Assessment of Effects Based Operations

[slapout9]

Is there actually any evidence to support the assertion that EBO is proven in the most successful U.S. military conflicts of the past 20 years

Regardless of the actual lack of military logic, EBO lacks evidence and always has.

Wilf, it is not just that but at the time of the 2 sources sited EBO hadn't even been developed as a concept as far as I know.

[slapout9]

This is more to do about the USAF continuing to justify that it can "win wars" by itself than a honest appraisal of doctrine. EBO justifies a lot of USAF doctrine and programs. Without it, rice bowls are threatened. Therefore, a pushback was expected.

Cavguy, should have put this with my other post but you hit the nail on the head,triple time. This is more about rice bowls than anything else and it is going to block real progress or try to at least. Their are important parts in EBO that should stay but there is a lot that should go.....mainly the term itself!!! I talked to Colonel Warden about this a couple of months ago and I was thinking of doing an interview with him about this subject. It would have been a very short interview because he said the problem is....nobody knows what anybody means by that term! Plus you have the added confusion of the word affect and effect sound just alike, but have different meanings and often would need to go together to truly explain yourself. (cause/affect and effect/result)
But if you speak southern English like me and ya was tawkin to me you woodint know if I aid affects or effects It is an English language WMD waiting to go off.

[Cavguy]

But if you speak southern English like me and ya was tawkin to me you woodint know if I aid affects or effects It is an English language WMD waiting to go off.

Slap,

Thanks. My plain speak must be because I was born in Opelika, AL!

[selil]

It is an interesting consideration that the USAF feels threatened. I had actually looked at using some of the EBO strategies to explain primary, secondary, and tertiary effects of cyber warfare. When you think about computer network attack and proportionality the idea of applying metrics to results is an inherent part of the planning process. And fairly ludicrous due to the self propagating nature of some attack vectors in cyber space. That led to a realization that cyber warfare has elements that are more like disease than bombs. Unfortunately that is not generalizable across the spectrum much like EBO can not be used by itself to meet the stated goals. That has me mentally swapping back and forth returning to the taxonomical models of Gagne and Bloom and rolling them into an OODA, SARA, IPDE decision process and analysis methodology. I think though EBO will return.

[Bill Moore]

Slap, Che's little movement in Boliva was pretty lame, and let's face it so was Che, but he had cool hair and a nice profile, so the t-shirt is really super cool. I think I have one in my closet somewhere, or maybe it is a Bob Marley t-shirt. Back on target (pun intended), in my opinion that wasn't network targeting, because there was no network, just some guy with cool hair and few followers. A latter day Jesus of sorts. Anyway I guess I set myself up for that one, so you get a warm case of black label and a burnt hot dog.

In an e-mail to ITP, McInerney calls JFCOM's missive the "most parochial, un-joint, biased, one-sided document launched against a concept that was key in the transformation of warfare -- and proven in the most successful U.S. military conflicts of the past 20 years (Desert Storm and Allied Force)."…

McInerney concedes EBO has been twisted and over-hyped, but he blames JFCOM.

In fairness McInerney may have a point, it just didn't come out in this article (I can only see what is posted, I don't have a subscribtion). If he is referring to an effects based approach to harmonize the interagency and coalition (politically) to pressure the national leadership of Serbia and Iraq, then maybe there is some merit, but that isn't EBO, that is simply using effects based thinking to frame a problem. As for putting steel on targets causing the Serb or Iraqi Army to collapse I think EBO proved to be a failure. Iraqi's didn't pull out of Kuwait because we shut down the electric power in Baghdad, and our whimpy bombing campaing in Kosovo wasn't the lever that pried the Serbs out. So I'm left guessing at what his point was.

SWJED if you could get permission to post the entire article to this site it may be helpful.

[SWJED]

Bill,

I can't post in full due to copyright but will see if ITP will move it to an area with full access to non-subscribers. They made an offer to SWJ concerning this once - will follow-up on that - no promises.

