Resurgence of Thought About Conventional Airpower at the Strategic Level of War

One might have expected the ascendance of fighter generals to result in the U. S. Air Force abandoning the concept of airpower as an independent war­winning instrument, but that was not the case. In 1988, Colonel John Warden, an F-15 pilot, published a book entitled, The Air Campaign: Planning for Com­bat, based on a thesis he wrote as a student at National Defense University.59 Warden’s argument in that treatise was reasonably evenhanded, balancing the need for offensive and defensive operations and conceding that in some conflicts the chief use of airpower might be “the destruction—or neutralization through maneuver—of some or all of the enemy’s forces.”60 Nevertheless, the very title of the book ruffled Army feathers in the suggestion that an air campaign might be fought separate from an Army-led joint campaign. To the Army’s growing irrita­tion, Warden’s ideas would soon become much more provocative.

By 1990, Warden had become chief of Checkmate, the Headquarters Air Force strategy analysis center. There, he developed the idea that an enemy state is a system, somewhat akin to a human body, with eyes, nerve centers, a brain, and other subsystems to provide infrastructure, organic essentials, and defense mechanisms. Warden proposed that one need not destroy an enemy’s infra­structure, organic essentials, or even his defenses to defeat him. The most effi­cient way to victory would be to attack selected “centers of gravity” (COGs), key nodes in essential subsystems, particularly the enemy’s brain and nervous system.61 If the correct COGs were struck simultaneously, the enemy system would be unable to adjust to compensate for the failure of multiple functions. It would go into “strategic paralysis” or collapse. Warden asserted that pre­cision weapons had provided airpower the ability to carry out such “parallel attacks” and thereby defeat enemy systems quickly, with less blood and trea­sure expended on both sides.62

Another prominent airpower thinker who emerged in the same era was David Deptula. As a lieutenant colonel, he was Warden’s deputy in Checkmate and, after the latter’s retirement, continued in the Air Force, reaching general officer rank.63 Deptula, who served in Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice’s Secretarial staff group, had been principal author of the service’s Global Reach – Global Power strategic planning framework, issued in June 1990 and subse­quently forming the conceptual framework for the restructuring of the Air Force over the next 3 years. Deptula championed Warden’s ideas and carried them a step forward, emphasizing the need to conduct “effects-based opera­tions”—that is, identifying the correct COGs and striking them to create the system effects Warden advocated, versus striking targets simply to destroy the enemy’s materiel.64

Warden and Deptula got the first test of their ideas in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, which hinted strongly at the conceptual convergence of opera­tional and strategic airpower. At the request of Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General John M. Loh, the Checkmate team developed an air-targeting con­cept called “Instant Thunder” which they believed would be sufficient to force the Iraqi army out of Kuwait. The Instant Thunder plan entailed rapid, intense attacks on command, control, and communications systems to paralyze Sad­dam’s ability to coordinate his forces and additional attacks on industry and infrastructure targets to compel him to withdraw from Kuwait. Warden briefed the plan to Loh, then to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Pow­ell, and then, at Powell’s request, to U. S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) commander General Norman Schwarzkopf, who requested that Warden fly to Saudi Arabia and brief the U. S. Central Air Force (USCENTAF) Commander, Lieutenant General Charles Horner.65 Horner accepted elements of the plan as a starting point, but considered it inadequate as it stood, putting its emphasis on the putative coercive effects of strategic attack without considering whether the Iraqi army, if unmolested from the air, might go on the offensive. There­fore, he sent Warden back to Washington, though retaining Deptula in theater to work with USCENTAF planners under the direction of Brigadier General Buster Glosson to flesh out a broader air strategy in support of the USCENT – COM plan for Operation Desert Storm.66

On January 17, 1991, USCENTCOM launched Desert Storm, and for the next 38 days, coalition airpower subjected Iraq to one of the most concentrated aerial bombardments seen in history. Over the first week, air strikes focused largely on strategic targets in the original Instant Thunder plan, dismembering the air defense system and hitting electrical power and command, control, and communications nodes in and around Baghdad. Then the emphasis shifted to interdiction targets and, increasingly, to Iraq’s Republican Guard and regular army forces in southern Iraq and Kuwait.67

On February 24, USCENTCOM launched its ground offensive, follow­ing 38 days of air attack. With AirLand Battle Doctrine guiding U. S. Army operations, airpower was employed in support of coalition ground forces while continuing strategic attacks against Iraqi command, control, and infra­structure targets. The application of combined arms was devastatingly effec­tive. One hundred hours into the ground operation, with Kuwait liberated and Iraqi forces in a desperate rout to escape envelopment in the now famous “Hail Mary” maneuver, all political objectives were accomplished and President George H. W Bush called the offensive to a halt.