A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

Near the border I could hear a couple of A-10s working targets. I called them and coordinated to work well north of their position, 10 miles north of the Macedonian border. I found the town of Bujanovac and began searching the roads and surrounding areas. I worked my eyes south of the town and finally picked up six revetments. They were on a hilltop but were different than any other revetments I had ever seen. They were several miles from any major LOC and well camouflaged but were visible from the southwest. Because the weather had moved in and clouds were just above us, we were now limited to flying below 21,000 feet. I kept Dirt in a trail position and took a good look with the binos. The targets were hard to make out. I could see the ends of large tubes, which I took for long-range artillery tubes, sticking out from both ends of the revetments.

I rolled in and dropped two Mk-82s to mark the targets for Dirt. The bombs hit next to two revets, but I couldn’t see any secondaries. I called Moonbeam and asked for Dodge 61, a two-ship of British GR-7 Harriers carrying BL-755 CBUs.

“Two’s got both your marks. Two has a series of brown revets,” Dirt called.

“Yeah, I got six revets in the triangle area.” I made sure he saw all of them.

“Underneath your smoke now?” The smoke from my bombs rested over the revets.

“That’s affirm.”

“Got’em now.”

“Let’s extend out to the south towards good-guy land, and I’ll work up a five line for these guys.” The targets were very difficult to see. I was planning to pass Dodge five pieces of information to help them find the targets: IP (initial point—the place where they should start their attack), heading, distance, elevation, and coordinates. I also gave them a target description once they were within visual range. The Harriers had an electro-optical targeting pod, which they could use to look closely at targets. I was planning to use this device to get their eyes on the revetments.

Dodge 61 came up on the ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radio:

“Cub Three-One, Dodge Six-One.”^{1}

“Three-One go ahead.” Dodge didn’t hear my response, and the radio went quiet—but not for long.

While plotting the revets on my 1-to-250-scale map, I dropped the map between my ejection seat and my right control panel. Pushing the jet over with some negative Gs, I tried to get it to fly back up to me, but only got it hopelessly trapped directly beneath the ejection seat. I called Dirt on our Fox-Mike frequency, where no one else was listening: “You are not going to believe this but I just dropped my 1-to-250.”

Dirt’s response was not at all what I expected: “OK, triple-A now… triple-A coming up… I need you to come down here southbound.” Dirt was trying to keep me clear of the exploding AAA rounds cooking off right underneath us.

“Copy, I got the triple-A now. I’m visual the triple-A now.” For a moment I could make out a ridgeline, where I could see the puffs of smoke coming out of the guns in a group of four to six positions. The AAA pits were two miles west of the target we were working.

“I didn’t get a good look at the firing position.” Dirt had seen the AAA rounds exploding just underneath us but had not seen where the guns were located. The problem with flying over AAA during the day is that they aren’t as visible as they are at night. The only evidence of AAA is usually the explosion of the airburst rounds that have been set to detonate after a specific time of flight, or at a specific altitude. This looks like popcorn popping, or, in a group, they sometimes look like a strand of pearls with four to eight rounds going off in a line. Since not all AAA is set for airburst, we assumed that popcorn going off below us meant that unseen bullets were streaking up, around, and past us.

Dodge repeated his call, unaware of the AAA activity, “Cub Three-One, this is Dodge Six-One.”

I answered and Dodge continued, “Holding IP Brad; authenticate Alpha, Foxtrot, November.” Dodge was following procedure and was authenticating me, using authentication cards that we carry to make sure a Serb wasn’t spoofing him.

On UHF I responded to Dodge, “Stand by, I’m taking a little triple-A.”

Dirt asked me on the Fox-Mike radio, “Are you seeing it? You get a hack at the firing position?”

“I saw it coming up, but I couldn’t get a good hack. These roads have me screwed up, and I have my 1-to-250 dropped.” I had been watching so many roads that I was not positive where the AAA was located.

Getting back to business I responded, “Copy, I’ve found some AAA positions and/or arty. You’ll have to stand by for a while. I’ll have to get it plotted.” I was going to try to take out both the long-range arty and the AAA positions with the CBU. I made a quick guess of where the hillside was on my remaining 1-to-50 map and passed it on to Dodge. “OK, general target area, I’ll give you an update later, is Echo Mike six five nine three… and I can give you an update now six nine nine six.”

“Echo Mike six nine nine six, copied.”