Sean D. Naylor
Army Times
16 August 1999
As the debate over what lessons should be drawn from the war in Kosovo continues, one fact stands clear. NATO, with American military power at its center, won the last war of the 20th century without the U.S. Army firing a shot.
That happened despite the deployment of a 5,500-soldier contingent named Task Force Hawk that was designed to launch AH-64 Apache attack helicopter strikes deep into Kosovo.
For two months in the mud and the dust of Albania, members of the task force planned and rehearsed the dangerous, meticulous missions that their leaders assured them were imminent. So intense was their preparation that two Apache pilots died when their helicopter crashed during one rehearsal.
On April 7 -- four days after the Task Force was ordered to Albania -- U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen met with NATO Gen. Wesley Clark in Belgium and told reporters: "Whatever Gen. Clark feels he needs in order to carry out this campaign successfully, he will receive."
But sources in the Pentagon and at NATO said that when it came to giving permission to send the Apaches into combat, the Defense Department, backed by the Army, failed to live up to that promise.
The word to launch never came. Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic eventually gave up the fight in early June, and most of the task force was soon on its way back to Germany.
The war had ended, but the recriminations and finger-pointing had only just begun.
Clark asks to deploy Apaches
Clark told Army Times July 5 that he asked for permission to deploy an Apache task force from Germany to the Balkans "a couple of days before the air campaign began" March 24.
"I thought they'd be very useful in going after the ground forces that were in" Kosovo, he said. "The fast-movers have a limited capacity for target identification. The Air Force has never been comfortable in accepting the mission of going after mobile targets on the ground."
Clark has no uniformed military officers above him in his U.S. chain of command, which runs straight from him to Defense Secretary William Cohen to President Clinton. The White House delegated authority for approving Clark's request to Cohen, according to sources with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO.
Cohen, in turn, was reluctant to make any decision on the task force without getting the nod from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry Shelton, these sources said. After much debate, the Joint Chiefs acquiesced to the deployment of Task Force Hawk, but withheld the authority to commit the Apaches to battle.
The Pentagon's reservations centered on three issues:
* A perception the missions weren't worth the risk to aircrews;
* A fear the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) strikes that would precede the Apache missions would hit civilians; and
* A concern that use of Apaches and ATACMS would fundamentally alter the character of a war that until then NATO had chosen to wage from 15,000 feet.
When Clark's request for the Apaches came, it took the Joint Chiefs by surprise, the sources said. A suspicion quickly developed that Clark and his staff had not thought through their plans .
"There was this conversation that went, 'What the hell does he want them for? What's he going to use them for? How's he going to support them? Where's he going to base them?,'" said the Joint Chiefs source. "In our initial conversations with his staff, they couldn't answer half of those questions."
Clark was told to come back with more answers before the Joint Chiefs could allow Task Force Hawk into the fight. "The feeling around here was that concurrence of the Joint Chiefs wasn't coming any time soon," the source said.
Task Force Hawk's Apaches began arriving at Rinas Airfield, Tirana, April 21, but their first few weeks in Albania did little to dispel the doubts in the Pentagon. The Army had dispatched one of its most experienced aviation officers, Brig. Gen. (P) Dick Cody, from Fort Hood, Texas, to Europe to help Hawk commander Lt. Gen. John Hendrix plan and execute the Apache raids.
As soon as he set foot in the mud pit that the Tirana airfield had become, Cody realized the Apache crews were going to need extensive training before flying combat missions in such an unforgiving environment.
The missions being planned would require the Apaches to fly with heavy fuel and ammunition loads high into the mountains to reach their targets in Kosovo. Heavily laden helicopters are difficult to control at high altitudes, and few of the Apache pilots had ever flown in such demanding conditions.
In addition, the Apache radios were inadequate for the long-distance communications needed in such deep attacks. Despite the addition of several rotary and fixed-wing communications aircraft to the missions, 'commo' problems continually plagued the task force. With no word from the Pentagon on when they would be employed, Cody put the task force through an arduous series of full-up mission rehearsals. Quickly, the proficiency of the helicopter crews and the staff back in the task force's deep operations control cell grew to the point that Cody felt comfortable comparing it to that of the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, a unit he had once commanded.
