EBO is not solely a horizontal process, nor is it solely a strategic, operational, or tactical prerogative. First and foremost, EBO is the vertical glue that ties tactical actions to strategic outcomes. It is a demonstration of cause-effect linkages that validate an individual bomb, sortie, or patrol in terms of effects that contribute to the objectives or conditions described by national-level policy makers in setting the desired end state. If a tactical mission is not connected in this way, it is likely unnecessary and potentially even counterproductive. One must orient all military operations to support the strategic end state—that is to say, the political end state as articulated by the various national and international entities that make up the coalition. Thus, EBO is the mechanism by which commanders at all levels can ensure that their mission objectives remain both relevant and effective.

Routinely, the desired strategic end state should dictate both the effects to be achieved and those to be avoided. Understanding intended and unintended effects allows the joint force commander (JFC) to determine the operational and tactical outcomes necessary to achieve the end state while simultaneously constraining the manner in which these tasks can be accomplished.¹¹ This maximizes efforts toward the political goals while minimizing the potential for wasted or counterproductive efforts, thereby supporting concepts of both unity of effort and economy of force. Further, for the components, EBO provides a means to understand how multiple actions can combine synergistically to produce direct and indirect effects that contribute to accomplishing the JFC’s objectives.¹²

Failure to understand the permanent, vital relationship between war and politics can lead to disjointed national means and a military indifferent to the strategic end state. A military strategy that does not lead to or contribute specifically to a political victory is meaningless at best and can sow the seeds for strategic disaster at worst.¹³ The potentially harsh consequences of such a condition should be apparent when focus on a tactical end state, operational end state, or war-termination condition becomes isolated from the strategic (i.e., political) end state that these milestones were intended to deliver.

Predoctrine discussion currently embraces terms such as tactical end state. This focus is potentially unwise because it can allow and possibly encourage separation between military and political thinking. Harry Summers’s famous exchange with a former North Vietnamese enemy, cited in the epigraph above, is relevant.¹⁴ Winning all the tactical battles does not matter if one loses the strategic fight. The military must not lose sight of the political goal by establishing and focusing on end states at subordinate levels. Operational commanders must design campaigns that aggressively and transparently connect military strategies to the political end state.

The potential for separation of military strategy and political end state is not an academic debate. It might appear as “mission creep,” or the entire political agenda may change—as happened to the French in Indochina in 1953 and 1954. During the months-long combat at Dien Bien Phu, the French military strategy focused on victory through decisive engagement with the Vietminh. However, the new French government, turning its attention to issues closer to home, had decided to negotiate an end to the conflict in Indochina. It repeatedly signaled this intent through international contacts and the announcement of a conference in Geneva to resolve the Indochina issue. A poll showed public support for the war at 15 percent.¹⁵ Gen Henri Navarre, senior military commander, “never had any illusions about the fragility of France’s political will, but now it was explicit . . . and in later years, General Navarre would always argue that it was the government’s announcement of the Geneva conference that had sealed the doom of Dien Bien Phu.”¹⁶ But the ongoing military strategy, even if it had achieved a “victory,” was not necessary for enabling the political choices that had been made.

Proposition Two:
EBO Provides a Comprehensive
 Framework for Coalition Operations

Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations (UN) has increasingly assumed roles as the arbiter of state-to-state intervention. Although this stance may seem inconsequential to US interests or even troublesome to the less observant, UN participation has had a decidedly positive effect on the size, composition, and will of most coalitions. Although “leads” clearly exist, UN members typically debate conditions in an area of concern to determine specific requirements for multinational action. Ultimately, the UN may pass a resolution that sanctions a particular action, assigns a lead nation or regional organization, or otherwise guides the endeavor. The result is a UN stamp of approval—a heavyweight power in this century.¹⁷ Military and diplomatic officers must consider UN and coalition interests as a critical foundation in planning any operation.