Dave

On edit - request to Inside Defense sent - if they respond favorably I will post a link here to the full article.

[slapout9]

Dave, I do have a copy of what was called "Country X as a Candidate for an Air Attack" published by the AWC that goes through the entire Air Campaign planning process (later EBO). It is about 15 pages long it is very revealing. It shows how systems thinking is used for the whole process not just the rings. I guarantee most folks have not seen this If I scan it and email to you (Dave aka SWC editor) can you put it up here? Or if anybody here can help with this? As they say a picture is woth a thousand words. I have to go get some stuff for the Hurricane that is coming right now but should be back after lunch. Slap

[SWJED]

Inside Defense was kind enough to agree to our request - Mattis Sparks Vigorous Debate On Future Of Effects-Based Ops - full article.

[SWJED]

Dave, I do have a copy of what was called "Country X as a Candidate for an Air Attack" published by the AWC that goes through the entire Air Campaign planning process (later EBO). It is about 15 pages long it is very revealing. It shows how systems thinking is used for the whole process not just the rings. I guarantee most folks have not seen this If I scan it and email to you (Dave aka SWC editor) can you put it up here? Or if anybody here can help with this? As they say a picture is woth a thousand words. I have to go get some stuff for the Hurricane that is coming right now but should be back after lunch. Slap

Thanks. Will upload to our server after you send it to me and I'll post a link here.

[Cavguy]

Tell us what you really think ...

Air Force headquarters referred questions on the topic to retired officers like McInerney, who unloaded heaps of criticism.

“Even though I am no longer on active duty I am embarrassed for a combatant commander to publish such a document,” McInerney says. “I am a fan of Mattis but this is too much.”

McInerney even encouraged combatant commanders to “ignore” what he sees as a shocking memo.

In an e-mail to ITP, McInerney calls JFCOM’s missive the “most parochial, un-joint, biased, one-sided document launched against a concept that was key in the transformation of warfare -- and proven in the most successful U.S. military conflicts of the past 20 years (Desert Storm and Allied Force).”

He belittles the two-page memo as a “tantrum” and the accompanying five-page guidance as “puerile” and “totally unbecoming” of a JFCOM commander.

Mattis should be “encouraging multiple perspectives for the enhancement of joint operations -- not trashing them,” McInerney asserts. The JFCOM memo is “intellectually bankrupt” and the policy’s conclusions are “profoundly out of touch with reality,” he adds.

Emphasis mine.

Wow. From a retired 3-star referred by USAF PAO. There are ways to disagree without this kind of insubordinate/vindictive rhetoric.

Anyone see another USAF relief/resignation for cause in the works? More evidence the USAF leadership just doesn't get the ramifications of its attitudes on the other services.

[Ron Humphrey]

Inside Defense was kind enough to agree to our request - Mattis Sparks Vigorous Debate On Future Of Effects-Based Ops - full article.

I agree with Ellsworth's take on the memo and it is pretty much what I got from it too. I would however agree that there is a very strong chance that the memo in and of itself would be used as ammo to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The important thing here is that there be the recognition that ideas are reflected into reality in such context as those hearing them percieve the need. What this means is that in a great many circumstances too many solutions and not enough questions equates to systems or programs which address the symptoms without really acknowledging what the problems really are.

The capabilities offered by the such systems can be ten fold force multipliers if and only if used correctly. If anyone finds themselves avoiding the "hard" decisions" which have to be made because of a tool then I suggest the problem is readily apparent to any who would truly see it.

Despite all of the rice bowls involved I still believe that the majority of those who work for DOD in any capacity still have first and foremost at their minds the mission, the soldier, and how to accomplish the former with the least detriment to the latter, as fast, effectively, and safely as possible.

All in all I think what Gen Mattis has done is brought forth the fact that it is time to start reviewing where things have gone too far and instead get the main focus back on the missions and soldiers and their leaders and get everyone on the same page rather than all over the map due to Symantics overload.

