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Thread: The Warden Collection (merged thread)

  1. #201
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    Default Good comments, but...

    Quote Originally Posted by Cliff View Post
    So we should only organize/train/equip for the current fight?
    Shouldn’t we organize/train/equip for the most realistic fight? If so we have ample air and seapower for the rogue nations and no fly zones. We have ample air and seapower if North Korea crosses the DMZ, Hezbollah dirty-bombs NYC with Iranian help, or a Yemen terrorist sneaks chemical weapons into D.C. In any of those scenarios, the war that followed would not be all airpower. Higher ground casualties would result, exacerbated if budgets spend excessively where we have sufficient domination, and not enough rectifying vulnerabilities of “distasteful” but essential ground combat.

    Business owners don’t spend excessively making their business completely fireproof because that is an extremely low probability incident. They buy fire insurance. We buy nukes to deter Russia/China…and reasonable air and seapower...but not at the expense of conflicts with 90% probabilities vs 1%.

    Not arguing with the budget comparison. Nevertheless, China's budget goes a lot farther... because their weapons are being made by Chinese, who get paid a lot less than the average American defense worker.
    They will pay $75-$100 million upfront…about half of an F-22 and closer to an F-35. Larger O&S and maintenance costs are well beyond most nation defense budgets and personnel skills. We see that Russia/India think they will export 800 Pak FAs. Who will buy them in quantity? The 50-100 sold to a few foes would barely leave the ground due to day 1 allied attacks, or a week of allied retaliation after the aggressor has his day. For less money, Nation X can buy many more TBMs that can hide, reload, and survive.

    Your argument that MAD is sufficient for deterring China and Russia is a slippery slope... As we found out with the New Look, this severely constrains your options, and probably isn't a good idea. If China decides to start cutting off Japanese oil over a dispute, are we willing to threaten them with nukes? If the answer is no, then MAD is probably sufficient to insure US national survival, but not protect our national interests.
    War games? Not sure if you are talking about arguments over islands/drilling location. But cannot imagine any scenario where China could/would blockade Japanese oil. They attacked Vietnam a few years back and were humiliated.

    MAD precludes Russia and China from getting too bold. Other conflicts like Georgia are yawners and were somewhat self-provoked. Taiwan will fix itself due to unity leaders and economic simpatico. We could blockade China’s oil far more readily in the Straits of Mallaca if they did invade.

    The odds are not 0. B-2s need to be protected if fighters are present.
    Reasonable statisticians comparing probabilities of a Soldier/Marine dying in current and future conflict versus hypothetical threats to a B-2 by a foe with 5th gen aircraft would see: less stealth, less numerous, lesser radars and night vision, less training & untested pilots, fewer tankers; airfields already hit by cruise missiles, stealth bombers, and attack UAS; few Chinese AWACs, unreliable engines, undercapable jamming/missiles….need I say more.

    According to the unclass 2010 report to Congress on China, the Chinese Air Force has over 327 fourth generation fighters... all of which are very capable. They have 252 advanced SAM systems... neither of these numbers include naval systems. I would submit that we currently have the minimum force required- in fact, it was classified as "moderate risk" in congressional testimony.
    Even classified assessments can be questionable. Look how we exaggerated the threat of the Mi-25? Anyone with an agenda can exaggerate risk to push different priorities while realistic air and sea casualties are low at best in any scenario.

    Meanwhile, real Soldiers/Marines/Sailors/Airmen on the ground are getting killed…not Airmen at altitude or Sailors at sea. Since the end of the Cold War, only ground combatants have faced serious risk. 327 fourth generation aircraft based on the F-16 and Su-27 could not down more than a handful of F-22/F-35, B-2s, or stealthy cruise missile/ UAS. None of those U.S. systems facing 252 advanced SAMs would experience losses approaching what Soldiers/Marines experience in one month of current/future combat….multiplied by 100 months.

    That said, you seem to miss my point. I'm not arguing for gutting the Army to buy more F-22s. I would have liked to have seen us buy the 40 more that were in the budget originally to give us a viable/sustainable force - but we didn't, and we're not going to get more. We need new tankers, new CSAR helos and the new bomber more, frankly. The big problem will be our F-16s and F-15s wearing out before we can actually buy F-35s (if and when we get to buy some).
    It’s a zero sum gain budget environment with Iraq winding down, Afghanistan on a countdown, and Libya starting its upward spiral with a less than clear endstate and poor current results.
    Planned tanker numbers were based on nuclear bomber requirements of 50 years ago. Current tankers are at half their lifespan despite advanced age and we never have used more than 300+ of the 500+ in any conflict, nor do we have the space to park them outside TBM range.

