NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Project Air Force Series on Operation Allied Force) [Paperback]

Benjamin S. Lambeth (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0833030507 | ISBN-13: 978-0833030504 | Publication Date: November 16, 2001

Offers a thorough appraisal of Operation Allied Force from a military, political, and strategic perspective, calling attention to those issues that are likely to have the greatest bearing on future military policymaking.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this volume, the US expert on air power, Benjamin S. Lambeth, has produced a detailed and convincing exposition of the progress and achievements of NATO's 78-day war against Yugoslavia in 1999. He sets out the course of the war in great detail, and the book is likely to remain a foundation work in all future assessments of the conflict. It is, in effect as near an official history of the war as we are likely to get for a long time... This fine book will be a starting point for all rational evaluations of NATO's victorious campaign. It will also be an important reference point in future discussions about NATO enlargement, as presumably the administrative and political problems involved in achieving consensus for action in future wars will not be eased by the admission of new members.
James Pettifer


...The Lambeth volume offers a particularly impressive overview of operational and strategic implications for future warfare.
Stephen Biddle


NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment, by RAND researcher Benjamin S. Lambeth, provides one of the most comprehensive reviews to date of Operation Allied Force. As advertised, the study focuses on the air war's strategic and operational objectives. However, Lambeth goes beyond the traditional perspectives to provide the reader with an understanding that although Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic may have capitulated following 78 days of bombing, that result in no way should be interpreted as an unqualified endorsement of the use of air power to resolve regional conflicts. In fact, Lambeth characterizes the use of air power during the operation as 'suboptimal'... The greatest value of this work lies in Lambeth's examination of political and strategic perspectives that may be of use to policymakers conducting such operations in the future.
Parameters, Spring 2002


Many of the author's conclusions are right on the mark and should be taken seriously by U.S. and NATO politicians and military leaders.
Milan Vego


... The most authoritative look yet at what went on, and why, in this significant and unusual war.
Phillip S. Meilinger

From the Publisher

On March 24, 1999, NATO embarked on a 78-day air war aimed atcompelling the government of Yugoslavia and its elected president,Slobodan Milosevic, to halt and reverse the human rights abuses thatwere being committed by armed Serbs against the ethnic Albanianmajority living in Yugoslavia's Serbian province of Kosovo. That ef-fort,called Operation Allied Force, ended on June 9 after Milosevicfinally acceded to NATO's demands and a withdrawal of Serb forcesfrom Kosovo had begun. The air war was a first of that magnitude forNATO and represented the third largest strategic application of airpower by the United States since World War II, exceeded only by theVietnam War and Operation Desert Storm in scale and intensity.With a view toward capturing the many useful insights to be ex-tractedfrom that experience, the U.S. Air Force chief of staff, GeneralMichael Ryan, asked Headquarters United States Air Forces inEurope (Hq USAFE) shortly after Allied Force ended to establisha studies and analysis office (USAFE/SA) to manage all USAF-sponsoredassessments of the air war. The director of that office,Brigadier General John Corley, in turn asked RAND's Project AIRFORCE to contribute to the assessment effort across a wide spectrumof topics, ranging from individual platform and systems performanceto command and control, operational support, strategy and plan-ning,and other considerations bearing on the air war's effectiveness.This book examines the conduct and results of Operation AlliedForce at the strategic and operational levels. An earlier and less de-velopedversion appeared as a chapter in the author's previous bookThe Transformation of American Air Power, which was published byCornell University Press in September 2000. The research docu-mented herein was carried out in Project AIR FORCE's Strategy andDoctrine Program and was completed in August 2001. Allphotographs included in this study were provided by the U.S.Department of Defense. The book should be of interest to USAFofficers and other members of the U.S. national security communityconcerned with strategy and force employment issues raised byNATO's air war for Kosovo and with the implications of thatexperience for force development, air power doctrine, and conceptsof operations for joint and coalition warfare.Other documents published in this series currently include the fol-lowing:MR-1279-AF, Command and Control and Battle Management: Expe-riencesfrom the Air War over Serbia, James E. Schneider, MyronHura, Gary McLeod (Government publication; not releasable to thegeneral public)MR-1326-AF, Aircraft Weapon Employment in Operation Allied Force,William Stanley, Carl Rhodes, Robert Uy, Sherrill Lingel (Governmentpublication; not releasable to the general public)MR-1351-AF, The Conflict over Kosovo: Why Milosevic Decided toSettle When He Did, Stephen HosmerMR-1391-AF, European Contributions to Operation Allied Force:Implications for Transatlantic Cooperation, John E. Peters, StuartJohnson, Nora Bensahel, Timothy Liston, Traci WilliamsDB-332-AF, Aircraft Survivability in Operation Allied Force, WilliamStanley, Sherrill Lingel, Carl Rhodes, Jody Jacobs, Robert Uy(Government publication; not releasable to the general public)Topics examined in series documents nearing completion include: Supporting Expeditionary Aerospace Forces: Lessons from theAir War Over Serbia Lessons Learned from Operation Allied Force Tanker OperationsProject AIR FORCEProject AIR FORCE, a division of RAND, is the Air Force's federallyfunded research and development center (FFRDC) for studies andanalysis. It provides the USAF with independent analyses of policyalternatives affecting the deployment, employment, combat readi-ness,and support of current and future air and space forces. Re-searchis performed in four programs: Aerospace Force Develop-ment;Manpower, Readiness, and Training; Resource Management;and Strategy and Doctrine.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Rand Corporation (November 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0833030507
• ISBN-13: 978-0833030504
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,004,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #69 in Books > History > Europe > Serbia

