BG(ret) Wass de Czege was rebutted...

Ry - in his comments to the original post (link below), anticipates this rebuttal.

This appeared in Army Magazine, the house organ of AUSA, the Association of the United States Army. I think it's well argued, and supportable - and leans toward some of my predjudices. This weekend, I'll finish up my thoughts on The New American Militarism by Andy Bacevich. If you haven't read Wass de Czege's piece - go here.

KOSOVO AND LANDPOWER We are responding to "The Continuing Necessity of Ground Combat in Modern War" by Brig. Gen. Huba Wass de Czege, U.S. Army retired, ("Front & Center," September) because it implies that the 1999 Kosovo crisis might have been solved with relative ease had land forces been committed. We see several problems with his arguments.

Gen. Wass de Czege is on the mark with his articulate defense of landpower's criticality. Air and land forces operating together have tremendous synergy. Land forces control terrain, force the enemy to respond to their maneuver and can fix the enemy while the weapons of land and air forces pummel him. Kosovo clearly showed what happens in the absence of AirLand synergy. With no credible threat of attack by land forces, Serb forces in Kosovo could disperse and hide from NATO's air forces. The outcome, as top U.S. Air Force commanders foresaw, was little damage done to Serb field forces inside Kosovo. In the future, we should not make an opponent's job this easy. If there is a choice, we should not use airpower alone and give the enemy the opportunity to optimize his response to a one-dimensional threat. Ideally, air and land forces should be used together to present the enemy with a Hobson's choice: disperse and hide from air forces but expose himself to attack by ground forces, or form a coherent defense against land forces but provide good targets for air and other fires.

These are valid points for the advocates of landpower to make and valid criticisms that can be made regarding the conduct of operations during Operation Allied Force in 1999. Wass de Czege, however, undercuts his own arguments in three important areas because he fails to take into account the reality of Serb forces in Kosovo, speculates about why Milosevic ended the conflict and ignores the political realities in NATO that provided the context for the conflict.

The rest is below the fold, in the Flash Traffic/Extended Entry.

Much of Wass de Czege's article is grounded in a hypothetical discussion of the contribution a future Army force, consisting of air-transportable fighting vehicles carried into battle on vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, could have made to the resolution of the conflict in Kosovo. Wass de Czege writes "the incursion of the Serb Army into Kosovo could have been preempted before the genocide began" and that "one or two objective force divisions could have been flown into Kosovo to block the entry of most of the Serbian forces." This statement ignores the reality of the situation on the ground. When Operation Allied Force commenced, the Serb forces were already in Kosovo -- about 25,000 to 30,000 strong -- with many more forces arrayed along the border just north of the province. Furthermore, the majority of the ethnic cleansing was done within a week while Serb forces were mixed in with fleeing Kosovar-Albanian refugees. This reality on the ground severely limited NATO's ability to attack the Serb army and national police forces. Finally, if NATO ground forces had been introduced into Kosovo early in the conflict, one could reasonably have expected the Serb forces to go to ground in defensive positions -- including in the towns and villages which they already controlled -- perhaps using Kosovar-Albanian refugees as shields. Thus, NATO could have faced a protracted effort to root out Serb forces -- with the attendant likelihood of civilian casualties and collateral damage -- rather than a quick campaign enabled by "deliberate and full-dimensional offensive operations."

Wass de Czege asserts that "Slobodan Milosevic finally caved, not because of the 77 days of precision bombing, but because he became convinced that NATO would ultimately launch a ground campaign in spite of earlier assurances to the contrary." Quite simply, there is no incontrovertible evidence to support this contention. Until Milosevic writes his memoirs and identifies fear of a ground campaign as the principal factor in his decision to end the war, it is simply speculation. Certainly the damage being inflicted on Serbia, the tenuousness of Milosevic's political control within Serbia (amply demonstrated by his sudden removal from power in October of last year), his abandonment by the Russians and the resulting physical and political isolation of Serbia, and possibly other factors, were in play in his decision-making. In any case, the leaders in Belgrade certainly knew that a NATO ground offensive was still many weeks or even months in the future when Milosevic elected to quit the fight in early June.

More problematic are Wass de Czege's claims about how a future Army air-mechanized force could have rapidly resolved the situation in Kosovo, either by preemption or, failing that option, through "deliberate and full-dimensional offensive operations." This would be accomplished by "brigade-sized" air assaults, using air-transportable fighting vehicles and VTOL aircraft. According to Wass de Czege, these forces would have defeated the Serb Army and secured Kosovo in 30 days.

