Warden's Five Rings

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Col. John A. Warden III, a former USAF officer and theorist of air power, established a theory of strategic attack based on five levels of system attributes. They are:

Leadership
Organic/System Essentials
Infrastructure
Population
Fielded Military Forces.

Each level of system or "ring" was considered one of the enemy's centers of gravity. The idea behind Warden's five rings was to attack each of the rings to paralyze their forces, an objective also known as physical paralysis. To optimize a strike attack the attacker would engage as many rings as possible with special emphasis on taking out the middle ring, which is the enemy's leadership. This would result in total physical paralysis.

Warden's theories on the application of air power in modern war have been criticized as little more than a reiteration of earlier strategic bombing concepts discredited by historical analysis of the Second World War and the Vietnam War.