From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the NATO bombing campaign in August and September 1995. For NATO bombings in the rest of 1995, see
Operation Deny Flight.
The 1995 NATO bombing in Bosnia and Herzegovina (code-named by NATO Operation Deliberate Force) was a sustained air campaign conducted by the North-Atlantic military organization to undermine the military capability of the Army of the Republika Srpska who threatened and attacked UN-designated "safe areas" in Bosnia. The operation was carried out between August 30 and September 20, 1995, involving 400 aircraft and 5000 personnel from 15 nations.
Although planned and approved by the North Atlantic Council in July 1995, the operation was triggered in direct response to the second wave of Markale Massacres on August 28, 1995.
During the campaign, a total of 3515 sorties were flown against 338 individual targets. Aircraft involved in the campaign operated out of Italy and from the U.S. aircraft carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS America. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of the bombs used in this campaign were precision-guided munitions. The Bosnian Serb integrated air defence network, comprising of aircraft and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), presented a high-threat environment to the allied air operations. A French Mirage 2000 was shot down by a Serbian shoulder-fired SAM on August 30, 1995.[2]
The air attacks increased the international pressure on Milošević’s Yugoslavia to take part in negotiations that resulted in the Dayton Peace Agreement.
Image taken by a US aircraft upon hitting a Bosnian Serb target.
[edit] References
- ^ a b www.independent.co.uk
- ^ Central Intelligence Agency: Balkan battlegrounds: a military history of the Yugoslav conflict, 1990-1995. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Russian and European Analysis, 2002, v. 1, page 378
[edit] External links
- Operation Deliberate Force fact sheet, NATO website, updated December 16, 2002.
- "Operation Deliberate Force," Globalsecurity.org.
- "Aircraft Carrier USS America Replaces USS Roosevelt in Adriatic," September 12, 1995, CNN.
- "Louder Than Words," TIME magazine, September 11, 1995.
- "If U.S. Force Is Needed In Bosnia," by Michael Johns, The Christian Science Monitor, February 25, 1994.
[edit] See also