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Thread: The Warden Collection (merged thread)

  1. #261
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Agreed

    Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
    a) U better not call others "old"!
    Relative, all things are relative...
    b) "pretty easy going" depends 100% on the definition of "threats" That's where the real problem is.

    Allende, Germany '17, Spain, Grenada and Mossadegh were never actual threats.
    Very true. Germany '17 was more a Wilsonian reaction, a liberal 'do gooder' effort to aid those 'friends' perceived as in need of magnanimous US assistance.

    It was if not misplaced certainly not aimed at a real threat -- though the infamous Zimmerman Note lent credence to the potential and British propaganda had an effect. As for the others (and a few more...), more Wilsonian zeal and foolishness to tell others how to think. All were IMO rather stupid and unnecessary, though the Grenadians appear happy with the result in their case...

    You're gonna have to change your tag line yet...

  2. #262
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Will do.

    This one is related to what you wrote about intolerance to threats, with a bit historical analogy:
    http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot....t-warfare.html

  3. #263
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Talking Yet another reason to change it...

    Good, perceptive article. Also agree with it and would add that late 1944 and early 1945 in western Europe allowed the US Army to 'learn' some really, really bad lessons (so did Viet Nam and so will Afghanistan and Iraq but that's another thread...).

    I enjoyed your last Commenters post on that article with the Liddel Hart quote. Recalled it from my own readings a few days (eons?) ago. Accurate and eminently logical...

  4. #264
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    I actually changed the signature already. I was just more subtle in changing it than usual.

  5. #265
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Yep

    And I'm older than usual.

    Good job...

  6. #266
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    The thread seems to be playing itself out into some related but disparate topics so it may be time to at least review the bidding on the arguments to date as influenced by the wonderful exchange we’ve had thus far.

    Going through the Warden Article, I still find the following issues bother me:
    First is the debatable definition of airpower as “anything guidable that moves through air or space, manned or remotely piloted”.

    What constitutes “guidable”? Does this mean “redirectable in flight” or simply something with a guidance system that corrects for error? The “remotely piloted” would seem to indicate “remotely guidable” but this is not altogether clear. This is important as the former excludes many types of ballistic missiles, GPS guided ordnance (whose guidance minimizes CEP relative to a predetermined location but are not “remotely guidable” in flight) while it includes some types of laser guided artillery shells and other traditional “ground power ordnance” that can be directed by a remote operator to alternative targets. It also defines away seapower as simply a truck for various forms of air power or ground power, since modern ships utilize guided weapons that are launched through the air almost exclusively, or carry Marines. Does Seapower therefore have no role other than as a slow, high capacity component of TRANSCOM?

    The other issue with the definition is the reference to manned and remotely piloted, but not autonomous. Does this mean autonomous air vehicles are not considered airpower?

    I would offer that defining “Airpower” is more than a consideration of the medium through which it passes, but the purpose to which its passage through the air is intended. “Airpower” as a form of combat power is concerned with the control of the air (or space) and with conducting operations against targets that are not related to the support of missions performed by ground or naval forces.

    Airpower indeed has some fundamental capabilities that enable it to perform a distinctive form of combat operations, but to make the capabilities directly supporting ground or naval operations beholden to commanders responsible for conducting other types of operations introduces an unnecessary layer of C2, with potentially high risk effects.

    Second:

    …perhaps equally few understand that airpower can and should fundamentally change the very nature of war.
    Regardless of airpower’s potential, it can never realize its real capability so long as it remains bound to an anachronistic view of war with an anachronistic vocabulary.

    This opening salvo is elaborated on building an argument that “battle-centric’ military thinking has been made obsolete by airpower. This is only true if one considers air power to have no effective defense. If there is an effective defense to airpower, then it must be overcome to achieve the broader objective. While it may be possible to do this in a much compressed timeframe compared to ground power, even stealthy airpower is at increasing risk as more sophisticated integrated air defenses are developed. The notion that airpower can strike at will, with little regard to adversary capabilities to defend itself assumes that future adversaries will be as inept at coordinating air defenses as we saw in Iraq, or that the country has no capability to horizontally escalate the conflict in an attempt to deter us from conducting a protracted air campaign, like we did in Desert Storm.

