Published Airpower Journal -
Winter 1993
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The most complete and happy victory is this: to
compel one's enemy to give up his purpose, while
suffering no harm oneself.
--Count Belisarius
To do the greatest damage to our enemy with the
least exposure to ourselves, is a military axiom
lost sight of only by ignorance of the true ends
of victory.
--Dennis Hart Mahan
If a battle can be won without suffering loss,
surely this is the most economical, if not the
most traditional, way of gaining the strategical
object.
--John Frederick Charles Fuller
THE MILITARY has long sought a quick and economical decision in battle. Leaders of armed forces the world over continue to search for the perfect maneuver, the right terrain, or the ideal weapon that promises victory at the lowest possible cost in terms of blood and treasure. Is modern air power what they are looking for? Precise aerial warfare--although not suited for every conflict--does offer certain distinct advantages over the more traditional forms of war. This article suggests an independent strategy for the application of air power--strategic paralysis--and discusses the conditions necessary for its success.1
Some readers will dismiss this article as just another parochial piece on air power. Be that as it may, the military can no longer afford to divide every budget and every conflict equally. True joint warfare demands recognition of the most appropriate and capable force for each situation and requires us to look hard at our future requirements and employment strategies.
The Gulf War of 1991--notable for technological achievements and the willingness to use them correctly--marked air power's coming of age. Failure to recognize air power's maturity or decisiveness in this war--or to downplay its potential in the next--is as myopic as suggesting that air power can totally replace land or sea forces.
Most military theorists agree that the objective of any military conflict is to change the enemy government's behavior. What is not so clear is the means of effecting such change and the role of air power in this process. Because strategic paralysis calls for attacking or threatening national-level targets that most directly support the enemy's war-making efforts and will to continue the conflict, this strategy holds promise for changing the enemy's behavior at a relatively low cost to both sides. Air power is the primary weapon of this strategy because only it can provide the access, mass, persistence, and simultaneity of attack needed to induce paralysis.
Two fundamental strategies of warfare are attrition and annihilation (fig. 1).2 On the one hand, attrition warfare seeks victory by exhausting the enemy in time, space, energy, and supplies. Because attrition warfare rarely leads to a quick, decisive victory, it is an unappealing choice for a war strategy. On the other hand, annihilation is the strategy of choice because it implies superiority over an adversary. One side seeks (or is capable of) the complete destruction of the other. But this form of war is often lengthy, costly, indiscriminate, and hard to control. Both strategies are linked by some increase in military force or war-fighting capability vis-a-vis an opponent; this increase serves to elevate attrition to annihilation. Unlike these strategies, strategic paralysis calls for precise aerial attacks against an enemy's most vital targets to paralyze his ability to continue the conflict and perhaps even break his will to do so.
The idea of paralyzing the enemy has many historical antecedents.3 In the 1950s, for example, Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart saw paralyzing an enemy by air as a way to win wars at the lowest possible cost: "It is thus more potent, as well as more economical, to disarm the enemy than to attempt his destruction by hard fighting. . . . A strategist should think in terms of paralysis, not killing." Liddell Hart argued that the resulting "psychological pressure on the government of a country may suffice to cancel all the resources at its command--so that the sword drops from a paralyzed hand." His analysis of war showed "that while the nominal strength of a country is represented by its numbers and resources, this muscular development is dependent on the state of its internal organs and nerve-system--upon its stability of control, morale, and supply."4 Liddell Hart's ideas are significant in their recognition of increasingly important levels within any government. Because strikes at the higher levels have the most impact, one can induce national or strategic paralysis by selecting targets carefully.
Strategic paralysis, then, constitutes a significant departure from the more traditional views of war. As we shall see, the success of this strategy depends upon four key elements that determine its relative strength or weakness: (1) aerospace control, (2) technology, (3) vulnerable infrastructure, and (4) vital targets.
