: Colonel John A Warden III (USAF Retd) is a modern air power theorist who claims that air power has fundamentally changed the very nature of war. His “Warden’s Rings” model for prioritizing targets...

Air Power Campaign
Running Head: AIR POWER CAMPAIGN
Warden’s model in first Gulf war
Abstract
In the year 1995, Col. Warden has published air power theory and termed it as ‘The energy as a system’ for conducting and managing air campaign in desert storm, which has emerged as a classic staple of airpower theory. Warden’s constructed air power theory is described as a series of concentric rings, with the leadership at the centre role. The subsequent rings of the model contain organic essentials, infrastructure, and population and finally fielded forced, aimed at protecting inner rings, and, destroying enemy’s campaign in stepwise manner. The approach has handled and organised in fairly well manner, although globalisation and pace of technological advancements have necessitated some refinements and up-gradations in the model.
Introduction
John Warden III, born in December 1943, joined and retired as a colonel in the United States Air Force Academy. His career spanned for around 30 years, from 1965 to 1995, included planning and handling several air campaigns in Vietnam, Germany, Spain, Italy and Korea. On completing number of assignments, John Warden is being called and positioned as the ‘leading air power theorists in the US air force’ in second half of the 20th century. His career is marked with brilliance and influential figure caused strong influence on the future of air power. He is being rewarded as the most creative airmen of the times, along with premier US air force strategic thinkers led several military historians, officer and experts to conclude Warden’s model as a new approach to the conduct of war (Pietrucha, 2015).
Warden model
Warden’s model or five ring system theory viewed enemy as a system with the set of five concentric rings, where each ring represents a centre of gravity. The rings are defined and laid down in the gravity of descending priority from the centre outwards, in simple words, centre ring is considered as the most important and outer ring as the least, in relative terms, as shown below:
(Source: RNZAF Air Power Development Centre Bulletin: Revisiting Warden’s Rings Targeting for Today, 2018).
Each level of ‘ring’ represents individual layer of system, with an idea of attacking enemy in sequential manner for paralysing their forces. Warden argued that enemy’s force should never be attacked in wholesome manner, rather, attacking needs to be planned and preceded in accordance to each layer of the ring. This optimise strike attack as attacker gets engaged and target as many rings as possible with the special emphasis on targeting and taking out centre ring, in order to demolish and suppress enemy’s leadership, which eventually, results in total physical paralysis (RNZAF Air Power Development Centre Bulletin: Revisiting Warden’s Rings Targeting for Today, 2018).
To emphasise and illustrate the Warden model, his propounded air power model or theory conceptualised system as a body having head and brain at the centre, removal of which cause body to die. None of this concept or strategy is entirely new as it can be traced back or found its roots to the air power theories and model developed by Trenchard, Douhet, and Mitchell. It is the basic or underlying notion in the field of air power where enemy’s outer strength and areas are strike and attacked upon, for distorting ‘heart’ of an enemy.
Warden’s visualisation of enemy as a ‘system’ holds primary importance in the air power world signifying greatest level of command, control and communication within the system. With the belief of functional disruption, strategic paralysis and systemic effect, air power theory of Warden has played prominent role in changing United States view of war-fighting and attacking at both strategic and operational levels. His theory based on effects-based planning and radical ideas have transformed air power’s purposes and applications, has probably positioned him the most influential air power theories since first Gulf war (Mueller, 2010).
Evaluating its appropriateness using air power campaign
Since 1989, Warden’s air power theory has led several wars, such as first and second Gulf wars, Vietnam War and many more where enemy’s condition and position is attacked and moulded for receiving positive results and outcomes. In the underlying assignment, first Gulf war is...