Forming a coalition is fundamentally a diplomatic function, but the military must conduct its campaign in a manner consistent with its unified goals. As Michael Dominguez, former acting secretary of the Air Force, stated in an address at the Air War College, “The future is a future of coalitions.”¹⁸ The process for enabling US participation in these coalition efforts should begin with organizing a multinational staff and must persist throughout planning and execution to achieve the cohesion essential for longevity and unity of effort. Maintaining coalition relationships, operational integrity, and the inherent legitimacy of group action—key factors at every level—can prove challenging as each coalition member attempts to shape plans to conform to its specific national interests (see fig.). According to Gen Anthony Zinni, USMC, retired, the US-only approach is no longer adequate for serving US interests: “It takes international authority and not the U.S. stamp on it, because that’s not acceptable anymore.”¹⁹

According to Thomas Donnelly, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, “Iraq has been the crucible that has shown us how limited our cold-war alliances were. It took us 50 years to build NATO; the challenge we have now is that we’ve got to come up with something new.”²⁰ EBO can provide an excellent framework for the type of discussions needed in creating those new coalition-centric environments. One technique, discussed at a Multi-national Planning Augmentation Team (MPAT) meeting, for sustaining coalitions and avoiding misunderstandings calls for adopting a planning step for “formulating the course of action” (COA) before actually developing options for each campaign phase.²¹ The intent is to ensure that all coalition members fully understand and have input into the JFC’s and component’s objectives and that the solution appropriately represents each nation’s interests. Consequently, each participant has a stake and a voice in the planning process as well as the outcome.

This method may not be the most efficient one in any traditional sense, but it informs planners to a greater degree on how to shape the operational and tactical COAs to meet the coalition end state without unacceptable consequences in other venues. EBO offers an excellent platform for this technique since it clearly focuses the agenda on necessary accomplishments—and consequences to avoid—before developing ways to pursue those accomplishments. Understanding both the objectives and constraints from the earliest possible moments affords coalition commanders the greatest practical flexibility while avoiding actions detrimental to coalition unity and, ultimately, to mission success. By its very nature, effects-centric thinking is critical thinking that encourages the creation of options for the coalition or joint force.

Proposition Three:
Intelligence Preparation Is
the Critical Foundation of
Effects-Based Planning

Knowledge in combination with critical analysis and thinking enables the sort of anticipation so necessary for EBO. But attaining perfect knowledge in combat is no more likely than finding gasoline for a dollar a gallon at pumps nationwide—the latter could happen, but most drivers would not consider it as their fundamental planning assumption. The impact of this historic perfect-knowledge problem is rapidly accelerating during the post–Cold War, information-centric age of the twenty-first century. Technology and the sole-superpower status of the United States have encouraged planners to view any large, traditionally organized enemy force as a large, traditionally organized target set—perhaps not the most relevant construct in today’s environment.²²

US sovereignty remains a given for the foreseeable future, thereby placing practical limits on the risk and cost that the United States is willing to assume in any endeavor. To remain in concert with administration strategies for constructive postconflict relationships, military operations must be similarly focused. However, this also opens the door for enemies to work at levels or seams well below the conditions that might earn an unconstrained response from the United States. Working to lower levels of contact with the enemy or operating transparently in a public domain can present a different problem set to intelligence professionals who must provide not only supporting data for developing COAs, but also credible, timely progress reports as the operation proceeds. For example, asymmetric force-on-force contact in this environment may encourage small, tactically agile units that can “swarm” for effect and then disappear into obscure terrain, populations, or other sanctuaries. This situation can become a problem in EBO if the supporting intelligence structure and protocols are ponderous (i.e., slow to respond or detect change) or if the organizational focus has remained solely on databases for the large, traditionally organized targets. Adversaries have also increased their use of IO, nonkinetic means, and other forms of coercion—all samples of potentially effective attacks that do not specifically lend themselves to solutions provided by Joint Direct Attack Munitions.²³ The targeting quandary thus becomes much broader than simply identifying the designated (or desired) mean point of impact. In addition to data basing, effects-based intelligence must be capable of adaptive collection-and-analysis techniques to keep pace with increasingly complex engagement zones. Further, for this data to remain relevant, it must be passed to the appropriate operators and acted upon before the enemy system hardens or hides a particular asset or vulnerability. Supporting a shooter’s tactical situation awareness can be fundamentally different from supporting a long-term deliberate-planning process; today’s intelligence community must be capable of doing both well.

In the abstract, effects are neither good nor bad but simply the consequences of an action. In reality, however, planners need to understand a system well enough not only to recognize effects but also to forecast them. Adding interest to the problem, identical consequences colored by different circumstances may be good at one point and bad at another. To anticipate consequences and enable commanders to take full advantage of effects methods, planners must have a comprehensive and current understanding of the enemy. Further, to achieve maximum value, planning, validating, and measuring effects demand prioritizing and focusing knowledge on the effects sought. If this is not practical, the commander must have an intelligence system that compensates for imperfect knowledge by maintaining a high degree of flexibility and speed of action, enabling the commander to engage effectively in near real time on breaking news. This inverse proportion (low perfect knowledge requires high flexibility and responsiveness) can present organizational and doctrinal challenges—but improper balance cedes initiative to the enemy.

