The Warden Collection (merged thread)

[pvebber]

Affecting CoGs in series vice parallel is dramatically more expensive.

Only if you are inept at operational art. How do you know that the cost of firing 1000 cruise missiles all at once to achieve your objective is going to be more successful than firing 100 on 9 consecutive days. or 8 or 7? Boyd discusses this problem in realtion to OODA loops.

Maybe urban legend, but supposedly he tells the story of a dogfight with a new pilot where he makes a complicated series of manuevers, the response to which would lead to Boyd being on the youngsters 6. After completting the manuevers Boyd is horrified to find the younster behind HIM. He asks the youngster how he figured out how to turn the tables. The youngster said "I had no clue what to do, I was gonna go left, then thought maybe right and all of a sudden there you were in front of me!"

You can make the OODA loop so much faster than your opponent that you end up outsmarting yourself, or paralyze him so much that he can't even surrender. With tipping point phenomena, you can't predict how much effect you need to effect the tip, or how much excess you applied after the fact. Sometimes incrementalism is also a political requirement.

Again Warden's argument requires a very determinsitic world view to be correct. There are parts of an adversary "system" that operate that way, but on the whole they do not, and the parts that do may not always be politically acceptable because of collateral effects.

Now these criticisms should NOT be extended to "well, then you must mean we shouldn't even try". Criticism is not condemnation - it is the seemingly obvious caution that we should not try to apply a theory that indeed works against some parts of the some problems, to ALL parts of ALL problems.

Some systems we have to try to understand in their holistic, complete, complex entirety, because simplification introduces errors that render overly simplistic models useless. JUst becasue we want there to be an easy answer that we can apply airpower to simply, quickly and relatively bloodlessly doesn't mean that is possible. Everything we have learned from the last 10 years of war has demonstrated that the heady days of Joint Vision 2010, eliminating the Fog of war and mechnically applying combat power to centers of gravity win wars is folly. Either that or our best and brightest fighting these wars are criminally incompetent for not having achieved our desired endstate quickly and cheaply.

When all is said and done, lets assume Warden is 100% correct. Then what? What changes?

How do we change Joint doctrine to use a language that "enables unconstrained use of airpower"? What things would a Warden designed Air Force do that todays Air Force doesn't do? How does our concept of war change if we assume airpower is a "strategic end-sate generating machine"? How does it harmonize our future growth with China so the rising tide floats all boats? How does it convince Iran to abandon its desire for nuclear power? How does it reduce the strategic risk of our excessive debt? In a multi-polar world what are the end-states we can achieve by compelling, coercing, or denying? Can airpower be a carrot instead of a stick? (other than by giving away!)

[pvebber]

Dip writes:

I have no idea why the USAF isn't blowing that horn. Maybe it is and I'm just not plugged in enough.

You have not seen the latest Air Force ad campaign: HADR is not only sexy its "SCI-FI"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg9K1mCh65U

[Fuchs]

Saddam Hussien (dead),
the electrical system non-functional,
roads and bridges unable to support mobility,
military officers demoralized or defecting,
air defense unable to interfere with US operations

Let's use this as an example (and I read '91 here):

Two approaches to air war:
'True' strategic air war with the intent to break the enemy government('s will to resist) directly with air power
and
operational air war in support of other arms; usually land support of a land campaign, rarely (Pacific War) primarily support of naval warfare. This may include bombing industries if those industries supply the OPFOR.


Saddam Hussein was caught in a miscalculation.
His withdrawal (the mission to be accomplished under UN mandate) would almost certainly follow if he understood his mistake. Offering him a way out that saves his face would likely reduce his resistance once he grasps the situation (and hurry the process up).


So what needed to be done? He needed to be convinced that the situation is serious. Air power eventually achieved this when he ordered a withdrawal (ground offensive was accelerated to interfere with the withdrawal iirc).

