Re: [GZG] [DSII] Precision Strike

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

John Atkinson wrote:

>>Oh, certainly. 'Course, those army strike assets would also have been in
>>range of the *Serbian* army strike assets which the combined air forces
>>were trying to hit from higher than 15,000' altitude ;-)
>
>Do the Serbs have anything now or then which could play footsie with
>an ATACMS?

Not ATACMS (165 km range), but MLRS only reaches 32km (at least according 
to the unclassified FM <g>) which is very nearly within range of the 
longest-ranged WP and South African howitzers. I don't know if Serbia had 
any such howitzers at the time of the Kosovo crisis, but it wouldn't 
surprise me at all - the various ex-Yugo states bought massive amounts of 
weapons from abroad during the post-break-up wars.

The Serbs also had their own MLR systems firing DPICM rockets; and although 
the ones I have any range data for (the M77) is rather shorter-ranged than 
the MLRS (only ~20km) it looks pretty much like any other truck until it 
fires, so it might be able to sneak into range as well - not even the US 
could afford to shoot at every single enemy truck before it got within 20km 
of the FEBA :-/

>I'd also question whether they have CBR capable of figuring out
>where that MLRS strike is coming from before they packed up and moved.

I'd expect the Serbs to have a pretty good idea about where the MLRSs even 
*before* they fired, and that *without* using any CBRs... it's not as if 
the NATO would've been the only ones with observers on the ground, after 
all ;-)

>At the very least it would have made the tactical questions more
>complex.

Indeed. It would also have made the *political* questions far more complex 
for the *alliance*, which was why it didn't happen - you only want to 
increase the complexity of the *enemy's* questions, not of your own :-/

>>It would also have added another interesting facet to this AA-vs-ARM ECM
>>warfare: creating *false* AA radar emissions to make the NATO
>>forces waste their MLRS/ATACMS on cheap decoys [...]
>
>And here we have the fundamental problem with any single-arm approach
>to ANYTHING.  Without eyes on the ground, properly trained eyes with
>the right gear, strike assets, be they precision or otherwise, can be
>spoofed.

Yep. For that matter even eyes on the ground can be spoofed if they don't 
have enough time to check the target out up close - some of those Serbian 
decoys look very realistic until you get within a hundred meters or so of them.

>UAVs would have helped in Serbia, but they wouldn't have
>solved the problem, not in that terrain against that foe.

UAVs *were* used in Serbia. USAF Predators, US Army Hunters, USMC Pioneers, 
German and French CL-289s, French Crecerelles, British Phoenixes... and 
just as you expected they didn't solve the problem. (Some pilots even 
claimed that they *reduced* the number of Serbian tanks killed, since it 
took so long to get an UAV to confirm a particular target that the strike 
craft often had to return to refuel before it could get permission to fire...)

As far as I can tell some 20-25 UAVs were shot down during the Kosovo 
crisis (the Serbs claimed 25 UAVs shot down; NATO's UAV units reported 21 
lost to enemy fire and 6 lost to "other causes", but I don't know how 
complete those reports were) including at least one and possibly more shot 
down by door gunners aboard Serbian MI-8 helicopters. The use of 
helicopters for UAV-hunting was stopped when NATO started providing fighter 
cover for their UAVs, though <g>

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
 What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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