Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

grown up in Strategic Air Command. Many of these new Air Force fighter leaders, having spent the majority of their Vietnam tours doing close air support in South Vietnam, came out of the war believing that the future of the Air Force was in supporting the Army. Now, there is nothing wrong with supporting the Army or the Navy — or the other way around — but making this the sole function severely circumscribed the potential of airpower, because it was all focused on tactical events.

John Warden, like other airpower supporters, advocated the inherent virtues of airpower. In his view, in order to realize airpower's unfulfilled promise, new ways of using it would have to be devised. Though there was much debate about these new ways, no consensus about them was reached. Then in 1988, Warden published a little book called The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat. It was the first new book on air operations to be published since the end of World War II, and the first to deal specifically with the issue of planning an entire air campaign. Thus it was an instant must-read among officers and systems analysts. It also caused a storm of controversy, since it argued that airpower should be treated as more than just a supporting arm in a ground campaign. Let Colonel Warden tell the story.

Tom Clancy: Will you tell us about The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat?

Col. Warden: I was a grad student at National War College, and I decided I wanted to do three things: write a book, learn to use a computer, and run a marathon. For the book, I had two possibilities: modern applications of the ideas of Alexander the Great, or something on operational-level airpower. My academic advisor told me I would probably get more out of the operational-airpower subject, so I chose that one. I worked on the book for about six months, in between attending classes. General Perry Smith, who was the commandant then, read an early draft, liked it, and sent copies to some key USAF generals. When the book finally worked its way through the publishing process and came out in 1988, it already had a fair amount of circulation around the USAF in its draft form. As for the book itself, the fundamentals are as valid today as they were when I wrote it. However, now I have a far better understanding of war and airpower, so I would like to write a couple of more books on a higher level.

In 1988, John Warden, now a colonel, moved over to the Office of the USAF Directorate of Plans in the Pentagon as its Deputy Director for Strategy, Doctrine, and Warfighting. While there, he had responsibility for the team that would develop Instant Thunder, the basic plan for the air war against Iraq some three years later.

^{Colonel John Warden outlines the basics of the Instant Thunder campaign plan to the Checkmate staff in early August 1990.}

^{Official U.S. Air Force Photo}

Tom Clancy: In 1988 you moved to the USAF Plans Directorate in the Pentagon. Tell us about that.

Col. Warden: My new boss, General Mike Dugan, then Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations (the future USAF Chief of Staff), had given me the job helping to change the Air Force mind-set. I had about a hundred officers in the Plans Directorate under my command, and we began by giving them some operational and strategic-level airpower concepts. Then, we all spent a lot of time debating and refining the ideas. Our weekly staff meetings would run three or four hours — not because we were discussing administrative trivia, but because we were dealing with large operational or strategic topics that would force all the divisional and other people to work these things hard. By and by, we were ready to start turning our ideas into action, and we rewrote the AFM 1–1 [the Air Force Basic Operations] manual, and put together a program to reform the USAF professional military education program. We had literally dozens of projects going on, with all of them having the common thread of, 'Let's start thinking seriously about airpower at the operational and strategic levels.'Here's an example of a project we ran at Checkmate [one of the organizations in the plans division]: Let's start out with the hypothesis that fuel is the 'center of gravity' [a vital necessity for operations] for the Soviet Army. So we talk to the intelligence people, and they say, 'You're wasting your time — the Soviets have a one-hundred-eighty-day supply of fuel buried in hardened storage tanks under East Germany. You only have about fourteen days before the war goes 'nuke,' or before the Soviets achieve their objectives. There simply isn't enough time to destroy that amount of fuel in hardened storage tanks.'Well, this doesn't make sense to the Checkmate officers. So they ask another question: 'How does the fuel get from the underground storage to the main battle tanks that actually use it up on the front?' It's a simple question about distribution. So we went back and found out that the Soviets had established about twenty-five operational-level fuel depots that stretched from the Baltic (in the north) to the Alps (in the south). They were designed to bring bulk fuel in from the East, and then 'push' it out farther to the West. Now, number one, there were no north-south cross-connections between these depots. And number two, although the hardened underground storage of this stuff was done very well, each depot had only about three output manifolds. It was like a filling station with only three gas islands. A fuel truck would drive up, fill up, then head west to the next lower echelon, where it would off-load and then return for more. There was also a manifold for tactical pipelines [field fuel lines laid by battlefield engineers following the forward echelons into combat]. So all the fuel from these great big depots ended up flowing through three or four very fragile output manifolds.Now, what happens if we shut those down? We decided to look a little further, and it turned out that the depot units were undermanned and didn't have the allotted number of trucks required to meet the established doctrinal movement rates of their tank units. There was no 'elasticity' in the Soviet system, so if we stop the flow of fuel [by bombing the depot fuel manifolds], in four or five days they run out.Now, imagine you're a Soviet tactical commander, and you know that your fuel has been cut off. Although you might not physically run out of the last drop of gas you're carrying with you for three to five days, you're probably going to stop, dig in, and wait for more supplies. The way their system was designed, work-arounds were almost impossible, so the Soviet-style corps which was dependent on a particular depot to its east was simply out of luck until someone fixed the problem — and it couldn't be fixed in a few days. We learned from this exercise that a handful of fighter-bomber sorties properly employed against operational centers of gravity could have a hugely disproportionate effect on fighting at the front itself. We used these lessons to good stead in planning for the Gulf War. Everyone we briefed liked the concept, except the intelligence people.

When they look at a problem, analysts like to use what they call a 'model.' This is a concept or simulation which can be used as a method of testing or expressing ideas. Colonel Warden's model of the enemy as an array of strategic targets envisions five concentric rings, with the military/civil leadership at the center, then key production facilities, transportation infrastructure, civilian morale/popular support, and in the outermost circle deployed military forces. Let's hear his views on it.

Tom Clancy: Through these studies, had you established a process of analysis that would serve you when you started to look at Iraq?

Col. Warden: Yes, the overarching system we used was the one I developed for General Dugan in the spring of 1988. This was what became known as the 'Five Rings' model. In essence, it tells you to start your thinking at the highest system-level possible, that your goal is to make the enemy system become what you want it to become, and do what you want it to do. The Five Rings show how all systems are organized — they are fractal in nature. For example, an army corps has a pattern of organization very similar to a nation or an air force. Every system has centers of gravity, which, when attacked, tend to drive the whole system into lower energy states, or into actual paralysis. In the Deputy Directorate for Operations, we had been discussing this concept for almost two years; so it was easy to apply it quickly after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

^{An illustration of Colonel John Warden's 'Five Rings' strategic targeting model. The enemy's fielded forces are on the outside, the national/military leadership in the center.}

^{Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd., by Laura Alpher}