[Steve Blair]

Since the guy's already retired, I'd say this is just the standard AF line. They always like to find some retired general to scream about things. The next step is an article in Air Force Magazine. They seem to think this gives them some sort of deniability, but never grasp that people understand what they're doing.

[TheLapsedPacifist]

Okay, can you guys help me out on this?

(Places tin-hat on head)

Gen Mattis has made a decision that EBO in its current format is not fit for purpose. It is academic whether I agree with this, since it's his decision to make. Good luck to him. But, we should reject the flawed staff work that went into the paper – neither the assertion that warfare is impenetrable to scientific-thinking nor the tenuous association of previous operations to EBO stands up to any significant scrutiny. Discounting these, what remains is not sufficient for us to form a robust conclusion by ourselves, so for me the jury is still out. Finally, the thinly veiled attack on the USAF detracts from what should be an object statement of a Commander’s intent.

===========

Long version!

I feel that one could summarise the paper into three points:

1. Mattis's personal preferences and experience: empowering junior commanders, having a clear commander's intent, less process more art, etc. No bones with this.

2. The paper asserts that the nature of warfare is unknowable...that war is a chaotic and complex system, you can’t predict second or third order effects. Therefore war is impenetrable to scrutiny via scientific approach ergo EBO is fundamentally flawed. Now I can disagree with this, it’s a fallacy.

Chaotic and complex systems can be analysed, their behaviour can be predicted. This is a fact – the weather is a chaotic system, and we can predict the weather out to a certain timeframe. Okay it’s probably not an “organised” complex system, so it isn’t directly analogous the EBO situation, but what it means is that just because someone identifies a system as chaotic, doesn’t mean that one cannot (and shouldn’t attempt to) predict its behaviour to some degree.

The point here is that we can predict the behaviour of some complex systems, but the problem is that we may only be able to do for a very short period of time or that the cost of deriving the prediction may be very expensive (in resources).

As for second or third order effects, "predict" is a strong word, it would have been preferable for EBO to be less gung-ho about this and look to "identify" and "anticipate" second or third order effects and develop branches and serial to deal with them.

3. The paper identifies a number of operations that are examples of EBO in action and that these were failures. I find the association of these operations to EBO to be really tenuous. I don’t think that Gulf War 1 was EBO, nor Kosovo, nor Gulf War 2 “Shock and Awe” – but if they were, didn’t we win?

Of greatest concern is that within the paper references are made to a report on Israel vs Hezbollah ’06, where EBO is identified as one of the primary factors contributing to Israel’s defeat. Hogwash! The “We Were Caught Unprepared” report is researched excellently but you could derive a completely different conclusion from the facts.

Selected facts from the report

1. By 90s Hezbollah was “transformed into a highly competent resistance organisation.”

2. ‘93, Op Accountability, Hezbollah prepares for an Israeli ground offensive but was “taken aback by the massive Israeli air and artillery campaign...[this] proved a valuable lesson...that would better prepare Hezbollah for the next war.”

3. ’96 Op Grapes of Wrath, “IDF generally resorted to stand-off precision firepower...[it] failed miserably...at no time during Op Grapes of Wrath was the IDF’s standoff precision weaponry able to silence Hezbollah’s rockets.”

4. 2000, as IDF and SLA withdraw from the security zone “Israeli troops staggered back across the border, telling reporters that their equipment and training had proven useless against Hezbollah...”

5. 2000, post-retreat, Hezbollah’s Sec-Gen Nasrallah states that “Israeli Achilles’ heel [was] Israeli society”. Hezbollah “was convinced that, in any future war, Israel would rely heavily on air and artillery precision weapons and limit its use of ground forces...it was confident that Israel would have no stomach for casualties...”

6. 2000, Hezbollah’s strategy becomes “...confront [Israeli] ground forces to a limited extent, to stall ground incursions, and inflict as many casualties as possible, which would wear out IDF, slow down their progress, and allow continued [Hezbollah] rocket fire.”