    Given numbers of actual aircraft shot down in past decades, how many CSAR aircraft are required when MV-22/CV-22 already exist and plenty of MH Special Ops and Naval helicopters are fielded? Agree we need a new bomber but considering that only a handful of B-2s were required in Libya and stealthy Navy UAS and MC-X will exist, we may not need anywhere near 80-100 new stealthy bombers.
    As Secretary Gates said, another large land conflict is unlikely for multiple reasons. Based on the extreme distaste for "boots on the ground", I think the Libya model is much more likely to be the model. I would expect that SOF and adviser forces will be heavily used as well.
    Believe the Libya model will prove not nearly as successful as some believe. Even if it is, it is atypical terrain and a minor threat. Try the same thing in the terrain of Lebanon, North Korea, Venezuela, or Ukraine, and try to find TBMs in Iran. Distaste for boots on the ground does not preclude that need in multiple much more likely conflicts than China/Russia. From the looks of unrest in the Middle East both now and in the past 20 years, more of the same is inevitable.

    Given all of that, we do not have too large an Air Force - we have one that is just large enough to give us a moderate-high level of risk based on our stated national strategy. It is going to get smaller due to attrition and airframes aging out- and that is not a good thing.
    Proof lies in deployments required per service member. Any service that deploys less than the Army has more force structure than the Army proportionally.

    As I have said before on this blog, the job of the USAF and USN is to make sure our wars stay small by being so good that they can't be beat. If we can't deter folks conventionally, we're left with nukes, as you mentioned...
    We would never use nukes in North Korea, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, or Venezuela. Airpower would supplant rather than dominate Joint firepower in those scenarios as the Israelis learned, and South Koreans and NATO understand. We have more than sufficient allied air and seapower advantages programmed to deter Russia/China. The rogue nations with unstable leadership are the ones most difficult to deter, and as Qaddafi’s actions show, no amount of air and seapower are a deterrent when we tell him we won’t go ashore with anything but the CIA and SOF/SF.

    Saddam used chems on Halabja in Kurdistan in 1988, as well as on the Iranians. There is evidence of his using Mi-8s to drop Sarin on Karbala in March of 1991. Again, all of this was PRIOR to the no-fly zones being enforced- they were established AFTER Saddam attacked the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the South.
    1988 was well before Desert Storm. March 1991 was shortly thereafter because we stopped short of doing the job correctly…and settled on a NFZ.

    You are now changing the argument... ONW and OSW fulfilled their objectives at a relatively low cost relative to what troops on the ground would have cost. If the objective was regime change, that's a different story.
    Add the wear and tear on aircraft that now must be replaced prematurely and cost of ONW/OSW to the cost of OIF to finish the job…not to mention higher gas prices due to “oil for food.”

    As I said above, I think we have more NFZs/No drive zones in our future - it is a (relatively) cheap way of stopping dictators from using their high-end military to slaughter their people, and doesn't have the stigma of boots on the ground. Sudan is a good example of a place where we might use this same strategy.
    Maybe. Seem to recall the last time we sent cruise missiles into Sudan and Afghanistan, it didn’t work well. Bombing did not stop genocide in Bosnia. A NFZ won’t stop terror attacks or safe havens. NFZ won’t hinder Iran or Hezbollah TBMs or a DPRK attack across the DMZ. Russia could attack Ukraine and go to ground long prior to any decision to use airpower alone.

    No fly zones and airpower/seapower have been incapable of ending warfare, terrorism, and irrational despots as we have known them over the past 50 years. By themselves, air and seapower won’t deter or end war over the next decades, either. Spending in that utopian pursuit would vastly increase the deficit and risk economic instability. Local economic community assistance due to air and seapower bases and manufacturing defense spending would benefit primarily our coasts where base costs are already inflated and other economic activities exist in greater abundance.

  2. #202
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber View Post
    I wish I had a nickel for every time that happened to me and I promise to do my replies in wordpad and copy and paste them in...but I never do it more than once...
    Thats my problem I don't do wordpad I do yellow legal pad and file folders and index cards.

  3. #203
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    pvebber, will have to break my response into 2 sections, this "system" dosen't like long responses for some reason.


    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber
    The most recent movie version being an excellent counter-example. The desired end-state may not be about "being anywhere", but what you believe your capability to act is when you decide to accept the role of protangonist in a confrontation. You may not have a clear understanding of what the outcome of the confrontation may be, just a moral understanding that if you do not decide to act, bad things will happen.
    Don't really see the conflict with Warden here?

    Warden appears to be saying that taking no action in such circumstatnces is preferrable to taking action that is not directly linked to achieving a desired end-state. In a moral vacuum this may be the most efficient, but the world does not exist in a moral vacuum.

    In other words, building on your analogy (always dangerous ) the Warden theory presupposes a known destination, a map, and the existance of roads that take you from where you are to where you want to be. That is indeed one subset of military problem.
    Yes, he is saying that.

