Robert H. Gregory - Clean Bombs and Dirty Wars: Air Power in Kosovo and Libya

First and foremost, I thank my wife, Christina Fishback, for supporting my writing endeavors over the past decade. I produced the bulk of this work during time off from my normal military duties, which we otherwise would have shared in a different manner. Fortunately, she understood from her own academic experience how writing a long work affects the psyche, though her idea of a Christmas and summer vacation did not entail waking up to a stack of pages to proofread each morning. I owe her a great deal of time that I promise to repay in the future.

Starting in 2006, Professors Daniel Moran and James Wirtz at the Naval Postgraduate School inspired me to write what eventually became chapter 5 of this book. Seven years later, historians Sean Kalic, Jonathan House, and John Kuehn gave excellent advice as the first half of this book evolved as part of my studies at the Command and General Staff College ( CGSC ). These individuals fueled my lifelong interest in military history. I also thank Lt. Col. Kenneth Slover, Jack Kem, Lt. Col. Scott Roxburgh ( USAF ), Dennis Linton, Matt Broaddus, and Nicholas Murray for their encouragement while I was at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Library, the Dudley Knox Library, and the Combined Arms Research Library had great researchers who helped me with source materials. Among them, I give special thanks to Brittany Gerke, archives technician at the Clinton library; Rob Seibert, mandatory declassification review archivist at the Clinton library; Greta Marlatt from the Dudley Knox Library; as well as John Dubuisson, Russell Rafferty, and Michael Browne at the Combined Arms Research Library. Also I thank Beth Bernstein at the RAND Corporation for helping with the process of getting permission to use several figures in the book.

While I was at Fort Leavenworth, Dean Nowowiejski, the Ike Skelton chair of the Art of War Scholars program, stimulated much of my writing and thinking on this work. I was fortunate to participate in a program that facilitated the extensive study of modern military history while also meeting the career requirements for professional military education. By design the Art of War Scholars program allows military officers from all U.S. services (and foreign countries as well) who are interested in researching and writing on their professional interests to do so with academic independence, disciplined initiative, overhead cover, writing time, research travel funds, and peer encouragement. Without this program and Nowowiejskis strong belief in providing students an alternative path from the standard military curriculum, I would have curtailed this endeavor. Three of my peers, Jason Alexander, Lance Tomlinson, and Bobby Gichert, who all participated in previous iterations of the program, recommended it to meI am thankful for their advice.

I discussed this work with several people via e-mail and in person. Among them, Scott Porter (Department of Command and Leadership at CGSC ), who worked on the battle damage assessment team in Kosovo, gave his perspective on the impact of the bombing. He shared photographs taken in 1999 of destroyed tanks and decoys that the Serbian army left behind in Kosovo after the air campaign (one of the photographs is in this book). Via e-mail, Douglas Macgregor (Colonel, U.S. Army, retired), who served as the J -5 at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe ( SHAPE ) before Operation Allied Force and as the director of joint operations during the operation, answered several of my questions pertaining to the air campaign and NATO s subsequent bombing damage survey. As the lone armor officer in a CGSC seminar with four aviators from the U.S. Army and two from the U.S. Navy, I gained a great deal of insight on air power through daily interaction with my peers. My Art of War classmates Doug White and Bob Stone read portions of the work and gave feedback over breakfast and lunch on several occasions. Doug participated in operations over Libya in 2011 and pointed out how the rebels painted the tops of their vehicles pink so that NATO aircraft did not mistakenly bomb them. This revelation led me to numerous sources pertaining to airground coordination with the rebels. Also, my longtime friend and workout partner, Paul Stelzer, during our daily weightlifting sessions at Gruber Fitness Center served as a sounding board for my ideas on how to revise the manuscript to make it sharper.

Numerous colleagues, friends, and relatives gave feedback on early versions of the manuscript. Lifelong West Point friend Dave Dixon read the entire manuscript and provided numerous comments and suggestions throughout. Charles Bies caught an important error with dates, and Travis Neely gave advice on how to trim portions of the first half of the work. I am thankful for comments provided by my sister-in-law, Allison Fishback, who read the entire work from the perspective of someone who had never served in the military. She gave significant advice on how to keep the work readable for a general audience and served as a litmus test for whether particular military terminology should be included or substituted by plain English. Additionally, Lt. Col. Vida Burrell discussed the work with me during a three and a half hour drive across the Arabian Desert while steering around camels, potholes, and numerous reckless drivers. Later on Dan Lichlyter did the same during seven hours of driving from Hofuf to Riyadh to Dhahran. During the revision process, my interpreter and friend Abdulaziz al-Banyan read the second half of the work and suggested appropriate spellings for Arabic names while providing a regional perspective on the Arab Spring movement. Any errors contained herein despite all the support, encouragement, and proofing I had from others are solely my own.