    Future adversaries are increasingly likely to have both significant IADS capability AND plans for horizontal escalation. These defenses and escalation options must be defeated in a series of battles that are conducted BEFOR and which must be successful, to enable the sort of paralyzing or coercive strikes described later in the article. They may be entirely air battles, but they still must be successfully conducted, or other operations will be conducted at potentially serious risk.

    Airpower MIGHT be able to forgo battle, and directly attack strategic center’s of gravity, but only if the adversary has no capability to conduct an air defense, or unacceptably escalate the conflict to other domains or geographic regions. It may have a significant effort on its hands to defeat those capabilities before it can attack any other targets.

    Thirdly, the article proposes a strategic framework for planning operations in general. It consists of 4 steps – defining the desired endstate, identifying the systems and system components we need to effect to achieve this desired endstate, identifying first the ways and only after that the means by which this change is effected, and lastly how to decide we are “done” and the implications of being “done” on the future state of the system we have affected.

    That strategic framework borrows heavily from systems theory and assumes some critical analytic tasks can be accomplished. First is that we properly define and bound the system we are trying to effect. Since the global economy affects us all, affecting significant players in the global economy will feedback on us, and open us to the sort of horizontal escalation opportunities that have been assumed away together with a need to think in terms of “battles”. Thus the adversary “system” may not be as simple to define as it was in the case of a global “niche” player like Iraq, or now Libya.

    The level of understanding of the way the components of the target system work together needs to be understood at a very sophisticated level to enable one to determine what the effect individual components in the system have on the system as a whole. For physically simple or “mechanical” systems – where each component has an observable role in the workings of the system this may not be hard. Electrical grids are the classic “simple” physical system. Other systems like financial or supply chain systems may not be as readily discernable in either what all the components are, or how the system will adapt to circumstances affecting individual components of the system. Social systems are the hardest of all to discern and understand in terms of the effect of partial or full loss of function of a particular component. The devil is in the details and assuming that devil can always be tamed is a dangerous one.

    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.
    This is not universally true, at least not to the point where one can determine the knowledge required to identify key components, or the effect of the loss of key components, a priori. Systems at this level are in a constant state of dynamic adaptation to exigent circumstance. Trains break down, traffic jams occur, power substations fail. Even mechanical systems that have important purposes are not always employed in a consistent manner. “Service oriented systems” with a large human component will not always behave, or respond to a shock, in a consistent or predictable way. The “Shock” required to guarantee failure and inability to correct the failure will generally be large and carry considerable consequences into other systems – most notably the system of “observers” that make up the rest of the global community. Too big a “shock” can be considered inhumane and cause “blowback” beyond the system you are trying to affect. That tipping point where force goes from being justifiable to excessive is not one that can be predicted.

    That said, the “5 rings” framework has a great deal of value when the circumstances make it the preferred type of methodology to use – when one has a considerable amount of international “top cover”, one is dealing with an adversary that has a fragile air defense capability and limited capability for horizontal escalation (i.e. it can be accounted for and measures taken to mitigate its effects to a large degree), when the underlying analytical assumptions are valid, and the centers of gravity are both discernable, and can be engaged staying well below any potential tipping point for “blowback”. These conditions do not exist in general, so the framework is not universally applicable.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

  7. #267
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    Default Part II

    Where the 5 Rings framework gets on shakier ground is the argument that Return on investment is related to the centrality of the rings, and the time over which they are engaged. This assumes that centers of gravity are distributed in the rings in such a way that the most valuable are always leaders, and the least valuable are fielded forces. The obvious case that turns this on its head is an example country that has a weak central leadership, but strong regionally controlled , but cooperating, IADS systems. In such a country the IAD system must be taken down before any other targets can be engaged, so its value is “the highest” since no action is possible while it operates, and the leadership is too decentralized to be effectively neutralized even if it could all be quickly engaged. A limited transportation infrastructure may in fact be the “most valuable” center of gravity to attack once the IADS system is down, or it might be a leaflet drop on the populace of the major cities. The characteristics of the individual systems and the arrangement of CoGs within the rings and their dependencies and vulnerabilities will determine the relative value particularly of processes, infrastructure, and population. North Viet Nam correctly focused on our Population as the key CoG.