    But it is not the totality of military (or policy) problems in general. The paper on "mudlding through" (above) explains this quite well. Sometimes there is only a vast desert and the knowledge that if you stay where you are, you will likely die. Going ANYWHERE is preferable to going nowhere.
    You are right Warden would never say that.

    (with an interesting anecdote in tax policy in the case of Reagan lowering taxes and getting a beneficial economic result and Clinton raising taxes and getting a benficial economic result. One view is that the act of making a decision in each case bouyed public confidence well above what the economic mechanics of the specifc decision would indicate.)
    Didn't think much of the article. Read David Stockmans(Reagans budget director) new book. It was a failure and they new it, so they switched on purpose and applied Keysian economics for the DOD, and Reagan became the best Democrat the Republicnas ever elected.



    The question is: "given that the 'ends drives the means' is only one of many strategic methods, why should all others be ignored?"

    Other methods provide multiple options as well, arguably superior ones when the "end" or the "problem" is not clearly defined (the pesky complex or 'wicked' problems).

    What evidence is there for ruling the others out?
    None, as I said ASCOPE is a dialect of the Ring-a-nese language and is sometimes easier to understand. There are other examples.



    What mission? In this case establishing the no-fly zone WAS 'the mission'. That the politicians have not yet reached concensus on the 'desired endstate' is immaterial to the military which is supposed to give a "jolly aye-aye and how high" when politicians give them a job to do.

    You are basically saying that the military should tell their civilian bosses to go stick it when the task they are given does not meet a very narrow set of criteria. That violates our cherished tradtion of civilian control of the military.
    Admiral Mullen had know problem expressing his opinion to McCain about Gays in The military, why not say what that he thought about the operation being ill conceived and needed more refinement? And then if the President ordered action do something.
    Last edited by slapout9; 04-02-2011 at 05:34 AM. Reason: stuff

  4. #204
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    pvebber, here part 2 of my response.


    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber
    EBO is a direct application of Wardens methodology, though with some pathologies introduced that are not attributable to his theory.
    Agree
    Design theories actually leave open the possibility of applying a Warden-like methodology, if it is appropriate. The key aspect design methods add (that some argue convincingly are already a part of 'regular' mission analysis and assessment) is a thorough examination of the problem and what sort of problem-solving strategies are amenable to it. It also has a direct impact on battle rhythm that is not sufficiently articulated, and potential the "difference-maker" in its application.
    Yes, it is very Warden like.

    Key areas where it conflicts with Warden's theory are:

    Questioning the validity of assumptions and implict knowledge.

    Design methods treat assumptions and implicit knowledge as variables, not constants. Warden's theory has implict roots in bayesian inference - that you can "fill in" for missing information by making assumptions and applying a beleif metric to them. If you don't know something for sure, but belive something is true, you assign a confidence level to how strongly you believe it and that you now have a substitute for actual information.

    This is a planning pathology arising from the common practice of "assuming your superiors assumptions are facts" for the purpose of lower level planning. This is the number 1 problem with EVERY actual instance of EBO I've seen utilized and is "hard-coded" into most of the EBO and EBO-based assessment tools I've evaluated. A good friend of mine from the Naval War College has made great strides, particularly withthe USMC, in fixing this, but with the unfortunate result of convincing senior officers that there are times they must say "we don't know" rather than "turning the Bayesian inference crank" on numbers with meaningless confidence and presenting them as "best approximation to truth" (but essentially known to be incorrect).

    The key is to accept that you don't know what you don't know, and that much of what you think you know is actually wrong. Warden's theory leads one to use what they have and act on the assumption it is true and develop a single "transfer function" from current state to a single desired end-state.
    No, you can have multiple endstates with Warden and usually will.


    Using multiple hypotheses for how a system can change (resulting in multiple potneital endstates) rather than a single one derived from "working backwards" from a single desired endstate.
    See above

    Design admits that multiple perceptions of reality exist and that multiple hypotheses (transfer functions) may act on the current state to create a multitude of possible endstates and that artificially reducing that to a single case exposes you to serious cases of unintended consequences.

    This requires the identification of desirable and undesirable characteristics of possible end-states, but accepts the reality that in many cases, you do not have sufficent control over all the variables in play to drive the system to a single desired end-state. You instead evaluate a number of characterisitcs, and try t increase the desirable ones nad decrease the undesirable ones, but in most systems any action will have a mixed effect that is dynamic over time. While not random "trial and error", it similarly can't simply "dial the good up and the bad down".
    That is pure Warden, where has he ever said anything different, in fact what you described is almost a direct quote(s) from some of his classes.


    The construction of a "theory of action" for how those hypotheses can be evaluated over time, potentially reducing the number of potential endstates "in play" and increasing the proability of locking out undesirable ones and locking in desirable ones.
    Again pure Warden.