Our question is at what cost to both NATO forces and Kosovar-Albanian refugees? As we noted before, Serb forces were in close proximity to the refugees. To use large VTOL aircraft in air assault operations, NATO forces would have had to conduct a massive campaign to suppress enemy air defenses to protect the large low-flying, slow VTOLs. This would have proved particularly difficult given the reality that, even at the start of Operation Allied Force, Serb forces inside Kosovo had significant numbers of hard-to-locate (and, therefore, hard to suppress) air defense systems. Indeed, the threat posed by hundreds of shoulder-fired missiles and anti-aircraft guns forced NATO's fighter aircraft to remain at medium or high altitude. The magnitude of the low-altitude threat was also one of the main factors that led to the decision not to employ Task Force Hawk's Apache attack helicopters. This mass of shoulder-fired missiles and guns could have wreaked havoc with the slow and low-flying transport aircraft that Wass de Czege advocates.

In addition, the Serbs -- noted for their brutality and opportunism -- would likely have placed these weapons in areas where massive suppression attacks would have caused significant collateral damage and noncombatant casualties. Furthermore, once inside of Kosovo, NATO ground forces would almost certainly have had to use massive firepower to uproot Serb forces from what was ideal defensive terrain, particularly the villages and the towns that they occupied.

How many innocent civilians would have been killed in the name of stopping ethnic cleansing using these tactics? On a more mundane level, where in Kosovo would one find the landing zones for the several hundred or so VTOLs required for brigade-level air-mechanized assaults? Even if air assault forces had been able to land in northern Kosovo, they would then have been far from any other friendly land force and sandwiched between tens of thousands of Serb forces inside Kosovo and thousands more located inside southern Serbia, just north of the Kosovo border. Would NATO, or the United States acting alone, have been willing to take such a risk? Or, in the event a ground offensive had been approved, would NATO and U.S. planners have opted for a more conventional lower-risk approach than that which Wass de Czege advocates?

What is perhaps most problematic in the article is the absence of an appreciation for the political realities in the case of Kosovo specifically, and more generally, the conflicts the United States may face in the future. It is as critical today as it was in Clausewitz's time to remember: "The political object -- the original motive for the war -- will thus determine the military objective to be reached and the amount of effort it requires." The political and diplomatic machinations that preceded Operation Allied Force and which continued throughout the conflict forced the military to conduct operations under significant political constraints. Simply put, there was no stomach for a ground war in Kosovo among the 19 members of the North Atlantic Council, who would all have had to endorse a ground attack if it were going to be a NATO operation. Even if the United States and perhaps Great Britain had decided to conduct a bilateral ground offensive, they would have been hard-pressed to do so if other reluctant NATO allies had refused overflight or basing rights to support such an operation.

In a more general sense, however, it is disconcerting that Wass de Czege seems to be advocating the early and even preemptive use of American ground forces in conflict. He believes that this would somehow reduce friendly casualties. Recent history does not support this assertion. Operation Desert Storm was preceded by a massive air campaign that, although it did not "win the war," did significantly enhance conditions for a favorable ground campaign. In the minds of many, this proves the efficacy of the massive use of firepower, even for extensive periods before a ground offensive, to prepare the way for a ground war.

Finally, cases of American preemption are difficult to find in our history; it is generally not how democratic nations fight wars. As an aside, the implications of the proliferation of man-portable air defense systems and other low-altitude air defenses are issues for the employment of Army aviation in the future, be it in the force Wass de Czege advocates or current helicopter-borne forces, which must be addressed.

The U.S. Army is in the midst of developing concepts for its transformation. Clearly, how the United States, its allies and its partners deal with conflict in the future is a vital issue, and the Army's role is crucial in any strategy.

Nevertheless, the Army's role in relation to the other services in future conflict is not clear at this stage. We believe that what is required is a considered and open debate supported by objective analysis. It is our hope that this letter will contribute to this debate.

LT. COL. JOHN GORDON IV, USA RET.
COL. DAVD JOHNSON, USA RET., PH.D.
LT. COL. WALTER L. PERRY, USA RET., PH.D.
MAJ. BRUCE R. PIRNIE, USA RET., PH.D.
Gainesville, Va.