    Similarly the notion that “faster is inherently better” has already suffered a considerable loss of support in C2 circles as it has become apparent that “opportune, effective timing” is more important than sheer speed in enacting decisions. The Warden construct is overly reliant on an assumption of a “one turn war” where we make our essentially single, parallel operation, and the result will always be an adversary unable to “take his turn”. This belies much of what we worked out throughout the Cold War to ensure the survivability and effectiveness of our counter-strike nuclear capability. It is doubtful that any country that would engage in a course of action that would result in antagonizing us to the point of war, would do so without a portfolio of “flexible deterrent options” that could be brought into play as a cost imposing strategy on our threats of massive attack.

    The massive single blow strategy is also one that is difficult to balance with the “Exciting” possibility of “conflict with little or no unplanned destruction or shedding of blood.” How does one determine the “optimum” single blow that minimizes cost to us, destruction of the adversary, and achieves a desired result with no ill will? Again the information to determine this philosopher’s stone of force application is impossible to know when you start. It seems to imply that we abandon our traditional incremental response to an adversary use of force. We in effect “take it for the team” until we decide in Popeye fashion that’s “alls I kin stans, an I kint stans na more” eat our Spinach and bust Bluto in the chops turning his eyes to little “Xs”. IF we have no strategic methodology that can incrementally respond to rising tensions and brinksmanship, then we severely limit our options to deter war in its early stages.

    This also does not consider the possibility of circumstances that result in “wicked” problems whose desired endstate is impossible to agree on, either because the fundamental problem eludes effective characterization, or all results have significant downsides, or coalition interests prevent completely common ground. In these sorts of cases thee may be a requirement to approach the problem in a sequential rather than parallel way in order to learn about the nature of the problem as you apply different ways and means (only some of which will be military) to figure out what sort of end states are achievable, or what endstate characteristics one values over others. This problem is exacerbated by the notion that one can separate and treat as disconnected aspects of a system, the physical and the “morale” and that since the “morale” side is messy, one only needs to reduce the physical to 0 to preclude the “morale” side from mattering. This presumes a fundamentally different underlying structure of warfare than the physical domain and cognitive domains mediated by information domain. The equation “outcome = physical x morale” is only applicable to a small subset of cases where the adversary has an extremely brittle physical system. The alternative in general is “nuclear warfare by conventional means” a dismantling of the adversary’s capability to operate as functional nation. This can’t be done against a nuclear armed opponent (as its effect is an existential one that will trigger a “use or lose” nuclear response) and has a high likelihood to exceed the “tipping point” of global opinion except in the most egregious of circumstances.

    Airpower enables us to think about conflict from a future-back, end-game-first perspec¬tive as opposed to one based on the battle obsession of Clausewitz and his followers.
    This is a fundamentally false dichotomy. Clausewitz if anything harangues the reader about the need to understand the nature of the war being fought before one embarks on it. The ‘battle obsession’ of Clausewitz is a straw man, to substitute for the real enemy of Wardens construct in Clausewitz – the fog and friction of war that will always frustrate attempts to make war scientific. In beating down the strawman of battle obsession, Warden dismisses Clausewitz entirely and does not deal with the question of how one conquers fog and friction to achieve war with “little or no unplanned destruction or shedding of blood”. Or how airpower dispenses with the need for battle in cases where the “enemy gets a turn”.

    So why should we be concerned that there are so many potential issues with Wardens airpower manifesto. Well, 2012 will see perhaps the most extensive review of roles and missions of the services, at least since Gold Water Nichols, if not WWII. Everything is on the table, including the “even division of defense dollars into thirds. If the argument that is taken into this debate by airpower advocates is:

    Airpower can operate against virtually all of the centers of gravity directly related to strategic objectives, regardless of their loca¬tion. Because it can bring many under attack in compressed periods of time, it is well suited for parallel operations. Finally, air¬power can produce appropriate effects with little destruction and bloodshed, if desired.
    Then these claims need to be subjected to appropriate scrutiny and if found wanting, sent back to the drawing board. The stakes are high regardless of the claims that “none should fear airpower advocates”:

    To see such a valuable resource properly used, however, we Airmen must stop thinking we can do so via the two methodologies most prominent in the last few years: trumpeting our spectacular technology and asking merely to be treated as equal members of a team composed of the three forms of power.
    For all its disclaimers, this is about the Air Force wanting a bigger piece of the defense budget – a zero sum game that would occur at the expense of the Army and Navy. The strategy advocated in the article is to argue that the framework you choose for strategy should be chosen to “lock in” airpower as the winner:

    If our approach to strategy finds acceptance, airpower becomes the ob¬vious solution; if it fails, we are just another hawker of new gizmos.
    This is a pretty bare-faced attempt to hijack the current Joint construct and substitute out current military planning methodology which assumes strategy is done outside the military “system” (though not without military involvement) and replace it with a strategy framework that is “loaded” in favor of airpower and imposes a requirement to cede at least some of the strategy process to airpower practitioners. This is not just unabashedly parochial, but begs the question of what happens when the situation is not amenable to solution by coercive application of airpower. The notion that “if airpower can’t solve a problem, its not a military problem” reduces the realm of military applicability to variations on the “halt scenario” (ie a country does something, like invade a neighbor, that you want to “halt” so you apply airpower to eliminate the adversary’s capability to (in some combination) command his fielded forces, supply his forces, support his forces from the rear, sustain popular support for the adventure, and finally, just destroy the forces themselves (back to the five rings).

    There are many other military problems besides variations on the “halt” scenario and defining away as “non-military” so nothing but airpower is applicable is not an argument for airpower, it’s an intellectual sleight of hand that serve neither the nation, nor airpower advocates.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

  8. #268
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    Default Part III

    Why should we start out with “airpower has limits” in our mind instead of “airpower has no limits”?
    Because it does.

    And to be responsible stewards of the taxpayers money, ALL ‘xxx-power” advocates need to start with WHAT WE ARE CAPABLE OF TODAY and argue for the evolution (or occasional revolution) of those capabilities based on an actionable course of conceptual and technology development that improves capabilities and adds new one over time. Should there be a think tank out there thinking with an open aperture how to press the limits of “the doable” Certainly! And they exist. They are doing that and new technologies and capabilities are on the horizon that will enable major changes in how we fight. But for once we have to be prepared to think in holoisitc terms about the future joint force, and in this upcoming debate of roles and missions we have to consider how “xxx-power” can enable solutions to threats that are out there brewing in an integrated way. This is the opposite of the parochial “it should be the goal of airpower to get a bigger share of the pie” strategy advocated in this article.

    In the fiscal environment we are going to be in a “if we don’t hang together we will all hang separately” mode in the coming years – perhaps as long as the coming decade. We need to advocate for our xxx-powers strengths, not try to “game the system” to our advantage by trying to argue for artificially constraining strategic frameworks. Let your xxx-power constituency argue how it holistically empowers the entire joint force, not why it should hold primacy over them. If each of the services (lets not pretend that airpower is not substantially = to Air Force) go into next years debates with the strategy espoused in this article, the resulting melee – like a election primaries, will only give ammunition for more drastic cuts in defense when the broader “general election” pits defense against the rest of government.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

  9. #269
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    pvebber, my local electric company has scheduled a power outage (on purpose) tomorrow for about 8 hours, but like MacArthur I shall return.

  10. #270
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    Default

    I'll let my missive above stand as my position on this thread and give you the final word - whenever your power company gets its Rings inorder
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

  11. #271
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Until then look at this...ipad and unmanned drone at the office


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc-DX...rec_grec_index

  12. #272
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Smart camera tracking

    Apologies cannot recall if posted here before.

    Slap,

    Try this for an IT application:http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/...g-mercilessly/

    I think this application is already in operation, or certainly at the development stage within the military-industrial complex.
    davidbfpo

  13. #273
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Part 1

    pvebber, it has been a great discussion. You raised many good points and I was tempted to just respond to the question of can Air power do it all, but perhaps it is better to start with a little history or how did we (USA) get into this mess. Part 2 to follow.

  14. #274
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Part 2

    During WW2 we produced many specialized vehicles that could maneuver to the right position in order to put lots of dumb steel missiles on target. The vehicles were more important than the steel missiles because until they maneuvered into the proper firing position you could never be sure of hitting anything. The economic strategy was to produce lots of vehicles and lots of dumb steel missiles and give them to the military to fire at the enemy until he was dead or surrendered.

    Toward the end we developed the Atom bomb. Now all the sudden War changed dramatically or so it was thought . No longer could large Armies or Navies conduct Mass operations without the risk of their total destruction. All we needed was a few specialized delivery vehicles and a few very special droppable missiles.

