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Comment by KineticLensman | Hacker News Reader

You don't necessarily need to kill tanks, just make them hide. The NATO air mission against the Serbs [0] in 1999 only destroyed 93 out of 600 Serbian tanks but had the effect of preventing the Serbs from using them effectively. This helped level the playing field between the well-trained Serbian army and the Kosovo Liberation Army.

After the surrender, when the Serbs drove their undamaged tanks home, the "look how many you missed" attitude missed the point. They were undamaged because they had effectively suppressed, and hidden in underground car parks, etc.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

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That’s true, but to make them hide, you have to be able to kill them.

http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html: ”the skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field”

This was also the successful approach of the Royal Navy against the German Imperial Navy in WWI: one significant battle followed by the IN (surface fleet at least) no longer being an issue for the rest of the war.

And tactically, the Allies actually lost the battle too. But it was enough to make the German fleet stay home for the rest of the war. Of particular interest is how this "asset" fared through to the end of the war. In 1918, with Germany's situation on the ground hopeless, the still-intact capital fleet was ordered to charge the Allies and win a decisive battle. Of course, the sailors refused, and the ships were scuttled in the end anyway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_mutiny

You see this a lot in RTS/Moba style games. One bad fight, even if won by sheer luck and suddenly everyone is scared about entering a similar position.

And in WWII. And in the Falklands war.

Was it? I’d be interested in learning more.

As far as German navies go (perhaps you were thinking of a different example) the Kriegmarine switched pretty heavily to subsurface ships, even for resupply in the “field” (ocean in this case). Not sure the extent of ocean going surface vessels except in the Baltic. Their empire was land based. The UK never lost control of the Mediterranean which definitely ultimately blocked German African activity and kept them from repelling allied supply for the battles in Mediterranean fronts. But had they built much surface shipping?

In japan the opposite was true: the IJN was dominant until at least late 1942 and as it was reduced it was less through this kind of battle and more due to losing ships and the reduction of manufacture of replacement due to bombing and supply line restrictions (my parents were both children in the middle of those “supply lines” in different areas of the pacific theatre during that war).

Curious about the falklands!

The Kriegsmarine had quite a significant surface fleet that actually siphoned away men and resources from the much more effective U-boats. The most famous vessel would have to be the Bismarck, followed by the Tirpitz. Also notable are the Graf Spee. Most of these ships didn't do much over the course of the war, though they did tie up the Home Fleet, which was afraid of what would happen if they managed to break out into the North Sea and contest the supply convoys from the US.

The Falklands War was similar in that the Argentine Navy had both a large cruiser (General Belgrano), as well as an aircraft carrier (Veinticinco de Mayo). The Belgrano was torpedoed with a large loss of life by HMS Conqueror, and after that the Argentine Navy stayed in port; though it's air wings fought well over the islands.

thanks!

It's easy to kill tanks when you have unchallenged air superiority.

How to kill tanks when you don't, now that's a more interesting question.

I can say that a well trained artillery properly positioned and being able to move rapidly can take out tanks. Artillery can hit something they can't see. Tanks are not known for hiring targets 2 hills/5km away, Artillery is. A lot depends on the terrain and the intel available.

By artillery I don't mean super ebganced guided missile systems by good old Howitzers 105, 155.

Well trained tanks are quite familiar with dealing with artillery. They are highly mobile, can cross many kinds of terrain (not just roads), and are well aware of using terrain, random speed, and random directions to avoid artillery fire.

Pretty impressive that the ground pressure of a M1 abrams tank is less than half of my mountain bike with 2.6" tires.

On anywhere close to equal footing artillery is a pretty dangerous thing to shoot, as soon as your position is triangulated you'd best shut down and move.

Sure direct fire from tanks is 2-4km, but there are tank fired indirect fire weapons as well. Like say the XM1007. On equal footing I'd rather be in a tank (moving at say 20 mph on an unpredictable course and speed) than hoping for the best with artillery. After all even if you get lucky with 1 tank, there's never just one tank.

Even air superiority isn't as useful as it was. A drone up in the air for 5 minutes with a targeting laser can ruin your day.

Seems pretty weird these days to be investing in tanks, but not investing in the A-10 Warthog.

Seems like drones would make artillery more deadly vs tanks as it'd make it easier to score indirect hits with fewer spotters and lower comminication latency vs radio. I imagine most tanks are big enough to allow a drone to spot one from outside the effective range of a regular machine gun.

But a hidden tank becomes an armoured, sealed, high-endurance OP, with a hugely powerful sensor and comms suite.

You think you're fixing them - but really are they fixing you?

