Targeting

[slapout9]

Yes, The Warden paper I know well and reject it utterly, for the same reason Tira and whole bunch of other folks do.

Quote: 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.

This assumes breaking stuff is decisive. It is not. We have vast amounts of evidence against this.

This is not attacking the will and cohesion of the enemy nor is it anything to do with what many touted as EBO - so how come this is always cited as the Rosetta Stone of EBO? - when Warden is advocating something that is purely physical destruction. Any relevance to COIN?

Hi Wilf, You just ask the question of all questions. That is one reason I called this thread Targeting instead of EBO. The reason in my opinion is that almost all EBO documents somehow reference the 5 rings Targeting model at least the older ones do. The other reason is that now General Deptula used to work for Warden as a Major as part of the Checkmate Team. Warden left the Air Force and Deptula is still in and was a big push behind what came to be known as EBO hence the posting the Article by him.


Warden at the time had know real title for his theories. He played with several, some of which were Parallel-Warefare and Hyper-Warfare, none of which he kept, but his primary purpose was to develop a process, a systematic way of thinking about how to develop a war winning Strategy. A process that could be taught and repeated as a Campaign Planning Model.

Here is a link to a short article that pretty much describes that process. This will seem like common sense to you but at the time inside the Air Force this was radical stuff.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...unerwadel.html

He was and is a big proponent of using non-lethal weapons to avoid breaking stuff. At the time he wrote that article he was still in the Air Force so I suspect he had to tow the party line so to speak. His insistance on development of less lethal weapons would end up being very costly to his career.

His model can and does work in UW type situations in some ways better than in conventional warfare as I will point out in later post. But generally he thinks that special forces should be handling it, much like the Afghan Campaign at least at the start of it.

In general reference to your primary question Norfolk answered it a long time ago when he said he felt he had been Horn Swoggled (I think this is a UK expression) by all this EBO stuff.