The Quest for Relevant Air Power

ROYAL NETHERLANDS Air Force │ 243
age assessment sorties over the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The RNLAF delivered more than 850 air-to-ground weapons, including
246 LGBs and 32 Maverick missiles. Given these figures,
the RNLAF played a substantial role in Allied Force and provided,
according to Dutch sources, approximately 7.5 per cent of the offensive
NATO sorties. 104 To put the number of expended PGMs
into context, the RNLAF accounted for approximately 3.5 per cent
of the total number of PGMs employed during the campaign and
released slightly more than the RAF, which employed 244 LGBs
and six ALARMs. 105
On top of this, a Dutch F-16 downed one of three Serb MiG-29s
destroyed by the alliance during the first night of the operation.
Indicating the sensitivity of this incident, the Dutch chief of defence,
Adm Lukas Kroon, expressed concerns about too much
publicity to Gen Wesley Clark. 106 Moreover, the option of ground
forces was never considered by the Netherlands government. 107
Three years later during the first half of 2002, the RNLAF supported
Operation Enduring Freedom by dispatching a KDC-10
tanker aircraft to Qatar’s Al Udeid airfield, from where it carried
out missions in close cooperation with US tanker aircraft for
nearly three months. 108 RNLAF participation in operations over
Afghanistan became more robust in autumn 2002, when a combined
F-16 detachment—consisting of 18 F-16s from the Netherlands,
Denmark, and Norway—supported by an RNLAF KDC-10
tanker aircraft deployed to Manas International Airport in Kyrgyzstan,
its base for operations over Afghanistan. 109 The Dutch
aircraft alone logged 804 sorties and 4,640 flying hours, regularly
providing CAS to ground troops. Approximately one year later,
the European F-16 detachment returned home. 110
In 2005 an EPAF EAW F-16 detachment was directly deployed
to Kabul International Airport for NATO operation ISAF. In the
second half of 2005, Belgium and the Netherlands provided four
aircraft each; in February 2006, Norwegian F-16s replaced the
Belgian contingent. The multinational detachment regularly carried
out reconnaissance and CAS missions. 111 In November 2006,
Dutch F-16s relocated to Kandahar Airfield against the backdrop
of NATO’s expanded ISAF mission in southern Afghanistan. 112
As in the case of Desert Storm, the RNLAF did not directly
participate in the high-intensity phase of Operation Iraqi Free-