7. 2000, “Hezbollah’s robust and hardened defences [against both land and air attack] were the result of six years of diligent work...”

8. 2000, “As a result of the second Intifada, fewer [Israeli] recruits received suitable training...[Israeli] officers [have] little experience with military operations other than counterinsurgency warfare.”

9. 2006, “IDF stretched to the limit by budgetary cuts to the ground forces and the continuing demands placed on them by the Palestinian uprising.” “[S]oldiers with perishable combat skills, such as tank crewmen, going years without training on their armoured vehicles.”

10. 2006, Hezbollah “had prepared for an effects-based campaign...”

11. 2006, “Anyone dumb enough to push a tank column through Wadi Saluki should not be an armoured brigade commander but a cook.” “Every single tank crew in the Wadi failed to use the smoke screen system on their tanks...”

To conclude that Israel’s EBO approach to the operation was one of the primarily reasons for their defeat is a fig-leaf to hid the fact that their land component had morphed into a counterinsurgency force, no longer capable of all-arms action. Hezbollah judged correctly that IDF would be forced to employ tactics that limited casualties, ie air-centric, and they develop a response to this. To make matters worse, the Israeli’s are guilty of repeatedly ignoring the writing on the wall. It would have been interesting to see how Hezbollah's strategy would have fared against a well-equipped, well trained, and well-organised armed-force - take your pick, US, UK, French, Russian, etc.

[Cavguy]

Extensive post, and well argued. Since it is your first, we appreciate an introduction here. Comment below.

3. The paper identifies a number of operations that are examples of EBO in action and that these were failures. I find the association of these operations to EBO to be really tenuous. I don’t think that Gulf War 1 was EBO, nor Kosovo, nor Gulf War 2 “Shock and Awe” – but if they were, didn’t we win?

Vaunted claims by some in GW 1 was that airpower through an EBO model would collapse the Iraqi Army alone - it still took a ground attack to do it. That ground attack was successful due in large part to the damage done to Iraqi C2 and morale by the air campaign. But whether it constituted an EBO success is something on which reasonable people can disagree. The Iraqis still fought hard (but unsuccessfully) with their Repulblican Guard divisions, but were outclassed by our Army.

Kosovo - probably "the" model where Airpower can be argued to have forced resolution to a conflict alone.

GW2 "Shock and Awe" - did little for decaptitating Iraqi C2 or forcing collapse. The simutaneous strikes did not strike fear into the Iraqi leadership. It wasn't until the statues toppled and Thunder Runs occured that the regime collapsed.

Of greatest concern is that within the paper references are made to a report on Israel vs Hezbollah ’06, where EBO is identified as one of the primary factors contributing to Israel’s defeat. Hogwash! The “We Were Caught Unprepared” report is researched excellently but you could derive a completely different conclusion from the facts.

To conclude that Israel’s EBO approach to the operation was one of the primarily reasons for their defeat is a fig-leaf to hid the fact that their land component had morphed into a counterinsurgency force, no longer capable of all-arms action.

Agreed on the atrophy of the IDF ground forces, but there was never a plan to use them - IIRC the original intent of the campaign was an EBO model being conducted by the IAF. When that failed to achieve its objectives, a hasty decision was made to employ ground forces which had neither prepared or trained for the operation it was asked to conduct. Difficulty and failure ensued. Wilf can probably add some here, as he discussed some of the mythology in this thread.

[Tom Odom]

To conclude that Israel’s EBO approach to the operation was one of the primarily reasons for their defeat is a fig-leaf to hid the fact that their land component had morphed into a counterinsurgency force, no longer capable of all-arms action. Hezbollah judged correctly that IDF would be forced to employ tactics that limited casualties, ie air-centric, and they develop a response to this. To make matters worse, the Israeli’s are guilty of repeatedly ignoring the writing on the wall. It would have been interesting to see how Hezbollah's strategy would have fared against a well-equipped, well trained, and well-organised armed-force - take your pick, US, UK, French, Russian, etc.