But the achievement came at a terrible cost. The task force lost one Apache April 26, when its pilots could not give the heavy bird enough power and lift to keep it from hitting a mountainside in the thin air, a phenomenon aviators call "settling with power." While destroying the Apache, the two pilots escaped virtually unscathed, but worse was to come.
On May 5, an Apache flown by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Dave Gibbs and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kevin Reichert flipped 180 degrees in mid-air and landed on its back, killing both pilots instantly. The Army Safety Center has yet to release its report on the crash, but Task Force Hawk officials said mechanical failure was the cause, possibly related to the helicopter's back-up, "fly-by-wire" control system. "I believe we had some kind of flight control malfunction," Cody later said. "The tail rotor did not cause that crash, nor was it a wire strike, nor do we believe it was pilot error."
The crashes did little to convince the skeptics in the Pentagon that the Apache missions Clark wanted to conduct were worth the risk. The Apache was developed in the 1970s to support ground forces by attacking massed enemy armor formations. But Hawk's missions involved one or two handfuls of Apaches -- supported by several UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters -- flying 80 to 100 miles through the mountains at night to strike small clusters of dug-in armored vehicles.
Army officials who examined the task force's operational concept did not like what they saw. "I just asked the same question I would ask of any tactical commander," said Col. Mike Hackerson, an Apache pilot in the office of the Army's deputy chief of operations and plans. "What was the target array that warranted employment of the Apache helicopters that couldn't be done by something else?
"The threat that we go after," he said, "is massed armor and artillery, and command and control nodes. There was never massed artillery, there was never massed armor, and there were very few command and control nodes that couldn't be taken out by other" systems.
The concerns over risk were shared by some of the more experienced members of the task force. Senior officers were concerned about the amount of information the Pentagon had released about the task force, including the composition of the force, where the Apaches were coming from, and where they were to be based.
"We basically gave the enemy a warning order," Cody said.
Nevertheless, the task force got on with the business of preparing for combat.
Worth the risk?
In recent weeks the task force's readiness has been questioned by Congress and the media. The delays in deploying the task force, the crashes, the failure to commit the task force to battle and publication of a memo from Cody to other Army leaders noting the first three weeks of the deployment were "painful and high risk" all helped fuel negative perceptions about the Army's -- specifically Task Force Hawk's -- ability to get to, and win, a fight.
But everyone in the Apache chain of command, from the pilots to Hendrix, was unanimous that by the beginning of May the task force was ready for war. The question remained, however, was it worth the risk?
For Task Force Hawk, that risk was substantial.
First, there was the mountainous terrain, criss-crossed with wires that were not marked on the pilots' maps. "I considered the terrain and the wires to be at least as dangerous as the Serb threat, if not more so," said one of the task force's most experienced pilots.
Then there were the Serbian gunners waiting for them in the mountains. Most pilots said the Serb weapons they feared most were small arms and shoulder-held missiles such as the SA-7 "Grail." According to an intelligence briefing given to the Apache pilots, on April 10 Milosevic "ordered all his guys who were training with SA-7s to move to the [Kosovo-Albanian] border." That amounted to a force armed with 200 SA-7 launchers and up to 20,000 missiles, according to the briefer, an Air Force officer from the top-secret Joint Analysis Center in Molesworth, United Kingdom, which provides intelligence from a variety of sources to American and NATO forces.
In addition to the SA-7, the Serbs were believed to be equipped with up to 100 of the more capable SA-16 "Gimlet" and SA-18 "Grouse" Soviet-designed shoulder-held air defense missiles. The Serbs also had Flatface and Giraffe early warning radars capable of detecting the Apaches, which were restricted by the mountains to using only one or two valleys as routes into Kosovo. The nightmare scenario for the task force was having a flight of Apaches and Black Hawks detected as they neared the border, and flying into an air defense ambush.
To illustrate for his audience how ready the Serbs were to shoot down the Apaches, the Molesworthbriefer disclosed that the Serbs had already downed seven of their own helicopters, thinking them to be Apaches.
For all the bravado expressed by their commanders, the prospect of flying into this environment alarmed some of the coolest heads in the Apache squadrons. "I did not think this was a good mission for us, because of the terrain and the projected threat array we would be facing," said one experienced Apache pilot.