Aerospace Control
Control of the air5 is fundamental to any successful military--let alone air--operation (fig. 2). Although air power thinkers recognized the importance of air superiority early on, warriors often found it hard to achieve. The advent of large aerial forces in World War II did little to change this reality. Despite the high praise accorded aircraft, they did not ensure victory. Before airplanes could drop their bombs, they had to be able to reach their targets; consequently, one of the largest aerial attrition campaigns ever waged took place in the skies over Germany, as each side fought for control. Thus, the introduction of modern bombers in World War II simply moved the bloody trenches of World War I to 25,000 feet. When the Germans lost the battle for the air, they lost the war.
Neither solely annihilative nor solely attritive, strategic paralysis is distinguished by a qualitative--not quantitative--change in force or capability. That is, because one attacks the enemy anywhere, anytime, with a simultaneity and guaranteed precision that ensures few casualties,6 the strategy holds the promise--thanks to technology--of resolving conflict at a level of destruction far short of complete annihilation.
Technology
High technology makes possible an alternative to the strategy of annihilation (fig. 3).7 Such innovations as precision guided munitions, cruise missiles, global positioning systems, and stealthy airplanes now give air power the penetrative capability, persistence, and specialized weaponry necessary to directly attack an enemy's strategic centers with devastating accuracy.
The Gulf War was not the first conflict in which the US sought to employ a strategy similar to strategic paralysis. For example, the US began World War II with a doctrine that advocated the daylight precision bombing of Germany's industrialized centers as a way to force Germany into ending the war. But the available airplanes, bombs, and navigational instruments (i.e., the technology) did not measure up.8 Indeed, because accuracy and ordnance were so poor, targets had to be attacked heavily and often. For example, 108 B-17s were required to achieve a 96 percent probability of kill on a power-station switching yard measuring 400' x 500'.9 It comes as no surprise, then, that Air War Plans Division--Plan 1 (AWPD-1) called for 6,860 bombers to destroy only 154 targets. The situation was no better for B-29s in the Pacific, where "only 50% of [the] total aircraft dispatched would successfully attack a given target and . . . only 25% of the bombs dropped (or 12% of the total bombs dispatched) would fall within a 1000 foot radius of the aiming point."10 As one writer observed about war, "You can fire small-calibre rifle bullets indiscriminately into an elephant all day, and he will still be on his feet at night. One aimed shot, however, will knock him to his knees."11 Technology now allows us to take that aimed shot.
Vulnerable Infrastructure
If strategic paralysis is to attain quick victory by applying technologically superior air power, planners must identify important, vulnerable targets.12 Such targets are readily found in a modern, industrialized society that relies on a fixed and vulnerable infrastructure. For example, because Iraq's bridges, communication centers, power production stations, and water plants were strategically important and extremely vulnerable to air attack, they were nearly ideal targets for a strategic paralysis campaign. In fact, the air campaign in Operation Desert Storm came as close to fulfilling this strategy as any campaign ever conducted, a fact acknowledged by Secretary of the Air Force Donald B. Rice, who noted the Air Force's "ability to paralyze our adversaries' war-fighting ability as air power did in Operation Desert Storm."13
Vital Targets
Target selection lies at the heart of military doctrine and theory. If aiming your effort--as Carl von Clausewitz would say--is important for the ground commander, it is much more so for the air commander because air power is expensive and precious.14 Air power can put an enormous amount of fire on an enemy position, but it is costly and difficult to sustain. Hitting an insignificant target with a bomb that has been flown 3,000 nautical miles is wasteful. Strategic paralysis sensibly assumes that every country has some targets that are more important than others in terms of sustaining the enemy's capability or will to wage war. Because the destruction of these targets or national elements of value (NEV)15 can paralyze the enemy government, one should concentrate one's air power resources exclusively on those targets. Given their importance, NEVs deserve closer examination.
