A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

To form an effective team, we needed to discuss several issues in detail: CSAR procedures, target identification, and responses to particular threats. We looked forward to the Tirana conference to hammer out those tactical details. As it turned out, Tirana was an operational-level decision meeting between general officers and not one where worker bees could engage in stubby-pencil work. Regrettably, the Apache briefers were not familiar with our KEZ operations and briefed employment concepts and tactics that had been developed during the Cold War. General Short was understandably uncomfortable; he and General Hendrix decided, at that time, not to go forward with Apache operations.

The A-10s and Apaches didn’t fly together in combat; therefore, their potential for success in the KEZ remains pure speculation. Our opinions differed significantly on whether we could have developed workable tactics, but most of us thought it would have been worth the try. The level of military pressure necessary to force a Serbian capitulation was eventually applied to the Serb army by the KLA during a two-week period in early June. Perhaps that same level of pressure could have been applied by the Apaches within days or hours in early May.

Some people may consider the A-10 a Stone Age jet, but its very limitations may have been the catalyst that led to our success. When human ingenuity, born out of necessity, is combined with a cultural desire to find creative solutions to difficult tactical problems, tremendous feats can be accomplished. Such feats accounted for a lot of destroyed enemy armor in the KEZ, and the Hog community should never forget the human traits that led to those results.

The First Night CSAR Maj Phil “Goldie” Haun

Day 4: 27 March 1999. So far so good, if flying an A-10 for seven hours behind a KC-135 in a holding pattern over the Adriatic, while NATO’s air armada wreaked havoc over Serbia, is “good.” The really sad part was that flying nighttime airborne alert was a great mission compared to what most of my squadron mates were doing. They were either sitting ground alert or just watching the war go by from the sidelines at Aviano. We had only been tasked to provide CSAR support as Sandys. Our job was to respond to a jet being shot down and to be overhead in the A-10—one of the most lethal war machines ever created—to orchestrate the pilot’s rescue. So far no one had been shot down, which was a very good thing, and, as a consequence, our operational involvement had been limited.

That night I was scheduled to fly during the graveyard shift. My wingman, Capt Joe Bro Brosious, and I were to take off at midnight. As we traveled from the hotel to the squadron, NATO cancelled its strikes for the night because of bad weather. The CAOC then cancelled our first airborne-alert CSAR two-ship and placed the squadron on ground alert. Capts Buster Cherrey and John “Slobee” O’Brien had been scheduled to fly first and were now pulling ground alert as Sandy 30 and 31.

I turned my attention to more interesting work. In two days our squadron would begin leading daytime attacks on the Serbian army deployed in Kosovo. I was in charge of planning those attacks, so I drove over to wing intelligence, on the other side of the Aviano runway, to review its information. I had just started looking at some Kosovo imagery when an airman in the room yelled, “An F-117 has been shot down!”

That couldn’t be right! The strikes had been called off for tonight. We didn’t even have Buster and Slobee airborne. Later I would learn that, although the NATO strikes had been cancelled, the F-117 was part of a US-only strike.

Someone handed me a set of coordinates and the pilot’s name and rank scribbled on a yellow sticky. I raced back to the squadron and pulled up as Buster and Slobee were stepping to their jets. I gave them the information I had and talked strategy with Buster for about 30 seconds. We decided to have the MH-53J Pave Low helicopters launch when Sandy 41, our second set of A-10s flown by Capts Meegs Meger and Scrape Johnson, were refueling on the tanker. Sandy 41’s job would be to contact the helicopters, update them on the rescue plan, and then escort them to the survivor.

\Photo: Weapons troop inspecting an IIR Maverick and IR illumination rockets prior to a night mission