It did actually not take much to convince him that the coalition was serious. Diplomats could have paved him a nice way out of the mess and air power could have demonstrated political resolution with actual attacks. Those actual attacks could have been directed against his counter-strike capabilities in order to minimise the mess; attack aircraft airbases, SCUDs (the latter did eventually fail, of course), suppress long-range artillery (longer range than the ubiquitous D-30's).
This would have required some self-support of air power in form of the strike package support; SEAD, AEW, ECM...
The bombing of barracks, bridges, palaces, electrical nodes, tanks and bunkers was not strategically necessary (the CAS at Khafij was tactically useful, though).


Now another version; air power in support of decisive land operations.
The scenario is roughly the same, but the decision is expected to lay in the hands of the ground forces (assumption: Hussein is too stubborn to yield to air power alone.
Air power softens up and deceives in order to prepare for a decisive land campaign advance: A near-encirclement of the occupation forces in Kuwait would almost certainly force Hussein to accept the need to withdraw. Alternatively, the encirclement could be completed in a more Clausewitzian approach of disarmament.


It should be obvious in both cases that I'm not intent on destroying a card house with some smart moves; I'm intent on defeating the will.
I look at personal preferences and assume somewhat purposeful decision-making within the limits of typical psychological malfunctions (such as cognitive dissonance or problematic group dynamics).
An enemy head of state only needs to be attacked if it itself is the problem or if by assumption a successor would be more inclined to bow to our demands. Aggressor politicians deserve a high explosive event, but killing them makes it damn hard to negotiate an armistice with them in the following days and weeks.

-----------------------------------
The 2nd kind of air warfare (in support of a decisive surface campaign) isn't truly strategic in my opinion, but rather a support campaign that works through the economy/infrastructure (WW2 examples). It's working only very directly towards victory:
Air power succeeds to pave the way for its exploits (SEAD, air superiority fight), air power affects the enemy at home (supply flow to OPFOR reduced), blue surface forces defeat red forces in battle more easily, red government accepts that it was overpowered militarily, its will is broken.
That's often way too indirect because more direct, more elegant, approaches are available.

[Cliff]

Let's use this as an example (and I read '91 here):
Saddam Hussein was caught in a miscalculation.
His withdrawal (the mission to be accomplished under UN mandate) would almost certainly follow if he understood his mistake. Offering him a way out that saves his face would likely reduce his resistance once he grasps the situation (and hurry the process up).

Uhhm, this is the guy who killed hundreds of thousands of his own folks in the Iran-Iraq war...

So what needed to be done? He needed to be convinced that the situation is serious. Air power eventually achieved this when he ordered a withdrawal (ground offensive was accelerated to interfere with the withdrawal iirc).

It did actually not take much to convince him that the coalition was serious. Diplomats could have paved him a nice way out of the mess and air power could have demonstrated political resolution with actual attacks. Those actual attacks could have been directed against his counter-strike capabilities in order to minimise the mess; attack aircraft airbases, SCUDs (the latter did eventually fail, of course), suppress long-range artillery (longer range than the ubiquitous D-30's).
This would have required some self-support of air power in form of the strike package support; SEAD, AEW, ECM...
The bombing of barracks, bridges, palaces, electrical nodes, tanks and bunkers was not strategically necessary (the CAS at Khafij was tactically useful, though).

You assume Saddam is a rational actor who cares about his people... I think that's a false assumption. Also, the second objective was to make sure Saddam could no longer threaten his neighbors - hence the CAS and AI. Your "demonstration" sounds a lot like McNarma and LBJ's "sending signals"... Most of the electrical and bunker targets were intended to degrade C2 of the Iraqi IADS, which is neccessary to do the rest of your list.

Now another version; air power in support of decisive land operations.
The scenario is roughly the same, but the decision is expected to lay in the hands of the ground forces (assumption: Hussein is too stubborn to yield to air power alone.
Air power softens up and deceives in order to prepare for a decisive land campaign advance: A near-encirclement of the occupation forces in Kuwait would almost certainly force Hussein to accept the need to withdraw. Alternatively, the encirclement could be completed in a more Clausewitzian approach of disarmament.

Again, I think you assume a lot about Saddam.

