Ken Bacon Air Quotations

We would take almost any reasonable action before reaching a point of having to make a decision about destroying an American plane over American air space.

Basically, it will allow us to increase the intensity of the air campaign over Kosovo and Yugoslavia.

Given what we have seen, the active redeployment of (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's) air defenses, the high state of alert, we think he is interested in much more than diplomacy, that he has ulterior motives to moving these around and we need to be prepared.

There is extensive movement in Iraq's air defense system. We assume that this movement is for two reasons. Part of it is defensive, so that it is harder for us to target ... air defense missiles, particularly SA-6 missiles, but also SA-2 missiles and ROLAND missiles, and we also think that some of it is offensive.

I think the primary reason for that (the delay) is that, right now, he (Cohen) feels that his place is here in Washington devoting as much time as possible to running the U.S. participation in the air campaign in Kosovo, preparing for the peacekeeping force.

We're watching it very carefully. We have certainly seen signs that (Saddam Hussein is) attempting to reconstruct his air defense abilities north of the 32nd parallel.

We're watching it very carefully, ... We have certainly seen signs that (Saddam Hussein is) attempting to reconstruct his air defense abilities north of the 32nd parallel.

What we have seen is extremely active activity by (Iraq's) air defense system,

The question you all will have is, 'Isn't this a step toward the deployment of ground troops in Kosovo?' ... The answer is, absolutely not. This is pure and simple an expansion of the air operation.

We think that the Operation Southern Watch and Northern Watch have been able to debilitate Saddam Hussein's air defenses quite a lot ... For one thing, we think that he's largely afraid to use his top of the line air defense systems, for fear of losing them to our patrolling airplanes.

Drafts are not final, and they're subject to change until they're final. So... by mutual agreement, the secretary of the Air Force and the deputy secretary of defense decided that there was more work to do and that's being done.

It will be another substantive strike. It will be severe. We will continue to focus on a variety of targets, but principally on air defense targets and also on military targets in and around Kosovo.

The Air Force is in the process of taking down all its tents at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia because the airmen are moving into dormitories, and therefore these tents could possibly be available for use in Albania or Macedonia.

These tankers will immediately help increase the tempo of air operations, allow us to keep planes on station for longer periods of time and increase the number of the hours of the day in which we're actually flying over or near Yugoslavia and Kosovo.

In the last four years, the (U.S.) military has fought one of the most successful air wars in history

Air Force Reserve and Guard C-130s have flown more than 525 hours, made 490 sorties and dropped more than 11.4 million pounds of fire retardant chemicals,