As if this were not enough, entire sets of consequences can devolve from an initial EBO action—events simply not foreseen by planners as likely products of their plan. Imperfect knowledge of the enemy system or the tem-poral nature of many linkages in a multifaceted enemy system can create unanticipated “paths” and thus produce unintended consequences. Some of the latter may in fact have quite favorable effects, but operational commanders generally do not view surprise effects as desirable outcomes. The JFC and supporting intelligence infrastructure must remain flexible enough to adapt campaign strategies to the new conditions that derive from unintended consequences, whether positive or negative.

In the operational environment of the twenty-first century, the nonhierarchical command-and-control structures of nonstate enemies and the lack of significant enemy infrastructure highlight the need for speed in operational planning’s decision cycles. Since EBO is sensitive to the quality and timeliness of information, the temporary nature of associations (cause-effect linkages) routinely raises situational awareness to something much higher than a tactical survival or success advantage. Preplanned target databases may simply not prove effective in the twenty-first century’s operational environment unless one can identify or associate them with specific triggers that validate their temporal utility. In other words, confirming the vertical linkage to operational and strategic objectives in a rapidly evolving environment requires a focus on anticipating desired effects. Building the necessary picture of the campaign in such a fluid environment demands an invigorated analytical effort.

An example of the degree of sophistication and broad knowledge needed in EBO comes from Operation Allied Force. Airmen often perceive systems warfare as attacks on a unique enemy confederation of interrelated subsystems. But no enemy system is ever truly isolated in the way that reductionists choose to present their case. For example, in Allied Force, air planners targeted a number of bridges to intimidate the enemy and to increase pressure on the Serbian leadership to capitulate. In two instances, “successful” bridge attacks created strongly negative consequences. In the first, a passenger train not intended as a target entered the bridge area just as aircraft bombed the bridge, destroying the train as well. In the second, attacks dropped a Belgrade bridge into the Danube River, effectively blocking its use by Hungary—a landlocked nation and steadfast ally dependent on the river for much of its import/export trade. The failure or inability to anticipate these undesirable effects complicated the military problem and momentarily undermined progress toward the political end state.

Proposition Four: EBO Should Include Specific
Mechanisms to Identify, Measure, and Assess
Consequences of Each Action Taken

One principal difference between attrition-based warfare and EBO often lies in the supporting intelligence scheme necessary to validate that the initial action has had the desired effect—that, in fact, the attack on a particular target or target set has created the chain of related effects that culminate in (or contribute to) some higher goal or objective. In the attrition case, a simple image of a destroyed tank may suffice for counting purposes if the assigned task, for example, calls for reducing the number of enemy tanks by 50 percent. Alternately, because EBO is set against desired effects rather than attrition-style metrics, the method for achieving a significant reduction in enemy combat capability may focus on other enemy vulnerabilities: command-and-control sites or links, deception planning aimed at diffusing enemy strengths, fuel quality and availability, or some form of area or resource denial, to name but a few options. An effective IO attack might simply order the tanks away from the specific area of interest. By its very nature, EBO is a coercive construct that allows the JFC to consider a range of alternatives to direct attack. Intelligence requirements for this sort of campaign, however, can be complex.

Just as one must validate the effectiveness of the initial attack—kinetic or nonkinetic—so must one register all subsequent reactions. The armor unit in question above must be monitored throughout the time block of interest to ensure that it does not reengage at some subsequent point. Attrition warfare, while offering fewer sophisticated options at the operational and strategic levels, does have a seductive tactical finality that eases the intelligence question. In the air-superiority fight, one might say the same for destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD) over suppression of -enemy air defenses (SEAD).²⁴

For example, if the desired effect at the operational level requires containing a particular enemy surface formation for seven days within the confines of an area bounded by water and four bridges, getting imagery of the four dropped bridges neither completes the mission nor necessarily achieves the effect. Assessment in this instance requires a source of data to confirm that the enemy does not/cannot use some alternate means (e.g., underwater fords, river bridging, ferries, or airlift) to escape the confinement area within the seven-day period. Certainly, attrition remains an option in this scenario, but, again, the “tactical finality” and potential unintended consequences of attrition would preclude this particular unit from ever being available. In this fictional scenario, that result could run counter to a desired political end state in which the enemy would comply with coalition demands but retain capability to defend itself against some regional threat.

