INADVERTENT BOMBING OF THE CHINESE EMBASSY
IN BELGRADE, YUGOSLAVIA, MAY 7, 1999
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1999
感谢您邀请我参加今天的听证会
accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia on
1999年5月7日，北大西洋条约组织（北约）是
undertaking air operations against the Government of Yugoslavia in
response to their repression in Kosovo. I am also pleased to appear
与导演乔治·瑟特（George Tenet）一起为美国的服务，我很钦佩
for years.
我们今天在这里讨论一个痛苦的主题 - 偶然的
bombing of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China located in
Belgrade, Yugoslavia. War is a painful subject. War is about the
故意破坏事物以施加改变
policy of an enemy. We intended to bring destruction to the
infrastructure of violence and coercion inside Yugoslavia in order to
迫使南斯拉夫政府中止其种族灭绝
citizens of Kosovo. We intended to destroy those things -- and only
those things -- which the government of Yugoslavia used to conduct its
敌对和压抑。我们从不打算摧毁任何东西
was not tied to Yugoslavia's war effort. Unfortunately, but not
在敌对行动的行为中，我们犯了错误。
Director Tenet has testified before you earlier, and has restated
today, that the mistake that led to the unintended bombing of the
中国大使馆是智力错误。我看不到那样。我们
in the Defense Department have the responsibility for dropping bombs
and winning wars. Ultimately, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy was
our error. The intelligence community is indispensable to our work and
他们做了一份绝对出色的工作，帮助国防部
during Operation Noble Anvil. I think our forces did a splendid job.
The results speak for themselves. We flew over 9,300 strike sorties
并攻击了900多个目标
opponent. We lost only two aircraft in these operations and
fortunately no NATO combatant was killed. But ultimately it was one of
our air crews executing one of our orders that led to this tragic
结果。这是怎么发生的？为什么会发生？会再次发生吗？
How can we prevent accidents like this from happening in the future?
After Action Assessment
Secretary Cohen has directed that the Department undertake a
comprehensive assessment of our operations in Operation Noble Anvil
and he put General Joe Ralston and me in charge of that assessment. We
started this review only last month because the people who have to
进行审查也是与战争战斗的相同的审查
现在实施和平。即使这是一个额外的负担，
we must undertake this review because the experience is fresh. The
数据仍然可用。
The After Action Assessment will go into many more issues than the
Embassy bombing. We will be asking ourselves a wide range of hard
questions: Did fighting as a member of a coalition impose restrictions
that made it harder to achieve our military goals? How effective is
NATO, an organization designed for peacetime decision making, in the
fast-paced decision making of war operations? How effective were
Serbian deception procedures in blunting the effectiveness of our air
strikes? These are just examples of the hard questions we will ask of
未来几个月的我们自己。
The mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy is only one of the
我们的评论中的重要问题。我们正在查看所有
incidents of unintended damage during the air campaign. As I said, we
flew over 9,300 strike sorties and attacked over 900 targets, dropping
over 24,000 bombs or missiles. All together, we had 30 instances when
we caused damage we did not intend. As Director Tenet said, the degree
of accuracy is unprecedented in history. Never before has a military
force gone to war and exercised such care to minimize unintended
destruction and did so with such success. Where we expended enormous
effort to minimize unintended damage to innocent civilians, our
opponent fought a medieval war that attempted to maximize damage to
innocent civilians. That story is just now unfolding.
在30个意外损害的情况下，三分之一是实例
where we damaged the target we wanted to destroy, but innocent
civilians were killed at the same time. You will recall the time one
of our electro-optically guided bombs homed in on a railroad bridge
就在客车驶向目标点时。我们从来不想
destroy that train or kill its occupants. We did want to destroy the
bridge and we regret this accident. As I said, 10 of the 30 instances
意外伤害属于这一类。
对于剩下的20个实例，有3个是由人为错误引起的
identified the wrong target, and two were caused by mechanical error
我们的硬件。在14个实例我们尚未determined whether
这unintended damage was caused by human error or mechanical failure.
我们will determine that to the best of our ability during our after
行动评估。
当然，剩下的情况是最戏剧性的，是
今天听证会的主题。中国大使馆的轰炸是
独特的是，我们有一个合法的目标。这
only problem is we had the target located in the wrong building. To my
知识，这是我们所有失败的唯一例子
strike operations. Because it was such a tragedy, it merits special
review and attention.