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Balanced, well-written and highly informative, January 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Project Air Force Series on Operation Allied Force) (Paperback)

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the role and efficacy of air power. This account is well-balanced giving the story from the pro air power and anti airpower views. It also answers the nagging questions you may have had after reading the incredibly uninformative and shallow accounts in the press. The book posits the reasons. An example -- the book provides the reasons for the need for a credible ground threat for airpower to be effective. Books such as Bombing to Win only state the need. Detailed, nuanced and spot-on accurate.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing Kindle Edition, June 2, 2010

By 

Trav Hallen (Canberra, Australia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Project Air Force Series on Operation Allied Force) (Kindle Edition)

It is unfortunate that I have to give a Ben Lambeth book two stars; but this excellent examination of the Kosovo air war has been let down by the incredibly poor Kindle edition.

I will not add to the comments of the other reviewers that attest to the quality of this book's examination of the subject matter, other than to say that it is what we have come to expect from Ben Lambeth. It is a high quality insightful analysis of the full range of issues raised as a result of the NATO experience in Kosovo.

Where I will add is to warn potential buyers off the Kindle edition until it is re-editted. Throughout the book there are a large number of paragraphs that have been cut off in mid-sentence, some even mid-word. This was a serious disappointment as such poor-quality editting would not be tolerated by RAND in their hard-copy editions. For those who wish to get an electronic version of this book for their Kindle I would recommend downloading it directly from the RAND website.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Inelegant Victory, April 10, 2002

By 

R. A Forczyk (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Project Air Force Series on Operation Allied Force) (Paperback)

There is little doubt that the 78-day NATO air campaign against Serbia in March-June 1999, dubbed Operation Allied Force, will remain highly controversial for a long time. NATO launched a limited war against Serbia in order to stop the vicious on-going ethnic cleansing campaign in the province of Kosovo and although ultimately Serb President Milosevic "blinked," it was an inelegant victory. Yet the victory was hardly inevitable and until the final weeks the air campaign appeared to be ineffective in bending Milosevic to meet NATO's demands. In NATO's Air War for Kosovo, RAND analyst Benjamin S. Lambeth has written an incisive strategic assessment of the air campaign as part of a US Air Force research project on the operation. Rather than a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the air war, Lambeth offers detailed analysis on the major achievements and problems in Allied Force. While other more detailed books will surely follow on the Kosovo War, Lambeth's volume will certainly be a good place to start in understanding this complex operation.