"Readiness or preparedness was really not the issue here," the pilot continued. "The issue was cost vs. benefit." Some of the most powerful voices in the Pentagon agreed. One of them belonged to Gen. Dennis Reimer, the outgoing Army chief of staff.
"My position was that this was a classic risk-benefit analysis," Reimer told Army Times July 13. "Initially I was not convinced that the benefits outweighed the risks, because we were not dealing with a mature concept."
Like other officers on the Army staff, Reimer's worries centered on the type of missions planned for the Apaches, and the dearth of viable targets for them to attack. "I always had concerns that the targets weren't there," Reimer said. "That was not what I would call a target-rich environment. That was basically going out and trying to plink tanks one at a time."
"The worst-case risk was that you might lose an Apache per tank," Hackerson said.
The Clinton administration's perceived obsession with avoiding casualties underpinned many of the concerns Washington was transmitting to the field. But Reimer said he and his fellow chiefs felt no pressure from the White House. "Nobody ever put any pressure on us other than the pressure that was generated by ourselves to make sure that we did not put people in harm's way needlessly."
But if this was the case, the opposite message was reaching the operators. "If he kills one U.S. pilot, he wins," said the Air Force officer from Molesworth. "He knows that, and we know that."
It was a concern shared by officers planning Apache raids. "I don't think we could afford something going wrong on the first night," said one.
This hypersensitivity to risk grated on many in the two Apache squadrons, who were itching to get started.
"There's always going to be risk," said one Apache officer. "As AH-64 pilots, we're not flying for the local news station. We knew when we signed up that bad guys were going to shoot at us."
To mitigate that risk, as the Apaches lifted off from Tirana, Task Force Hawk leaders planned to fire volleys of ATACMS missiles along the routes the Apaches would take through the mountains.
The ATACMS has a range of over 150 kilometers, and explodes above its target, raining anti-personnel bomblets over a 600-foot square area.
Lt. Col. George Rhynedance, the commander of one of Hawk's two Apache squadrons, told his troops not to be concerned about whether the ATACMS explosions would alert Serbian air defenders that the Americans were coming. "If an ATACMS lands on you, that'll be the least of your worries," he said. "You'll be worrying about how to stop your ears from bleeding."
But this approach caught the task force in the web of another White House no-no: collateral damage.
"Clearly what you had was the potential for individual [Serbian air defense] gunners to hug villages," Reimer said. "That was one of the issues associated with the operational concept that we were always looking at. There's always the potential ... [for] collateral damage."
Rules of engagement for Task Force Hawk required all targets to be identified -- usually by an unmanned aerial vehicle -- within a few hours of being attacked. That would be nearly impossible in the case of missile-wielding Serb defenders.
One senior task force official expressed his frustration with the rules of engagement in a May 12 staff meeting. "It's a pathetic discussion, but it's serious because we've got to get approval before we can shoot," he said.
According to NATO, the Joint Chiefs and Army sources, the Pentagon's skittishness about committing the Apaches to battle also derived from a fear that ATACMS and Apache strikes would fundamentally change the nature of the war, and pave the way for the use of ground forces, which the White House had already ruled out.
"The prevailing thought was, you use the Apaches and it is a ground war," said a Joint Chiefs source. "This was the foot in the door for ground troops," said a NATO source.
"Our concern as the Army was the president had said 'no ground forces,'" but by launching missile and Apache strikes from Albania, Hawk risked counterstrikes from the Serbs, which in turn could prompt an escalatory response from U.S. forces, said Hackerson.
Waning Washington support
According to Reimer, Clark never provided the detailed briefing on the proposed Apache missions requested by the Joint Chiefs.
Hackerson, interviewed separately, supported Reimer's account. "I never saw a threat array," Hackerson said. "I saw us continuing to ask the same questions."
Reimer said he was not briefed on Task Force Hawk's operational concept until he visited Tirana May 8, a month after their order to deploy. Nor did Clark request permission to use the Apaches until about seven to 10 days before the war ended, Reimer said. Even then, the Joint Chiefs had not reached a decision on the request.
But Reimer's version of events is disputed by NATO and Joint Chiefs sources, who said Clark "answered the mail" on the Joint Chiefs' requests for information, and made repeated attempts to gain permission to unleash the attack birds.