Ideally, one should direct air attacks against a vulnerable, vital element of the enemy's national structure, and this element should consist of only a few targets. Understanding and identifying these targets is as much an art as it is a science. If a country is to be considered a sovereign power, it must enjoy at least four instruments of national power or influence: political, economic, military, and informational.16 Since some aspects of these four instruments are also sources of strength in war, they should be targeted.
These types of targets have already been identified by such people as Clausewitz, Henri de Jomini, Giulio Douhet, Gen William ("Billy") Mitchell, Liddell Hart, and Col John Warden, and by such organizations as the Air Corps Tactical School and the German Luftwaffe (in World War II). Seven NEVs in particular are noteworthy: (1) leadership, (2) industry, (3) armed forces, (4) population, (5) transportation, (6) communications, and (7) alliances. These seven are important because they delineate a country's sources of strength and identify the target sets necessary for the country's defeat. In theory, one can induce paralysis on a strategic scale by neutralizing the right combination of these elements.
It is important to understand that NEVs are interdependent and can compensate for each other.17 One problem with the historical view of air power targeting theory is the notion that the destruction of a single target or target set can bring down entire countries (e.g., the bombing of the ball bearing industry in Germany in World War II). This premise generally has no basis in fact. A more realistic approach is to assume some sort of dynamic interaction among NEVs (fig. 4). Although a single NEV might be more important than others at a given moment, it is still affected by the others. The elimination of any NEV will destabilize the others.
Individuals important enough to be NEVs (e.g., modern-day dictators) are rare these days.18 The destruction of one target (or target set) could be enough to collapse an enemy government, depending on the importance of the NEV and the speed and thoroughness of its destruction, as well as the dependence, resiliency, and speed of compensation of the other NEVs in relation to it.
This notion of replenishment and substitution (i.e., the ability of an NEV to increase in importance/size, to reposition itself, etc.) is especially important.19 For example, if a country's industry were crippled by enemy attacks, a suitably motivated and effective leader could rally his population to work harder and thereby compensate for the loss. If the leader were killed, however, the system would have to compensate. Clearly, democratic governments with established rules of succession are more likely to survive this type of assault. But work-arounds and efforts at substitution can go only so far, especially when attacks occur across a wide spectrum of NEVs. The strategic trauma associated with such strikes cannot easily be compensated for, regardless of one's preparation. Some people have compared such wide-ranging attacks to a type of nationwide torture (i.e., "death by a thousand cuts").20
Thinking in terms of NEVs instead of centers of gravity offers several benefits. For instance, while every country possesses all seven NEVs, no two countries will have the same strategic target sets. If a country's NEVs can wax and wane in war, then so can its most important targets. At best, depicting something as an NEV is accurate only at the time of the "snapshot." Therefore, what might have been a critical target at the beginning of the war might not be later on. Because some elements can increase in importance (e.g., by compensating for the weaknesses of others), one must continually reevaluate them during the conflict. The same is true of alliances, whose security guarantees, communications links, shared religious and cultural beliefs, and economic ties are also likely to change during a conflict. One need only look at the complex coalition in Operation Desert Storm (and Saddam's strategy to defeat it) to appreciate the importance of understanding the value and vulnerabilities inherent in any alliance.
Although every country has the same NEVs, their relative importance changes--depending on the circumstances. Such was the view of Maj Muir S. Fairchild, an instructor at the Air Corps Tactical School, who wrote in April 1938 that
each nation differs from all other nations, not only in its degree of vulnerability to air attack, but also in the kind of vulnerability; that is to say in the elements of its national structure that are most vulnerable to this sort of an attack. One nation is weak and vulnerable in one respect and strong in another--while the exact opposite may be true of its neighbor [emphasis in original].21
NEVs mirror each country's international status in industrial, social, cultural, and political development because they comprise the very elements which convey such status. NEVs may also reside outside the geographical boundaries of the country in question. During Desert Storm, for example, Saddam saw Israel's relationship with the US and other members of the coalition as a vulnerability and tried to exploit the situation by directing the majority of his Scud missile attacks not at the coalition but at Israel. Fortunately (for a number of reasons), he was unsuccessful in fragmenting the coalition, but the strategic outcome probably would have been different, had he succeeded.