It should be obvious in both cases that I'm not intent on destroying a card house with some smart moves; I'm intent on defeating the will.
I look at personal preferences and assume somewhat purposeful decision-making within the limits of typical psychological malfunctions (such as cognitive dissonance or problematic group dynamics).
An enemy head of state only needs to be attacked if it itself is the problem or if by assumption a successor would be more inclined to bow to our demands. Aggressor politicians deserve a high explosive event, but killing them makes it damn hard to negotiate an armistice with them in the following days and weeks.

You are confusing Warden's model, Fuchs. Attacking the leadership ring doesn't neccessarily mean you kill them... you just have to affect them.

The 2nd kind of air warfare (in support of a decisive surface campaign) isn't truly strategic in my opinion, but rather a support campaign that works through the economy/infrastructure (WW2 examples). It's working only very directly towards victory:
Air power succeeds to pave the way for its exploits (SEAD, air superiority fight), air power affects the enemy at home (supply flow to OPFOR reduced), blue surface forces defeat red forces in battle more easily, red government accepts that it was overpowered militarily, its will is broken.
That's often way too indirect because more direct, more elegant, approaches are available.

Again, you seem to agree with Warden, but just don't like the way he wrote his arguement. The last line is pretty much his 5 rings model in one sentence...

V/R,

Cliff

[Fuchs]

Uhhm, this is the guy who killed hundreds of thousands of his own folks in the Iran-Iraq war...

...this didn't seem to bother us and was not the subject of the '91 conflict.

You assume Saddam is a rational actor who cares about his people... I think that's a false assumption.

No, I assume Saddam was a mostly rational actor who cared about his power. There are many ways how someone like that can be threatened without threatening his people much.
The more someone wants to keep, the more you can threaten. The more you have destroyed already, the less you can threaten with destruction.

Also, the second objective was to make sure Saddam could no longer threaten his neighbors - hence the CAS and AI.

This was pointless, for Turkey was in NATO, Syria and Iran were powerful enough to defend themselves, Jordan is too close to Israel and it wouldn't have required a second lesson to teach him not to touch Kuwait or Saudi-Arabia. Who's left? Qatar and Bahrain? Same as Kuwait, plus he lacked the transport to invade them.
His ability to threaten neighbours would have been gone by a mix or military and political reasons anyway - without destruction of most of his heavy weapons.

Your "demonstration" sounds a lot like McNarma and LBJ's "sending signals"...

They were in the trap that they demanded too much, were seen as wanting to achieve even more (indirect rule) and being unable to hit most of the factories that produced for the war effort. The failure of a recipe under such conditions means nothing unless another recipe is known that would not fail.

Most of the electrical and bunker targets were intended to degrade C2 of the Iraqi IADS, which is neccessary to do the rest of your list.

I consider this as overrated. The Iraqi air defences were susceptible in many ways. The effort against the C2 was redundant.

You are confusing Warden's model, Fuchs. Attacking the leadership ring doesn't neccessarily mean you kill them... you just have to affect them.

...which will work about as well as the Bomber Command's bombing reduced work morale unless you have a good idea what effect has the best probability of success. That's what it's all about.
And someone here had hinted at killing leadership, that's why I referred to it.

Again, you seem to agree with Warden, but just don't like the way he wrote his arguement.

No, I don't agree at all, even if conclusions from my model can be misunderstood to be close to his.

I don't think they were shining examples of airpower strategy - especially the Luftwaffe.

They were example of good bang for the buck, success under adverse conditions and focus on the important.

Luftwaffe in May '40 (France Campaign) focused on one thing only: The success of the land campaign. It began with some pressure on the French air force and a fake Schwerpunkt and proceeded with all might to support at the real Schwerpunkt - Sedan. Only a few per cent diversionary missions were about something else than supporting the land campaign.
This choice of focus was proved to be correct in the process.
It was a peer/peer conflict (actually, Germany was even a bit weaker), the Luftwaffe was not clearly superior in quality (its losses were higher than the French and British ones!) - the one thing that deserved them a place in air war history as first greatly successful air campaign was the focus on a single mission.

Compare this with the miserable targeting of '99.
What exactly was the purpose of destroying a railway bridge if there were no army movements anyway?

