the important measure is not the targets destroyed but

AIR FORCE Magazine / April 200146

By Brig. Gen. David A. Deptula

The important measure is not the targets destroyed butrather the effect on the enemy’s capabilities and actions.

N the predawn darkness ofJan. 17, 1991, Air Force Maj.Greg Biscone piloted his hugeB-52 bomber toward Wadi AlKirr airfield, a fighter base incentral Iraq and one of the

Gulf War’s prominent first-night tar-gets. Nearby, another Air Force B-52also was speeding toward the base.

The BUFFs’ aim points on thatnight were the taxiways linking WadiAl Kirr’s runway and hardened air-craft shelters. The bombers droppedlow for the approach and, in a matterof minutes, the B-52s executed atextbook multi-axis attack, crippledthe airfield, and turned for home.

By that time, stealthy F-117s al-ready had struck targets in down-town Baghdad. Tomahawk cruisemissiles followed, blasting electri-cal and communication systems inthe capital.

F-15E fighters over western Iraqattacked launch facilities from whichScud missiles could hit Israel or coa-lition nations.

As Biscone’s B-52 turned towardhome, coalition raids commenced atfour more fighter bases. Elsewhere,13 F-117 attack aircraft bombed com-mand bunkers, communications ex-

changes, interceptor operations cen-ters, and satellite downlink facilities.

In western Iraq, 30 aircraft attackedchemical weapon facilities. Thirty-eight others shut down Shaibah air-field north of Basra. Forty-four blastedsurface-to-air missile sites near AlTaqqadum airfield, Habanniyah oilstorage area, and three chemical weap-ons precursor facilities.

Republican Guard headquarterscame under attack. Suspected bio-logical weapons storage sites werehit. So were critical oil storage fa-cilities.

Conventional air launched cruisemissiles—launched from B-52s af-ter an epic flight from the US—hitkey electrical facilities at Al Mawsilin the country’s northern reaches.

This all happened in the first fewhours of the Gulf War. And by theend of the first day, coalition war-planes also had hit bridges, militarysupport factories, and naval facili-ties.

Coalition aircraft forces had in asingle 24-hour period flown some1,300 offensive sorties against 152targets—the most separate-target airattacks in the history of air warfare.Indeed, the Gulf War began with

strikes against more targets than werehit by the entire Eighth Air Force in1942 and 1943.

It was not just the sheer number ofsorties that made Day 1 so unusual,however. Just as important, if notmore so, were the specific effectsproduced by this bombing activity.The war’s first night demonstratedthat the conduct of war had changed.It marked the birth of “effects-based”

Firing forEffectsI

Shock Wave. In the Gulf War, swiftattacks with precision weapons

paralyzed Iraq’s ability to act. Here,an aircraft engine lies in front of a

demolished fighter shelter at Jalibahair base in Iraq.

AIR FORCE Magazine / April 2001 47

DO

D p

ho

to


required to suppress enemy defenseslimits the number of targets that canbe attacked at one time.

Fig. 4 depicts simultaneous attackagainst the same set of targets. Hit-ting all pieces of a defense systemeases the attack on high-value tar-gets but still leads to a somewhatsequential application of force. Themajority of targets are defenses enroute to and in the area of the targetof value. Such a partial simultaneousattack can be accomplished with largeforce packages of nonstealthy air-craft in discrete areas or in a one-time attack on a limited target set.However, the large force packagesto suppress enemy air defenses tendto limit the total number of areas thatcan be struck.

Simultaneous attack on all objec-tives opens a door to major changesin warfare. It permits surprise at thetactical level, a larger span of influ-ence, fewer casualties, paralyzingeffects, and reduction in time re-quired to gain control over the en-emy.

Fig. 5 depicts simultaneous attackagainst a wider array of critical tar-gets. Leadership facilities, refinedoil and electricity, transportation

operations, or EBO, as a principalmeans of conducting warfare.

The air campaign capitalized onemerging capabilities and was builtaround highly adaptive attack plans.These plans were shaped to paralyzeSaddam Hussein’s ability to controlhis forces, neutralize the ability ofthose forces to fight, undermine theirwill to fight, reduce the size of Iraq’smilitary production base, and createconditions needed for control ofIraq’s capacity to build weapons ofmass destruction.

This approach allowed coalitionforces to avoid Iraq’s principalstrength—its vast, heavily armoreddefensive armies—and thwart Bagh-dad’s ability to inflict massive ca-sualties.