NEVs are also more vulnerable when they are highly developed. Thus, the higher a country's position on the industrial ladder, the more likely its NEVs will be vulnerable to air power attack. Over 50 years ago, Maj Alexander P. de Seversky observed that "total war from the air against an undeveloped country or region is well-nigh futile; it is one of the curious features of the most modern weapon that it is especially effective against the most modern types of civilization."22
The characteristics of a country's infrastructure are the key to its vulnerability. For example, transportation is essential to any country's ability to sustain itself in combat. However, using aircraft to attack men and materials that are moving along jungle trails is considerably more difficult than attacking more modern rail, road, and air transportation systems. The same holds true for communications. Runners carrying messages are far less susceptible to systematic air attack than are telephone lines or microwave towers.
Another consideration that has a bearing on NEVs is the enemy's proclivity to make rational decisions. One cannot expect to exert much influence on an enemy who places no value on the targets attacked. Thus, in order to avoid wasted effort, the attacker must understand how the enemy values his assets. Air Comdr Jasjit Singh contends that "the aim of strategic air power is [the] destruction, disruption and dislocation of the enemy war-waging machine in its totality so as to . . . increase the costs of waging war to an unacceptable level." In other words, the enemy must value his costs and unacceptable levels in a way that is predictable or understandable.23 A rational enemy will give up only when the costs of continuing the conflict outweigh any potential benefits. Air power's toughest challenge (as Douhet found out) may be in educating future adversaries in the fact that loss of the air means loss of the conflict.
Last, first-class intelligence is vital to the selection of NEVs, for airpower is targeting and targeting is intelligence.24 It is especially important to a strategy of strategic paralysis because precision weapons require precise intelligence. It would be foolish to load an airplane with laser guided bombs and send it off against a city without any specific targets in mind. Without good intelligence, one will waste effort, extend conflict, and increase costs. As Charles de Gaulle observed, "A general with an excellent army most carefully deployed for battle will yet be defeated if he is insufficiently informed about the enemy."25
Despite the appeal of a strategy of strategic paralysis, one must be aware that a diminishment of any of the four elements critical to its success--especially technology and aerospace control--could have an adverse effect on the strategy (fig. 5). A "loss" of technology, for example, could lead to a less discriminating war of annihilation.26 In this instance, one doesn't lose aerospace control--only the ability to attack precisely. This situation could occur if an enemy becomes able to employ an effective countermeasure for a wide range of our precision guided munitions or cruise missiles. (In the future, this might entail nothing more than interfering with our global positioning system, on which our weapons and airplanes are likely to become more dependent.)
More serious is a loss of aerospace control, which could lead to a war of attrition. This situation could occur if an enemy becomes able to detect and destroy our stealthy aircraft, a situation that would force us to regain the skies (i.e., work through the attrition stage) before we could continue with either annihilation or strategic paralysis.
Aerospace control might also be lost by nontechnical means, including the failure to logistically maintain the precision weapons or airframes required for air superiority, or the imposition of politically motivated restrictions that limit the exploitation of our strengths or the enemy's weaknesses. Regardless of the cause, loss of aerospace control eliminates any hope of strategically paralyzing the enemy.
Would any country other than the United States be interested in pursuing a strategy of strategic paralysis? First, the strategy should appeal to any country seeking a quicker victory at a relatively lower cost. However, the requisite elements of high technology and aerospace control likely put the strategy beyond the means of all but the most technologically advanced and wealthy countries. Second, the strategy should appeal to any country seeking to minimize civilian and military casualties and to preserve human rights. However, such considerations are usually irrelevant to aggressor nations, who would likely perceive strategic paralysis as a strategy of weakness.
