Kosovo and the continuing SEAD challenge

Aerospace Power Journal, Summer, 2002 by Benjamin S. Dr. Lambeth

Editorial Abstract: Just as the attacks of 11 September 2001 refocused national attention on terrorism, so did the shootdown of an F-117 stealth aircraft over Kosovo in 1999 serve as a wake-up call for the Air Force to improve tactics, techniques, and procedures relating to the suppression of enemy air defenses. Dr. Lambeth paints a mixed picture of success and frustration during NATO's air war over Kosovo, pointing out systemic problems that the Air Force must address as it faces increased antiaccess challenges posed by intelligent enemies and threats from double-digit surface-to-air missiles.

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IN THE END, almost everyone acknowledged that the allied forces' use of airpower in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) air war for Kosovo in 1999 was a resounding success. (1) Yet, some troubling questions arose well before the war's favorable outcome over a number of unexpected problems along the way. Perhaps the most disturbing of these involved assessed deficiencies in the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) in support of allied strike operations against the enemy's fixed and mobile targets.

Much of the surprise experienced by allied aircrews during their early, unsuccessful forays against Serbia's integrated air defense system (IADS) in Operation Allied Force may have stemmed from an overconfidence in the Air Force's SEAD capability, which had taken root in the aftermath of the highly effective SEAD campaign during the opening days of Operation Desert Storm eight years before. At that time, Baghdad was protected by the heaviest concentration of air defenses of any city in the world after Moscow. Likewise, highly internetted, radar-guided surface-to-air missiles (SAM) and antiaircraft artillery (AAA) proliferated throughout the rest of Iraq. Accordingly, the coalition's initial SEAD attacks focused on neutralizing Iraq's radar-directed medium- and high-altitude SAMs with AGM-88 high-speed antiradiation missiles (HARM) so as to open up a sanctuary for coalition aircraft above 10,000 feet. (2) The underlying concept of operations entailed using a combination of tactical surprise and deception, from the very first moments of the campaign, to force the largest possible number of Iraqi SAM batteries to disclose their positions to the coalition's HARM shooters by activating their radars. (3)

During the first four hours of the war, coalition sensors logged nearly 100 radar emissions from Iraqi air defenses, resulting in the firing of more than 500 HARMs to useful effect during the first 24 hours. Consequently, Iraq's IADS operators quickly learned that activating their radars meant inviting a deadly attack. By the sixth day of the war, Iraqi SAM, AAA, and early warning radar emissions had dropped by 95 percent. Now that Iraq's air defenders were fully intimidated and loathe to activate their SAM acquisition-and-tracking radars, coalition SEAD operations moved from suppression to the physical destruction of enemy defenses, using general-purpose bombs, AGM-65 Maverick missiles, and CBU-87 cluster bombs. (4) Instead of rolling back the enemy's defenses sequentially, coalition planners attacked those assets simultaneously, neutralizing them in such a way that Iraq never recovered. For good reason, the US Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey later characterized the SEAD campaign as "one of the clear s uccess stories" of the war. (5)

In marked contrast to the highly satisfying SEAD experience of Desert Storm, the initial effort to suppress Serbian air defenses in Allied Force did not go nearly as well as expected. The avowed objective called for neutralizing as many of Serbia's SAMs and AAA sites as possible, particularly its estimated 16 SA-3 Low Blow and 25 SA-6 Straight Flush fire-control radars. Another early goal involved taking out or suppressing long-range surveillance radars that could provide timely threat warnings to enemy troops carrying shoulder-fired, infrared SAMs such as the SA-7. Unlike the Iraqis, however, the Serbs kept their SAMs defensively dispersed and operating in an emission-control mode, prompting concern that they meant to draw NATO aircraft down to lower altitudes for easier engagement. Before the initial strikes, there were reports of a large-scale dispersal of SA-3 and SA-6 batteries from nearly all of the known garrisons. The understandable reluctance of enemy SAM operators to emit and thus render themselves cooperative targets made them much harder to find and attack, forcing allied aircrews to remain constantly alert to the radar-guided SAM threat throughout the war. (6) This situation also had the effect of denying some high-risk targets for a time, increasing force-package size, and increasing overall requirements for SEAD sorties.

Moreover, unlike the more permissive operating environment in Desert Storm, limitations to airspace availability typically made for high predictability on the part of attacking NATO aircraft, and prohibitions against collateral damage frequently prevented the use of the most tactically advantageous attack headings. Adm Leighton Smith, USN, retired, commander of NATO forces in Bosnia from 1994 to 1996, said that the resulting efforts to neutralize the Serb IADS were "like digging out potatoes one at a time." (7) Gen John Jumper, commander of United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) at the time, later added that the combined air operations center (CAOC) could never get political clearance from NATO to attack the most troublesome early warning radars in Montenegro, which meant that the Serbs knew when attacks were coming most of the time. (8) In other cases, the cumbersome command and control ([C.sup.2]) arrangements and the need for prior CAOC approval before attacking the fleeting IADS pop-up targets resulte d in many lost opportunities and few hard kills of enemy SAM sites.