Did France participate in Operation Allied Force (OAF) as part of NATO? I thought they dropped out of the military part of NATO in 1966? Did they participate as part of the UN and not as part of NATO?
I presume you are talking about the 1999 Operation Allied Force:
ALLIED FORCE (NATO 99) The NATO strike on Yugoslavia that began on the night of 24 March, 1999 running for 78 days and nights. The rump state of Yugoslavia (consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) had launched a number of bloody assaults against ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo sparking worldwide revulsion. As had become typical, the attacks began at night with cruise missiles hitting military, industrial and air-defense sites. Later stealth and conventional aircraft made further strikes with precision weapons. This was the first use of force by NATO and came about a week after Poland, Hungry and the Czech Republic joined the alliance. See GHIBLI and TRIDENTE.
GHIBILI was the Italian contribution, TRIDENTE was the French effort.
As always, copyright on the text is mine, from my book
Actually, France dropped out of the integrated command and the military comitee, but was still a member of the military alliance (roughly, no french unit is integrated in the NATO military organization, but it doesn’t prevent them from joining in military operations). France participated in the operations in Yugoslavia as a member of NATO.
By the way, the situation has changed during the last decade, though I don’t remember the specifics. I believe there’s now again a french representant in the military comitee, for instance.