    Wardens Rings are categories of things and while it is easy to place targets into the rings categorically, it is extremely difficult to establish the realitionships between the things within a ring, and even more difficult to establlish the realtionships between rings. The construction of a "theory of action" involves looking at flows among entities - information, materiel, personnel etc. to ascertain centers of gravity not based on what ring they occupy, but what the broader realtionship within the system is. THis is indeed a more complicated thing to accomplish than simply placiing tagets in categories and looking for "weak sisters" - but it is the level of detail needed to make systems theory "actionable" in more than a broad brush way. This level of detail is what gets you from Col Warden's statement that the only way to stop Iran's nuclear program was to "shut down their electrical grid" to the Stuxtnet viirus - an extremely precisly targeted attack on a very specific "flaw in the deathstar" that somebody likely spent years developing the required information to achive.
    Don't you see a conflict here?Above you said you cannot know for sure what is(elements,rings,etc.) in the system with any certainty. If that is the case (which I don't believe) how could you possibly know the "flows" in the system. How could you know the "flows" in the system but not know the targets (elements,entities) of the system? As for level of detail , again that is a fractal analysis and Warden talks about that in some detail. May want to check your quote to. I remember him talking about that and I think is more like "a way to shut down the grid' not the "only way". But maybe I am wrong.


    One is constantly reavaluating the problem framework and solution space to assess whether the planning process has been "overtaken by events" and a fresh look at the situation needs to be initiated.
    That would certainly happen during the Design phase of Warden's theory and it would be continuous during the whole Campaign.

    Rather than artificially constrain yourself to short timelines becasue "its cheaper" design approches engage a problem over time to see if the an initial desirable outcome "has legs". It helps avoid a "mission accomplished moment" that the Warden methodology of going for quick success and declaring victory leaves one open to.
    Sounds more like a way to get more funding for a failed operation than any kind of advanced Strategy process.....nah I don't buy it myself.

  5. #205
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    Well now I'm confused.

    Warden's theory proposes that we work backwards from a single desired endstate. Except that we can have multiple desired end states and usually will.

    Warden's theory proposes that we take no action that does not lead to our desired end state. Except that we can take actions that are not discernible in their effect until after the fact and which change our target desired end state.

    Wardens theory produces parallel courses of action by working back from a desired endstate. Except that a series of hypotheses about possible qualities a desired end state might have and and explored in a sequential fashion is "pure Warden".

    A theory can not be all things to all people and be useful.

    Don't you see a conflict here?Above you said you cannot know for sure what is(elements,rings,etc.) in the system with any certainty. If that is the case (which I don't believe) how could you possibly know the "flows" in the system. How could you know the "flows" in the system but not know the targets (elements,entities) of the system?
    You can't know for certain what all the elements of the system are. That does not preclude you from knowing parts of the system, including flows, in great detail. I'm not the one with a theory that requires complete knowledge of the system being affected so that one: "opens another very exciting possibility: conflict with little or no unplanned destruction or shedding of blood".

    No conflict at all, because I'm not assuming everything is fundamentally knowable. I'm saying that nothing is completely knowable.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

  6. #206
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber View Post
    Well now I'm confused.
    No you 're not, but you may have been Hornswoggled.

    Warden's theory proposes that we work backwards from a single desired endstate. Except that we can have multiple desired end states and usually will.
    I have never read or heard him say single. Here is an example, Gulf War 1. Iraq out of Kuwait. The Iraqi army still able to defend Iraq but no real offensive capability. Regional Stability is not disturbed. Oil flow to the rest of the world would not be significantly interrupted. Multiple endstates. Did that from memory so I may be a little off but you get the idea.

    Warden's theory proposes that we take no action that does not lead to our desired end state. Except that we can take actions that are not discernible in their effect until after the fact and which change our target desired end state.
    If you want to look at it that way I guess you can, but do you know the Sun will rise tomorrow until it happens...No, but it is a really good bet it is going to.

    Wardens theory produces parallel courses of action by working back from a desired endstate. Except that a series of hypotheses about possible qualities a desired end state might have and and explored in a sequential fashion is "pure Warden".
    I did not see the word "sequential" in your original post, if it is there I stand corrected. If you do it in parallel it would be pure Warden.

    A theory can not be all things to all people and be useful.
    Might be true and it might not. I whole purpose behind the Systems Thinking movement was to come up with a universal way to understand All Systems by all people. To find the universal factors of all Systems to be used by all people.


    You can't know for certain what all the elements of the system are. That does not preclude you from knowing parts of the system, including flows, in great detail. I'm not the one with a theory that requires complete knowledge of the system being affected so that one: "opens another very exciting possibility: conflict with little or no unplanned destruction or shedding of blood".
    Where does Warden say you have to have complete knowledge? The whole idea behind parallel attack is to realize that not everything in the system is knowable, but there are certain elements that will have to be there in order for the System to accomplish it's purpose. If you are going to attack someone you have to have person(s), weapon(s),location(s),etc. they have to be there or nothing will happen.