It is a concept that has come to beknown as “parallel warfare” and wasbased upon the coalition’s ability toachieve specific effects on, not theabsolute destruction of, targets.

The concept can best be under-stood through an analogy. Electricalcircuits are of two basic types—se-rial and parallel. In the series circuit(Fig. 1), one closes a switch andelectrons flow from the power sourceto the first bulb. Current must pass

through each light before it can lightthe next.

In the parallel circuit (Fig. 2), clos-ing the switch sends current to allbulbs simultaneously, and each lightsup in an independent way. The con-cept, in war, describes an operationin which forces attack all major tar-gets at more or less the same time, toattain cascading effects.

The object of parallel war is toachieve effective control over theset of systems relied on by an adver-sary for power and influence—lead-ership, population, essential indus-tries, transportation, and forces.

Before the Gulf War, air campaignstook on targets sequentially, striv-ing to “roll back” enemy defenses soaircraft could attack targets of high-est value. Area and point defenseshad to be eliminated before war plan-ners could gain access to what theyreally wanted to attack.

In Fig. 3, depicting sequential at-tack, the early warning sites, air-fields, operations centers, anti-air-craft artillery, and SAM systems aretargeted. Each target clears the wayfor the next one until finally thetarget of value, in this case leader-ship, can be hit. The effort and time

Fig. 3

Before the Gulf War, airmen applied force sequentiallyto “roll back” defenses. They had to eliminate areaand point defenses to gain access to what they reallywanted to hit. Each step cleared the way for the nextuntil, finally, a target of value—in this case, leader-ship—was hit. The huge effort made simultaneousattacks on targets impossible.

Fig. 1

The word “parallel” in “parallel warfare” comes frombasic circuitry. A series circuit is shown at left. Whenone closes the switch, electrons flow from a source tofive light bulbs. However, electricity must passthrough each light before lighting the next—setting upthe danger of single-point failure. This is called“sequential” flow.

Fig. 2

This figure shows a parallel circuit. The switch closesand electrons flow to all bulbs at the same time, in

simultaneous flow. The system is not vulnerable to asingle-point failure. Applying the same concept to the

application of force in war yields the terms serial(sequential) and parallel (simultaneous) warfare.


nets, connectivity between the lead-ership and the population, and fieldedmilitary forces are attacked at thesame time. This dramatically expandsthe ability to control enemy actions.

Parallel war entails more than com-pressing sequential attacks into asingle multifaceted attack. Parallelwar exploits time, space, and levelsof war to achieve rapid dominance.In the opening hours of the GulfWar, coalition forces exploited allthree dimensions.

Time. Coalition aircraft struckmore than 50 targets in the first 90minutes of war and more than 150 inthe first 24 hours.

Space. Attacks ranged over theentirety of the Iraqi battlespace. Dis-tance did not bar attack on any tar-get.

Levels of war. The allies mountedsimultaneous attacks on targets oftactical, operational, and strategicsignificance.

Vigorous exploitation of time,space, and levels of war to achievespecific purposes is the essence ofEBO. Rendering an enemy force use-less is just as effective as eliminat-ing it altogether.

Traditionally, military forces haveachieved their goals through destruc-tion of enemy forces. Centuries ofsurface warfare created a commonview that such destruction was theintrinsic purpose of military forcesand combat.

However, war’s ultimate purposeis to compel a positive political out-come. Use of force to control ratherthan destroy an opponent’s ability toact opens up new possibilities.

Control—the ability to eradicatethe strategic freedom of the adver-sary—does not necessarily meaneliminating all of that enemy’s tacti-cal actions. In the Gulf War, Iraqnever lost the capability to fly indi-vidual aircraft sorties. However,these air sorties were of little or noconsequence to the outcome of theconflict.

Critical to the concept of controlis the ability to affect essential sys-tems on which an enemy relies. Us-ing force to inject incapacitating ef-fects in an entire system can yieldeffective control over that system.You could also “control” a systemby destroying it, but it would requiremuch more military force for no bet-ter or more useful result.

Pursuit of effective control con-serves military forces otherwiseneeded for destruction. This in turnexpands the number of systems sub-ject to control through force appli-cation. Case in point: It takes a cer-tain amount of force to obliterate theair defense system around Baghdadbut a much smaller amount to shutdown a power grid supplying elec-tricity to the system. Attacking inthis way frees up aircraft for otherpurposes.