If one accepts coalition warfare as the norm for the twenty-first century, one also has to accept that modern coalitions rarely pursue strategies of annihilation against combatant societies and the militaries that support them. Even the US call for regime change in Iraq never carried the implication that war aims included destruction of the society that sustained the former regime. EBO, because of its sensitivity to a defined end state, offers the opportunity for a carefully bounded success—a critical capability in this century. Such a success is fundamentally tied to understanding the enemy system and maintaining the capability to measure the effects of the JFC’s actions accurately as each unfolds within that system.

Proposition Five:
Military Forces Should Be
Specifically Organized and
Trained to Conduct EBO

There is little probability that any US service will conduct major operations in the future without forming as a joint force. Moreover, the same could be said about coalitions. Thus, barring some unique conditions, the United States will enter future conflicts and major combat scenarios as part of a joint, combined, or coalition force—most likely a coalition formed of liberal, democratic states. It only makes sense then that one should structure the war-fighting organization to accommodate and exploit both the coalition construct and the advantages inherent in EBO. However, despite the rhetoric of senior Department of Defense and joint officials regarding EBO, this was largely not the case in Operation Iraqi Freedom.²⁵ EBO existed in many venues—but as a product of personalities more than of structure or doctrine. In truth, one finds very little agreed-upon EBO-related doctrine (beyond establishing EBO as an effective mind-set for conducting a campaign) at either the joint or service level. As a result, in Iraqi Freedom EBO lacked both transparency and persistence as individual personnel and whole units rotated in or out of the area of operations. Without the framework of doctrine, enforced by appropriate command relationships and organizational structures, initial attempts to implement EBO tended to produce more style than substance. This should not come as a surprise because wholly dissimilar processes in any set of organizations can cause significant friction whenever contact or some form of interaction occurs. For the Air Force, that means EBO can fully work only if it is a joint process accepted by the other services, supported by doctrine, and then implemented within an appropriate organizational structure.

However, such a structure has not seen much coordinated development. In predoctrine EBO pamphlets, Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) has discussed this challenge, using its joint-doctrine series, but there is still no validated working model on which to base change. Commenting on EBO integration with the current system, JFCOM states that “effects-based processes to date—particularly planning activities—are based on (and in some cases additive to) current joint planning procedures.”²⁶ This sort of strap-on approach to legacy planning elements ensures a bias against achieving the full measure of this concept. Additionally, it can encourage a business-as-usual attitude within the joint community, using a thin coating of EBO jargon to give it that luster of newness. Is it any wonder that many people do not see EBO as anything different?

The answer is not to throw everything out and start over, but to create a model for evolutionary change that focuses joint and service organizations on a more efficient use of scarce resources, perhaps at the component level or in some matrixed core element specialized for joint planning. The effects mind-set itself could serve as the starting point for finding such an appropriate organizational structure. The line of attack could prove as simple as using EBO as an organizing construct rather than a targeting construct. The logical follow-on step would then be an effects-centric training template appropriate to each tasked organization.

Summary

First and foremost, EBO is a mind-set—and that mind-set should be inherent in all military operations (Proposition One). It is a way of thinking that pushes planners to identify and exploit direct or cascading links between the activities, persons, and infrastructure that can be affected and those activities, persons, and infrastructure that must be affected in order to achieve the stated political goals of the operation. By focusing on these links, planners ensure that daily tactical actions vertically integrate with and support both the operational objectives and strategic end state. Operating in this manner supports unity-of-effort and economy-of-force initiatives. EBO provides for synchronization of multiple actions to achieve a desired effect, and it encourages constraint in the application of power that could be wasteful or counterproductive. EBO does not guarantee success any more than do the principles of war. But EBO does offer a framework for efficient planning and assessment since it focuses planners on output more than on process or input (i.e., it alters a planner’s focus from alternatives [weapon systems] to objectives [desired effects]) (Proposition Two). In today’s dynamic environment, this is a good change.

