NATO officials in the Balkans say they are surprised by the public scepticism in the West towards the bombing attacks against Yugoslavia, because they think the operation is going to plan.
The alliance is building up forces in Albania in what servicemen on the spot are sure will be a ground operation of some kind, however this is presented in their capitals back home.
"We will go in on the ground, that is for sure," said one NATO intelligence officer in the region. "The bombing will destroy their tanks, their artillery, the guerrillas are coming from the hills, this will weaken the Serbs. We can send in a column of tanks. There will be some resistance, some battles, but nothing major."
The Italian port of Bari is coming to resemble a NATO camp, with Italian navy ships ferrying NATO equipment, including the huge support apparatus for the 24 American attack helicopters, the Apaches, which are on their way, and humanitarian aid to Albania.
Security is relaxed: tourists can stroll from the ferry port over to the NATO loading areas. In the main hotel, the Palace, I saw British pilots wandering around still in their flying suits, with identical copies of maps visible under the clear plastic of their thigh map pockets.
The alliance plan is to gradually "phase in" new weapon systems. The "tank-busting" sorties by US and British jets will from later next week be augmented by attacks by the US Apache helicopters operating from Albania.
These will be joined by the Multiple Launched Rocket System (MLRS), tracked vehicles first used in the Gulf War which can destroy an area of several acres with one salvo.
NATO sources here say that the attacks will in time degrade Serbia's defences. It has only a finite number of tanks, and dwindling supplies of fuel to move them. But time is the problem, as impatience grows in Western capitals.
"It's going well from a military point of view. Basically they are taking Serbia to pieces," said Mr Duncan Bullivant, a former British tank squadron commander and official with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring mission in Kosovo which was evacuated just before the bombing. "But this operation is being run within the political constraints of 19 nations in which public opinion counts much more than doing the right thing militarily."
But the military planners, caught out by Serbia's intransigence in the face of the bombing, can only move so fast in assembling a new, larger, force. Yesterday the United States sent the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, with 4,000 men and 28 aircraft including Marine Corps Harrier jets, on the USS Kearsarge from North Carolina.
Britain is sending 14 Challenger tanks with 2,000 troops of the Household Cavalry to join the 4,500 men already in Macedonia. France is also sending 2,000 men with 15 Leclerc heavy tanks. Canada is expected to add six F-18 jets.
The optimism here depends on the assumption that Serb troops, once they lose their tanks, artillery and communications, and are faced with ever-bigger guerrilla attacks, will prefer to quit than fight sacrificial last stands.
Meanwhile, the Kosovo Liberation Army has begun attacks into Kosovo from bases in Albania, claiming to have taken two villages in the north-east of the country.
The KLA's London spokesman, Mr Pleurat Sejdiu, said these units would work in tandem with NATO bombing, taking advantage of the Serb reluctance to expose their armour to patrolling Alliance jets.
"The KLA has started to have more and more weapons, and better weapons," he said. "The NATO bombing is showing its first results, Serbs have lost a lot. They are afraid to go on with the tanks."
The US Defence Secretary, Mr William Cohen, earlier this year said NATO would be used as "air support" for the KLA. Now, with his officials hoping the combination of bombs and guerrillas will bring the Serbs to their knees, he has changed his mind.
"I agree the KLA does not qualify as a choirboy circle," Mr Cohen said. "They will come back stronger and Milosevic will find himself having to confront a guerrilla force that over a period of time will, in fact, defeat his army."
Reuters adds from London;
The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, insisted early today that a NATO ground invasion of Kosovo was still not an option.
"We said that in the beginning and that remains the case," he told the Sun newspaper.
"I am totally focused on the defeat of Milosevic and that is what we will do. But there are no easy options in this situation. The air war has made an impact on Milosevic's forces but we still have a lot to do," he said.
He added: "Even if we'd threatened a ground war at the beginning, that would have changed nothing because we would still have been a considerable time away from putting one together."