Effective control of enough of theadversary’s enabling operational-level systems will paralyze his abil-ity to function at the strategic level.Ultimately, the enemy will be com-pelled to acquiesce to the will of thecontrolling force.

In the Gulf War, coalition forcesattacked in parallel at rates so highthat Iraq had essentially no chanceto repair lost assets or find alterna-tives and continue its resistance.

Military planners have always seenthe desirability and value of simul-taneous attacks, but they had neverbeen able to produce them. This wasdue to three factors:

Effective air defenses, whichforced the attacker to divert aircraftaway from the main attack.

Inaccurate weapons, which pro-duced a need to mass aircraft andbombs in order to have a chance ofhitting the target.

Lack of an operational-level con-cept focusing on the use of effectsrather than destruction.

The first two shortcomings re-quired technological solutions—namely, stealth and precision guidedweapons—which did not mature un-til the late 1980s. When they were inhand, planners were able to tacklethe third factor.

For decades, airpower theoriessuffered from weakness in execu-tion. The World War II campaignsagainst German ball-bearing and air-

Fig. 4

Hitting air defense elements simultaneously easesattacks on main targets but still yields a somewhat

sequential force application. Nonstealthy aircraft canconduct attacks only in large force packages indiscrete areas or on a one-time attack against a

limited target set. This produces little shock effect.

Fig. 5

Stealth and precision permit airmen to strike a widearray of key targets all at once. This capacity to attackthe entire array of high-value objectives with little orno effort to suppress enemy defenses producestactical surprise, a wide span of influence, fewercasualties, paralyzing effects, and shorter wars.


craft industries took seven months.The anti-transport campaign took fivemonths, and the oil campaign tooksix months. These relatively longoperations gave the enemy time torecover in other systems and escapea rapid paralyzing blow.

In the Gulf War, however, preci-sion munitions obviated a need formass. Coalition forces dropped 9,000laser-guided bombs, but that under-states their impact. In some cases, asingle aircraft and one PrecisionGuided Munition produced the sameresult as a World War II raid of1,000 airplanes delivering 9,000bombs.

In short, the arrival of PGMs off-set the need for mass attacks toachieve a high probability of suc-cess.

By the 1970s, radar detection andradar-guided surface missiles andguns had become a lethal fact of thebattlespace. Experience in Vietnamand the 1973 Arab–Israeli war indi-cated that highly defended targetswould yield to successful attack onlywhen protected and attacked by large“force packages” to get strike air-craft into and out of a target area.

A typical force package duringthe 1972 Linebacker I campaign con-sisted of 62 combat aircraft (less airrefuelers) to get 16 fighter–bombersinto and out of a target area. This cutdown the number of targets that couldbe attacked at any time.

Stealth—in the form of the F-117—provided the solution to this prob-

lem. Stealth radically reduced thenumber of aircraft, supporting per-sonnel, and infrastructure requiredto effectively strike a large numberof targets. In the Gulf, F-117s flewless than 2 percent of combat sortiesbut attacked 43 percent of targets onthe master target list.

In a typical attack comparison, anonstealth package of 41 aircraft wasneeded to hit a single target withthree aim points in the Basra area. Atthe same time, 20 F-117s were sentagainst 37 aim points in areas ofequally high threat, with no losses.

Conventional planners and intel-ligence personnel tend to think abouttargeting in terms of “required num-ber of sorties” to achieve “desireddamage against each target.” An in-telligence evaluation of Gulf air warprogress demonstrates how one canbe misled by a focus on individualtarget damage.

On Feb. 15, 1991, the coalitiontarget-planning cell received a re-port on the electric target set. Not alltargets included in the primary andsecondary electric target set had beendestroyed or damaged to a specificpercentage. Thus, the analysis con-cluded, the coalition had not met itsobjective.

In reality, Baghdad’s electricitysystem had ceased to function. Theplanning cell knew the true situationand reduced the number of plannedstrikes. Some Iraqi power plant man-agers even shut down their plants toavoid attack. Coalition air forces

achieved their goal without expos-ing themselves to danger.

The Gulf War’s initial attack plancalled for shutting down Iraq’s airdefense command-and-control sys-tem through complete destruction.However, it was determined that therewere not enough stealthy F-117s todestroy each of the nodes of the airdefense system simultaneously.

The solution lay in effects-basedtargeting. Not all nodes had to bedestroyed; attacks needed only tomake them ineffective and unable toconduct operations during specificperiods.

