The Warden Collection (merged thread)

[pvebber]

War is about AFFECTING Physical systems

Affecting physical systems is but one WAY of conducting war. War, I'll say again, is about getting someone to do what you want, stop doing what you don't want, or simply revenge. It is waged against people, which is why "leadership" and not physical infrastructure is at the center of Warden's five rings.

Then those people should be very carfull about attacking my country in the first place

.

What if they didn't attack your country, but you require them to do something, or stop doing something? (We are Good guys so don't do the revenge thing...)

OR is your interpretation of Warden that we should only engage in war if we are physically attacked?

I don't think he is saying that at all, it's more like we need to find out what all Airpower can truly do, because we have just "assumed" (often because of current technology limits) it has limits, instead of finding out what they actually are.

So is the Air Force remiss in conducting war games and exercises that address these things? I've been the Red Cell lead for the last 3 or 4 AFRL futures wargames and they addressed a remarkable array of things that airpower might do. Are these efforts somehow insufficient? Col. Warden has been involved as a guest speaker at at least one of these as I recall (one of the opportunities I got to chat with him). They are constantly "finding what they actually are".

Airpower has demonstrated that it has limits. That is a fact. Technology has acted over time to reduce those limits, but they have to demonstrate that they do so. Just as the advance of technology has removed limitations on land and seapower. Capabilities have to be proven, not taken as fact until disproven. We can't afford, particularly now, to do otherwise.

If you read the article Warden says something to the effect that when people say Airpower can not solve the problem what they really mean is that Military power can not solve the prolem.

This is a view that gives in to the "dark side" of tacticizing war. What I mean by that is the idea that achieving tactical objectives is necessary and sufficient to achieve operational objectives,and operational objectives are necessary and sufficient to achieve strategic objectives. In its most extreme form it denies the operational level and claims tactical objectives are necessary and sufficient to directly achieve strategic objectives.

The Viet Nam war, where the North lost nearly all tactical battles, yet won the war, serves as a counter example.

It tends to frame warfare (the ways of conducting war) in terms of picking targets and breaking them (or seizing them). Operational Art is not seen as necessary, because ,done quickly and pervasively enough, the strategic outcome can be achieved without the "enemy ever getting a turn".

This sounds a lot like Warden's view. And it suffers from myopia to the potential ways the adversary can 'take their turn' in ways that render airpower either irrelavant, or take advatage of over aggressive utilization of it.

The reality of modern war is that the cases where the adversary can be indiscriminately attacked to the point of paralysis are extremely rare. By international law, if you "break it you own it". You can't just cause a country to stop functioning and then just say "serves you right for pissing me off". You can get to the "mission accomplished" moment, but as we have seen, that doesn't mean you have achieved your war objectives.