Airpower Reborn: The Strategic Concepts of John Warden and John Boyd

John Andreas Olsen, ed.

Overview: John Boyd and John Warden are arguably the most important intellectual influences over the USAF in the 21st century, although many Airmen have little understanding of their fundamental concepts or how they changed the American approach to Airpower. Without their ideas, the United States might not be the dominant Airpower in the world in the 21st century. Their concepts were first put into action during Operation Desert Storm, but have since expanded and helped define the very core of what it means to be an Airman. This work examines the key contributions of Boyd and Warden, and at the same time, offers an explanation of modern Airpower theory and strategy. As a result, it is both history and a modern examination of the key attributes of Airpower. The work also advances new arguments about what Airpower is, and how it can be effectively applied in the 21st century, if planners understand the unique elements of Airpower and its capabilities.

• John Andreas Olsen’s “Airpower and Strategy” provides a brief summary of post-Cold War Airpower, including the 1999 claim that it might be able to win wars without a ground element. Olsen defines and describes a new strategic concept, systemic paralysis, which involves attacking an enemy’s entire system in order to prevent effective resistance. Is this a concept limited to Airpower? Would the same theory work in other domains? Is it possible to defend against this type of campaign?
• Peter Faber’s “Paradigm Lost: Airpower Theory and Its Historical Struggles” provides a thorough grounding in the “language of war,” the key terms necessary to understand the later discussions in the book. He also analyses 13 different theories of Airpower developed before Boyd and Warden. These early theories tended to treat the air domain as an extension of land, which ignored the unique aspects of Airpower and its application in the modern world. He concludes with a short summary of Boyd and Warden, who broke away from past assumptions and formed true Airpower theories. What is your personal theory of Airpower? Do you more closely favor Boyd or Warden?
• Frans Osinga’s “The Enemy as a Complex Adaptive System” offers a deeper explanation of Boyd’s theory, particularly the OODA Loop concept. Boyd used many disciplines to create his concept, and then chose to share it through oral presentations rather than written communications. This allowed him to continually modify his ideas, but it also made it difficult for critics to grapple with his concepts and test them. Boyd considered flexibility and adaptability in military conflict to be the key attributes of a successful campaign. These attributes allow a commander to make correct decisions faster than an opponent, forcing the opponent to always react to the commander’s initiative. Osinga concludes by demonstrating the influence of Boyd’s ideas in the past two decades of aerial warfare. In addition to Airpower, how might the OODA Loop concept be applied to military conflict? To diplomacy? To economics? Is this a theory for all competition?
• John A. Warden, III’s “Smart Strategy, Smart Airpower” provides a personal summary of his Airpower theory, which calls for selecting a desired future outcome and determining how to reach it by attacking an enemy system in multiple nodes, causing maximum disorientation. This idea has often been mischaracterized as a collection of Five Rings of targets, with the inner rings more important than the outer—which is not what Warden intended when he first announced his concept. Grouping different types of targets into five broad categories allows a planner to focus upon the key objectives of a campaign and how they influence each other in reaching the desired end state. It also allows a planner to conceptualize the entire enemy system, and how different elements of the system interact with one another. Once the system is understood, the planner should select the desired future end state, and then work backwards from that point to determine which decisions and actions need to be made to bring it to fruition. How might this concept be applied in other domains? Does “backward planning” work better than the conventional approach? What are its key advantages and disadvantages?
• Alan Stephens’ “Fifth Generation Strategy” claims that new Airpower technology is being underutilized because new ideas of how to employ it have not been developed to match its capabilities. Instead, we have continued to focus upon traditional aspects of warfare, like taking and occupying terrain, which might not always be necessary in a conflict (and expose one’s own forces to enemy action). Stephens uses the concept of technological generations (Fifth Generation Fighters, for example) to demonstrate that strategy has not moved forward at the same pace, and then lays out the requirements for a “Fifth Generation Strategy” that can utilize U.S. advantages in technology. How is strategy different from a theory of Airpower? Why do we cling to past assumptions of how to apply military force?
• Colin S. Gray’s “Airpower Theory” advances a new concept of Airpower theory, through a series of 27 dicta. Each is a simple statement that builds upon previous dicta. This eventually creates an entirely new concept, unique to Airpower, of how to apply modern technology through the air domain in a fashion much broader than how the U.S. Air Force currently considers Airpower. Ultimately, a thorough understanding of what Airpower is, and what it can and cannot do, is absolutely vital for modern conflict. That theory cannot be a modified version of ground or naval theory—it must be unique to the domain. Do you take issue with any of the 27 Dicta? How do they combine to inform a broader concept of Airpower?