A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

I initially expected the air war over Kosovo to be similar to the one in Desert Storm, and that it would have similar results. As a veteran of 43 of the latter’s actual combat sorties—which involved dropping bombs and getting shot at—I could see some similarities. However, it was much more difficult to find targets in Kosovo; often the ones we did find were given sanctuary by our restrictive ROEs. The political constraints were much more stringent in and around the villages of Kosovo than they had been in the Iraqi and Kuwaiti desert. The Serbs used the media at every opportunity to discredit the NATO coalition by claiming that our allied pilots committed war crimes. Such claims, if substantiated, could have easily turned world opinion against the coalition and forced NATO to halt its air campaign against fielded Serbian forces. That would have allowed the Serbs to continue their genocide and atrocities against the Kosovar Albanians. Strict ROEs, the (not-so) real-time target-approval process, and the denials for strikes on valid targets caused our pilots to become disgruntled with the whole command and control process—often  causing us to wonder whose side the guy making those decisions was actually on. The 81st FS Panthers had adopted the tactic of having all AFACs fly with a wingman, which we dubbed a “tethered fighter.” Capt Slobee O’Brien and I had been paired during that portion of the war and had flown several very successful missions together. None was more unusual than the sortie on 11 May, during which Slobee was the AFAC and flight lead of Uzi 11, and I was his tethered fighter and overall KEZ mission commander. The AFAC’s job was to find valid targets and then control the fighters while they attacked those targets. The wingman’s responsibilities were to provide visual lookout for the flight, communication backup, and firepower support, as well as assist the AFAC in any other way necessary. The tethered fighter could immediately attack targets if the planned strikers were either not available or too far away.

\Photo: Lt Col Coke Koechle, 81st EFS/DO, getting ready for a combat mission at Aviano AB

We flew an uneventful 45-minute vul period over Kosovo and then headed southwest for the tanker orbiting in Albania. After topping off, Moonbeam (ABCCC) told us to head to a certain village north of Pristina to search for targets that had been reported earlier. Once in the area, Moonbeam gave us a talk-on to a specific L-shaped building that had a bus parked alongside it and directed us to strike the building. This was highly unusual, since most ROEs prohibited us from hitting permanent structures for fear of harming innocent people and causing collateral damage. The idea of a talk-on from Moonbeam was also unusual, but I didn’t think much about it since other fighters could have passed on the target description earlier in the day. We surveyed the area with our binoculars and, while we saw no movement, we were convinced that this was the correct target. We each dropped three Mk-82 500 lb bombs on, or in the immediate vicinity of, the building and saw it and the bus begin to smolder. We reported the effects of our attack to Moonbeam and moved on to look for other valid targets in the area.

\Map: Location of L-shaped building north of Pristina

I had been near this area several days earlier and wanted to check some potential targets that I had seen, so we proceeded about 15 miles north of the smoking building. We found what looked like tracked vehicles in a tree line and mortar pits along a road, and were just about to employ our remaining ordnance when Moonbeam called again.

“Uzi One-One, do you still have contact with the L-shaped building?”

“No,” Slobee replied, “We have another potential target and are just about to strike it.”

“Well, we’d like you to go back to the L-shaped building. There are enemy soldiers walking around outside of it now, and we want you to strike it again.”

After several seconds of silence, Slobee said “Uzi copies.”

I don’t know what was going through my flight lead’s mind, but it was plainly obvious to me that someone had that building in sight and was providing real-time intelligence to the CAOC. I had an eerie feeling and pictured special forces on the ground near the target, or a Mr. Clark type from a Tom Clancy book. Then I thought that maybe it could be some KLA/UCK ground troops with a satellite-communications link to our forces. It really bothered me that, potentially, there were good guys down there and we didn’t know where they were.

We flew back to the building, which was just barely burning, and each dropped our last Mk-82 and fired a Maverick missile into it. It quickly erupted into a raging inferno, and the bus was completely destroyed.