BATTLEFIELD OF THE FUTURE

Overview : Future Airpower
and Strategy Issues
Strategy is the art and science of translating national security
objectives into practical military plans and operations . Strategy
formulation in an age of revolution in affairs is especially
challenging . Our two strategy essays by two premier military
thinkers, Col John Warden and Col Richard Szafranski, debate
the issue of just how innovative strategy formulation must be in
the midst of a military revolution . Col Warden argues that "war
in the twenty-first century will be significantly different for the
United States from anything encountered before the Gulf War."
However, Col Szafranski contends that "there may not be really
much that is revolutionary in contemporary notions of parallel
war and hyperwar ."
Col Warden believes that twenty-first century strategy will
have to ensure great precision : high casualties will not be
politically tolerable ; collateral damage must be minimized ;
nonlethal weapons will have wide application ; and manipulation
of information will be critical . Strategy will have to concentrate
on an enemy's entire system of organization and activity, not
simply its armed forces .
Using the five-ring analogy, Col Warden proposes that strategy
should target an adversary's leadership, energy or resources,
infrastructure, population, and armed forces . This would make
airpower the dominant instrument of such new era warfare .
Simultaneously attacking these essential components rather
than concentrating solely on enemy armed forces is the essence
of Warden's strategy . Warden believes that the five-ring analysis
gives us a good picture of what to strike, and that we must view
"the enemy as a system, not an independent mass of tanks,
aircraft, or dope pushers ." Warden's goal is "to make the cost
political, economic, and military-to the enemy higher than he is
willing to pay, or to impose strategic or operational paralysis on
him so that he would become incapable of acting ."
Col Szafranski, however, questions whether proposals like
Col Warden's aiming at the "simultaneous reduction of the
enemy systems overall energy level, so that the organic system
goes into shock" are really new. Is attacking the various centers
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