    But something else was also happening. The relative importance of the vehicle to the weapon was changing. A shift was taking place. Although a very specialized vehicle was still needed, the weapon itself was becoming more important than the vehicle. Would the Army and Navy allow this?

    Stay tuned for Part 3.

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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    But something else was also happening. The relative importance of the vehicle to the weapon was changing. A shift was taking place. Although a very specialized vehicle was still needed, the weapon itself was becoming more important than the vehicle. Would the Army and Navy allow this?
    Of course the Army and Navy would allow this. And they did. Guided anti-tank missiles often cost as much (or more) than the non-specialized vehicle that carries them (APC, light truck, all terrain vehicle). The combination of non-specialized vehicles with high-tech, high-cost weapon systems had proven to be very effective, allowing light infantry units to engage armored forces (see for instance the battle of Debecka Pass Iraq, or the Toyota War in Chad, or the operations of Egyptian infantry against Israeli armor in the Sinai during the early phases of the Yom Kippur War). The same goes for fire-and-forget light anti-air missils. For the Navy, the demise of the big-guns battle ship in favor of the frigate carrying sophisticated missile weapon systems represents a similar evolution.

  16. #276
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Part 3

    In 1947 LTG James M. Gavin would(former Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division) publish a book called "Airborne Warfare." It was about how the future of our country depended upon Air Power. An exert from the book is published below. By the end of the year "The Great Divorce" would happen. The Army Air Corps would become a independent service. The United States Air Force was created.

    It was 2,200 yeas later when sea power reached its full potential. Then, in the battle of Normandy, the Allied powers, using hundreds of seacraft of all types, invaded the Continent of Europe. The sea was used to its fullest. It is significant, however, that part of the invading forces were transported by AIR. It was significant because that battle saw sea power at its peak. AIR power was just beginning. And this is the critical point that we have arrived at, and this is the competition we are in. This media that envelops us we must use. We must imagine, design, and develop the means and methods of using it. We must--if our people and our institutions are to survive. For the people with their institutions who best learn how to use this media will survive in this highly competitive world.
    AIR power is now the decisive element in modern war. And by AIR power is meant every contribution to waging war that man has created and that can be flown. Men, weapons, ammunition, food, bombs, missiles, and all that it will take to fight a future war must FLY. Clearly, therefore, in the development of our AIR power and Airborne potential changes must be made in our ground force equipment as well as in our Air Force equipment.
    The new independent Air Force was going to change everything. A mental Atomic bomb had been dropped on the Army. The Navy was figuring out that in order to survive it needed to go Atomic and to go under the water, that too was going to change everything or was it? It was starting to appear that an Air Force (really an Airplane Force ) and the Atomic Submarine Navy, and maybe a few good Marines were all we needed. There wasn't going to be anything left for the Army to do.....or was the Army about to deliver the Change of all Changes. A change in the very concept of what a weapon is and most important a conceptual change of what an organization is.

    Stay tuned for part 4.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-25-2011 at 09:19 PM. Reason: Citation in quotes, not bold.

  17. #277
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Haven't forgotten about this thread but tornado's hit Alabama hard last night so it may be a couple of days before I finish. Airpower could have made a big difference and we need more advanced Airpower and Airborne concepts for war and civil emergencies. More Emergency VTOL aircraft (not just helicopters) Air Force used to say "Speed is Life" certainly true last night and today. Emergency crews are stuck to the ground...just pathetic and unnecessary!

  18. #278
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default The OODA of Fouche

    Hat tip to Zenpundit for this, the graphic is of note and available on:http://committeeofpublicsafety.files...2/bowtie13.png

    Zen has some comments:http://zenpundit.com/?p=4274#comments
    davidbfpo

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    Default Old Wine in New Bottles: Douhet, Warden, and Counterinsurgency

    Old Wine in New Bottles: Douhet, Warden, and Counterinsurgency

    Entry Excerpt:



    --------
    Read the full post and make any comments at the SWJ Blog.
    This forum is a feed only and is closed to user comments.

  20. #280
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Iraq Crisis Solved By Colonel John Warden (Ret. USAF)

    Link to article and interview of Retired USAF Colonel John Warden, author of "The Enemy Is A System" and Winning Strategist from Gulf War One on how to handle Iraq crisis by using Strategy and Airpower.




    http://americanthinker.com/2014/06/i...hn_warden.html

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