I would agree with the first half of the sentence but the second half is another fig leaf. I have seen the briefs on this and listened to the same leap--that emphasis on COIN is somehow the root of the problem. I have no doubt that it accentuated tendencies long standing in the IDF.

Those same tendencies existed in the 56, 67, and 73 war including preference and over reliance on air versus artillery, use of armor in a pure role, and a spotty approach to integrating infantry in a combined arms attack. I watched the IDF do the same things as a UN observer in southern Lebanon in 1987. As the IDF applied EBO in the operation, EBO furthered accentuated those tendencies.

And this is not to single out the IDF for its mistakes or its tactics. Unless a force has actually exercised combined arms warfare, it will face issues, regardless of nationality.

Tom

[selil]

Okay, can you guys help me out on this?

(Places tin-hat on head)

So how long have you been an Air Force Officer?

I'm going to think about your points even if you did use "it is academic" as a pejorative phrase and I feel really sad and lonely now.

Points we agree on: I do think that the commanders intent document used cherry picked examples to make a point rather than frame the discussion. Good politics, and bad science/research. I do think that EBO has a place but I am unsure of that place and as I have dug in to the literature it becomes fuzzier. I do agree and support that saying the fog of war can not be pierced is woefully ignorant. The fog of war is a sliding window of commanders intentions and understanding that moves with technologies and techniques, always getting better at seeing further and understanding more, and always revealing that much more that needs to be included (think long tail, skewed curve).

Points you would have to express to convince me: This is commanders intent and direction of action. It does make a case that the terms and techniques are implicitly not meeting the needs perceived. That is a non-negotiable statement. Either the tools intended for a commander work or they do not. There is an entire thread next door talking about technology not meeting the users needs and how difficult it is to get people to pay attention to that issue. Here a commander is talking about a perceptual and cognitive tool that does not in his opinion meet the needs of the "SERVICES" and apparently one service disagrees. There is a user assessment mistake made in technology called "silos of decision" where only one stake holder is involved in a community used product design. The technology be it software or hardware fails miserably when extended to the larger population. A cognitive and planning tool for joint operations (and from what I can tell all military operations are joint) needs to be useable by all.

I like the idea of knowing the primary through tertiary effects of munitions. The various laws of war would seem to dictate considerations of proportionality and casualties be part of the planning and operational strategies. What I see looking through the dozen papers (and likely maybe not the right papers) is a buzz word laden, tumultuous process, filled with gross expectations, and wildly absurd claims.

Though I likely have no credibility to you or many, after having read the dozen or so AF Journal papers, I don't believe I could adequately explain the process. If a person of moderate to minimal intelligence with a sincere desire to understand something can not become conversant in that topic then the topic is horribly flawed or the community understanding of the topic is horribly misunderstood. This is especially true of something that must be used in an environment of limited intellectual real estate, faced with mortal events, and compressed by time and the efforts of various forms of combat and conflict.

One of my favorite authors Thomas Kuhn tells us that for ideas and concepts to have relevancy in explaining "things" they must be easily generalized and useable across the broadest spectrum. I am not sure that EBO has been rendered and explained into that state.

[Bill Moore]

All quotes are from the InsideDefense article, and much thanks to InsideDefense for allowing SWJ to post the entire article. There is no doubt that this article will serve as a catalyst to drive a serious debate over EBO's future, assuming it has one.

Over the last decade, the Air Force has promoted effects-based operations (EBO) as a revolution in warfare -- operations aimed at producing certain effects, as opposed to merely damaging or destroying targets.

Yes and no, it probably was a revolution for the Air Force based on their their technology evolving to the point to enable precision targeting. For example, in previous wars the Army Air Corp and Air Force would bomb miles of rail to interdict rail traffic, but now with more accurate weapon systems they can put steel on point X and achieve the same objective. Our technology and knowledge of closed systems like an electric power system allow to turn the lights off in any city with a few well placed strikes, and we can shut it down for hours or months. However, the following addresses this isn't EBO, as a matter of fact we always did this when we had the capability. For example, the French underground during WWII used the CARVER method of analysis to determine which pinpoint targets to hit to achieve their objectives.

