Folks, I have a busy schedule this week but shortly I will post a few responses including some of my personal contacts with Colonel Warden. I will start with how I met him and what he considers to be one of the most important elements of his Airpower Theory and Strategyin general. It is a good story, it shows if you really listen(from a non service dogma related viewpoint) you might just learn something.
You are making Warden's point
Warden suggests, "airpower advocates must stop trying to use airpower as a substitute for its military predecessors." Accordingly, airpower detractors will engage airpower on that level for precisely the reasons Warden cites. That's what's going on here in spades.
HERE is an example of a sublime and enduring airpower victory in an irregular environment (i.e. the Pakistan tribal regions after the earthquake) that isn't "bound to an anachronistic view of war with an anachronistic vocabulary (Warden)."
Of that airpower-centric operation, terrorfreetomorrow.org writes, "Pakistanis now hold a more favorable opinion of the United States than at any time since 9/11, while support for Al Qaeda in its home base has dropped to its lowest level since then. The direct cause for this dramatic shift in Muslim opinion is clear: American humanitarian assistance for Pakistani earthquake victims." A subsuquent study showed that the reversals in opinion were not temporary.
Along those lines, THIS article suggests one way the AF could turn that knowledge into capability. But it won't because the AF is as unlikely to internalize Warden's guidance (cited at the beginning of this post) as the AF's detractors.
To the AF, conventional war = dropping bombs from jets and irregular war = dropping smaller bombs from turboprops. They don't even really recognize strategic effects even when they are creating them. Take the training of the Afg Air Force, for example. The zeitgeist is that the AAF is necessary to allow the gov't to continue to make security gains. What is frequently lost is that in a country like Afg (where vast distances are combined with scant infrastructure is combined with the strategic vulnerability of a central gov't that is too-far-removed from the people), airpower can provide the essential connectivity of the gov't to the population in the hinterlands. I have no idea why the USAF isn't blowing that horn. Maybe it is and I'm just not plugged in enough. More likely, though, that they view it as something they have to do so that the Afghans can start dropping the small bombs...
Regardless, nice to see a well-informed discussion of airpower. Very good exchange.
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