A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

Sadly, there was another source of beautiful imagery for finding Serb army targets that we were unable to exploit. The French army operated ground-controlled reconnaissance drones and routinely collected imagery during the course of the conflict that could have been very valuable. We were unable to use it because we did not even know it existed. I first became aware of this capability a year after OAF while visiting a large open house in September 2000 that was hosted jointly by the French army and the French Joint Defense College. There I met members of the 61st Artillery Regiment as they displayed their CL 289 and Crecerelle optical and IR-imagery drones. They explained that their drones were able to take both day and night pictures, and that they also had data links for real-time imagery transmission. Curious, I asked their leader if they had participated in any recent operations. A lieutenant said, “Yes, Kosovo.” I then asked them from where, and they replied “Kumanovo”—which had been our Macedonian entry point into the eastern half of the KEZ. I asked them how they employed their drones, and they said they flew them daily to determine the positions of Serb army tanks, APCs, and artillery—exactly in the areas where we flew our missions. They normally flew them at night so that they would have a good ground order of battle for the beginning of the day. I asked if their operations had been effective. They said, “Yes,” and added that they got very good, if not complete, information on Serb army dispositions. I asked them to whom they sent their imagery, and they said to the normal French army-intelligence channels.

I was flabbergasted. As the sun went up each day, we were always the first AFACs across the border, and we desperately needed that kind of imagery to find targets. The French imagery would have been perfect for us since it could have been delivered close enough to real time that the enemy could not have moved his weaponry before we arrived overhead. Someone had it—but we didn’t. I can’t speculate on where it went or why it never got to us, but obviously every possibility for obtaining crucial target information should be exploited.

Another good source of current target information was the CAOC’s force-level execution (FLEX) targeting cell. The FLEX cell fused information gained from various sources, using a variety of methods, and was often able to determine the location of actively operating Serb army units and command posts. For example, when a Serb artillery unit fired on a Kosovar village, the US Army’s counterbattery radar could plot the Serbs’ position. Similarly, when a Serb command post transmitted orders on its radios, our electronic warfare (EW) folks could triangulate its location. The FLEX cell also received target information from Predator drones. The cell fused all of this information and passed it to the ABCCC, which would then contact the AFAC in the area nearest the suspected target. The AFAC would then take a look, and our experience confirmed that the FLEX information was usually quite accurate. The marriage of drones and AFACs to locate and engage targets was a first for either combat or training operations. Sometimes it worked well, and sometimes it didn’t. Our pioneering work with Predator is addressed more fully in chapter 7.

\Photo: RQ-1A Predator, a long-endurance, medium-altitude unmanned aircraft system for surveillance and reconnaissance missions

Even with all this high-tech help, we still located about 80 percent of the targets we engaged using our Mk-1 eyeballs, augmented by our trusty 12-power gyrostabilized binoculars. A typical OAF AFAC scenario would begin with thorough flight planning using the best target information available from all sources. After takeoff the AFAC would contact ABCCC and/or JSTARS and integrate their updates into his mission planning while en route to the KEZ. He would then proceed directly to the target areas. The AFAC would focus on either the highest priority target or the one that had the highest likelihood of being found. Failing to find anything to attack at the target coordinates and lacking any other good target information, the AFAC would proceed to areas where his experience suggested that he might find something worth attacking.