They know our loathing to lose pilots, and they've used their air defenses in a way that exploits that. Intelligence reports indicate that the army is still able to dispatch fuel to its forces, although there are widespread shortages and rationing for civilians. Although the railway and bridge destruction has made transporting fuel much more difficult, two senior defense officials said the army was still shipping gasoline in small convoys of six-axle trucks, bypassing destroyed routes or building makeshift river crossings. The ability to improvise and endure underscores how the war has revitalized the army officer corps. In the course of those conflicts in the early 90's, he shifted resources from the army, which has historically seen its mission as one of protecting the nation from outside aggression, to the more loyal and more pliable Serbian police.
Police officers are now significantly better paid and have better housing than army officers.
The changes caused enormous morale problems among an officer corps that plucked its recruits from villages, trained them in guerrilla warfare in special schools and largely insulated them from the country's chronic economic problems. Milosevic also purged scores of senior army officers to find generals who were willing to command troops that work with the police in savage attacks on civilians. Midlevel army officers have long questioned the professionalism of the loyalists, while quietly voicing doubts to Western military officers about the future of the army. But American Government experts on the region said this week that the bombing of Yugoslavia had silenced the grumbling and erased the doubts, at least for now, while handing the army a mission that officers perceive as legal and just. Militaries respond well to crises.