"It was well understood that Clark's initial request [for the Apaches] was to use them," a Joint Chiefs source said. After being told he did not have permission to employ the Apaches, "Clark kept coming up on line saying Task Force Hawk is ready, I want to use them. He was told 'No, no, no, no, no.' It was clear that he did not have the support of the Joint Chiefs, and if that's why he didn't submit a formal request, then that's the technicality."
Each time the Joint Chiefs rebuffed Clark, he would come back with a plan that entailed less risk, these sources said.
"Just do one successful mission," Clark told Task Force Hawk leaders and senior staff officers in a visit to their Tirana headquarters May 15. After that, it would become easier to get permission to do others, he implied.
"Even if you get there and see nothing, expend some rockets and 30mm in a recon by fire," he said. "I want the Apaches to start as the scavengers; get the guys who are sick, lame and lazy."
Eventually, Clark proposed using the Apaches to conduct a mission that would not require them to enter Kosovo airspace at all, but merely to fire at Serbian targets just over the border, according to the NATO and Joint Chiefs sources.
But each time the Joint Chiefs flinched. Clark's frustration grew. "I know you're ready," he told the Hawk command and staff group May 15. "I am going to do everything I can to get you into the fight."
Still the Joint Chiefs and Cohen hesitated, to the annoyance of those in the dirt in Albania. Everyone connected to the Apache mission knew their warfighting edge was tenuous. "I have been very, very clear that the time for us to go was some time ago," Hendrix told his staff May 11. "I have consistently said to our decision-makers that we were ready to go, probably a week ago."
It apparently did not even occur to some of the senior leaders in Hawk that they might never see combat in Kosovo. "We didn't spend half the treasury of DoD last month just to get you over here, you've got to understand that," Cody told a group of pilots May 9.
But nine days later, the chances of the Apaches seeing combat began to dim when administration officials, led by President Clinton, started to trot out a convenient explanation for why they were being sidelined.
"When the weather is good -- as it generally is at this time of the year -- most of what the Apaches could do can be done by the A-10s at less risk," President Clinton said May 18. Nevertheless, said Hackerson, the chances of Task Force Hawk being used were actually increasing when Milosevic sued for peace in the first week of June, because Kosovo Liberation Army assaults were flushing Serb forces out of their hiding places, making them better targets for the Apaches.
But then the war ended, and the impression left with close observers in the Pentagon and NATO was that the Joint Chiefs, with the Army's support, had denied Clark the use of assets he felt were necessary to win the war. "The Army's senior leaders were always opposed," said a NATO officer.
Reimer acknowledged that he had found himself in an awkward situation. "There is a great reluctance to tell a theater commander 'no' on an operational requirement," he said.
"We've always felt like you should give the operational commander the means necessary to accomplish the mission that he has been assigned. On the other hand, you have a responsibility to your soldiers to make sure that they are adequately trained and ready to do that job that they've been assigned, and that they're not being put at undue risk....
"I just think there were less risky ways of accomplishing the mission."
But a retired senior Army leader said the risks were overestimated. "We ought to have been providing anything that the guy on the ground asked us to provide," he said .
"I think the risk [to the Apaches] would have been low, and their effectiveness would have been very good... They're durable, they can take hits, and by the way they're very difficult to hit."
And post-war reports from Kosovo appear to confirm that air attacks were not very effective in crippling the enemy. The Serbian armed forces withdrew in good order from the province in hundreds of intact armored vehicles. Dummy Serbian tanks were hit, but few real tanks destroyed, critics contend.
After the war, Clark continued to assert the Apaches could have done the job. "They were extremely capable, and would have been highly lethal and effective if employed," he told Army Times.
Clark declined to comment on his discussions with the Pentagon over Task Force Hawk, but others familiar with the debate said he was troubled by the constraints placed on him, and by the Army leadership's role in denying him use of the Apaches. "He was deeply disappointed by the whole affair," said a NATO officer.
In the end, the feisty commander may have paid for his tenacity.
On July 27, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Henry Shelton informed Clark that he was, in essence, being forced to retire early. Clark, a 33-year veteran, was asked to leave his post next April, two months ahead of schedule.
He will be replaced as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and chief of the U.S. European Command by Gen. Joseph Ralston -- an Air Force officer.