[Steve Blair]

While the Flying Tigers and Luftwaffe in May '40 accomplished great things, I don't think they were shining examples of airpower strategy - especially the Luftwaffe. But this is distracting us from the real point - your argument for better use of resources is exactly what Warden is arguing for - so you agree with his ends but not his means?

Warden's use of the Luftwaffe to illustrate his examples is one of the points (IMO) where he really goes off the rails. The Luftwaffe did exactly what it was designed to do, because the Germans had a different conception of airpower based on their experiences in World War I. Was it in line with Warden's vision? No. Does that automatically make it wrong? Certainly not.

Warden continues to chase the myth of warfare on the cheap (from our perspective, at least). He is also far too wedded to the idea that airpower can be decisive in any area, and if it can't we shouldn't get involved. If you read "The Air Campaign," you would think that the Air Force won the war in the Pacific all by itself and that the Battle of Britain was a failed defensive campaign. Warden is also (again IMO) far too linked to the idea that kinetic efforts should be divorced from political considerations, and far too often falls back on the "politicians tied our hands" argument when airpower doesn't work as advertised. Warden's theories work well in computer games, but I really think they fall short when put to the real world test.

[Cliff]

Affecting CoGs in series vice parallel is dramatically more expensive.

Only if you are inept at operational art. How do you know that the cost of firing 1000 cruise missiles all at once to achieve your objective is going to be more successful than firing 100 on 9 consecutive days. or 8 or 7? Boyd discusses this problem in relation to OODA loops.

I think Col Warden is making a generality here... but it is supportable. Take your example - the cost of deploying troops to the field for 9 days is going to be 9 times the cost of deploying them for 1 day. Not as big an issue for you Navy folks, but everyone else pays...

Maybe urban legend, but supposedly he tells the story of a dogfight with a new pilot where he makes a complicated series of maneuvers, the response to which would lead to Boyd being on the youngsters 6. After completing the maneuvers Boyd is horrified to find the younster behind HIM. He asks the youngster how he figured out how to turn the tables. The youngster said "I had no clue what to do, I was gonna go left, then thought maybe right and all of a sudden there you were in front of me!"

Having been that guy once (OK, it might have happened twice), I will submit that one of the hardest opponents in BFM can be someone who is new and thus has no clue... because sometimes they will do something completely dumb, but if you take a second to ask "why did he do that? that was dumb..." it might just work!

You can make the OODA loop so much faster than your opponent that you end up outsmarting yourself, or paralyze him so much that he can't even surrender. With tipping point phenomena, you can't predict how much effect you need to effect the tip, or how much excess you applied after the fact. Sometimes incrementalism is also a political requirement.

Hmmm... agree on the political. If you've properly analyzed your opponent, then the inability to surrender should be immaterial, because you'll know when he's there and leave him a way to let you know he's done.

Again Warden's argument requires a very determinsitic world view to be correct. There are parts of an adversary "system" that operate that way, but on the whole they do not, and the parts that do may not always be politically acceptable because of collateral effects.

Again, Warden is not arguing that we're there now - only that we are getting closer, and should keep trying - and that we will not get closer if we give up because ground and seapower folks tell us it'll never work.

Now these criticisms should NOT be extended to "well, then you must mean we shouldn't even try". Criticism is not condemnation - it is the seemingly obvious caution that we should not try to apply a theory that indeed works against some parts of the some problems, to ALL parts of ALL problems.

Which is why Warden says we should see if we can make airpower work in a quick/less costly way, and if not, consider if we really want to go to war.

Some systems we have to try to understand in their holistic, complete, complex entirety, because simplification introduces errors that render overly simplistic models useless. Just because we want there to be an easy answer that we can apply airpower to simply, quickly and relatively bloodlessly doesn't mean that is possible. Everything we have learned from the last 10 years of war has demonstrated that the heady days of Joint Vision 2010, eliminating the Fog of war and mechanically applying combat power to centers of gravity win wars is folly. Either that or our best and brightest fighting these wars are criminally incompetent for not having achieved our desired endstate quickly and cheaply.

This goes back to the same point above.

When all is said and done, lets assume Warden is 100% correct. Then what? What changes?