    No conflict at all, because I'm not assuming everything is fundamentally knowable. I'm saying that nothing is completely knowable.
    Neither is Warden in fact in his first article "The Enemy as a System" he addresses that very concept. Again from memory he says something to the effect you will never know everything but you can know enough to make decisions. Again I am paraphrasing but I think that is pretty close.

  7. #207
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    I have never read or heard him say single
    In his article:

    The best approach to strategy starts with a future picture, determines the systems and centers of gravity that must change to realize that picture,
    takes into account the impact of time, and preplans an exit.
    And in his popularization thee "Prometheus Process"( from Prometheus website:

    The first (and importantly first) step in strategic thinking is to identify the future that you want to create. In the Prometheus Process, the desired future is called the Future Picture. It is a very hard, very objective, very measurable picture of the future you want to create. In the Prometheus Process, you break the Future Picture into 12 separate elements that ensure a balanced future embraced by all.
    Not "identify a set of futures", or "characteristics applicable to desirable futures" (plural) but "a" or "the" (singular) future. If he intends that "the" future picture is actually a set of pictures, one would think he would not cast the discussion in singular terms.

    If you want to look at it that way I guess you can, but do you know the Sun will rise tomorrow until it happens...No, but it is a really good bet it is going to.
    How much in military operations can you know with the level of certainty that you know the sun will rise? What happens for instance AFTER you take out an adversary's leadership? SUch knowledge is crucial to a Warden inspired decapitation strike. If the only thing we are thinking about is separating the C2 head from the military body, how do we know the result will be "paralysis" and not a whole host of insurgents going to ground and taking on a long term irregular strategy?

    In such a case a parallel decapitation strike may create a larger, longer term problem than if we allow the leader to stay in charge and lose his army in a sequential series of battles. Has the Iraq war been cheaper in the long run because than if we had destroyed Saddam's army in the field rather than convince the core of it to go underground?

    I did not see the word "sequential" in your original post, if it is there I stand corrected. If you do it in parallel it would be pure Warden.
    Sequential operations is implicit in the need to "evaluate over time" i.e you poke the system, see how it responds, poke it again, see how it responds, and eventually you can produce a theory of action for how the system responds. You can't in general have that kind of knowledge a priori (as the muddling through paper argues) which highlites an important clarification in my argument you have helped me understand.

    Where does Warden say you have to have complete knowledge? The whole idea behind parallel attack is to realize that not everything in the system is knowable, but there are certain elements that will have to be there in order for the System to accomplish it's purpose. If you are going to attack someone you have to have person(s), weapon(s),location(s),etc. they have to be there or nothing will happen.
    You are correct - the issue is not about "completeness" of knowledge, it about "a priori" knowledge or the knowledge that you can have before you try to affect the system about how the system will respond. My previous use of "complete" has been from the point of view of how much knowldege you can have about how a system will respond to a stimulus, before you apply the stimulus.

    The implication of Warden's parallel operations in a short period of time is a tremendous amount of a priori information about the system. Information that the alternative strategic methods believe is not discernible until you "experiment" on the system - forcing a sequential engagement, evaluated over time.

    I think this is at the crux of much of the criticism - the "correlation equals causality" assumption implicit in:

    If we want to change our opponent as a system to conform to our objectives, then the most direct approach entails affecting opponent centers of gravity closely related to the objective
    .

    In the actual usage of EBO in my experience, the "relatedness" between objectives and centers of gavrity (and what effect we will have on CoGs) is not based on "real systems analysis" but on establishment of a Bayesian belief network of what the planners BELIEVE these relationships are. This beliefe network is then substituted for actually a priori KNOWLEDGE about the system where it is not available.

    I've figured out that much of my criticism comes from seeing this problem first hand enough times to question the sanity at times of those operating this way. When questioned, one gets disturbingly close to "if I believe strongly enough that these realtionships exist, then they actually must exist".

    So the issue becomes perhaps not a problem with Warden's theory, but in the practicality of implementing it, and the problems with how I've seen otherwise really smart people goon it up.

    SO how would Warden recommend dealing with situations where there is insufficient a priori knowledge to actually know with high confidence (not high 'BELIEF') to bee comfortable that a parallel operation will actually achieve the desired end state?

    AT that point does he shift over to a more "evolutionary" strategic method, as you seem to indicate, or would he argue to canx the operation because of the known unknowns, let alone the unknown unknowns?.

    How does that decision calculus work in Warden's theory?
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

  8. #208
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Smile Muddling Through Sequentially

    pvebber, before we go any further is this where the idea came from that Warden believes that everything has to be knowable? Is this what you perceive as the the original argument?


