Electronic Weapons: May 6, 2000

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Faced with the problems of finding Serbian armored vehicles hidden in forests during the 1999 bombing campaign, and the successful use of dummy vehicles, the U.S. Air Force is seeking funding to develop and build a new class of more sensitive radars that could see through the foliage and sort out real vehicles from the dummy ones. The air force still insists that it crippled the Serbian armored force in Kosovo, but bases this assertion on unconfirmed estimates. Few destroyed vehicles were found in Kosovo when NATO peacekeepers arrived and aerial reconnaissance was unable to spot the Serbians hauling damaged vehicles out of the province when the Serbs withdrew.