Kosovo Air Operations: Combat Aircraft Basing Plans Are Needed in Advance of Future Conflicts (open access)

Kosovo Air Operations: Combat Aircraft Basing Plans Are Needed in Advance of Future Conflicts

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Following the failure of peace talks and escalating violence against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the United States provided military support to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) combat operations against Yugoslavia in March 1999. This report reviews how well the United States was prepared for basing its combat aircraft during this operation, called Operation Allied Force. Specifically, GAO determines (1) whether plans were in place to determine where and how to deploy combat aircraft for an operation like Allied Force, (2) how combat aircraft basing decisions were coordinated among the services and allied nations, and (3) whether the United States had the necessary international agreements in place to enable it to quickly execute plans for such an operation. GAO found that the United States had no specific and detailed advanced plans that could be used to determine where and how to deploy its combat aircraft during Operation Allied Force because it was a combination of peacetime and combat operations. Overall plans for operations in defense of NATO members did not apply to this conflict. Although part of the U.S. European Command's mission is to plan for …
Date: May 29, 2001
Creator: United States. General Accounting Office.
System: The UNT Digital Library