A strategy based on faith: the enduring appeal of progressive American airpower

Joint Force Quarterly, April, 2008 by Mark Clodfelter

To many in the U.S. Air Force, the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in late January 1973 proved that Nixon's "unfettered" bombing could have achieved success earlier. An aging LeMay likely reflected the view of many air commanders by telling a reporter in 1986 that America could have won in Vietnam in "any two-week period you want to mention." (36) That response ignored key changes in the war that had occurred from the Johnson presidency to Nixon's. It further dismissed distinctive differences in the war aims of the two Presidents. Johnson fought to create a "stable, independent, non-communist South Vietnam," a much tougher objective than Nixon's amorphous "peace with honor." The tenets of progressive airpower appeared ill suited for a limited war against an insurgent enemy that rarely fought. Rolling Thunder argued strongly that bombing could not achieve a quick or an easy solution in future conflicts against similar opponents for aims that were less than total, and that an uncertainty regarding results--both in terms of how they might affect more powerful allies and how the world community at large might perceive them--would likely restrict the use of airpower. Yet most Airmen saw Linebacker, not Rolling Thunder, as the model to learn from, and they turned their attention to the prospect of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.

Rings in the Desert

One Air Force officer who focused on conventional war was Colonel John Warden. He had flown as a forward air controller in Vietnam, and during the decades that followed, he developed ideas that would form the basis of America's air campaign plan for the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Like Billy Mitchell, Warden stressed airpower's "revolutionary" characteristics, and he fully shared Mitchell's progressive vision. Warden believed that the creation of stealth aircraft, extremely precise "smart" munitions, and bombs with significant penetrating power gave the United States a dramatic capability to fight limited, conventional wars by relying almost exclusively on airpower. He argued that those three technological developments enabled American air forces to attack a prospective enemy's "centers of gravity" directly, which they could do by circumventing enemy surface forces. "Airpower then becomes quintessentially an American form of war; it uses our advantages of mobility and high technology to overwhelm the enemy without spilling too much blood, especially American blood." (37)

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For Warden, the key center of gravity of a nation--or of any organized group capable of fighting--was leadership. That element comprised the center ring of his five-ring model that specified the major components of warmaking capability. Surrounding leadership was a ring of key production, which for most states included electricity and oil. Surrounding key production was a ring of infrastructure, comprising transportation and communications, and surrounding it was a ring of population, which included food sources. Finally, a ring of fielded military forces surrounded population. Warden contended that leadership was the most critical ring because it was "the only element of the enemy ... that can make concessions." (38) If that ring could not be attacked directly, the goal then became to confound the leadership's ability to direct warmaking activities, and airpower could target the outer rings. Yet the focus of the attacks remained the impact on the center ring. He cautioned against attacking military forces, which he labeled "a means to an end," and urged that they "be bypassed--by strategy or technology." (39) Warden also eschewed direct attacks on civilians, and his rationale for attacking industry mirrored an Air Corps Tactical School text: "If a state's essential industries (or, if it has no industry of its own, its access to external sources) are destroyed, life becomes difficult, and the state becomes incapable of employing modern weapons and must make concessions." (40)