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It is in the complex and arcane world of military procedures that the impact of Operation Allied Force on the world’s defense industry will in time be measured, and, beyond that, in its impact on defense exports in the years to come. What Operation Allied Force has shown is not encouraging; even if one keeps to the statements that have always been made about NATO and which have served as effective arguments for the promotion of the equipment used in this domain, the example of Operation Allied Force could prove disastrous. Aviation Week & Space Technology cites a senior DoD official’s comment after the end of the fighting: “The NATO system was so cumbersome that it limited the effectiveness of some of the best technology. Joint STARS, for example, couldn’t be used to direct aircraft against the targets it saw, because it took so long to get approval for a strike.” Comparing the Gulf War campaign and the Kosovo campaign, Aviation Week wrote: “During the 1990-91 Gulf War, the rules of engagement delineating what was permissible during combat were written by the commanders on the spot. By comparison, NATO has a monumental list of rules of engagement that were further complicated by 70 changes for the Kosovo air campaign alone.”
These are initial observations concerning the Kosovo War, but it would be wrong to consider them the exception. The Kosovo War is NATO’s only war, NATO had a long time to prepare for it and there is no reason to believe that we are looking at an exception or an accident. Calling into question the political limitations and the interference of the 19 member nations in order to let NATO off the hook for its responsibility doesn’t make sense: what we are talking about is the very substance of NATO, which is a political alliance of 19 members. This diversity and its inherent contradictions are translated into bureaucratic terms, and then into technical and operational terms, and the result is the Kosovo War. Which brings us to the subject of the “NATO Standard”.
NATO Standard is a qualitative label that has established an unblemished reputation since 1952 (the creation of NATO, the integrated military organization established under the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949). The NATO Standard constitutes a major argument guaranteeing the quality of an item of equipment. The F-16 is the most illuminating example in this regard: the joint procurement by four European NATO countries (Belgium, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands), in 1975, at the same time as the selection of the F-16 by the USAF the same year, gave the aircraft a head start for the aircraft’s export sales. Today, the NATO Standard is still used as an argument for the export sale of a number of developing markets: such is the case for the three new NATO countries (Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary), in which the majority of the countries competing for export sales put forward their NATO membership as a selling point in promoting their equipment; such is the case of the conduct of the makers of the Eurofighter in Norway, who strongly urged this argument to succeed in having the Eurofighter included (along with the F-16) in the “short-list”, to the detriment of France’s Rafale aircraft manufactured by Dassault. This state of affairs has been potentially put in issue by Operation Allied Force.
The results of Operation Allied Force do not place directly in issue the equipment itself, but rather the environment in which the equipment operates, the procedures that are followed, the overhaul and maintenance techniques, as well as mission management. Thus it is through indirect analysis that the performance of the equipment itself can be assessed. Since the equipment was developed with reference to the NATO Standard, its design followed the rules of the bureaucratic process culminating in the definition of the specifications for the equipment and took into account NATO Standard norms and procedures, including those that showed themselves not equal to the task during Operation Allied Force. A European military source had this forward-looking comment: “The approach has to be tested to its limits, since that is always the way the bureaucracy operates. If the doctrine of “zero fatalities” ends up permeating all levels of NATO mission planning and weapon design, since the “zero fatalities” doctrine found its tactical embodiment in what transpired during the war over Kosovo -- and more specifically the prohibition against flying below 5000 meters -- it is not unreasonable to anticipate that the NATO Standard will become less demanding for missions involving flying below 5000 meters and that the development of fighter aircraft and appurtenant equipment -- as well as the procedures to which they are subject -- is bound to be influenced by that doctrine.”
