NATO did a fairly good job of estimating the amount of damage it inflicted on Serb forces in Yugoslavia, but the alliance never used a running count of Serb equipment destroyed as a measure of its success, according to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark.

Clark briefed reporters in Brussels Sept. 16 on the results of an exhaustive survey intended to determine just how effective NATO was in striking Serb forces in Kosovo and southern Serbia during Operation Allied Force. He said NATO aircraft destroyed 93 tanks, 153 Armored Personnel Carriers, 339 military vehicles, and 389 pieces of artillery or mortars.

The figures are "actually pretty close" to those NATO was quoting toward the end of the bombing campaign, Clark asserted. (See chart.)

An assessment team, led by USAF Brig. Gen. John D.W. Corley, looked at pilot reports, gun camera footage, satellite and aircraft surveillance imagery, and eyewitness accounts, and some 35 experts made a direct, on-the-ground examination of 429 bombing sites in Kosovo.

Corley attributed the discrepancies in numbers to several causes: multiple hits on the same targets, hits on Serb decoys, relocation or covering of damaged vehicles, and an "exceptionally conservative" approach to the tally, which imposed "extremely rigorous" standards "to validate a successful strike." Some hardware probably destroyed by NATO aircraft was not included in the count because it could not be satisfactorily confirmed as destroyed, he said.

Only those items that could be positively deemed "totally destroyed, nonsalvageable" were counted, Corley said.

This survey is based on data from an on-going 12-month Air Force effort to systematically understand the air campaign's effects and glean useful lessons for future operations. The survey also fed into the Pentagon's quick-look lessons-learned effort, but Clark's briefing was spurred in large part by press reports questioning NATO's vehicle-damage figures, given the relatively few hulks found in Kosovo after Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic capitulated. The reports also quoted Serb leaders claiming a vastly smaller number of vehicles destroyed than NATO figures suggested.

NATO destroyed about a third of Serbia's 350 or so tanks, more than a third of its 430 to 450 APCs, and more than half of its 750 mortar and artillery pieces, according to Clark. He said he had "no way of knowing" what Serb casualties were. In monitoring the withdrawl of Serb forces from Kosovo, Clark said NATO has noted that "they're missing a good deal of their equipment."

In some cases, NATO pilots deliberately attacked known decoy sites so they could not be used for subsequent Serb "ambush traps," Corley noted.

There was clear evidence that the Serbs had cleaned up the battlefield, and Corley said this was part of an effort on their part to make NATO's strike planning and assessment job tougher. Scars on the ground found at many bombing sites indicated that very heavy objects had been dragged away and removed from the scene. Witness reports showed some damaged vehicles were covered with tarps. Some new pieces were brought in during the conflict, making the counting job harder still.

Col. Ed Boyle, who planned and coordinated the airstrikes at the Combined Air Operations Center in Vicenza, Italy, also explained that, because Serb military vehicles were often intermingled with civilian ones, and because the weather was bad about half the time, the Serbs "did have periods during this entire campaign when they could freely move around the battlefield, move equipment, and reposition it."

Despite having what Corley described as "the most robust [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] capability seen in any conflict to date," the battlefield could not be monitored nonstop.

Boyle noted that "it was not a perfect world out there, where we could see the battlefield 24 hours a day and be able to prevent them from moving equipment."

Clark said the NATO strategy was two-pronged. One part was a "strategic attack line operating against Serb air defenses, command and control, [army troops and militias], their sustaining infrastructure, and supply routes and resources." The other was a "tactical line of operation against the Serb forces deployed in Kosovo and in southern Serbia, ... who were doing the ethnic cleansing."

It was imperative that this latter target set get priority, Clark asserted, since ethnic cleansing was the principal motivator of NATO's intervention in the first place. However, it was necessary to pursue "both lines of operation to be successful," he said.

Clark added that the operation was a success.

"The conflict ended on NATO's terms. Serb forces are out, NATO forces are in, the refugees are home, a cease-fire is in place. So in that sense, we succeeded in this conflict," he said.

Clark conceded that the tank-plinking effort was an "extremely controversial part of the campaign," but that, "from the very beginning, we said we didn't believe in battle damage bean-counting as a way of measuring the effects of airpower."

Wholesale destruction of the Serb army was not necessarily a goal of the tactical effort, Clark said. Rather, "what we had been successful in doing was keeping it in hiding, under wraps, ineffective. ...What we found was that the Serb use of heavy equipment was quite constrained as a result of the airpower."

The measure of success in the tactical effort is clear, Clark asserted. "We destroyed and struck enough," along with more strategic targets, to get Milosevic to accept NATO's terms.

Clark also asserted, without offering evidence, that another factor influencing Milosevic's decision to capitulate was that "he had ample evidence to conclude that, had he not conceded when he did, the next step would have been the long-awaited and much-talked-about NATO ground effort."

-John A. Tirpak

Target Category	Pre-War Estimate of Serb Arms	Reported Destroyed (June 1999, Initial BDA)	Confirmed Destroyed (September 1999, After Survey)
Tanks	350	110	93
APCs	430 to 450	210	153
Artillery/Mortars	750	449	389
Military Vehicles	N/E	N/E	339
	Source: NATO. N/E means Not Estimated. BDA means Bomb Damage Assessment.