Quote Originally Posted by pvebber View Post
Not really a lot new here, mostly a rehash of:
pvebber-

Col Warden's point is only partially to re-hash his theory, but to point out that airpower (as Slap pointed out, this doesn't just mean the Air Force) can be used in "complex" situations as you call it.

The fundamental flaw in the Warden school of thought is that it is based on a fundamentally mechanistic view of systems theory. The only way you can "backplan" from a desired future state to the sequence of "centers of gravity" you have to break, is if there is a rigid cause and effect linkage amenable to such a decomposition.

There is a name for systems that do NOT exhibit that feature. "Complex". If you are trying to break simple systems with rigid cause and effect like power grids or supply chains then the Warden theory works great. Start trying to apply it to political systems and social networks and, well Aaron Barr of HBGary found out the hard way about how "the adversary gets a vote"
So we should just give up on trying to understand the enemy? Warden's rings model is simply a way of depicting a system, complex or not. As Warden says in the article:

Opponents are complicated things with many moving and static parts, but we can simplify our analysis by seeing them as a system, which means that they function in some reasonably connected manner.
In other words, we must somehow simplify the enemy into a system to understand it. How would you recommend understanding the enemy's political system?

Airpower allows the simultaneous attack of key points in the adversary system causing it to collapse. The more precise the ability to attack, the smaller the actually kinetic effect required and the less the collateral damage.

The reality is that "centers of gravity" are not static and a true systems theory understanding of an adversary of any appreciable complexity is that they are not "mechanism" but "organisms" that do not simply and predictably collapse when "affected" but adapt, repair, re-orient, and exhibit unpredictable emergent responses.
An organism is any living system, or the highest level of cell organization (Nation Institute of Health). So no, they aren't static- and Warden isn't suggesting that. But we still need to simplify even a political "organism" into a system that we can understand if we are to affect it. Warden is also suggesting that the faster we hit a system (or organism) in a parallel attack, the less it can adapt and re-orient.

A strategy based on the ability to predict the future - which is what is required in order to foresee a desired end-state, and determine a set of simultaneous actions that will result in an inexorable path to it - is not a realistic one. Despite how energetically we may wish it were so.
This is the point of Warden's article - that airpower is not being used as effectively as it could be because the accepted wisdom is that it is "too hard" to use it in complex systems, and that "everyone knows airpower won't work" in situation x (say COIN). He argues that this is because of our terminology and past history. He believes we can find ways to make it work if we try. Warden is arguing that we should try to make sure we keep our desired end state in mind. He also is arguing that if we can't find ways to reach our objectives quickly, we should consider if we should really should go to war.

Warden is arguing not that we need to predict the future, but that we should know what future we want to create.

Do you really think that our strategy should not try and foresee our desired end state?

V/R,

Cliff