The attack plan was rewritten in away that allocated fewer F-117 loadsto some targets. This greatly multi-plied the number of stealth/preci-sion strikes available for use else-where.

The opening 24 hours of the airwar saw the fleet of F-117s carry outattacks on 76 separate targets. Forcomparision, under the traditionaldestruction-based way of war, planscalled for the F-117s to attack onlytwo targets on the first day.

Planning for effects raises com-plex issues. Planners, working withintelligence officers, must determinewhich effects on each enemy systemwill contribute most to the attain-ment of military and political objec-tives of the theater campaign. Thisdepends upon the specific politicaland military objective, enemy vul-nerabilities, individual target sys-tems, and weapon systems capabili-ties.

A campaign plan is highly depen-dent on the weapon systems avail-able. Thus, an effective plan squeezesmaximum impact from those sys-tems—not in terms of absolute de-struction of a list of targets but interms of effects desired upon targetsystems.

Strategy means matching meansand ends. Assigning certain air as-sets (means) to certain target sys-tems to achieve specific effects (ends)is the basis of the new-style air cam-paign. It is generally articulated in aConcept of Operations that describesfriendly force intentions and inte-gration of operations to accomplisha commander’s objectives.

Of concern here is not so much theCONOPS process or format but ratherthe philosophy underlying the airstrategy.

In Vietnam, the Air Force devel-

Silver Bullets. Stealthy F-117s flew two percent of Gulf War combat sortiesbut hit 43 percent of targets. In the war’s first 24 hours, F-117s hit 76 separate,high-value targets.

DO

D p

ho

to


oped a command-and-control orga-nization to plan and execute air-to-surface attack. Known as the Tacti-cal Air Control System, it emphasizedallocating sorties to individual tar-gets in support of ground operations.At the center of the TACS processwas the Tactical Air Control Center.To a large extent, targets processedthrough the TACC were chosen andprioritized not by airmen but byground commanders.

Battle damage assessment focusedon destruction of individual targets.The function and organization of theTACS led many to confuse the effi-ciency of hitting individual targetswith the effectiveness of achievingcampaign objectives.

TACS was established in doctrineas the air command-and-control sys-tem for conventional war. Post–Viet-nam change focused on expeditingresponsiveness, enhancing sortiegeneration rates, and incorporatingmodern systems to quickly processlarge Air Tasking Orders. The pro-cess received great emphasis, whiledevelopment of air strategy got al-most none.

In the 1980s, USAF’s Tactical AirCommand and the Army’s Trainingand Doctrine Command developedextremely close ties. This helped el-evate the Army’s doctrine of AirLandBattle as TAC’s de facto air strategyin regional conflicts.

In time, USAF attitudes changed.Basic Air Force instructional docu-ments on target planning boasted a

full chapter on targeting for AirLandBattle but contained no principles orguidelines for conventional strate-gic attack.

In short, the Air Force’s largestand most influential conventional aircommand, TAC, entered the 1990swith its vision of conventional waralmost totally focused on supportingthe Army—a critical but by no meansonly capability of conventional air-power.

These thought patterns and viewswere apparent among TACC plan-ners and intelligence personnel whowere assigned to Central Air Forces

Out of Action. In Operation Allied Force, this Serbian airfield was hit repeat-edly with precision weapons, which kept it out of operation. Note the bombcraters on the runway and nearby sites.

Instant Gridlock. To achieve coalition goals, its aircraft didn’t have to attackindividual tanks or troop formations. Dropping a bridge, as shown here, wouldeffectively halt the enemy’s advance or block his line of retreat.

in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the sum-mer of 1990. Attention was focusedexclusively on tactical operations.The prevailing procedures for de-signing an ATO produced a purelymechanistic application of sorties totargets in sequence.

They called it “servicing a targetlist.”

Fortunately, the architects of theGulf air campaign, who began workin late August 1990, did not limitthemselves to the servicing-a-target-list approach. The design of the aircampaign grew out of thinking abouthow to hit an enemy’s systems toachieve specific effects contribut-ing to the military and political ob-jectives of the coalition.

Planning was based on a “center-of-gravity” approach. It began witha critical examination of potentialstrategic centers of gravity, theirconstituent operational systems, andled to identifying the set of indi-vidual targets making up each sys-tem.