Let me say that we didn't suspend critical judgment until the shooting
stopped. We knew we made a mistake in bombing the Chinese embassy
within hours. We started almost immediately to try to find out why it
发生了以及如何避免在以下空气中犯类似错误
操作。在过去的两个月中，我们完善了我们的
understanding. Director Tenet outlined for you in his statement the
errors that led to mistaken bombing of the embassy. I don't intend to
在我的证词中重复一遍。
Three Key Questions
相反，我想专注于重要的三个关键问题
向科恩秘书和任何后来的国防部长致敬。人类
beings will always make mistakes. Where there are intentional acts, we
need to punish those responsible for such acts. We hold our men and
women in uniform to very high standards of performance. In this case,
however, I have reviewed the record carefully and I see no evidence of
intentional wrongdoing that led to this tragic accident. Where human
failings are unintentional and purely accidental, we face a different
challenge. Here we need to look at the systems and processes we impose
to guide and constrain individuals. Where did our systems and
procedures fail? Do our systems and procedures allow too many human
失败会导致悲惨的结果？
You and I can't prevent human beings from making honest mistakes. I
and my colleagues at DoD are absolutely responsible for the systems
and procedures. If those systems and procedures permit failure or
exacerbate honest error, we are absolutely responsible for fixing
他们。
I believe there are three central questions that I must answer when I
deliver our report back to Secretary Cohen.
First, is it too easy in our system to put things on a target list and
attack them?
Second, can the Secretary of Defense trust the system used to
geolocate or "site" a target?
Third, is the current 'no strike" process adequate to prevent
战时无意损害？
为了回答这三个关键问题，我必须首先开始
with a broad description of our process.
There are four aspects to the comprehensive targeting process. I will
use the following shorthand labels for these four sub-processes:
targeting guidance, target development, target approval, and
execution.
Target Guidance
这可以说是最重要的子过程。这些是步骤
we take when we receive from the President of the United States as the
Commander in Chief the specific national-level instructions on how to
fight the war, and what specifically he wants us to do and what he
要我们避免。该指南进一步发展为特定
instructions to battlefield commanders.
The President and his senior advisors decide, in broad strategic
terms, how to fight the war -- how long, with what intensity, and with
what limitations. It is in this sub-process that we decide what
actions a battlefield commander can undertake on his own authority and
what actions require specific approval from higher headquarters.
我已经仔细审查了记录，没有证据表明
this part of the process contributed in any way to the accidental
bombing of the Chinese embassy. The guidance was clear and
unequivocal. No one had the authority to attack embassies and
everybody knew it.
Target Development
This is the sub-process where various commands and offices review and
develop specific target "folders" for consideration by senior
commanders or civilian authorities. I must restrict what I say about
这specific details of this sub-process for security reasons. I can
say the following.
Targets are nominated and developed both at field headquarters and in
华盛顿国家安全机构。目标
development process begins with a general proposition and results in a
comprehensive proposal -- known in our business as a target folder --
for approval in the approval process I will discuss shortly.
Targets developed in Washington are supposed to be evaluated by
multiple national intelligence agencies before they are submitted for
formal approval. As mentioned previously, targets may also be
developed in the field. Once approved by the CINC, any targets
要求NCA批准执行
for review and processing.
Targets that are developed in the field are submitted to the Joint
在提交正式批准之前，请审查工作人员。
华盛顿开发的目标应该由其他
organizations in the national security establishment before they are
submitted for formal approval.
The crucial mistakes that were made -- as Director Tenet has testified
-- were made in this target development sub-process. Inappropriate
procedures were used to geo-locate a legitimate target. More
important, the subsequent review of the target folder in this target
开发子过程未能捕获原始错误。
Target Approval
The third sub-process involves the review and approval of the target
文件夹。这是一个关键步骤，因为这是
process when senior officers and individuals check to make sure the
target development process conforms to the target guidance. All the
important questions -- we thought -- were asked at this step: Is this
a legitimate target? How does it relate to our military goals? What
角色在我们对手的操作体系中扮演着角色，如何
it affect him if it is destroyed? Can we constrain our intended damage
只这一目标?大学的可能性是什么ntended damage and
我们如何通过更改一天中的时间或
这physical direction of the attack?
My careful review of the process and the documentary evidence suggests
that the second most important mistake occurred in this phase. More
accurately, we didn't make a mistake by what we did in the approval
phase, but what we normally do not do. Normally we do not question the
mechanical aspects of target siting during the approval process. We
assume that the target has been properly located in geo-spatial terms.