Further, strategic paralysis is not suited for every situation. A rogue country that is aggressively pursuing territory is not likely to benefit from this strategy because the territory it desires would have to be occupied. Clearly, the need for aerospace control makes strategic paralysis an offensive strategy. One cannot imagine an attacker (certainly not after the Gulf War) allowing his opponent to gain and maintain aerospace control (or attacking at all with inferior air power assets).
But strategic paralysis is suited for the US military, which prefers to fight wars as quickly, inexpensively, and bloodlessly (on both sides) as possible. High-tech air power makes this strategy feasible. Attrition and annihilation are no longer the only strategies available to the military commander. Strategic paralysis has come of age.
1. Only 16 years after the Wright brothers' first flight, Col John Frederick Charles Fuller discussed "Strategic Paralysis as the Object of the Decisive Attack," in On Future Warfare (London: Sifton Praed and Co., Ltd., 1928), 83.
2. See Jehuda L. Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation (London: Greenwood Press, 1986), 177. Wallach credits German historian Hans Delbruck with introducing the term attrition strategy and describes attrition as the opposite of annihilation. See also Hans Delbruck, "On the Contrast between the Strategies of Attrition and Annihilation," in History of the Art of War, vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, trans. W. J. Renfroe, Jr. (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 439-44, 108-9; and Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 384.
3. Brig Gen William ("Billy") Mitchell, Giulio Douhet, and Gen Sir Edward Bruce Hamely, as well as the Air Corps Tactical School and the German Luftwaffe (along with many others), refer to air power's ability to paralyze an enemy.
4. Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (1954; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 212.
5. Control of the air is usually thought of as air superiority or air supremacy and is attained by sheer firepower or overwhelming force, or is inherent in the weapon system used. For example, a stealth aircraft brings its own type of air superiority to the fight and does not engage in the traditional fight for access that is normally associated with gaining and maintaining air superiority.
6. In theory, wars conducted according to strategic paralysis can end relatively early because of low costs on both sides. If losses are already high in annihilative or attritive wars, it may be much harder for the enemy to stop the conflict and save face than it would be if civilian casualties and damage were relatively light. As Sir Hugh M. Trenchard observed, "Air can carry much more destruction to the enemy per man with a minimum loss of life than any other form of warfare. . . . Though the cost of life and limb of the bomber crews may on occasion be heavy, the world has never known such a small rate of loss in comparison to the population of the nation, taking into consideration the magnitude of these great bombing battles and the effect they are having in shortening the war." Air Marshal Sir Hugh M. Trenchard, "The Effect of the Rise of Air Power on War," in Air Power: Three Papers (London: Air Ministry, Directorate of Staff Duties, 1946), 10, 12.
7. I am indebted to Maj Nick Clemens and Col Phil Meilinger of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell AFB, Ala., for helping distill and nurture this concept.
8. Although the US Strategic Bombing Survey and many air power advocates argue that we were in fact successful in our bombing strategy of strategic paralysis against the Germans, our victory required the occupation of Germany and the nearly complete annihilation of the German armed forces and economy. Certainly, this was no simple paralysis.
9. Briefing, Headquarters USAF, subject: The Air Campaign from Close to the Mirror, 9 February 1992.
10. Lt Col Thomas A. Fabyanic, Strategic Air Attack in the United States Air Force: A Case Study, Professional Study no. 5899 (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air War College, April 1976), 64, 84, 104-6; Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby, Air Bombardment: The Story of Its Development (New York: Harper Brothers, 1961), 21-26; and Robert F. Futrell, The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983), 130.
11. William Bradford Huie, The Fight for Air Power (New York: American Book-Stratford Press, Inc., 1942), 261-62.
12. This is not to say that air power has no role in low-intensity conflict with countries that have no vulnerable infrastructures. On the contrary, air power offers solutions along the full spectrum of conflict. A more legitimate question would concern the role of air power in a large-scale conventional conflict against a third world nation with a minimal infrastructure, such as Vietnam.
