A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

Colonel Thompson had to decide who would accompany Scratch and Dirt to see “the Man.” I was the commander, present at the beginning of the misunderstanding, and offered to go. Stu nobly offered to explain to General Short his previous sorties and the source of any misunderstanding. Colonel Thompson, although thankful for the offers, doubted General Short would have time to understand all of the convoluted details before grounding our entire group for insubordination. Colonel Thompson had worked for General Short before and decided to lead the two majors to Vicenza. General Short carefully explained to them, Colonel Thompson reported afterward, that he could not tolerate any more ROE deviations, intentional or otherwise. He would expressly approve any exceptions.

Capt Joseph S. “Joe Bro” Brosious’s story provides a happy ending to this tale. One of the guys who had twice been after the Serbs’ pesky Montenegrin acquisition radar finally strafed it with his mighty GAU-8 Avenger cannon. The Hog had proved its versatility once again, showing that it is well adapted to handle some particularly knotty missions. All the guys who had gone after the radar survived, maintained an aggressive edge, and continued to take the fight to the enemy. However, we all learned an important lesson—we could do the enemy’s work for him if we dropped our guard on the ROEs.

The Giraffe Capt Ron “Stu” Stuewe

I’ll warn you up front that this is a long narrative. I’ve told this story only a handful of times and have found that it’s best received at the bar on a Friday night over a couple of beers. Its telling usually involves a lot of fighter-pilot hand gestures, and a good deal of profanity—sometimes it even evokes audience participation. A buddy of mine describes this as a story about a few days of “knife-in-your-teeth combat flying,” and the attitude—aggressive or foolhardy—that one can develop while attempting to accomplish the mission. It is an important story, however, that has existed only in the memories and personal journals of a few pilots. Even though it will lose a little in translation, it should be preserved in print.

I was “Sandy 1” on the night of 4 May 1999, sitting 30-minute CSAR alert with Maj Dice Kopacz as my number two. I had arrived at the squadron around 2000 hours, in time to be ready for our normal ground alert from 2100 to about 0500. I noticed a buzz in the air about a “priority target,” and Kimos, the squadron commander, was on the secure telephone for a long time. Most of the night flyers had already launched on their sorties, and everyone else was in pilot rest for the next day’s missions. Finally, after a half hour of pondering, Kimos came to me with a set of coordinates on an orange sticky pad. He simply stated, “There’s a Flat Face radar here. Go kill it.” As it was shaping up, the only available bodies for this priority target were the guys on CSAR alert.

Attack pilots find nothing better than having their squadron commander tell them to go kill a target. We tried to plot the coordinates on our maps only to learn it was too far west. We grabbed a computer and found out that this early warning radar wasn’t in Kosovo, or even Serbia for that matter. It was located on the coast of Montenegro—which, incidentally, was supposed to be a third party during this bombing campaign. Not only did the politically sensitive nature of attacking targets in Montenegro worry me, but also I had concerns about the three unlocated SA-6 batteries that intel claimed were in the area.

I put everyone to work: building maps, working on timing, and getting our night-vision goggles ready. Then I went to the weather shop. The weather forecaster explained that the ceiling was low—real low—2,000-foot overcast with four kilometers of visibility, to be precise. There was not much we could do except fly below the clouds, which would put us well below the altitude prescribed in the ROEs. While I was planning the attack, the weather guy changed his forecast several more times. The lowest forecast was for a 2,000-foot ceiling, and the highest called for a 10,000-foot ceiling. It seemed that the CAOC and Kimos considered this priority target important enough that the normal ROE altitudes would not apply, and I was cleared to go “below the weather.” I found out later, however, that the forecast ceilings that the CAOC, Kimos, and I were planning with were all different. Therefore, the attack altitude that corresponded to the below-the-weather approval meant different things to each of us.