How do we change Joint doctrine to use a language that "enables unconstrained use of airpower"? What things would a Warden designed Air Force do that todays Air Force doesn't do? How does our concept of war change if we assume airpower is a "strategic end-sate generating machine"? How does it harmonize our future growth with China so the rising tide floats all boats? How does it convince Iran to abandon its desire for nuclear power? How does it reduce the strategic risk of our excessive debt? In a multi-polar world what are the end-states we can achieve by compelling, coercing, or denying? Can airpower be a carrot instead of a stick? (other than by giving away!)

My thoughts on what Warden would answer: We focus on the endstate. Our concept changes to focus more on the desired ends and the quickest way to get there vs. a force/battle centric way of thinking. On China, fully funding a robust airpower capability would potentially allow you to deter Chinese military action, confining the competition to the economic realm- which after all is what US grand strategy has been about since World War II. As for Iran, it either deters them or gives you the capability to affect their regime leaders in a way that convinces them it's too painful to continue. Rather than focusing on hitting their nuclear program, how about we target the president, mullahs, and revolutionary guards through their extensive financial holdings? That's the difference Warden would promote. The debt issue is not a military one, so I agree that airpower can't solve that - although if Warden's ideal was realized, we could probably cut a lot of folks. I think that airpower can be a carrot - reference our current strategy of outsourcing containment of Iran by improving other folks' Air Forces in the gulf.

Probably the biggest lesson I have learned over the last year of hanging with the Army is that the Army doesn't like strategy. I'm not trying to attack- there's good reason for this. And this is not something I came up with - this is what the Army folks have told me (one of them is going to be a FA-59, or strategist). Again, the Army drives most joint doctrine and planning because it is the biggest service and normally the JFC. This is a big part of why Warden is saying we have a hard time thinking about airpower. This is what Warden is arguing against - again, he's not saying we're there now, but that we (airpower advocates) should keep trying to get there. He is not advocating bombing everything in sight- or even that bombing is always necessary - in fact, he wants to reduce the amount of direct kinetic damage.

Good discussion pvebber.

V/R,

Cliff

[ganulv]

On China, fully funding a robust airpower capability would potentially allow you to deter Chinese military action, confining the competition to the economic realm- which after all is what US grand strategy has been about since World War II.

I don’t mean to come off as catty, but what is your metric for full funding? The U.S. military budget is already four to five times that of China’s. The federal government could spend even more on airpower, yes, but in a world of limited resources is there any realistic reason to argue that it should?

Even if your logic holds I don’t know that the U.S. really needs any more economic competition from China than it already has.

[Cliff]

I don’t mean to come off as catty, but what is your metric for full funding? The U.S. military budget is already four to five times that of China’s. The federal government could spend even more on airpower, yes, but in a world of limited resources is there any realistic reason to argue that it should?

Even if your logic holds I don’t know that the U.S. really needs any more economic competition from China than it already has.

Ganulv-

I was trying to respond to pvebber's theoretical China question... I agree that our absolute budget still is way bigger than China's, and the federal debt is a bigger threat than anything else- meaning budgets will get cut. Warden would argue that the airpower (again airpower is not just Air Force) budget should be boosted at the expense of other military accounts - and I was attempting to show how he might apply that additional airpower to the China scenario.

I think that given the current fiscal environment and our current commitments it is unlikely that any of the services will get a significant budget boost over anyone else. One feature of our current system is that everyone has supporters in the public and in Congress, meaning true tradeoffs are very difficult to get.

One note on budget, though - the USAF budget (proposed) for FY12 is $166B. Of that, $30.92B is not controlled by the USAF, but goes to joint organizations (a lot of classified stuff for three letter OGAs). Another $9B pays for space procurement for systems like GPS, comm sats, launchers that support the entire joint force (and a lot of other folks). That's a total of $39.92B, or 24% of the USAF budget that essentially goes to supporting the entire DoD. I'm not complaining about this - I just think folks don't realize how much money the USAF spends on space to enable the entire joint force. It's not all Raptors and white scarves! The Navy and Army are actually buying more aircraft in FY12 than the USAF.

V/R,

Cliff

Link to Budget docs:
Air Force Financial Management Budget Site