Sean D. Naylor
Army Times
7 June 1999
RINAS AIRFIELD, TIRANA, Albania -- Task Force Hawk leaders are fighting to protect their most potent artillery systems from a Pentagon directive that would rule out their use against Serbian targets in Kosovo.
The Pentagon already has banned U.S. jets from using cluster bomb units (CBUs) in the air war on Yugoslavia, after a series of embarrassing mishaps in which NATO aircraft hit civilian targets by mistake, including inadvertent attacks on convoys filled with refugees.
But officials here fear that the Pentagon initiative also will preclude the task force from firing Army Tactical Missile System or Multiple Launch Rocket System rounds into Serbia, because the missiles and the rockets use submunitions similar to those in CBUs. CBUs are canisters filled with softball-sized bomblets.
During a May 23 interview with Army Times, Task Force Hawk commander Lt. Gen. John Hendrix said the Air Force had stopped using cluster bombs "several days ago."
Asked whether he thought that the MLRS and the ATACMS, which both use the same launch vehicle, would be covered by the new policy, he replied: "I think they will, at the moment ... I believe that it is probable that ATACMS and our MLRS will be viewed that way." Hendrix said he was "absolutely" working to have the artillery systems exempted from the policy, but that he was unclear where the decision rested. "It's really, I think, probably a NATO issue, more than anything else, so it probably has to take place up through the military committee to the [North Atlantic Council] and then there's an endorsement by the secretary general," he said.
"On the U.S. side, I think we took this decision ... to give us greater assurance that we were not going to needlessly kill civilians," Hendrix said. "As a military person I would really rather see a different policy, but having said that, I understand it, and this is the way we work. We respond to political decisions."
However, Hendrix said he thought the issue would be resolved in Task Force Hawk's favor before the 5,000-soldier outfit was committed to battle.
"I don't think it's a permanent policy at all," he said.
But if the ban on using ATACMS and MLRS stuck, the task force would have to rethink its entire concept of operations. That concept was based on using the MLRS and ATACMS to suppress Serbian air defenses along the Albania-Kosovo border, prior to deep strikes by AH-64A Apache attack helicopters. Task Force Hawk's ATACMS/MLRS launchers form the core of its indirect fire capability.
Each launcher can carry 12 MLRS rockets or two ATACMS missiles. The ATACMS missiles come in two versions, Block 1 and Block 1A. The Block 1 missiles have a range of well over 100 kilometers, and scatter 950 submunitions over an area with a diameter of up to several hundred meters.
The Block 1A enjoys a 75 percent increase in range over the Block 1, and is more accurate, but only carries about 350 submunitions.
The MLRS rockets have a range of over 30 kilometers, and carry about 650 shaped-charge bomblets, each slightly smaller than a hand grenade. An extended range version of the rocket can reach to over 40 kilometers.
The task force does have other artillery systems at its disposal. There is a battery each of M109A6 Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzers and M119 105mm towed howitzers. The Paladins, from 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, Baumholder, Germany, have a range of 30 kilometers, and the M119s, from 1st Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment, Fort Bragg, N.C., can hit targets up to 20 kilometers away. Because neither of these systems has anything like the reach of the ATACMS, they, as well as MLRS rockets, would have to be fired much closer to the border in order to hit their likely targets in Kosovo, increasing their vulnerability to counterfire from Serbian artillery.
Army Times
7 June 1999
RINAS AIRFIELD, TIRANA, Albania -- Task Force Hawk leaders are fighting to protect their most potent artillery systems from a Pentagon directive that would rule out their use against Serbian targets in Kosovo.
The Pentagon already has banned U.S. jets from using cluster bomb units (CBUs) in the air war on Yugoslavia, after a series of embarrassing mishaps in which NATO aircraft hit civilian targets by mistake, including inadvertent attacks on convoys filled with refugees.
But officials here fear that the Pentagon initiative also will preclude the task force from firing Army Tactical Missile System or Multiple Launch Rocket System rounds into Serbia, because the missiles and the rockets use submunitions similar to those in CBUs. CBUs are canisters filled with softball-sized bomblets.
During a May 23 interview with Army Times, Task Force Hawk commander Lt. Gen. John Hendrix said the Air Force had stopped using cluster bombs "several days ago."
Asked whether he thought that the MLRS and the ATACMS, which both use the same launch vehicle, would be covered by the new policy, he replied: "I think they will, at the moment ... I believe that it is probable that ATACMS and our MLRS will be viewed that way." Hendrix said he was "absolutely" working to have the artillery systems exempted from the policy, but that he was unclear where the decision rested. "It's really, I think, probably a NATO issue, more than anything else, so it probably has to take place up through the military committee to the [North Atlantic Council] and then there's an endorsement by the secretary general," he said.
"On the U.S. side, I think we took this decision ... to give us greater assurance that we were not going to needlessly kill civilians," Hendrix said. "As a military person I would really rather see a different policy, but having said that, I understand it, and this is the way we work. We respond to political decisions."
However, Hendrix said he thought the issue would be resolved in Task Force Hawk's favor before the 5,000-soldier outfit was committed to battle.
"I don't think it's a permanent policy at all," he said.
But if the ban on using ATACMS and MLRS stuck, the task force would have to rethink its entire concept of operations. That concept was based on using the MLRS and ATACMS to suppress Serbian air defenses along the Albania-Kosovo border, prior to deep strikes by AH-64A Apache attack helicopters. Task Force Hawk's ATACMS/MLRS launchers form the core of its indirect fire capability.
Each launcher can carry 12 MLRS rockets or two ATACMS missiles. The ATACMS missiles come in two versions, Block 1 and Block 1A. The Block 1 missiles have a range of well over 100 kilometers, and scatter 950 submunitions over an area with a diameter of up to several hundred meters.
The Block 1A enjoys a 75 percent increase in range over the Block 1, and is more accurate, but only carries about 350 submunitions.
The MLRS rockets have a range of over 30 kilometers, and carry about 650 shaped-charge bomblets, each slightly smaller than a hand grenade. An extended range version of the rocket can reach to over 40 kilometers.
The task force does have other artillery systems at its disposal. There is a battery each of M109A6 Paladin 155mm self-propelled howitzers and M119 105mm towed howitzers. The Paladins, from 4th Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, Baumholder, Germany, have a range of 30 kilometers, and the M119s, from 1st Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment, Fort Bragg, N.C., can hit targets up to 20 kilometers away. Because neither of these systems has anything like the reach of the ATACMS, they, as well as MLRS rockets, would have to be fired much closer to the border in order to hit their likely targets in Kosovo, increasing their vulnerability to counterfire from Serbian artillery.