But Ellsworth also says the memo’s references to EBO’s utility for targeting against well-defined, “closed systems” like power grids, roads and railways should spark concern because this is not what the effects-based vision was about. Mattis himself concedes this in the memo when describing the many elements of the concept he deems worth salvaging, Ellsworth asserts.
“At its core, the promise of effects-based thinking is precisely the ‘hard stuff’ of complex adaptive systems against which it has not performed well,” the professor says.

I think we can agree that precision targeting closed systems is not EBO, it is not new, and in some cases it has value. If not, then please post a counter argument.

Mattis' primary point was that EBO was a,

wasted intellectual effort and the expenditure of literally tens of millions of tax dollars to develop and promulgate a ‘non-idea,’”. It diverted attention away from real operational problems that the U.S. military needed to resolve, insurgency being at the forefront.”

while I agree it was a non-idea, I was hopeful it was a method to implement an interagency process, but to date that doesn't seem to be the case, the follow argument supports GEN Mattis,

Army Maj. Gen. David Fastabend wrote that he went to Iraq in 2006 believing “EBO was merely useless, an attempt to build a doctrinal theology around the notion that actions have consequences.”

“But in its more radical interpretation,” Fastabend wrote, “EBO advocates a strict planning focus on outcomes isolated from actor or method, and this in turn leads to operational planning that rapidly devolves into a ridiculous essay, a listing of aspirations: ‘let us eliminate corruption, isolate the border, prevent sectarian tension.’ Such aspirations, with no consideration of who must do what by when are worse than useless; they are damaging because they conceal the need to make hard choices. Therefore, I now believe the EBO concept is not merely useless but actually damaging to our ability to plan realistically and conduct operations.”

Here is my take, I have not yet seen EBO applied effectively yet at the strategic, operational or tactical level. It leads to some pretty slides, but it doesn't lead to clear task/purpose type orders required to achieve desired effects. Is there merit at analyzing systems? Of course there is, but we have always done that during the targeting process. What I have seen is the attempt to describe everything as a system or network, then conduct nodal analysis and attempt to solve the problem with a nodal attack. This has failed miserbly in our recent COIN adventures, we only turned it around when we got away from the so called HVI hunt and focused on controlling terrain (the population in COIN).

Special Operations Forces also attempts to apply this approach to conventional warfighting to the point that general harassment operations in enemy territory are considered a waste of time by several leaders, because the only way to achieve an effect according to them is to hit a critical node that will have repurcussions throughout the system (the silver bullet approach). This completely disregards the years of experience that proves harassment operations may have a larger impact (effect) than pin point strikes on nodes. For example, we only need to look at the numerous harassment type operations conducted against us in Iraq and Afghanistan to see what a significant impact these types of attacks can have. If I can divert divisions and erode national will with a few hit and run attacks on low value targets I would call that an effect based operational strategy without nodes. The current EBO construct prevents that type of thinking.

The surge operations had a huge effect, but it wasn't based on attacking nodes. How do you actually fit "effective" strategy into the EBO process?

It is hard to make an counter argument without sounding like you are completely against the subject you are criticizing. I'm not completely anti-EBO, I think there are some parts of it that have merit, but GEN Mattis in my opinion is correct on his main points that EBO has evolved into a non-functional distraction.

The challenge for any of us at any level from strategic to tactical is to correctly identify and then frame the problem in a useful way that allows us to develop a "feasible" solution. Using numerous models and problem solving methodologies (not only MDMP) will only expand our capabilities to do so when time permits, but in the end that problem solving process for the military must result (I think) in clear task/purpose type orders. The current EBO process does not.

[Ken White]

Okay, can you guys help me out on this?