Yes, although there's an old joke about how a modern tank that can't shoot is just a very heavy and incredibly expensive mobile phone.

Also, it needs to keep an engine running to power its sensor and comms suite.

The engine is generally a auxillary power unit mounted in the bussel rack of an m1a2 for example. Some may assume parent is referring to the main engine which on m1's consume quite a lot of fuel.

It did not destroy 93 tanks.

The wiki page you link even spells it out. They air campaign destroyed an order of magnitude less, maybe even as few as 3 tanks. They hit decoys or fuck all. Far from levelli g the playing field ethinic cleansing rate increased as the air campaign was waged.

The Kosovo air campaign was one of the most total an utter failures of recent times yet people still try and paint it as a success. Unbelievable.

> It did not destroy 93 tanks...the wiki page you link even spells it out

The Wikipedia article [1] confirms the ninety-three figure.

"When it came to alleged hits, 93 tanks...were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty.

The Department of Defence and Joint Chief of Staff had earlier provided a figure of 120 tanks...and a Newsweek piece published around a year later stated that only 14 tanks...had actually been obliterated...not that far from the Yugoslavs' own estimates of 13 tanks... However, this reporting was heavily criticised, as it was based on the number of vehicles found during the assessment of the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, which wasn't interested in the effectiveness of anything but the ordnance, and surveyed sites that hadn't been visited in nearly three-months, at a time when the most recent of strikes were four-weeks old."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia#Mil...

How can it be called a failure? It achieved it's goal: Serbs were on the brink of defeating Albanians and totally cleansing Kosovo before it started, and ended with Yugoslav defeat and Kosovar independence (and somewhat indirectly, Yugoslavia's final dissolution a year later). Without Americans ever needing to put any boots on the ground, only by air power.

Winning a war isn't about killing your enemies... It's about achieving your goals. You can't deny they were fully achieved, solely with air power. To me it sounds like anything but a defeat.

I agree.

It is often psychologically more appealing to win battles rather than achieve long term goals. For instance someone wants to get to work faster, but instead they get in a fist fight with the driver in the car ahead of them because the driver was driving too slow.

Clausewitz hit the nail on the head when he said, "war is the continuation of policy by additional means". A rational strategy uses battles to achieve policy goals. Losing a battle by minimizing your own losses to win a war is rational with that context.

- In German "Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" Politik with all its varied meaning: often translated into english as politics or policy or political.

But in this case, they actually did won the battle. Yes Serbs preserved the vast majority of their military equipment, except planes. But only by hiding i.e. not using them in battle. Losing a war as a result because they weren't much better equipped this way than the Albanians, and the field was leveled.

If they tried to use the equipment to the fullest, they'd just lose it, as Saddam tried in 1991, and result would have been pretty much the same. In a way, it even benefitted Americans because it couldn't be told that they won the war by massacring Serbs (hardly 500 of Serbian military plus about same number of civilians were killed - if they tried to properly operate their military equipment it would be destroyed along with crews and mean a lot higher casualties).

Killing 500 civilians would be considered a war crime if anyone else except US military does it.

NATO also deliberately targeted Serbia's power grid and deliberately targeted a radio/TV station during the war. Both of those things would cause uproar in the US media if an opponent of US geopolitical interests did them.

>NATO also deliberately targeted Serbia's power grid and deliberately targeted a radio/TV station during the war.

Targeting a state owned radio and TV station is well with in the laws of war assuming of course the the radio/TV station is actively aiding the war effort. In this specific case NATO targeted this radio/TV building because it acted as an important command and control node to transmit orders to Serbian military forces.

You can read more about it in the U.N.'s report on the investigation of possible NATO warcrimes in the Kosovo war: 'Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia'

This report also claims with regard to targeting of power facilies

"74. Of the electrical power transformer stations targeted, one transformer station supplied power to the air defence co-ordination network while the other supplied power to the northern-sector operations centre. Both these facilities were key control elements in the FRY integrated air-defence system."

>Both of those things would cause uproar in the US media if an opponent of US geopolitical interests did them.

Russia and the Syrian targeted hospitals regularly for years and while it get coverage people in the US didn't care much able it. Hospitals are the most protected category of civilian infrastructure according to the laws of armed conflict and Russia bombed them so often there is a wikipedia article about it[1].

[0]: https://www.icty.org/sid/10052#IVB4

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian%E2%80%93Syrian_hospita...

> "74. Of the electrical power transformer stations targeted, one transformer station supplied power to the air defence co-ordination network while the other supplied power to the northern-sector operations centre. Both these facilities were key control elements in the FRY integrated air-defence system."