13. Julie Bird, "Rice: New Capabilities Are Needed," Air Force Times, 11 November 1991, 6.
14. Clausewitz, 486. When air power resources are plentiful, target selection is easy. "However when the power resources are scarce, critical target selection is more difficult. Not only must the comparative worth of the targets be measured, but the available strike resources must be measured and allocated against them." Air Force Pamphlet (AFP) 200-17, An Introduction to Air Force Targeting, 11 October 1978, 9-2. Modern aerospace resources are very expensive, hard to replace, and subject to a multitude of abuses by people who don't understand them. They must be conserved by caring and competent airmen. See the note on "Economy of Force" in Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, vol. 1, March 1992, 16.
15. NEVs were called "vital centers" by Giulio Douhet, "vital targets" by Gen Curtis LeMay, "decisive strategic points" by Henri de Jomini, "panacea targets" by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur ("Bomber") Harris, "Achilles' heels" by Liddell Hart, "nerve centers" by Billy Mitchell, and "centers of gravity" by Clausewitz. They were all referring to the same thing.
16. Some writers describe the informational instrument of power as either social or psychological. See Joint Pub 3-07, Doctrine for Joint Operations in Low Intensity Conflict (test pub), October 1990, I-7.
17. NEVs are not centers of gravity. Clausewitz defined center of gravity as "the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed." Clausewitz, 596. He recognized that more than one center could exist and that nonphysical entities such as public opinion and alliances could be centers of gravity. However, Clausewitz does not address the concept of interaction between them.
18. "Non-democratic regimes usually have unreliable arrangements for the legitimate transfer of power, and doubts about how it can be accomplished smoothly may increase the longer a single leader lasts in office. There is a widespread presumption that countries ruled for extended periods by authoritarian leaders degenerate into chaos when those rulers die and their special personal status no longer holds the lid on their countries' tensions. It is, however, also possible to assume the contrary." Richard K. Betts and Samuel P. Huntington, "Dead Dictators and Rioting Mobs: Does the Demise of Authoritarian Rulers Lead to Political Instability?" International Security, Winter 1985-1986, 112. This article does not address the overthrow or death of the leader in a coup d'Åtat, which is one of the possible outcomes of the strategy of strategic paralysis.
19. See Mancur Olson, Jr., The Economics of Wartime Shortage (1963; reprint, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1991), 17.
20. Col John A. Warden III, "What Aerospace Lessons Should We Carry into the Future from the Gulf War?" presentation to conference on Aerospace Power's Role in American National Security, Crystal City, Va., 16 March 1993.
21. Maj Muir S. Fairchild, "The New York Industrial Area," lecture no. AF-11C, Air Corps Tactical School, 6 April 1938, 1, document no. 248.2019A-12, USAF Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Ala. See also idem, "Primary Strategic Objectives of Air Forces," lecture no. AF-14C, Air Corps Tactical School, 11 April 1938, 6, document no. 248.2019A-14, USAF Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB, Ala.
22. Maj Alexander P. de Seversky, Victory through Air Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), 101-2.
23. Air Comdr Jasjit Singh, Air Power in Modern Warfare (New Delhi: Lancer International, 1985), xxxi.
24. See also AFP 200-22, Targeting: Profession and Process, 12 May 1989.
25. Charles de Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword, trans. Gerard Hopkins (New York: Criterion Books, 1960), 80.
26. Theoretically, one could still paralyze an enemy with nonprecise (annihilative) weapons, but such attacks would be costlier and bloodier than those with precision weapons.
Contributor
Maj Jason B. Barlow (BS, University of Hawaii, MPA, Golden Gate University) is an action officer with the Operational Issues Group, Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Operations, Headquarters USAF. He has served as a U-2/TR-1 training flight commander, instructor, and evaluator pilot, and as a T-38 instructor, evaluator pilot, and academic instructor. Major Barlow is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the inaugural class of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies (SAAS), Maxwell AFB, Alabama.
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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