WASHINGTON -- When troops from the Yugoslav 2nd Army left Montenegro and moved south last week to reinforce units in Kosovo, NATO tapped into the troops' communications and carefully plotted their every move, according to an alliance officer.
High above the bloody Balkans, a surveillance aircraft, bulging with sophisticated high-tech wizardry, listened in. The crew pinpointed, recorded and analyzed every Yugoslav army radio dispatch.
Chalk up another success for a little-known spy plane by the odd name "Rivet Joint" and nicknamed "the hog." The U.S. Air Force's RC-135, with its snout-nose and jowly profile, is built to sniff out electronic communications.
As NATO bombs pummel Yugoslavia, and Serbian troops move through the craggy reaches of Kosovo, a silent war is taking place at every level of the skies.
Still, just as military experts and planners concede that the only way to rout the Yugoslav forces is by sending in NATO ground troops, the sophisticated surveillance technology hardly guarantees success for NATO.
While the intelligence systems have helped pinpoint scores of targets -- surface-to-air missile sites, military headquarters, radar systems and troop concentrations -- they cannot overcome some Serbian tactics and military hardware.
Serbian soldiers and tanks, for example, have been mingled with refugees to avoid NATO bombs.
Deadly shoulder-fired missiles have proved almost impossible to detect and are therefore preventing low-level bombing. Some surface-to-air missile sites are not using radar that a satellite or plane can detect, but rather are firing by sight.
Since NATO is unwilling to fight on the ground, it is left to spy and bomb from the heavens.
Miles above the ground, satellites snap pictures through the clouds. In the middle distance are high-flying U-2 spy planes. Closer to Earth, pilotless drones send back live video pictures 26,000 feet above the Yugoslav army troops, tanks and artillery.
As Rivet Joint targets the Serbs' communications, another spy plane known as the Joint STARS, a modified Boeing 707 laden with antennae, locates and tracks ground targets in all kinds of weather.
Rapid dissemination
The intelligence from both planes can be quickly processed and then zapped to NATO officers in a roving high-tech command aircraft. The NATO officers, in turn, message a U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon with targeting information.
"One of the great leaps forward since the [Persian] Gulf war is our ability to rapidly disseminate information," said retired Maj. Gen. Bill Nash, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Bosnia from 1995 to 1996.
What's different from the 1991 gulf war are upgraded high-tech systems and more satellite capacity, both of which offer commanders a broader and more instantaneous picture of the battlefield, current and former Pentagon officials say.
The speed with which information can get into the hands of commanders "has gone from days to hours" since the gulf war, said John Pike, a spokesman for the Federation of American Scientists.
In the fight against Saddam Hussein, Pike said, intelligence officials had to move a "caravan" to the region in order to process the pictures from U-2 spy planes. Now those pictures are quickly developed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and sent electronically to a NATO intelligence center in Vincenza, Italy.
The intelligence tapes from Rivet Joint would require several steps of analyses during the gulf war before useful information could be provided to attack aircraft, Pike said.
Now, he said, Rivet Joint's catch is being analyzed and transmitted in near real time, significantly increasing the ability to inform pilots of target coordinates.
The spy data gleaned from both Rivet Joint and Joint STARS are sent electronically to a windowless building at Vincenza.
"They put two and two together," Pike said, and beam the information to an Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Center (ABCC), a lumbering EC-130 aircraft full of electronic gear and a large staff.
There are 23 secure radios aboard, as well as a Teletype and 15 computer consoles. It is essentially a spy headquarters in the sky.
But while target information can now quickly get to the pilots, these high-tech systems are still operated by fallible humans.
Three weeks ago, U.S. Air Force F-16s carried out airstrikes on what they thought were two Serbian military convoys in western Kosovo. It turned out there were probably civilian refugees in both convoys, and an untold number of them died.
It wasn't until after the F-16s completed their attacks that officials aboard the ABCC received word from intelligence experts in Vincenza that Serbian armed forces rarely travel in such large convoys.
"As soon as there was any doubt, they stopped attacking," Air Force Maj. Gen. Daniel Leaf explained shortly after the incident. Leaf also acknowledged that while British Harrier jets reported civilians on the ground in the area around Dakovica, "they were not in communication with the [F-16s]."
Besides soaking up communications, other spy systems are designed to provide pictures and images to military planners.
Eyes in the sky
Satellites and the U-2 aircraft, which fly above 70,000 feet and require the pilot to don a pressurized suit, are providing many of the photos used by NATO planners as well as Pentagon press briefers.
The Keyhole satellite has electronic cameras that provide real-time pictures. And the film has a high resolution, approaching 10 centimeters. It also has an infrared capability, meaning it can detect heat sources, such as camouflaged tanks or buried structures.
But Keyhole cannot see through clouds, a significant failing in a cloudy region like Yugoslavia. The Lacrosse/Vega satellite has the ability to transmit the blotchy radar images that the trained eye could identify and track as tanks or other military vehicles.
Some of the intelligence systems have been used in the Balkans during the recent Bosnian campaign. Joint STARS proved that it could be useful in adverse weather conditions and rough terrain, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
"Planners initially believed that three continuous orbits would cover the theater of a major theater war," said the FAS. "But experience in Bosnia's mountainous terrain suggests even smaller operations might require more than three continuously orbiting aircraft."
Besides picking out targets and watching for troop movements, the satellites and aircraft in Kosovo are also watching what is staying put.
Satellites are able to show that the Yugoslav navy heeded the warnings of U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark to remain in port or risk attack. Intelligence was able to show that Yugoslav ships in Kotor Bay, for example, were dispatched inside three 230-foot storage tunnels, officials said.
Plans for oil blockade
Other aircraft will be important for the coming oil blockade of Yugoslavia, trying to prevent tankers from heading into the port of Bar in Montenegro, Serbia's sister republic.
The Navy's P-3 Orion will offer intelligence assistance to the NATO ships, with the ability to not only detect vessels but also to pick up any transmissions from the tankers and other cargo ships, according to Navy officials.
Pentagon sources say the Serbs are no match for NATO's intelligence-gathering apparatus.
The Serbs rely on such primitive means as binocular-wielding spotters at alliance airports, watching particular aircraft take off and notifying Belgrade officials by cell phone.
And the Russian intelligence ship that is tailing the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its battle group is of little concern to intelligence professionals. The Russians have not kept up with the changes in technology since the end of the Cold War, said one Navy source, and the United States takes numerous steps to make sure its communications are secure.
Despite the sophisticated, gee-whiz trappings of U.S. intelligence, some military officials say it is deficient in one key area: human spies on the ground.
That is NATO's "greatest deficiency," said retired U.S. Army Gen. George A. Joulwan, who preceded Clark as the alliance's supreme commander.
"We have great technical means but not the best means," he said, "which is two eyeballs."
Pub Date: 5/02/99