Kosovo War

The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is often used to describe two sequential and at times parallel armed conflicts (a civil war followed by an international war) in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, part of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. These conflicts were:

Military and political consequences

The Kosovo war had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved — formally it is still part of Yugoslavia, but in practice the Yugoslav government has little or no say or practical influence over the affairs of the province, which is run as a UN protectorate under a UN-appointed governor. It remains an issue of considerable controversy with Kosovo Albanians continuing to press for independence, a demand which is resisted by the international community for fear of the potential destabilising effects.

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Milo?evi? survived the immediate aftermath of the war, but the effective loss of Kosovo was a major factor in provoking the popular revolt which overthrew him in 2000. He was subsequently arrested and taken to The Hague, where he is currently on trial for war crimes.

Related Topics:
2000 - The Hague

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Despite the successful conclusion of the war, Kosovo exposed gaping weaknesses in NATO. It revealed how dependent the European members had become on the United States military — the vast majority of combat and non-combat operations were dependent on US involvement — and highlighted the lack of precision weapons in European armories. Some right-wing and military critics in the US also blamed the alliance's agreement-by-consensus arrangements for hobbling and slowing down the campaign.

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The campaign exposed significant weaknesses in the US arsenal, which were later addressed for the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. Apache attack helicopters and C-130 Hercules gunships were brought up to the front lines but were never actually used after two Apaches crashed during training in the Albanian mountains. Stocks of many precision missiles were run down to critically low levels — had the campaign lasted much longer, NATO would have had to revert back to using "dumb" bombs for lack of anything better. Also, many of the precision-guided weapons proved unable to cope with Balkan weather, as the clouds blocked the laser guidance beams. This was resolved by retrofitting bombs with global positioning system satellite guidance devices that are immune to bad weather. Also, although pilotless surveillance aircraft were extensively used, it often proved the case that attack aircraft could not be brought to the scene quickly enough to hit targets of opportunity. This led to the fitting of missiles to Predator drones in Afghanistan, reducing the "sensor to shooter" time to virtually nil.

Related Topics:
Afghanistan - Iraq - Apache attack helicopters - C-130 Hercules - Global positioning system

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Kosovo also demonstrated that even a high-tech force such as NATO could be thwarted by quite simple tactics, according to Wesley Clark and other NATO generals who analyzed these tactics a few years after the conflict.

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http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/front/RTGAM/20021120/wless1120/Front/homeBN/breakingnews The Yugoslav army had long expected to need to resist a much stronger enemy — either Soviet or NATO — during the Cold War and had developed effective tactics of deception and concealment in response. These would have been unlikely to have resisted a full-scale invasion for long, but were probably effective in misleading overflying aircraft and satellites. Among the tactics used were:

Related Topics:
Soviet - Cold War

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• US stealth aircraft were tracked with radars operating on long wavelengths. If stealth jets got wet or started to drop bombs they would become visible on the radar screens. An F-117 Nighthawk was spotted in this way and downed with a missile, although this was admittedly a lucky shot. There were rumors that a new prototype of Russian SAM could detect and hit the F-117. This would explain why the Russian foreign secretary Primakov came with a huge transport the very next day to Belgrade.
• Precision-guided missiles were often confused and unable to pinpoint radars, because radar beams were reflected off heavy farm machinery like old tractors and plows.
• Many low-tech approaches were used to confuse heat-seeking missiles and infrared sensors. Decoys such as small gas furnaces were used to simulate nonexistent positions on mountainsides. Scout helicopters would land on flatbed trucks and rev their engines before being towed to camouflaged sites several hundred metres away. Heat-seeking missiles from NATO jets would then locate and go after the residual heat on the trucks. Similar tactics were planned in the case of the ground invasion - covert placement of heat emitters on territory that NATO troops were to enter, tricking B-52s into carpet-bombing their own positions and causing friendly-fire incidents.
• Dummy targets were used very extensively. Fake bridges, airfields and decoy planes and tanks were used. Tanks were made using old tires, plastic sheeting and logs, and sand cans and fuel set alight to mimic heat emissions. They fooled NATO pilots into bombing hundreds of such decoys. NATO claimed that Yugoslav air force had been decimated. In reality, as it turned out after the war, most Yugoslav planes and armored vehicles survived unscathed.
• Bridges and other strategic targets were defended from missiles with laser-guidance systems by bonfires made of old tires and wet hay, which emit dense smoke filled with laser-reflecting particles.
• Old electronic jammers were used to block U.S. bombs equipped with satellite guidance.
• Yugoslav jets flew combat missions over Kosovo at extremely low altitudes, taking advantage of mountainous terrain to remain undetected by AWACS airborne radar aircraft.
• Hispano-Suiza anti-aircraft cannons from the World War II era were used effectively against slow-flying drone aircraft.