The winner / the stronger can stretch the fact and the criteria. I'm sure some Bin Laden people considered all the 9/11 targets as legitimate. This still doesn't make neither 9/11 nor deliberate bombing of civilian targets in Serbia right.

The disparity of power between NATO and Serbia was so great that NATO had no need to resort to measures that would endanger and hurt civilians to the degree that the attacks on the Serbian power grid and media did. Even the conflict inside Kosovo could have been resolved by putting boots on the ground. But NATO nations did not want to risk their soldiers, so they killed Serbian civilians instead.

>Russia and the Syrian targeted hospitals regularly for years and while it get coverage people in the US didn't care much able it.

Probably true, but I'm just talking about the media uproar, whether or not the uproar had much effect among the US public.

The idea that targeting civilian infrastructure is ok because that infrastructure is also being used to support an opponent's military effort seems to me like a slippery slope.

What? Of course America/NATO put boots on the ground. That's the whole point. NATO ground forces going into Kosovo stopped the Ethnic cleansing.

The air campaign did nothing. Boots on the ground saved lives.

Russian ground forces stopped the ethnic cleansing.

NATO ground forces showing up, ended the conflict.

>>The wiki page you link even spells it out. They air campaign destroyed and order of magnitude less, maybe even as few as 3 tanks. They hit decoys or fuck all.

You missed the OP brilliant point, NATOs mission was to force Serbs to retreat and to stop tanks from wreaking havoc, NATO doesn't care that Serbia now has some 1960's tanks.

>>Far from levelli g the playing field ethinic cleansing rate increased as the air campaign was waged.

As if Serbs were gonna stop voluntarily

The NATO air campaign Did. Not. Force. The. Serbs. To. Retreat.

It completely failed in the objective.

However, the second NATO put boots on the ground the Serbs pulled out.

The air campaign was a total failure. Complete, abject, failure.

As someone with little knowledge of the history of this conflict, could you explain your position a little further?

1. the Serbian military was engaged in ethnic cleansing in Kosovo

2. NATO attempted to use solely air power to stop them

3. Whilst the NATO air campaign was underway incidents of ethnic cleansing increased, not decreased

4. When NATO changed strategy and deployed land forces Serbia withdrew immediately, ending the Ethnic cleansing.

5. Not only did the air campaign fail at its stated goal of stopping ethnic cleansing it also had a miniscule rate of enemy assets destroyed making it a double failure.

You missed some of the most interesting and sordid parts of the war as reported in the press.

European countries contributing soldiers to NATO were extremely averse to even one or two casualties. The result was that "pacts" were made with the enemy dividing up zones, allowing unimpeded ethnic cleansing.

Also, European NATO commanders would sideline their own country's troops to protect them.

Albania so mistrusted NATO that they imported anti-aircraft guns at the time to shoot NATO helicopters down.

NATO did not put boots on the ground. They discussed it a lot and armed Kosovans but did not move into the ground. This Wash Post article is titled " Kosovo Land Threat May Have Won War " for a reason https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/sept99/...

NATO, er USA, has a lot of options to inflict pain and lots of it. A few Tomahwaks can cripple the best factory, power supply etc (they can link it to aiding the military so no war crime). They can escalate until the other side surrenders

Someone needs to tell James Blunt he wasn't a soldier in Kosovo then.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050

KFOR was a thing, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_Force

after Serbs surrendered, get it?

This isn't accurate.

To quote the KFOR Wikipedia page:

> KFOR entered Kosovo on 11 June 1999 two days after the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244. At the time, Kosovo was facing a grave humanitarian crisis, with military forces from Yugoslavia in action against the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in daily engagements.

Note that daily engagements were ongoing at this point.

I remember the attacks on their electric power systems towards the end was also effective. Was the Serbian population ready to spend months or years without electricity?

Typically attacks against the populace do not cause governments to fall. In retrospect the strategic bombing campaigns against the UK, Germany, and Japan did not cause a change of regime. And this has been borne out in smaller wars (e.g. Serbia, Chechnya) since then. I don’t understand the psychology of it but regardless that appears to be the case.

Still compromises economic responses, some aspects of C3, and, uh, did this one result in a popular uprising removing the regime?

Belgrade? Not as far as I know.

Strategic bombing didn’t have the effect on German production that annoying would have predicted. Nor did it on Iraq in the first gulf war. I think it had some efficacy against the Japanese shipbuilding capacity but am not certain. Certainly it had no effect on Japanese support for the war effort right up to the day the Emperor gave his famous 1945 radio address.

Milosevic was eventually removed from power by a popular uprising, but I guess that was 4 years after the bombings

s/annoying/anyone/ thanks autocorrect

Did depriving the Serbian population of electricity achieve any policy goal?

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