The Warden Collection (merged thread)

[Cole]

Let's analyze COL (ret) Warden's perception that attack of the the Five Rings in the title above decreases in importance from left to right.

Leaders:
That's why we are conducting serial Predator/Reaper attacks in Pakistan and night raids in Afghanistan. Don't believe Pakistan would be nearly as receptive to parallel massive bombing of every madrassa and all of Northern Waziristan. The intelligence takes time anyway. It's hard to find a target from the air that does not want to be found. Should we have instead dropped a 2,000 lb bomb on Karzai's erring young relative and multiplied the collateral damage manyfold? Should we be bombing ISI leaders since they seem to be part of the problem? That would go over well.
Processes:
Believe that's why we attempt to replace the poppy-growing in Afghanistan with a different crop, and pursue better government as a solution to graft and warlords. It's difficult to encourage either from 40,000' or many miles off shore.
Infrastructure:
We know who gets blown up by IEDs or sniped trying to secure the host country's rebuilding efforts. The guy on the ground, not in the air or at sea. If you say, we don't need a guy on the ground, I would answer what happens when the enemy has invaded another country and still has guerillas, foreign fighters, and sympathizers staying behind? Do we abandon our allies? Now let's say the offending invader is Russia or China. Do we attack the infrastructure of invaded Ukraine or invader Russia. Russia is big and its hard to retrieve downed pilots there. They have nukes. China too! What happens to our infrastructure (Walmart) and oil supplies (Russia, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Canada oops sorry).
Population:
Some would say that's why we have a population-centric strategy for locating the bulk of ground forces. It's more difficult to influence the population from 60,000' with a F-22 or B-2. Don't believe either has much of an EO/IR capability with stealth and altitude. How do they assure no collateral damage?

The British population increased its resolve as a result of WWII German bombing of London. A small diameter bomb can take minutes to travel multiple miles during which time targets may move near civilians or vice versa. With a "parallel" strategy and inability to perform BDA for multiple simultaneous targets, we miss failures and lose successes attributed as collateral damage by the adversary.

Fielded Forces:
Conveniently, this has the least priority because it the most difficult for airpower to accomplish. Bad guys can easily hide from airpower once their invasion is complete...and because of blitzkrieg-like ground invasions, they will nearly always be complete IN ALLIED TERRITORY, by the time a decision is made to do something about it.

So the author would say attack the leaders, processes, and infrastructure because they are more important. But the government we leave behind will simply go back to the original undesired behavior or fall again if we like that government, unless our ground forces have the opportunity to train their host nation replacements. It's insufficient to train only host nation pilots.

How long did it take us to find Saddam Hussein and would it take to locate Qaddafi or Kim Jon Il, or Chavez, or Ahmadinejad and Khameini? That last leader would go over well in the Islamic world.

If the leader is a tad crazy as many potential rogue nation leaders are, do they really care about processes and infrastructure? What if religious beliefs subscribe to an austere existence anyway, and jihadist sacrifice of the people is viewed as fully acceptable? What if they have nothing to lose anyway. Look at satellite pictures of North Korea at night to see how much electricity they have. If the enemy army is in allied territory, what stops them for living off the land and goods of the allie ala Sherman? If we ignore the fielded force sitting in allied territory ala Kosovo, and the leader is not as rational as Milosevich was, how does the war end?

Badly and with little accomplished I would respectfully submit. I would like to hear how the sniping would have stopped if NATO peacekeeping forces were not on the ground and if allied ground forces were not threatening a full scale invasion. We see how well we stopped leaders, processes, and infrastructure in Desert Storm without the full monte ground attack until completion. The Shiite populations didn't fare too well, either?

If instead of massive bombing of hidden enemies and hitting populations instead, or their infrastructure/processes (that will make long term friends) we instead attack the invading country on the ground, from the sea, and air...they are forced out of hiding where airpower, long range fires, and rapid maneuver can engage them. They are slowly choked of oil and exports by blockades. Our rapid build-up of ground forces by air initially, and eventually sea, protects ports and airheads from further invasion. Having adequate force remaining for stability operations, and keeping the "enemy" army intact and on our side to help stabilize prevents the problems that occurred in OIF and an initially neglected Afghanistan.

Just an alternative theory some call Joint and Combined Arms warfare and full spectrum operations.