(Places tin-hat on head)

Sorry, all hat placement is an individual responsibility...

...
2. The paper asserts that the nature of warfare is unknowable...that war is a chaotic and complex system, you can’t predict second or third order effects. Therefore war is impenetrable to scrutiny via scientific approach ergo EBO is fundamentally flawed. Now I can disagree with this, it’s a fallacy.

Change it to the more correct "you can’t predict second or third order effects with any degree of certainty." While your rebuttal is superficially correct, it forgets two things; (1) the enemy is not as predictable as the weather, he's vastly more flexible; and (2) nothing we do as actors on the ground will have significant impact on the weather, yet if we err in war we can exacerbate the second and third order effects (see the Israeli - Hezbollah stupidity; Israeli tactical errors, not anything to do with EBO), change the enemy's actions and reactions, even change our own future actions -- or negate a past action. The same thing applies, in reverse to the enemy. Wx forecasting doesn't have to deal with that...

The only weather related thing in war, the fog of war, is not the problem -- OTOH, the friction inherent in war is a big problem.

Still:

...but what it means is that just because someone identifies a system as chaotic, doesn’t mean that one cannot (and shouldn’t attempt to) predict its behaviour to some degree.

Agreed -- but one should be very aware of the limitations and tenuous results likely from that predictive effort. EBO, like other theories, has uses -- it is not the holy grail.

3. The paper identifies a number of operations that are examples of EBO in action and that these were failures. I find the association of these operations to EBO to be really tenuous. I don’t think that Gulf War 1 was EBO, nor Kosovo, nor Gulf War 2 “Shock and Awe” – but if they were, didn’t we win?

Yes, we -- emphasize that, WE -- did and the real wins were by people on the ground not using EBO (and perhaps accruing more or less benefit from others use of EBO...).

CavGuy addressed the first and last but don't forget on Kosovo, the Serbs didn't start to back off until the KLA (the guys that sucked us into that stupidity with a con job in the first place) went in on the ground.

We won. Yep, we is a good word.

It would have been interesting to see how Hezbollah's strategy would have fared against a well-equipped, well trained, and well-organised armed-force - take your pick, US, UK, French, Russian, etc.

The last isn't what you say, but it is big and does have a lot of stuff. I think they'd have been terribly embarrassed and only their disregard for own or civilian casualties would have saved them from a debacle. The first three probably just would have been embarrassed.

EBO can lead one to believe they've achieved something that they have not. Like any planning aid, the correct alternatives have to be selected. That's subject to human error. Anything that purports to be the answer to most problems is subject to misuse; the more such processes are depended upon, the more likely they are to fail.

[slapout9]

Found this article that I have had for awhile and was going to post to my Targeting thread, but I will post it here. This comes from the Air Campaign Planning Process. step 1 Operational Environment Research.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...2/wolusky.html

Update I have emailed Dave the Country X study and Dave will put it up here as promised. But I would like everyone to pay attention to Ring 4 Population and double especially Ring 5 Leadership analysis it was far more extensive and detailed when it was just systems analysis as part of campaign planning as opposed to EBO which is why it should be changed back wards. RMA Reversal of Military Affairs as Bill Moore would say. Also Wilf used to say anything he read about EBO he used to scratch out EBO and see if it made any sense. Do the same thing for the country X study scratch out Air Force and just judge it as a systems analysis of a general Campaign plan.

[davidbfpo]

Slap,

The Wolusky paper is a good read, on a quick first read, although it is focuses on the American experience and the use of air power.

My only quibble is with the description of 'Op Deliberate Force', the coercion of the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzcogovina, after the Sarejovo market place attack. Yes, air power played an important part, but I recall that several writers, yes including General Richard Rose, have commented that the local military balance in Sarejevo was affected by the Anglo-Dutch-French artillery on Mount Igman (name of mtn not 100% sure of).

I lke the story of Mullah Omar escaping death, as a AGM was aimed at the front of the building he was in and he exited the rear door after impact.

davidbfpo