Decisions about whether to stopor continue an attack depended onwhether the coalition had achieved aspecific effect. Individual targetswere important only if the systemwas still operating. If the effectsdesired were achieved, it did notmatter that individual targets maynot have been hit.

Figs. 6 and 7 illustrate the subtlebut significant difference between“destruction-based” and “effects-based” operations. Fig. 6 shows two

DO

D p

ho

t o

DO

D p

ho

to


serial-targeting approaches—thesingle prioritized list and the mul-tiple target set lists prioritized insequence. The serial approach tar-gets elements of an adversary’s de-fenses that restrict access to certaintargets—early warning radars, airdefense systems, command-and-con-trol nodes, and airfields. They are tobe hit before production, govern-ment, and leadership facilities.

Series methodology can be appliedto an entire target base or group ofindividual targets. However, attack-ing one system at a time allows theothers to continue operations or re-cover from previous attacks.

Fig. 7 shows the parallel attackscheme, application of force againstall targets in each target system atone time. With correct identifica-tion of target systems, the desiredeffect is likely. The simultaneousapplication of force in such a man-ner would enable friendly controlover the adversary systems. When aforce faces a target set too large to bestruck through single attack, thenplanners should first focus on hit-ting those aim points that will pro-duce the greatest impact.

Early attack operations are weightedto paralyze the air defense areas inwhich nonstealthy assets would op-erate. This is the reason for the skew-ing depicted in Fig. 7 toward thetarget sets A, B, C, etc., notionallyrepresenting air defense, airfield, andcommand-and-control target sets.

However, intelligence about theenemy never will be total. More-over, an enemy will attempt to ne-

gate the effects of attacks. As a con-sequence, parallel war may involvemore than one case of force applica-tion, even if there are sufficient re-sources to attack all known elements.

The advent of EBO calls for abasic realignment in war planning.The combination of stealth and pre-cision redefines the concept of mass.Classical mass—that is, a large ag-glomeration of forces—is no longerrequired. Surface forces will alwaysbe useful, but massing surface forcesto overwhelm an enemy isn’t requiredto gain control of an enemy.

Nor is it necessarily the smartestcourse. It takes more aircraft to trans-port a single light infantry divisionto a war theater than it took to moveall of the PGMs used in the Gulf Warof 1991.

Early deploying forces should bethose with a demonstrated ability toeffectively influence an adversary.If the measure of merit for servicetransformations became one of de-sired effect per unit of lift—the de-gree that combat effectiveness in-creases for each quantity of liftexpended—future lift requirementsmight actually be reduced.

Massed forces—air, ground, orsea—present a lucrative target to anenemy. Therefore, the traditionallyaccepted concept of “mass,” a val-ued principle of war, becomes insome situations a vulnerability. Po-tential adversaries may capitalize onthe massing of forces and associatedbuild-up time to deny US access to awar theater. These anti-access strat-egies become more probable as de-

livery systems such as accurate bal-listic missiles, cruise missiles, andweapons of mass destruction prolif-erate among potentially hostile states.

Since the ability to impose effectsis independent of the massing offorces, the projection of force be-comes more important than the de-velopment of force. The object ofpresence or mass is influence. Theoperative element of achieving in-fluence is the threat or actual use offorce to achieve a particular effect.If the same effect can be imposedwithout physical presence or mass,then in some circumstances deployedforces can be replaced by power pro-jection.

Systems-based intelligence analy-sis is critical to the application ofEBO. Planners need to know whatan enemy needs to exert influenceand conduct operations. Without thatinformation, parallel war won’t beeffective. Exploiting advances inspace-based systems, communica-tions technology, and rapid infor-mation transfer can reduce this po-tential vulnerability by reducing theneed for forward-based organiza-tional elements.

Redefining the concept of mass,relying to a greater degree on forceprojection rather than force deploy-ment, and aiming to control adver-sary systems rather than destroy themrequires changes in the current ap-proach to force management. Thechanges needed may include morereliance upon out-of-theater com-mand, control, communications,computer, and intelligence organi-

Fig. 6

Shown at left are two methods of serial targeting—single prioritized list and multiple target set lists insequence. The serial approaches initially targetelements of an adversary’s defenses. Attacking onetarget system at a time allows the others to continueoperation or recover from previous attacks.

Fig. 7

This parallel attack scheme applies decisive forceagainst all targets in each target system at once. If

each target is hit, effects desired within each systemwill likely occur. If all aim points cannot be hit in oneattack, those of greatest significance in each set arehit first. This accounts for the skewing toward target

sets A, B, C, etc., representing air defense, airfield,and command and control.