Intelligence preparation is the cornerstone of EBO (Proposition Three). Databases should include kinetic and nonkinetic strengths and vulnerabilities of enemy systems as well as those strengths and weaknesses within the human dynamic of the enemy system. The more complete and accurate the data, the greater the flexibility that joint or coalition commanders will have in constructing their courses of action. If preplanned operations from mature databases prove ineffective in a changed or changing environment, then the intelligence apparatus must be flexible and responsive enough to enable near-real-time exploitation of emerging opportunities. Further, the intelligence system must be able to observe and report progress in a timely fashion in order to affect ongoing and future operations. Assessment must begin with initial planning and continue until one can observe and validate the final desired effect (Proposition Four). Measuring effects requires tailoring specific collection capabilities to specific execution tasks in much the same way that kinetic targeting requires matching weapon systems to targets. For example, dropping a bridge span may require collection-and-assessment tasks far beyond a single image.

It is a well-known standard that military forces should train as they will fight. The same is true for effects-centric organizations and processes—forces must be team-trained if they are to reach their fullest potential during actual operations (Proposition Five). This most especially includes coalition warfare and EBO. EBO can offer a scientific approach to coalition engagements that both opens the planner’s perspective to the wide-angle view of a coalition and streamlines the path to victory by specifying the en route conditions necessary for winning. This has the collateral effect of focusing efforts on the common ground that supported formation of the coalition while constraining those efforts that might lead to its undoing.

EBO is simple but not easy. It offers a process by which the JFC can ensure the continued relevance of his or her campaign to the changing political environment that surrounds warfare in this century. Further, it encourages leaders at all levels to avoid a focus or over-reliance on first-order or direct effects, which can ultimately push the campaign to tactical, attrition-based operations and thus obviate the value of EBO. Metrics such as hours flown, bombs dropped, number of targets destroyed, and enemies killed by air generally reflect measurements about fighting, but they serve no useful purpose in reporting progress toward the strategic end state. For EBO planners, though, the end state and progress toward it should be clear since they benefit from a campaign-based integrating mechanism that identifies the desired effects linked to operational and strategic objectives, assigns those effects to joint or coalition components based on service or national capabilities, and then assesses the degree to which campaign actions achieve or contribute to the stated objectives and end states. Enter EBO.

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Notes

1. For additional discussion, see Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity and the Unpredictability of War,” International Security 17, no. 3 (Winter 1992): 59–90.

2. “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.” Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 119–21.

3. “Fog” is a useful metaphor for describing factors outside a commander’s finite grasp. Using the term illustratively, Clausewitz explains that commanders must operate without full and perfect knowledge of the enemy or the environment. For a contrary view on the origins and utility of this concept, see Eugenia C. Kiesling, “On War without the Fog,” Combined Arms Center Military Review, September–October 2001, http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/SepOct01/keisling.htm.

4. For a discussion of American preferences for strategies of annihilation, see Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973).

5. The military term asymmetric warfare describes warfare featuring two belligerents mismatched in their military capabilities or their accustomed methods of engagement. “Asymmetric Warfare,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare. Writers are updating US joint-doctrine publications to reflect operational planning in six phases: phase zero: shape; phase one: deter; phase two: seize the initiative; phase three: dominate; phase four: stabilize; and phase five: enable civil authority.

6. For a discussion of the interaction of airpower and asymmetric strategies, see Maj Anthony Christopher Cain et al., “Stopping U.S. Air Power,” Research Paper (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air Command and Staff College, May 1995).

7. In this article, the term science refers to a methodical or scientific approach or process; it does not refer to the science of a new technology that might result in a new capability or otherwise improved military strength.

8. For a clear explanation of how the Air Corps Tactical School’s industrial-web theory evolved and played out against Germany and Japan, see Haywood S. Hansell Jr., The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler (Atlanta: Higgins-McArthur/Longino and Porter, 1972).

9. Dr. Joseph Strange of the US Marine Corps War College developed a center-of-gravity analysis model based on identifying the critical capabilities, requirements, and vulnerabilities of each center of gravity. For a discussion of the model and its use in today’s environment, see Col Dale C. Eikmeier, USA, “Center of Gravity Analysis,” Military Review, July–August 2004, 2–5, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/milreview/eikmeier.pdf. See Air War Plans Division—Plan 1 (AWPD-1) for the finding about electricity. Operational commanders, however, made the decision to lower the priority of electricity, based on poor assumptions regarding Germany’s ability to reconstitute or shift electrical power.

10. Brig Gen David A. Deptula, “Effects-Based Operations: Change in the Nature of Warfare” (presentation, National Press Club, 22 April 2001).

11. For example, establishing restricted airspace such as a buffer zone to avoid triggering participation by a third-party nation.

