Word: airs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...brief moment like it was going to be such an antiseptic war: invisible fighters and bombers sneaking through Yugoslav defenses and bringing back proud videos of their kills. But on Saturday night, the antiseptic evaporated. Flying into one of the few hornet's nests of surface-to-air missile activity, a U.S. Stealth F-117A fighter ended up near Belgrade at that most dreaded of air-combat locations: the wrong place at the wrong time...
...quick rescue of the pilot gladdened Pentagon hearts, but the downing remained a reminder that air power, despite its omnipotent, high-tech gloss, does have stark limits. Whether it was the sleek $2 billion radar-eluding B-2 Stealth bomber or the hulking, duct-taped $74 million B-52 pulverizing Serbian targets last week, the essential character of air warfare didn't change: air power, old or new, can always punish a foe but can rarely force him to change his mind. And like any kind of combat, it has mortal risks...
...fury of the initial strikes--the Air Force's use of two types of heavy bombers against Milosevic in the first night of attack last week is something that never happened in the Gulf War--was designed to force Milosevic to buckle. He hasn't, and as America is learning, the easy part is over...
During the weekend, Operation Allied Force pivoted from blasting the Serbs' air-defense network to the dirtier--and far more deadly--mission of hunting down and destroying Yugoslav tanks, artillery and other small military assets. Immediately, the odds began to shift against NATO's pilots...
...most allied planes did their bombing from about 25,000 ft. And much of the opposition was easy to handle: on five occasions, NATO planes downed Yugoslav MiG-29s. "These were modern dogfights, with the planes a couple of miles apart and moving at high speeds," says a U.S. Air Force officer...