Time Is the Unbending Foe in Ground War Scenarios

WASHINGTON —  As discussion intensifies about a ground invasion of Kosovo, policy-makers face three potential scenarios varying greatly in scale and likely casualties, but each entailing substantial preparation time and daunting logistics.

Current and former military officers and other experts say NATO could use ground forces to carve out protective enclaves for ethnic Albanians with initially as few as 10,000 to 20,000 troops, and two to four weeks of preparation.

An attack to wrest most or all of Kosovo from Yugoslav forces would probably require 60,000 to 100,000 troops and six to eight weeks’ planning; an all-out assault to raise NATO’s flag over the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade would probably require 200,000 allied troops and several months’ preparation, they say.

So far, none of the scenarios have been approved. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has not authorized any ground forces, and President Clinton insists that the United States and its allies will instead carry on with their air campaign against the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

But, if the alliance changes its mind, any of these efforts would be hobbled by the enormous challenge of transporting thousands of troops and a huge flow of supplies to a region with small airports, few wide roads, and almost no bridges strong enough to carry the weight of a 72-ton M-1A1 tank.

“None of these are easy, and none could be done without a lot of planning,” said Gen. George Joulwan, who retired in 1997 as commander of NATO forces.

The extensive lead time suggests that Milosevic could finish most of his “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians before any plan is completed.

While the United States and NATO have never contended a ground campaign could unfold quickly enough to halt Kosovo’s human tragedy, the desire to do so appears to underlie growing public and congressional support for a ground offensive.

In addition to refugees who have fled Kosovo, hundreds of thousands of displaced ethnic Albanians are still in the province, and are in danger. Political pressure may force NATO to order the invasion that it has so far resisted. Alliance ministers discussed the possibility of a ground offensive at an emergency session in Brussels this week, and the issue is likely to arise again at the organization’s 50th anniversary summit next week in Washington.

So far, NATO officials have taken the position that a ground campaign would involve far too much risk, and would not have the support of all 19 member nations.

Creating enclaves could provide relatively quick relief for some refugees near Kosovo’s southern border.

But Yugoslav forces could bombard and harass the enclaves, making it difficult to protect the refugees. The job would be huge, even with a big, high-tech intelligence-gathering effort to keep tabs on hostile forces outside the perimeter.

“They’ll be very vulnerable,” said retired Air Force Gen. Thomas McInerny, who commanded the U.S.’ 3rd Air Force in England.

And this limited objective would do nothing for refugees still in Serb-held territory who can’t reach the protected zone.

More Troops, Equipment Pledged

An effort to create refugee sanctuaries could be carried out by strengthening some of the NATO forces already in the region. Among these are NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, which has 11,000 troops in Skopje, Macedonia. The British this week announced plans to send 1,800 more troops, plus additional tanks and equipment to Macedonia, and the French have said they will send an additional 700.

The U.S. has 2,200 Marines on ships in the Adriatic Sea, as well as 8,200 members of the 1st Cavalry Division on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia, and 1,200 members of a cavalry battalion in Italy.

The forces of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps would probably need more tanks and artillery, and would need to be retrained to shift from humanitarian relief to combat roles, analysts said.

Because of the poor roads into the region, its tough terrain, and the likelihood of Serbian resistance, NATO forces might decide to begin an attack with an assault by airborne troops or Marines. There are only 14 roads leading into Kosovo, and Yugoslav forces have been mining approach roads and bridges, setting up artillery, and preparing to resist any invasion.

Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, said such a effort could be launched with 15,000 to 20,000 troops, with the forces increased later to 30,000 to 50,000, to ensure better protection.

He speculated that creating such an enclave would probably result in “dozens” of casualties among NATO troops. A drive to liberate all of Kosovo, in contrast, could entail hundreds of allied casualties, he said.

Any such attempt to seize all of Kosovo would be a much larger job from the start. Joulwan, the retired NATO commander, said the job of moving 60,000 to 100,000 troops would take time, and the task of training relief forces for joint combat operations would probably require two to three months.

“You can’t expect troops to be passing out blankets one day and fighting the next,” he said.

This larger operation would involve troops and equipment coming in from a number of points of entry, probably including Albania and Macedonia. But experts said some of the biggest difficulties would be in simply reaching the Kosovo border.

The Tirana airport in Albania, already choked with refugee relief flights and military traffic, has only one runway, and until recently didn’t have lighting for night flights, defense officials said. The road from Tirana toward the Kosovo border dwindles to one lane in each direction five miles out of town.

There is only one road from the Greek port of Thessaloniki north to Macedonia.

Such limitations would probably create huge bottlenecks: As a rule of thumb, military engineers say three roads are needed to supply a single division of troops.

Engineers would need to reinforce or replace bridges that aren’t strong enough to carry tanks or other heavy equipment, a time-consuming task.

Month Needed to Get One Division in Place

Retired Army Col. Richard J. Dunn estimated it would take four weeks just to move the 101st Airborne Division, with more than 300 helicopters, from Ft. Campbell, Ky., by sea to forward bases in the Balkans. “The timing would be painful,” he said.

U.S. forces would probably be required to make up a larger share of an invasion force than a force set up to create an enclave, analysts say.

That is because the United States has the best-trained and equipped troops, but also because U.S. forces have a huge cargo-carrying capability.

U.S. forces might be needed for only one-third of the troops to open an enclave, but perhaps more than half of the 100,000 to 125,000 required for a full invasion of Kosovo, O’Hanlon said.

Yugoslav resistance to a full assault would probably be strong. Following a doctrine that helped them pin down 200,000 German soldiers in World War II, Serbian fighters train to fight strongly at the border, then to fall back into the hills with small arms and light artillery.

Kosovo “is their Valley Forge,” Dunn said.

In logistical terms, the easiest approach would be from the north, through Hungary.

Now a member of NATO, Hungary offers good roads, airports and rail lines, and mostly flat terrain. The country served as a staging ground in 1995 for NATO’s attacks on the Bosnian Serbs.

NATO forces could send a huge force across the Yugoslav border in hopes that superior NATO tanks would overwhelm the Serbs’ aging Soviet-era models.

But the Serbs’ defense of their largest city would be fierce, and the Hungarians are worried that Milosevic could harass the Hungarian minority in Yugoslavia.

Because of this, a full-scale invasion is considered a lower probability. Yet NATO officials hint that, if ground forces were called, they might deploy some forces to Hungary in hopes of tying down Serbian units.

“We haven’t excluded using more than one point of entry, or numerous points of entry,” Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on ABC’s “This Week” program.