12. From discussions with Maj Gen Robert J. Elder, commandant of the Air War College and formerly the D/JFACC of US Central Command. Printed with permission.

13. For additional discussion on assessing strategy, see Philip A. Crowl, The Strategist’s Short Catechism: Six Questions without Answers, Harmon Memorial Lectures in Military History no. 20 (Colorado Springs, CO: US Air Force Academy, 1977).

14. For an excellent summary of issues in this conflict, see Jeffrey Record, “Vietnam in Retrospect: Could We Have Won?” Parameters, Winter 1996–97, 51–65, http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/96winter/-record.htm. According to Record, “The United States, to repeat, was not militarily beaten in Vietnam. Indeed, by 1973 the United States and its South Vietnamese ally had stalemated the North Vietnamese conventional military threat and were decisively defeating the indigenous southern insurgent component of the communist threat.”

15. Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 206.

16. Ibid., 290.

17. Based on the authors’ discussions with representatives from over 40 nations over the last three years, a UN resolution supporting military action is—or will likely become—the “norm” for most nations to participate in military coalitions involving a hostile environment. The exception would be self-defense—in NATO parlance, a chapter 5 action.

18. Michael L. Dominguez, acting secretary of the Air Force (presentation, Air War College, Maxwell AFB, AL, 27 May 2005). Printed with permission.

19. Gen Anthony Zinni, USMC, retired (remarks, Center for Defense Information Board of Directors dinner, Washington, DC, 12 May 2004), Center for Defense Information, http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=2208&from_page=../program/-document.cfm.

20. Mark Sappenfield, “US Allies in Iraq: Valuable but Dwindling,” Christian Science Monitor; 4 January 2006, 1.

21. “The [MPAT] Program is a cooperative multi-national effort to facilitate the rapid and effective establishment and/or augmentation of a multinational task force headquarters. The MPAT provides responsive coalition/combined expertise in crisis action planning.” MPAT/GPOI Multinational Planning Augmentation Team, http://www2.apan-info.net/mpat. MPAT was an early and key contributor to relief efforts following the tsunami of December 2004.

22. For additional discussion, see Col Phillip S. Meilinger, “Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower,” Airpower Journal 10, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 50, 52–72, airchronicles/apj/apj96/spr96/meil.pdf . His proposition number four reads, “In essence, airpower is targeting; targeting is intelligence; and intelligence is analyzing the effects of air operations” (53).

23. The Joint Direct Attack Munition is a guidance tail kit that converts existing, unguided free-fall bombs into accurate, adverse-weather “smart” munitions.

24. In some ways, SEAD delivers initiative in combat to the enemy, whereas DEAD permanently removes a particular component from the enemy system.

25. Observations of the authors during research and interviews, both stateside and in the area of operations.

26. Joint Warfighting Center (JWFC) Pamphlet 7, Operational Implications of Effects-Based Operations, 17 November 2004, 21, http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/other_pubs/jwfcpam7.pdf.

27. From discussions with Dr. Chris Cain, a retired USAF colonel and dean of research at Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, AL. Printed with permission.

Col Steven D. Carey (USAFA; MBA, Golden Gate University) is vice-commandant of the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. His previous assignments include chief, Operations and Intelligence, Sixteenth Air Force, Aviano AB, Italy; chief, Commander’s Action Group, United States Air Forces in Europe, Ramstein AB, Germany; chief, Air Warfare Concepts Division, Air Force Doctrine Center, Maxwell AFB; and commander, 58th Fighter Squadron, 33d Fighter Wing, Eglin AFB, Florida. A fighter pilot with 4,000 flying hours, he flew combat missions in Operation Desert Storm served as director of operations for Combined Air Forces North in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, and Air War College, Colonel Carey also served as a National Defense Fellow with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.

Col Robyn S. Read, USAF, retired (BS, Texas A&M University; MS, Gonzaga University), is a research analyst with the Airpower Research Institute, part of the College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. His principal research interests include coalitions, small-war activities, and effects-based operations. During a 30-year career on active duty in the Air Force, he served as a forward air controller, tanker pilot, munitions test engineer, research pilot, staff officer, and squadron commander. He also worked security-assistance issues for two years while assigned to the US Military Group in Bogotá, Colombia. He has taught at the Air War College, primarily in strategy, doctrine, and airpower. Colonel Read is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Armed Forces Staff College, and Air War College.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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