page_title: NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
section_title: Military casualties
hierarchical_section_title: NATO bombing of Yugoslavia / Aftermath / Military casualties
caption_attribution_description: English: Depleted uranium (DU) ammunition of U-238, firing on the ground of FR Yugoslavia 1999. Photo taken in:Military museum Belgrade Српски / srpski: Муниција осиромашеног уранијума У-238 испаљиваног по тлу тадашње Југославије 1999 год. Фотографисано у Војном музеју у Београду
context_page_description: The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. The air strikes lasted from March 24, 1999 to June 10, 1999. The bombings continued until an agreement was reached that led to the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo, and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, a UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. The official NATO operation code name was "Operation Allied Force" whereas the United States called it "Operation Noble Anvil"; in Yugoslavia the operation was incorrectly called "Merciful Angel" as a result of a misunderstanding or mistranslation.
  NATO's intervention was prompted by Yugoslavia's bloodshed and ethnic cleansing of Albanians, which drove the Albanians into neighbouring countries and had the potential to destabilize the region. Yugoslavia's actions had already provoked condemnation by international organisations and agencies such as the UN, NATO, and various INGOs.
context_section_description: Military casualties on the NATO side were limited. According to official reports, the alliance suffered no fatalities from combat operations. However, on May 5, an American AH-64 Apache crashed and exploded during a night-time mission in Albania. The Yugoslavs claimed they shot it down, but NATO claimed it crashed due to a technical malfunction. It crashed 40 miles from Tirana, killing the two crewmen, Army Chief Warrant Officers David Gibbs and Kevin Reichert. It was one of two Apache helicopters lost in the war. A further three US soldiers were taken as prisoners of war by Yugoslav special forces while riding on a Humvee on a surveillance mission along the Macedonian border with Kosovo. A study of the campaign reports that Yugoslav air defences may have fired up to 700 missiles at NATO aircraft, and that the B-1 bomber crews counted at least 20 surface-to-air missiles fired at them during their first 50 missions. Despite this, only two NATO manned aircraft (one F-16C and one F-117A Nighthawk) were shot down. A further F-117A Nighthawk was damaged by hostile fire as were two A-10 Thunderbolt IIs. One AV-8B Harrier crashed in the Adriatic Sea due to technical failure. NATO also lost 25 UAVs, either due to enemy action or mechanical failure. Yugoslavia's 3rd Army commander, Lt. Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, claimed that Yugoslav forces shot down 51 NATO aircraft, though no other source verified these numbers.
  In 2013, Serbia's then-defence minister Aleksandar Vučić announced that the combined Yugoslav military and law enforcement casualties during the air campaign amounted to 956 killed and 52 missing. Vučić stated that 631 soldiers were killed and a further 28 went missing, and that 325 policemen were also among the dead with a further 24 listed as missing. The government of Serbia also lists 5,173 combatants as having been wounded. In early June 1999, while the bombing was still in progress, NATO officials claimed that 5,000 Yugoslav troops had been killed in the bombing and a further 10,000 wounded. NATO later revised this estimation to 1,200 soldiers and policemen killed.
  Throughout the war; 181 NATO strikes were reported against tanks, 317 against armoured personnel vehicles, 800 against other military vehicles, and 857 against artillery and mortars, after a total of 38,000 sorties, or 200 sorties per day at the beginning of the conflict and over 1,000 at the end of the conflict. When it came to alleged hits, 93 tanks (out of 600), 153 APCs, 339 other vehicles, and 389 artillery systems were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty. The Department of Defence and Joint Chief of Staff had earlier provided a figure of 120 tanks, 220 APCs, and 450 artillery systems, and a Newsweek piece published around a year later stated that only 14 tanks, 12 self-propelled guns, 18 APCs, and 20 artillery systems had actually been obliterated, not that far from the Yugoslavs' own estimates of 13 tanks, 6 APCs, and 6 artillery pieces. However, this reporting was heavily criticised, as it was based on the number of vehicles found during the assessment of the Munitions Effectiveness Assessment Team, which wasn't interested in the effectiveness of anything but the ordnance, and surveyed sites that hadn't been visited in nearly three-months, at a time when the most recent of strikes were four-weeks old. The Yugoslav Air Force also sustained serious damage, with 121 aircraft destroyed.
  Operation Allied Force inflicted less damage on the Yugoslav military than originally thought due to the use of camouflage and decoys. "NATO hit a lot of dummy and deception targets. It's an old Soviet ploy. Officials in Europe are very subdued", noted a former senior NATO official in a post-war assessment of the damage. Other misdirection techniques were used to disguise targets including replacing the batteries of fired missiles with mock-ups, as well as burning tires beside major bridges and painting roads in different colors in order to emit varying degrees of heat, thus guiding NATO missiles away from vital infrastructure. It was only in the l
caption: Depleted uranium ammunition, fired in FR Yugoslavia in 1999
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A480", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2009:11:01 11:59:11", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "240", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "5108", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4619", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "3", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:11:01 11:59:11", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:11:01 11:59:11", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "189/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "101/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "101/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode, red-eye reduction mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "33/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3648", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2736", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "3648", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "2736", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "3228", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "3648000/241", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2736000/181", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}