Page 349 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

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u.s. air forCe doCtrine:. tHe searCH for deCisive effeCt

In such a conflict, the U.S. Air Force would likely have to carry out its missions in
the face of highly sophisticated enemy air and fighter defenses. Despite the massive
size of the Soviet forces, the Americans still maintained a strong technological lead.
From the middle of the 1970s until the end of the Cold War the American concept of
future air war centered on the idea of leveraging better technology to defeat a strong
enemy air defense, strike deep behind enemy lines, and use the precision capabilities
steadily developed since World War II to create maximum effects with an economy
of force.
In taking this approach the Americans developed and fielded a superb array
of modern aircraft and weapons. In order to penetrate enemy air defenses stealth
technology was perfected in the F-117 attack aircraft which could not only penetrate
a modern air defense system, but could put several tons of bombs on the target with
exceptional accuracy. Laser range finders that enabled bombs to be guided by the pilot
in flight meant that modern aircraft could easily deliver heavy bombs to within feet
of the target point. Space satellites gave the American airmen exceptionally precise
information on enemy defenses and targets, while modern digital communications
enabled intelligence to be transmitted almost instantaneously to the pilot in the
cockpit. Put together, all of these developments in information, munitions, and
aircraft capability amounted to a new doctrine of employing airpower. Because the
costs of the new technologies were so high, and the ability to integrate all these new
technologies into effective systems so difficult, it was a uniquely American approach
to aerial warfare. Only the United States could afford to field such systems and to
train people to use them in concert. 41
The most significant US airpower thinker of the 1980s and 1990s was an Air
Force Colonel and Vietnam veteran John Warden. Warden believed that air power
was the decisive element in modern war and argued that the Air Force should think in
terms of an independent air campaign. Viewing a likely enemy as a system, Warden
argued that one should think of the enemy in terms of rings—with the priority of
targeting to the “inner” and more important rings of leadership and key infrastructure
with fielded forces being on the outer and lower priority rings. Warden argued that
by hitting key targets one could paralyze the enemy system and make it incapable of
42
effective battle without a long campaign of attrition against the fielded forces.
The United States never fought its Cold War enemies, but the technology, skills
and doctrines for war developed for Cold War enemies proved to be an excellent
preparation to fight the conventional conflicts of the 1990s. In the Gulf War of 1991

41
On the development of the USAF technology after the Vietnam War see Werrell, pp. 55-220. See
also Benjamin Lambeth, The Transformation of American Airpower (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2000).
42
Warden’s key concepts are expressed in: John A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Com-
bat (Washington: National Defense University Press, 1988); “The Enemy as a System,” Airpower
Journal 9, Spring 1995, pp. 40-55.