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'Serbs running out of SAMs', says USA
Yugoslav air defence forces have expended the majority of their stocks of radar-guided surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), according to US Air Force (USAF) commanders at Aviano Air Base, Italy, responsible for suppression of enemy air defence (SEAD) missions.
SAM and anti-aircraft artillery fire is now so rare over some parts of the war zone that US SEAD operators now talk about "benign" air environments. An F-16CJ Fighting Falcon squadron commander told Jane's Defence Weekly: "We have 80% attrited their SAMs they have fired off 80% of their SAMs. They can't have an endless supply of them."
The USAF has concentrated around 48 F-16CJs, armed with AGM-88 High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs), at Aviano to spearhead its SEAD operations. They work in conjunction with around 30 US Navy and US Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler jamming aircraft.
SEAD aircraft escort every allied strike package that enters Yugoslav air space, but F-16CJ crews report a significant reduction in air defence activity in recent weeks.
"If you look at the whole of the area of operations it is quietening down a lot," said the squadron commander. "Fewer people are shooting back. At the start of the war we flew only at night, now we are flying close to 24-hour operations.
"We measure our effectiveness by zero pilot losses. No aircraft have been lost when we were on station. This is done by us just being on station, by firing HARMs at active SAM radars or by them shooting at us instead of the strikers."
The commander's unit, the 23rd Fighter Squadron, one of two F-16CJ squadrons deployed at Aviano, has alone fired 150 HARMs since the start of the NATO bombing campaign. "We have had some classic 'weasel kills' hitting SAM radars with HARMs while they are guiding missiles at allied aircraft but they are few and far between."
Due to recent experience in Iraq, the US SEAD community has become increasingly interested in achieving "hard kills" or physically destroying enemy SAM systems, rather than just temporarily suppressing them by hitting easily repaired radar antenna with HARMs. "We are carrying out destruction of enemy air defence [DEAD], but we are not able to kill as many SAMs as we would like here.
"In the European theatre the terrain makes it so much harder to find those guys than in the Iraqi topography. We team up with the [F-15E] Strike Eagles and F-16CGs for DEAD. They use precision-guided munitions [PGMs] and cluster bombs, mostly PGMs.
"The Serb radar operators do not come up very often. They sometimes emit a bit. They are trying to get enough guidance data to fire at us. Once they do that they are changing positions. You've got to make something happen in the hour. You need good intelligence to make this happen. It is demanding to get it all together for successful DEAD attacks."
Tim Ripley JDW Special Correspondent
Jane's
Defence Weekly