Air power is bang on target

By SQNLDR Alex Post

Air Power Development Centre

IN ESSENCE, air power is targeting, targeting is intelligence, and intelligence is analysing the effects of air operations.

This proposition, made by the Dean of the USAF’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Colonel Phillip Meilinger, reveals much about the nature of air power as distinct from land and maritime power.

Before the advent of air power, countries protected the vital elements of their national power – economic, political and military – with their armies and navies, which had to be defeated before these vital elements could be threatened.

Often, victory in battle was sufficient for overall victory as countries sought to protect the sources of their national power.

The early air power theorists recognised that air power had the ability to operate against any part of an opponent’s territory. Air power was not operationally constrained by geographic barriers like mountains, rivers or oceans.

Its speed and range allowed it to threaten the entire country and, in contrast to armies and navies, it could also bypass surface defence forces. As a consequence, from the outset of a conflict, most elements of an opponent’s national power could be threatened and not just its armed forces.

But with this ubiquitous capability commanders in World War II found themselves confronted with the problem of deciding what targets would produce the greatest effects on the enemy and their ability, and will, to conduct military operations.

In Europe, the allies targeted, at one time or another, the aircraft industry, industrial workers’ morale, oil production and the transport system.

In pursuit of this strategy, they created huge bomber fleets because the imprecision of the air weapons necessitated large numbers of bombs to be dropped to increase the probability of hitting the target.

Since WWII, much effort has been expended in developing useable targeting methodologies. One outcome of this effort has been John Warden’s five ring targeting model that ranks broad targets in order of importance.

It starts with the highest priority as leadership, followed by means of production, infrastructure, population and lastly, the fielded armed forces.

This model has influenced recent air operations in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia.

A significant effort was made in the Serbian operations to target the small circle of President Slobodan Miloseovic’s immediate leadership group.

Informational attacks were directed against them individually, while physical attacks were mounted against their personal property and sources of wealth.

Such attacks have been made possible by the precision provided by tremendous advances in technology.

But precision munitions require precision intelligence if they are to be most effectively used. The importance of precision pre-strike intelligence is vital, not only in identifying and locating targets, but in characterising them in all dimensions so that the effect generated by their destruction in the whole enemy system can be accurately estimated.

Just as important is precise, post-strike, battle damage assessment to assess the effect actually produced and in assessing the need for re-attacking the target.

Targeting has developed as a result of the advances in air and space technology and the concept of effects based operations.

It illustrates some of air power’s most important characteristics: penetration, precision, reach, and speed. The relationship between targeting and air power is such that it may be said that air power is effective targeting.

– SQNLDR Post is responsible for the development of future concepts at the Air Power Development Centre.

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