This situation is not new. For the past fifty years, United States weapon systems have been designed principally, if not exclusively, on the basis of their primary function and mission, which are obviously cast to fit the NATO environment, and accordingly they technically satisfy the NATO Standard. A case in point was the Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter, a reasonably priced light fighter aircraft developed during the late fifties and the early sixties for United States allies. The F-5 met with enormous success and thousands of them were exported not only to NATO countries but outside the NATO area as well -- to Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The USAF itself procured only a few copies of the aircraft for its aerial combat training units, in the seventies and well after the F-5 had enjoyed the largest part of its exports sales. Thus, a good part of the air forces of the entire world -- NATO and non-NATO -- employed, and in some cases still employ, an aircraft designed in accordance with the NATO Standard. Simply put, until now, the NATO Standard did not pose a problem; rather it stood for a guarantee of quality (depending upon the perception one had of NATO). Today, however, we have examples of a situation where the NATO Standard has proved a handicap. Applying the NATO strategy of the 60s and 70s, which left the offensive to the big US attack aircraft carriers, the British developed 18 000 ton “short” aircraft carriers, limited to reduced-capability air defense aircraft (V-STOL, Sea Harrier). The infuriating result for the British: today, in the allied fleet in the Adriatic off the Balkan coast, the command of the fleet is assigned -- when the American carrier normally in command puts into port -- to the French aircraft carrier Foch (despite its three decades of service) because it has attack capabilities that the British lack.
We thus see how Operation Allied Force can modify the way we look at the current state of armaments and weaponry, and therefore the way we view defense export trends for the coming years. To that must obviously be added the political factor: many non-NATO countries, especially in Asia and in Latin America, have perceived Operation Allied Force as an act of aggression. On 7 June, the newspaper “Le Monde” wrote: “ ‘Imperialism’, ‘neocolonialism’, ‘hegemonism’. In Beijing, but also elsewhere in Asia, in Moscow, but, here and there, in Africa as well, the good old rhetoric of the Cold War has been trotted out: far abroad, the Kosovo War got a bad press. The Arab-Muslim world, which might have been thought to have felt itself solidly behind the Kosovars, was barely an exception. Being at a distance from the theater of operations in no way attenuated the reaction of rejection which cannot fail to have consequences for the future.” In this new situation, it is obvious that the determination not to depend on an organization that is perceived as aggressive will in many countries only reinforce the technical and operational issues posed by Operation Allied Force.
The question that comes to mind at this point arises from the observation that NATO brings together the majority of countries which produce weapon systems, and certainly the countries which produce the most advanced weapon systems. So, NATO Standard or no NATO Standard, how do we envisage the real influence of the lessons of Operation Allied Force on exports? The answer lies in the observation that not all the NATO nations which participated in Operation Allied Force are uniformly NATO-Standardized.
It is here that another point must be raised: the performance of the French fighter aircraft. France was by far the second contributor to the offensive after the US (at the peak of its effort, 96 aircraft, versus 50 for Germany and 25 for the UK). The performance of the French aircraft did not go unnoticed. Their exploits did not rise to the prestigious level of the highly touted US high-precision weapons, although the French made a good second place showing, besting the British, for example. The French performance lay primarily in the basic field of systems availability for air missions -- facility and rapidity of maintenance, reduced crews, etc. correspondingly lesser costs, saved time and greater availability (greater number of missions for the same number of aircraft); in this field, the French showed themselves to be the league leaders, ahead of the British and of the Americans, respectively. The effect was relatively higher employment in the coveted ground-attack mission: with 10% of the total personnel of Operation Allied Force, the French performed 14% of those missions. Alongside that, certain air forces, although totally compliant with the NATO Standard, encountered problems. “No one has said anything about the incidents that took place in Aviano, about the disastrous maintenance of Spanish machines”, said Captain Luis Martin de la Hoz, Spanish pilot of a F-18 during Operation Allied Force.
The French have adapted to NATO procedures without it being able to be said that France is at the NATO Standard. On the contrary, the basic systems and procedures have been devised in a very specific environment: an industry and an Air Force based on national independence and sovereignty, and thus bypassing the NATO bureaucracy. France’s participation in Operation Allied Force changes nothing in that regard, given the extent to which the characteristics we are talking about are intrinsic to the equipment, systems and procedures, starting with their initial design. By necessity, France has had to design its systems for independent action from the outset, and its systems are therefore adapted to all types of situations (to those calling for the NATO Standard, as well as those involving satisfaction of the requirements of the countries importing French weapon systems). The problem with the NATO Standard is that it imposes at the outset a specific mold which makes the sovereignty of the user depend, to a greater or lesser extent, upon this standard. A serious question is posed if this NATO Standard is threatened by a crisis of confidence over its use, and it is precisely this that has transpired in Operation Allied Force.
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