    Under these circumstances, morale was to the physical as three is to one. In fact, the physical was largely the "physical" of the individual soldier and it was almost impossible to separate the intangibles like morale, friction, and fog from the physical. Today the situation is significantly different; the individual fighter has become a director of large things like tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces, and ships. Fighters are dependent on these things, these physical things, to carry out the mission. Deprived of them, the ability to affect the enemy drops to near zero. Whether the equation has changed to make the physical to be to the morale as three is to one is not clear. That the two are at least coequal, however, seems likely. The advent of airpower and accurate weapons has made it possible to destroy the physical side of the enemy. This is not to say that morale, friction, and fog have all disappeared. It is to say, however, that we can now put them in a distinct category, separate from the physical. As a consequence, we can think broadly about war in the form of an equation:
    (Physical) x (Morale) = Outcome

    In today's world, strategic entities, be they an industrial state or a guerrilla organization, are heavily dependent on physical means. If the physical side of the equation can be driven close to zero, the best morale in the world is not going to produce a high number on the outcome side of the equation. Looking at this equation, we are struck by the fact that the physical side of the enemy is, in theory, perfectly knowable and predictable. Conversely, the morale side the human side is beyond the realm of the predictable in a particular situation because humans are so different from each other. Our war efforts, therefore, should be directed primarily at the physical side.
    copied from "The Enemy as a System" by Colonel John Warden
    Last edited by slapout9; 04-03-2011 at 06:31 PM. Reason: stuff

  9. #209
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Thumbs up You two are doing fine without me intruding...

    However, I think it's important to emphasize this item of which you are both aware. It's from Slap's Warden quote:

    "...we are struck by the fact that the physical side of the enemy is, in theory, perfectly knowable and predictable..."

    Not to take that out of context, I agree with the statement as well as what goes before and comes after. Warden's a smart guy. He uses the words "in theory."

    Fighter Jocks are great folks. One of my best friends was once one, many good acquaintances are or were. However, most pilots suffer from two minor problems as war fighters (IMO, obviously...); they're conditioned to using checklists and what they do relies on knowledge and acceptance of the theory and laws of Physics. Problem with that is you cannot develop a checklist for people activity and war fighting is an art, not a science. A rather lawless art at that...

    Back to the "in theory" bit. That's the rub -- theory and actuality often differ, intelligence is rarely adequate to the degree he envisions and that entails making assumptions. That's always dangerous and the Intel guys won't ordinarily do it, they're rather -- excessively, some say -- cautious that way.

    That leaves the final stategery up to the decider -- who will decide based upon his gut feeling and his assumptions rather than on the precision that Warden's strategy demands for best execution. We have literally seen that in operation several times over the past ten (20 ? Back even unto DS/DS?) years when several decision makers had the power but not the knowledge to make decisions (and that in a system that strongly militates against disagreeing with the Boss).

    Warden's theories have merit, his process is sensible in some situations. Neither his nor any other 'system' has the route to the always best solution. Nor is anyone likely to develop a better idea because, as he said: "Conversely, the morale side the human side is beyond the realm of the predictable in a particular situation because humans are so different from each other..." Totally true. Might work better if every 'implementer' (and every opponent...) was another Warden -- they have not been and will not be.

    His follow on to that last quote: "Our war efforts, therefore, should be directed primarily at the physical side" goes circular -- we're back to needing quite accurate physical Intel. We've almost never had that and are even more unlikely to do so in the near future...
    Last edited by Ken White; 04-03-2011 at 09:06 PM. Reason: Grammer police avoidance

  10. #210
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    we are struck by the fact that the physical side of the enemy is, in theory, perfectly knowable and predictable.
    Yes that and several things in the Prometheus Process.

    Also from "Battlefield of the future" Chap 4 on Airpower Theory for the 21st century (which contains a great many of the points in Warden's current article) looking from the other direction:

    When we want more information, we pull out subsystems like electrical power under system essentials and show it as a five-ring system. We may have to make several more five-ring models to show successively lower electrical subsystems. We continue the process until we have sufficient understanding and information to act. Note that with this approach, we have little need for the infinite amount of information theoretically available on a strategic entity like a state. Instead, we can identify very quickly what we don’t know and concentrate our information search on relevant data.
    Which indicates that while we don't need information about everything, relatively simple decomposition will provide all the information one might need. Getting to what Ken brings up, this is a very Newtonian, mechanistic view of the world, which only applies to a small subset of physical systems, like electrical grids.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Default Ken, Jump In Anytime

    Especally with the Backward planning always using the worst case scenario quote you put up somewhere that I can no longer fine




    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    Back to the "in theory" bit. That's the rub -- theory and actuality often differ, intelligence is rarely adequate to the degree he envisions and that entails making assumptions. That's always dangerous and the Intel guys won't ordinarily do it, they're rather -- excessively, some say -- cautious that way.

    Ken, further down he also says this about modeling sounds like pvebber tag line.

