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But though the blitzkrieg Milosevic launched didn't quite accomplish that, it has already remade the face of Kosovo. Some 40,000 regular Serb troops, special police, paramilitary units and ultranationalist gangs tore through Kosovo "with complete ferocity," says a NATO official. "The intensity was not anticipated." And now NATO is scrambling to revise its war plan in a race against time. "He's working very, very fast," said NATO commanding General Wesley Clark, "trying to present the world with a fait accompli."
THE NEW BATTLE PLAN
NATO and Serbia are fighting very different wars. While NATO was attempting to grind down Belgrade's air defenses, Milosevic was fighting the only war he really cares about. He refused to fire spasms of SAMs into the swarming skies over Yugoslavia. That kept NATO's low-and-slow tank- and troop-killing warplanes away and confined vaunted alliance firepower to Everest-high altitudes. In Belgrade government officials chortled that the damage to their air-defense systems was "minimal" despite a NATO expenditure of "230 grams of high explosives per head" of every Yugoslav. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia's well-armed infantry stormed through Kosovo virtually untouched. "It is difficult to say," admitted Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon, "that we have prevented one act of brutality."
While Milosevic moved fast to stay ahead of the impact of the air strikes, NATO was plagued by bad luck. Only about half the bombing sorties actually dropped ordnance on targets. Some planes were socked in by bad weather; other pilots couldn't eyeball their prey--NATO rules required visual identification of a target to prevent civilian casualties--through the thick cloud cover, and returned to base with bomb bays still loaded. "Everybody is surprised," says a White House aide, "that we're not as far along as we wanted to be."
Even as General Clark insisted he was not engaged in a race with the Serbs, he pressed Western capitals for reinforcements. Washington rushed to comply, and by week's end the Pentagon had dispatched more F-117A Stealths, B-52 bombers, Prowler radar jammers and refueling tankers, as well as B-1 bombers, to give NATO enough aircraft for round-the-clock operations. Top brass weighed the risks of sending in radar-visible Apache helicopter gunships that could lay down a withering blanket of bullets and rockets against small concentrations of Serb tanks and armor. There was also some worry within defense circles about a dwindling supply of American cruise missiles. Defense officials reported that there were only about 100 air-launched cruises available, but some 2,000 sea-launched Tomahawks remained. NATO political bosses--reassured perhaps by the impressive accuracy of the Tomahawks so far--agreed to widen the target base by 20% to include the Defense and Interior ministries in downtown Belgrade, then scrapped the phases entirely to let Clark choose almost any targets he wished. Not even a plea from Pope John Paul II for an Easter halt in the assault changed the West's plans. "NATO is not on the Easter pause mode," said a senior Washington official.