Brig. Gen. David A. Deptula is the Air Force National Defense Reviewdirector. During Desert Storm, he was the principal planner for the coalitionair offensive. This article is adapted from a longer paper, “Effects-BasedOperations: Change in the Nature of Warfare,” which is available on the AirForce Association Web site (www.afa.org).

The Edge. The Gulf and Balkan air campaigns revealed the kind of leverageoffered by stealth, precision, rapid and secure information transfer, accuratepositional information, and other cutting-edge technologies.

zations, distributive intelligence ar-chitecture, and “off-board” systemsthat can provide information directto the user.

We are in a transition phase of theongoing revolution in military af-fairs. Parallel war achieved throughEBO departs from traditional strat-egies, but we fight with the toolsavailable today. We must carefullymanage the transition to the newinstruments of war to assure theirdevelopment is not restricted by thetheories of the past and to adaptcurrent systems to more lucrativestrategies.

It is proving to be a difficult tran-sition. The tendency to retain ortho-dox concepts and doctrine is strongwhen the means on which those con-cepts and doctrine were based stillmake up the bulk of the inventory.Military doctrine is invaluable inestablishing a basis for force appli-cation, but it must not be allowed toconstrain effective forms of applica-tion just because they are differentand nontraditional.

EBO provides a useful constructon how to conduct war that can bridgethe gap between the weapons of to-day and the weapons of the future. Itallows useful application of currentweapon systems as we acquire a newgeneration of tools needed to fullyexploit the concept.

The air campaign in the Gulf Warand the air war over Serbia usedbombs and missiles on individualtargets to achieve a specific effectwithin the parent system. These aircampaigns gave us a view of theleverage that stealth, precision, rapidand secure information transfer,ready access to accurate positionalinformation, and other cutting-edgetechnological systems can provide.However, while the aircraft/PGMmatch of the 1990s far exceeded thecapability of the systems used dur-ing World War II, it still is crudecompared to the ideal means for theconduct of EBO. We must continueto develop systems that will provideeven higher leverage effects.

As technological innovation ac-celerates, “nonlethal” weapons and

cyberwar enabled by informationoperations will become operativemeans in parallel war.

The ability to achieve effects di-rectly against systems without at-tacking individual components wouldallow a concept of parallel war pref-erable to that of today. Indeed, theultimate application of parallel warwould involve few destructive weap-ons at all; the objective is effects,not destruction. Nonlethal weapons,information warfare, miniaturizedhighly accurate munitions, and space-based systems might make such con-cepts a reality.

While nonlethal weapons and in-formation warfare will allow us tofurther capitalize on the concept oftargeting for effects while continu-ing to limit casualties, only new or-ganizations and doctrine aiming toexploit EBO can fulfill the full po-tential of this concept. Nonlethalweapons and information warfareshould enhance the ability of ourforces to conduct operations to di-rectly achieve desired effects. In thisrespect, recent attempts to developand write joint military doctrine arehelpful when their focus is on weaponsystems capabilities and effects-based planning rather than employ-

ment environment or presumptionsof attrition and annihilation.

Parallel war through EBO doesnot exclude any force component intime, space, or level of war at theoutset of any political–military chal-lenge. However, that does not equateto each force always participating inevery operation or to a degree insome proportion to their size or pres-ence. Whoever can perform the op-erations to achieve the desired ef-fects best at the time should have itassigned to them.

Optimum parallel war is depen-dent upon a functional organizationencompassing not just the air com-ponent but the entire theater cam-paign (i.e., a joint force land compo-nent commander, a joint force navalcomponent commander, as well as ajoint force aerospace componentcommander) with a true joint forcecommander (not dual-hatted as acomponent commander as well) or-chestrating the synergies of the en-tire force.

EBO can be applied in every me-dium of warfare. Even so, aerospacepower’s relative advantages—speed,range, flexibility, precision, perspec-tive, and lethality—fit hand in glovewith this new strategic construct.Joint aerospace power has the po-tential to achieve effects at everylevel of war directly and quickly. Asa result, it will remain the dominantmeans for conducting parallel warthrough EBO in major regional con-flicts in the future. ■

US

AF

ph

ot o

by

Sco

t t H

. S

pit

zer

the important measure is not the targets destroyed but

Documents