Curmudgy,Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon
Your kidding right!!
No he doesn't know much about insurgencies and he is not interested in holding somebody else's terrain for which they will fight to the death for.......What he does know alot about is WINNING which is what this country needs to start doing instead of holding territory.
Warden apparently thinks,
.Warden championed and perfected the concept of approaching “the enemy as a system.” Rather than throwing armies against armies and air forces against air forces, Warden’s strategies involve analyzing an enemy’s military forces as parts of a much larger whole. In the Persian Gulf Air Campaign, Warden dismantled the enemy’s ability to function. You can incapacitate the functioning of your opponent from a system standpoint
We have tried this for decades and not once was it successful. It sure as hell didn't defeat Iraq during DESERT STORM, but relentless targeting of their fielded forces, along with a decisive ground assault did. Targeting the C2 and other systems were supporting efforts, and the overall impact of that that targeting is not possible to assess. The results of the highway of death, the ground campaign, all combined with a PSYOP effort resulted in mass capitulation.
That was a conventional fight, and even then a systems approach had questionable effect. The insurgency is not a systems of systems that conforms to linear thinking, it is composed of a think and adapting adversary who has dealt with our air power previously. This approach is simply an attempt to script write, much like the flawed EBO concept, where if we do X, then Y will happen.
On the other hand, can airpower disrupt, maybe even halt ISIS in their tracks? It certainty can if we have the intelligence to effectively direct it. Ultimately if the Iraqi government wants to win they certainly need to take and hold their sovereign territory, that isn't conventional, it is simply common sense. They are a legitimate state if they can't control their territory, and if ISIS is controlling it then they're winning. I think ISIS could handle getting pushed back a little by a combination of air and ground forces. Unless they're stupid they'll adapt a Fabian strategy and avoid a decisive battles and wage a war of attrition, I think we been down this road before. If we expect too much from air power, like winning, we'll once again be very disappointed. On the other hand, we should use our air power to the extent possible to disrupt and degrade ISIS. A win by ISIS is not in our interest.
No Slap, not kidding. There is a vast difference between interstate combined arms war and instrastate insurgencies. "Winning" in one forum has little or nothing to do with winning in the other.. Only someone who had not been involved in the fight in Iraq or Afgahanistan over the last decade could think otherwise.
You forget that we made short work of the Iraqi Army in 2003-4, yet could not win in the long run. It is the long fight that matters, not the opening palys of the first quarter, as the Colonel likes to think
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 06-30-2014 at 05:37 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
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The Warden Collection (merged thread)
Link to Warden interviewon Strategic Compressio or Winning Fast. Ends with some advice to the President!
http://www.westernjournalism.com/ret...now-cant-wait/
The 'Five Ring' advocates forgot interdiction
Hat tip to WoTR for this article, so from near the start as a taster and the author is a USAF veteran:World War II decisively disproved many elements of Douhet’s theories, at least in Europe, where strategic airpower was critical to victory, but not independently decisive. Since then, the most zealous airpower advocates have latched onto each new promise of airpower-centric victory, from nuclear weapons to the combination of stealth and precision. In the process, we lost sight of some of the most effective air efforts undertaken to neutralize enemy forces on the battlefield and render an adversary’s goals impossible to achieve militarily. Somehow, we relegated interdiction to the back benches. The most pernicious of the prevailing airpower theories is Col. John Warden’s “five rings,” which returned to the vision of a decisive strike against enemy leadership through airpower, with the expectation that the target country would quickly fold. This theory, tied closely to an unambiguously decisive air campaign in Desert Storm, remains deeply ingrained in the Air Force — a beguiling mirage that seems to have been proven in Iraq in 2003, discounting the twin facts that the air campaign did not succeed in either decapitating the government or causing its collapse. Twenty-four years later, we remain mesmerized by the prospect of quick victory against any opponent without actual regard to the limits of military force, much less the limits of airpower. This theoretical framework has handicapped the next generation of airpower strategy development and blinded the Air Force to airpower applications that are effective, but not quick, easy, or subject to the beguiling lure of advanced technology. Extended interdiction campaigns are proven, war-winning efforts that have been given short shrift in the face of a misty vision of landing a decisive blow. The effectiveness of airpower in battle is a result of interlocking, coordinated efforts that deliver mutually supportive effects as part of an integrated campaign.....
Link: http://warontherocks.com/2015/09/the...interdiction/?
davidbfpo
Not so fast!
This article may not qualify as plagerism but it is pretty darn close!
Read "The Air Campaign" planning for combat. Chapter 6: Air Interdiction!
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