NATO's Air War for Kosovo consists of eight chapters, beginning with two brief chapters that outline events leading up to the air campaign. The air campaign itself is covered a chapter 3, a 50-page summary that covers the main events of NATO air operations but does not provide a day-by-day account. The fourth chapter addresses the possible reasons for the Serb capitulation and stresses that it was not just the air campaign in isolation that prompted this outcome. The fifth chapter covers the three main unique accomplishments of the war: combat debut of the B-2, UAV employment and increased contributions from space-based resources to combat operations. However the heart of this book lies in chapters 6-7, which address friction and operational problems and lapses in strategy and implementation. It is in these 118 pages - 47% of the book - that Lambeth lays out his most significant assessments of the war. Readers will note in the bibliography that Lambeth's source-material derives from two primary venues: contemporary newspaper accounts and post-war interviews with participants.

While Operation Allied Force was deemed a victory, it was a disappointing campaign from the military perspective. As Lambeth notes, "notwithstanding its ultimate success, what began as a hopeful gambit for producing Milosevic's quick compliance soon developed, for a time at least, into a seemingly ineffectual bombing experiment with no clear end in sight..." and, "NATO's air war for Kosovo [was] a step backward in efficiency when compared to the Desert Storm campaign." Lambeth lays out the military frustrations of Allied Force in clinical detail, beginning with the inability of the SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) operations to completely shutdown the resilient Serb mobile SAM batteries. The problems with "flex targeting" also prevented the air campaign from seriously hurting the Serb army in Kosovo or even interfering with the ongoing ethnic cleansing. So many other problems surfaced, including the Chinese Embassy bombing, airspace management congestion, interoperability problems with NATO, collateral damage and the Task Force Hawk fiasco that it almost seems amazing that NATO actually won. In terms of strategic lapses, Lambeth particularly hammers on President Clinton's decision to remove the ground option a priori as reducing NATO's threats to a single dimension. This threat was then further diminished by the assumption that Milosevic would fold after a token 3-4 days of bombing and the adoption of a small-scale escalation model for the bombing campaign. When the token bombing didn't work, NATO was forced to rethink its strategy and opted for ad hoc targeting, which was hindered by overly complicated NATO planning procedures and bad weather. Instead of taking down entire systems in Serbia - like air defense and electrical power - as the airpower enthusiasts advocated, the air campaign instead developed as a muddled, escalatory series of poorly-coordinated raids. In the end, Lambeth concludes that it was the inability of the Serb air defenses to shoot-down a significant number of NATO aircraft and the gradual destruction of Serbia's economic-industrial infrastructure that were probably the air campaign's greatest contribution to Milosevic's decision to agree to NATO demands. However, Lambeth is quick to note that the Russian abandonment of Milosevic, diplomatic isolation and the threat of eventual NATO ground operations also had a major impact on the Serb leader's decision. Milosevic's decision to escalate the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo was also a major strategic blunder that partly counter-acted NATO mistakes; Serb atrocities only served to harden NATO resolve for victory.

There are a few areas where Lambeth treads too lightly. In terms of accomplishments, American Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) capabilities were impressively displayed in Operation Allied Force. Including Scott O'Grady's F-16 shot down earlier, American CSAR capabilities are 3 for 3 in the Balkans, which improves the morale of US pilots and hurts the morale of the enemy. Lambeth also fails to provide any real overall assessment of the damage done to Serbia by airpower in Allied Force, nor even a summary of the major infrastructure targets that were affected. Finally, while Lambeth mentions the strikes on the Belgrade TV station on 21 April 1999, he fails to put this raid in moral context. Inadvertent collateral damage is a painful but unavoidable fact or warfare - as Lambeth notes - but deliberate targeting of a civilian facility is another matter. The Laws of Warfare, which the United States adheres to explicitly prohibit attacks directed against civilians and/or attacks that serve no military purpose. While the TV station was a conduit for Milosevic's propaganda, this did not make it a legitimate military target. Therefore, the order to attack the TV station was both immoral and illegal and the US military leaders who carried it out could someday be liable before an international tribunal. Given the large numbers of targets that were "scrubbed" during the campaign for weather or collateral damage reasons, it is amazing that this attack was carried out in downtown Belgrade.