    The Five-Ring Model
    To make the concept of an enemy system useful and understandable, we must make a simplified model. We all use models daily and we all understand that they do not mirror reality. They do, however, give us a comprehensible picture of a complex phenomenon so that we can do something with it. The best models at the strategic level are those that give us the simplest possible big picture. As we need more detail, we expand portions of our model so that we can see finer and finer detail. It is important, however, that in constructing our model and using it, we always start from the big and work to the small.
    copied from "The Enemy as a System" by Colonel John Warden


    I am beat..... you guys will just have to wait till tomorrow.

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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber View Post
    Getting to what Ken brings up, this is a very Newtonian, mechanistic view of the world, which only applies to a small subset of physical systems, like electrical grids.
    Oh NoI should have known, you are one of those Quantum Physics guys. Till tomorrow.

  13. #213
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
    intelligence is rarely adequate
    War is about breaking will - especially breaking the will of the opposing leaders. They're also known as government / cabinet / head of state. Intelligence on these should be available.

    The Warden stuff and generally most U.S. air power strategy stuff is still conditioned by the WW2 trial and error story when the U.S.A.A.F. fought against governments with an unusually extreme determination and struggled to get its targeting right (ball bearings maybe? no, aircraft factories maybe? no, steel production maybe? no. Hey, targeting the fuel industry did the charm!).

    The American way is too much about targeting and understanding targets. These strategies don't look enough at the leadership's character, which should be step #1.

    For example, we didn't need a five rings or other method in 1999, but a Russian prime minister who told Milosevic that Russia will not intervene and some near-constant (and rather unacceptable) pressure on the government of Yugoslavia. The actual targeting did not decide about the outcome, or the duration of the conflict's hot phase - it was only decisive for the extent of material and human damages.

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    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    We all use models daily and we all understand that they do not mirror reality. They do, however, give us a comprehensible picture of a complex phenomenon so that we can do something with it. The best models at the strategic level are those that give us the simplest possible big picture. As we need more detail, we expand portions of our model so that we can see finer and finer detail. It is important, however, that in constructing our model and using it, we always start from the big and work to the small.
    This view represents a reductionist view that one can understand how a system works by dismantling its parts and isolating the causes and effects of each.

    Not all systems are reducible in this way because of system-wide interactions that are lost when you isolate component systems. So there is fundamental disagreement about the viability of his "best" model description.

    Oh NoI should have known, you are one of those Quantum Physics guys. Till tomorrow.
    YEs, my GS series is actually 1310 "physicist"

    I feel like we are refighting the Bohr-Einstein dabates over the nature of quantum mechanics or the Copenhagen vs Many Worlds interpretation arguments more recently.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

    -George E.P. Box

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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber View Post
    This view represents a reductionist view that one can understand how a system works by dismantling its parts and isolating the causes and effects of each.
    Not all systems are reducible in this way because of system-wide interactions that are lost when you isolate component systems. So there is fundamental disagreement about the viability of his "best" model description.
    But isn't War fundamentally about breaking PHYSICAL systems? Isn't that what it is all about? Like Warden says if you break enough physical systems the enemies will to fight isn't going to matter very much because they will be physically incapable of resisting. After the War is over you can get into transforming or redesigning Systems but that needs to happen in some kind of a peaceful and stable environment.

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    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by slapout9 View Post
    But isn't War fundamentally about breaking PHYSICAL systems? Isn't that what it is all about? Like Warden says if you break enough physical systems the enemies will to fight isn't going to matter very much because they will be physically incapable of resisting.
    I'm not sure - was this irony/sarcasm?

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default That's a fair question.

    I too am perplexed (as usual... ).

    While that breaking of physical systems may in some cases be practical and therefor correct, my recollection is that there have been few occasions where it worked and that far more often one thing or another intrudes on the breaking physical entities process and insufficient damage is done to the minds of the opponent -- they just dig deeper and keep fighting...

    Those things that intrude and thus deny the success or accuracy of the idea are both friendly and enemy. Perhaps more of the former...

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    There's also the fundamental problem that the more you break, the less your opponent has left to lose.

    There were furthermore periods in European warfare where breaking things was pretty much irrelevant (not the least because the people of the time were not fixated on their tools of war since the enemy had the very same anyway). There were even wars in which actual fighting was of negligible relevance, while threats (such as to the enemy's supply depot line), diseases and the lack of supplies (such as the lack of food in besieged fortresses or in a siege camp) were of great importance.

    The focus on 'breaking things' was uncommon even in naval warfare well into the late 19th century when explosive shells had finally pushed firepower into dominance over boarding for good (there were still some battleships captured instead of sunk at Tsushima!).


    The whole focus on the tools and weapons of war and their destructive power is afaik a product of WW2.

    Just an example; there's a civil war in Cote d'Ivoire right now but breaking things is of marginal relevance there.

