Well, not EXACTLY, there was the whole ground invasion thing that according to the theory was not supposed to be necessary... It particularly sticks in the airpower theorists craw that the whole "leadership paralysis" thing was the supporting effort to enable a more effective ground campaign and not the supported end in itself. Well the Way to achieve the desired end itself.Cole, your right. You just described Warden's Gulf War 1 Strategy. Perfect 5 rings example, works exactly as advertised.
Since its inception in Douhet, the dream of airpower theory is that it make the rest of the means of war obsolete. That belief is grounded in a set of assumptions about the superiority of the coercive form of strategy over cost imposing and incentivising strategies.
The differentiating characteristic of airpower is that it provides "action at a distance". Thats is its "super power" and its "achilles heel". No matter how attractive it is to think you solve any problem with action at a distance, it is in general necessary but insufficient. Redefining the problem set to include only those cases were it might be both necessary and sufficient is not the "attainment of its potential", but defining itself out of relevance in the mainstream.
TO focus the topic on the boards subject, how would the Warden approach of a "fully capable airpower" and "unconstrained link from effect to strategy" achieve and endstate like "Eliminate the influence of the Taliban from Afghanistan" in a single, parallel operation, or "remove the threat of pirate activity from the Horn of Africa"? How do you accomplish what I consider the new "mainstream" sort of endstate the military is is asked to accomplish, with "action at a distance"?
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