Targeting

[William F. Owen]

Wilf, here is a little deeper back round on the beginnings of what became known as EBO.

1-I guess this is pretty much the paper that started it all. "The Enemy As A System" by Col. John Warden
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...les/warden.htm


2-From that original concept of "Systems Warfare" it went to this, which is why EBO has long been associated with Air Power only, which is was never meant to be.
http://www.aef.org/pub/psbook.pdf

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?

[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.

[slapout9]

Excellent paper on how Warden's Rings can be used to Target any organization.


Urban Warfare at the Operational Level: Identifying COG's and Key Nodes.

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=...fier=ADA397036

[slapout9]

5 Rings Targeting of a terrorist organization. Absolutely one of the best papers on Warden's theory and how it can be applied to any organization. Warden left as commandant of the Air Command and Staff College in 96 and this is one of the last really good papers on his theory. After this period things started to switch to EBO theory and have not really done that well since then. Chapter 3 has the targeting scheme that nearly 10 years later the Grubbs article brings up ("Is There a deep fight in COIN "posted earlier on this thread). As so often happens with theories they get changed when they just really need to be understood. The amazing thing is that an Airman wrote this and it is as valid today as it was then if not more so.


http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/acsc/97-0393.pdf

[William F. Owen]

5 Rings Targeting of a terrorist organization.


http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/acsc/97-0393.pdf

Well I'll give it a look, but I am very doubtful, because:

a>) The RAF is trying to claim some insights into COIN, which are just woeful and play very fast and loose with the historical record to try and support their arguments.

b>) I think the overwhelming lesson of the 2nd Lebanon War is that Air Power has extremely limited utility in COIN, as concerns "kinetic" effects. The RAF is actually now trying to claim that AIR POWER did not fail in the Lebanon, but that it was given an impossible task, thus did not fail, per se.

c>) I also suspect that there are some very unhealthy pre-emptive USAF agendas in play in this paper.

[slapout9]

Here is a PDF file on how CARVER can be adapted to almost to any situation. This one is CARVER+Shock used in the food industry. The first time I saw this in LE was with the NYPD some years back. This should be an Interagency Gold Standard right after the 5 Rings IMHO.



http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Carver.pdf

[Eden]

Generally, I'm all for piling on whenever EBO is criticized, but after a tour as a planner I've realized a few things.

1. In its essence, EBO (or EBP or EBAO or whatever the acronym consultants are using now) is a useful tool in planning. We've been doing it for years; artillerymen, like Proust's gentleman, were pleased to discover they had been using it for decades when they asked us whether we wanted to "neutralize", "suppress", or "destroy" a particular target. In concept, it is much like backward planning. I know where I want to be at the end of the operation; how do I get there? Personally, I found it to be a good way to recharge my planning brain cells and incorporate innovative thinking.

So, what's the problem?

2. It is not moron-friendly. Many officers I worked with were unable to articulate feasible, definable, measurable effects, let alone figure out what "causes" needed to be employed to bring them about. When you add in unintended effects, second and third order effects, etc., you quickly develop migraine headaches and intellectual shutdown amongst your staff. In other words, effects-based planning is hugely difficult, especially in hideously complex environments such as your average COIN op.

3. It has been hijacked by knuckleheads and LOM-scroungers. Whereas early works on the subject suggested that EBO might be a nice way to approach problem solving and an aid in planning, its recent enshrinement in the buzzword pantheon has effectively crippled its utility. We have taken an interesting idea and transformed it into a panoply of spreadsheets, bullet points, MOPs, MOEs, mandatory annexes, and new staff sections. As one who has waded through charts of desired effects, sub-effects, sub-sub effects, and apparently randomly-selected (see para 2, above) actions, methods, enabling tasks, etc., ad nauseum, I can testify that EBO are already as dysfunctional as IPB ultimately became. Unfortunately, EBO is a perfect catalyst for our proclivities toward endless analysis, false precision, and overornamentation.

4. It is often dominated by targeteers, artillerymen, and bomber pilots, none of whom are noted as a class for their excellence in strategic planning. As a result, we have too often replaced meaningful campaign plans with target lists. In the end we chase targets rather than our chosen end-state.

It's too late to stuff the genie back in the bottle, guys. The only way to escape the insidious uses to which this good idea is being used is through education and professional discussion. Or maybe we could come up with a new buzzword. But what would be the second and third order effects...