And what we found was that in this case insufficient information was
provided in the target development sub-phase to enable senior
领导以评估身体选址决策。我赶紧添加，
however, that of the 900 targets struck, this is the only case of
目标开发过程中的错误识别。
执行
The fourth sub-phase is the execution phase, when our forces carry out
他们指定的任务。在这种情况下，轰炸机工作人员确实做了什么
it was told to do. There is nothing in the execution phase that
contributed to the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy.
Answering the Three Key Questions
在这种背景下，我们现在可以回答我提出的三个关键问题
earlier.
首先，在我们的系统中太容易了
targeting list?
I think the evidence here is that our system is not lacking in this
regard. It is not too easy to get things targeted. We need to remember
that the intended target was an appropriate target. We wanted to
破坏南斯拉夫联邦局的总部
供应和采购。这个组织直接参与
Yugoslavia's war efforts and knocking it out would shorten the war and
limit our opponents ability to continue their violence. The evidence
suggests the target development and approval process appropriately
asked all the right questions about the FDSP. Unfortunately we thought
it was located in a building that turned out to be the Chinese
embassy.
This leads me to the second question: Can the Secretary of Defense
trust the system and process we use to "site" targets?
在这里很明显，在这种特殊情况下，当前系统
failed us. It appears that the system worked well for 99.9 percent of
这targets, but when it fails spectacularly as it did here, we have
to say that the system must be improved.
地理位置目标始终存在不确定性。在某些情况下
这nature of the target simplifies the problem. Locating a railroad
switching yard or an oil refinery is relatively easy. They have a
unique character that is easily seen on a picture and their size makes
它们甚至在最通用的地图上都相对容易找到。地理
当目标是主要城市的办公大楼时，请找到目标
dramatically harder and inherently less certain.
在这种情况下，分析师使用不适当的程序来
geolocate the target. The larger system failure is that the target
发展过程没有传达给其他办公室和个人
这technique that was used in the siting process. Senior officers in
这approval process would have questioned the siting of the target
had the target folder indicated the method that was used by the
分析师。它没有。我们必须解决这个问题。
How we fix it is a matter of current review. Here we have to balance
这need for reasonable checks and balances with the imperative for
战争时期的有效行动。我们将有具体的
今年夏天晚些时候的建议。在这个阶段，我相信一个
可能的补救措施可能是在目标文件夹中包括一些
description of the target siting methodology. The standards should be
在城市环境中的办公楼比大型独特的建筑物更高
structures such as oil refineries.
第三，当前的“无罢工”系统足以最大程度地减少
collateral damage?
在这里，我必须得出结论，答案是否定的。系统是
不足是因为它当前取决于数据库
not adequately updated. The concept of the no strike system is
fundamentally sound; the challenge lies in ensuring that the
系统依赖包含的基础数据库，
maximum extent feasible, the most up-to date information available.
显然，没有人愿意攻击中国大使馆。什么是
embarrassing to me is that no one knew where the Chinese embassy
真的是。我们政府中有一些人知道
where it really was, but they were not consulted in the target
development process. But the bigger problem is that this episode has
revealed how insufficient our data base development and review process
是，鉴于已进化为现代的极高标准
战争美国风格。
Fifty years ago we knew we couldn't discriminate between embassies and
legitimate targets in a bombing campaign so we warned everyone
因此，向前推。我们今天不能这样做，不需要
今天这么做。但这意味着我们必须有data bases that are
足够准确地捕获将犯的错误。
Let me use this as an opportunity to say something about the National
图像和映射代理。有很多文章，
最近几周的社论将尼玛归咎于这一悲惨
accident. NIMA is not at fault. The dedicated folks at NIMA did a
superb job supporting our war fighters. They are unsung heroes. The
事实是，一位分析师不适当地使用了为
a different purpose, and used an inappropriate technique to locate the
target on that map. The target development and approval process then
failed to catch this error through procedures that NIMA does not
control. I want to publicly thank LTG Jim King and the hard working
patriots at NIMA who worked so hard to support our war fighters in
this and every other operation.
Conclusion
Mr. Chairman, Congressman Dixon, let me conclude by saying that the
unintended bombing of the Chinese embassy was a tragic accident. This
review has led me to conclude that we could have avoided this accident
knowing what we now know. But when the accident was made, it is clear
that no one thought it was the Chinese embassy or wanted to hit the
Chinese embassy. This accident occurred because of a small but
我们的目标系统中重要的故障模式。它可以更改。它
needs to be changed. I pledge to you that it will be changed.
Thank you.