  19. #219
    Council Member pvebber's Avatar
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    But isn't War fundamentally about breaking PHYSICAL systems? Isn't that what it is all about? Like Warden says if you break enough physical systems the enemies will to fight isn't going to matter very much because they will be physically incapable of resisting. After the War is over you can get into transforming or redesigning Systems but that needs to happen in some kind of a peaceful and stable environment.
    Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!

    Help!

    The strategic approach gives us the freedom to consider and mix every conceivable way to change a center of gravity—a bribe, an aerial bomb, a hack, a proxy, a conference, an award, assistance funding, or a thousand other possibilities.
    But only one example is a kinetic attack! This is obviously your evil plan, to make me lecture you on Warden and thereby assme the mantle of Wardenista myself. Fiendishly Clever!

    War is fundamentally about convincing someone (or multiple people) to do something they don't want to do. There are some exceptions (i.e. Revenge), but in general its either "Give me something" or "stop doing something".

    Killing people and breaking things is a way to achieve those ends that Warden suggests we don't have to resort to:

    Knowing the strategic objective, we start looking for the means to achieve it. Our choices would range from war defined as bloody and destructive to cajolery of some kind. In the middle of this spectrum, we might find something (currently nameless) that makes it physically impossible for a possessor of something we want to withhold it but involves little or no bloodshed and destruction. To make discussion easier, let’s call this “bloodless force.” If we had this option at a reasonable cost, we would probably choose it in those instances when cajolery failed and when we could not reasonably argue that we should take the bloody war path as a first choice.
    and

    When we engage in conflict, we should always make our strategic objective the creation of a better peace. Normally, in a better peace the vanquished do not bear such hatred for the victors that another trial becomes inevitable. One way of reducing postconflict enmity involves lessening the suffering and recovery time of the defeated party. Traditional wars have perverse and long-lasting effects, but airpower may someday offer an alternative.
    and

    The objective of a conflict is to achieve a future picture, not to kill and destroy.
    So we have a litany of appeals to "bloodless force" and as some have jokingly proposed "a theory of powerpoint power" (you just have to send the enemy the powerpoint detailing how you are going to dismember him, in parallel, and he will have no choice but to submit )

    Yet we have a concept (outcome = physical (simple) X morale (complex))that deals only with physical systems and intentionally divorces "the hard part" because, well, its too hard. You can't bribe, cajol, confer with, give money or power to a physical gizmo.

    All you can do is make so it doesn't work, or physically seperate it from the things it needs to work, or work upon. At the end of the day, if you restict yourself to physical systems, you pretty much restrict yourself to breaking them or breaking the connections to other things.

    So one has to wonder just how literally Warden means us to take "bloodless"? He talks about airpower being the prefered means because it can "delievery energy with great precision". Yet seems to want to avoid to the extent possible killing people and breaking things. Particularly when he talks about things like:

    In a few cases, we may find that just one or two will prove adequate, but in most instances we must affect several in a relatively compressed period of time. Notably, even in a large system such as the United States or China, the number of targets associated with strategic centers of gravity is rather small—considerably fewer than 1,000, more than likely.
    If you do paralyze China by taking down their leadership, power and transportation networks (I would be amazed if that was 10,000 targets, let alone 1000, but I'll suspend disbelief , how many people will die from second order effects, even if none are killed in the initial attack? These do not seem to register on the airpower body count. This gets us once again to "nuclear warfare by conventional means" - the destruction of a states ability to function as a penalty for not doing what we want. WHy would such an attack not trigger a nuclear response by a country so equipped?

    But, they will not, and they are not going to resent us for it, because everbody starved to death or sickened, rather than get blowed up by a bomb.

    Of course if we sent them the powerpoint, they have nbody to blame but themselves
    Last edited by pvebber; 04-05-2011 at 10:21 PM.
    "All models are wrong, but some are useful"

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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Smile A Parallel Response

    Ken, Fuchs, PVebber, I don't think you guys are confused, by the questions ask you are seem to be getting it. A couple of tweaks may be needed Especially the critical importance of the Navy as Warden pointed out in the article and as Fuchs brings up.


    Quote Originally Posted by pvebber View Post
    But only one example is a kinetic attack! This is obviously your evil plan, to make me lecture you on Warden and thereby assme the mantle of Wardenista myself. Fiendishly Clever!
    No evil plan intended, just good discussion.

    Here is a better example of breaking a physical system by bloodless means. The first 911 attack against our (USA) ring#2 Systems Essentials.


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCLRlVxOH-Q

    And the "Moral Equivalent of War." It was an attack on our Physical System of Oil Dependence but no shots were fired. And they(OPEC/Arab Nations) won this one!
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPePpMxJaA

    Starting to see how it can be done? Like I have been saying our Enemies understand Ring theory and Systems Warfare very well. We seem to struggle with it. Much to our peril IMO.
    Last edited by slapout9; 04-06-2011 at 06:11 PM. Reason: stuff

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