Bombningen av Dresden är en av andra världskriget mest kontroversiella nyttjanden av luftstridskrafterna från den allierade sidan. Vissa argumenterade för att Dresden var ett civilt mål utan militärt eller strategiskt värde. Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att analysera Dresden som mål för de allierade luftstridskrafterna ur Giulio Douhet och John A.Warden IIIs luftmaktsteorier. Undersökningen bär mot att analysera hur och om man kan motivera Dresden som ett militärt och strategiskt mål ur två olika luftmakteoriers perspektiv. Uppsatsen genomförs med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys och komparativ analys för att jämföra teorierna med fallet. Resultatet av undersökningen visar hur man kan motivera Dresden som militärt och strategiskt mål. Warden och Douhets teorier är användbara för att analysera bombningen av Dresden. / The bombing of Dresden is one of the most controversial actions carried out by the allied air forces during World War 2. Some argue that Dresden was a civilian target, without strategic or military value. The purpose of this essay is to analyse Dresden as a target for the allied air forces using Giulio Douhets and John A. Warden IIIs theories of the use of air forces. This essay aims to investigate if and how one can justify Dresden as a military and strategic target by using Douhets and Wardens theories. The essay is conducted through qualitative content analysis and comparative analysis to compare the theories with case. The result shows how one can justify the bombing of Dresden using Douhets and Wardens theories.

John A Warden III har en teori om hur luftkrig ska genomföras, som sedan slutet på 80-talet influerat bland annat USA i deras planering och genomförande av luftoperationer. Denna teori var som mest aktuell under Gulfkriget 1990-1991, där luftstridskrafterna genom ett agerade enligt Wardens teori gav stora effekter på konfliken. Detta arbete syftar mot att undersöka om Wardens teori fortfarande används, och vilka effekter detta agerande medför. Arbetet presenterar de begrepp som kan ses som centrala i Wardens teori och analyserar dessa mot en fallstudie som rör flygstridskrafternas agerande under inledningen av Operation Enduring Freedom i Afghanistan år 2001. Slutsatsen är att det finns spårbarhet av Wardens tankar om luftöverlägsenhet under hela perioden som arbetet berör. Däremot finns det endast spårbarhet av att koalitionen agerade enligt tyngdpunktsbegreppet, parallell attack och fienden som ett system under den inledande fasen av konflikten. Därför kan det inte sägas att koalitionen agerade enligt Wardens teori under konflikten.

John A. Warden III är en av vår tids mest inflytelserika luftmaktsteoretiker och Wardens teori är vida omskriven och ligger till grund för flertalet undersökningar. Warden redogör själv för att teorin inte skall ses som en mall utan att det snarare är generella idéer och riktlinjer. Det gör att teorin går att applicera på många olika fall men det lämnar också utrymme för tolkning. Syftet med denna uppsatts är att undersöka ifall allmängiltigheten i Wardens teori gör att teorin tolkas olika. För att besvara frågeställningarna har en kvalitativ textanalys genomförts på ett antal utvalda uppsatser skrivna av studerande vid Försvarshögskolan. Det övergripande resultatet visar att allmängiltigheten i Wardens teori inte kan anses vara något problem då de undersökta författarna tolkat Wardens teori på ett liknande sätt.

With the ever-expanding speed of technological development and the dependence of social media outlets in everyday life. Information warfare can be used to strike targets with information operations from leaders down to the average person. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the fact that attacks are being performed on our media corporations to influence are opinion. By influence opinion via deception the outcome of an attack even changes an election. The aim of this paper intends to shed light on the behaviour of hacktivist groups. The Syrian Electronic Army will be the main character in this paper do to the groups plausible deniability connections to the Syrian regime. As this paper will show with the works of a case studies on this group with the theoretical framework of John Warden. Hacker groups with connections to a regime work towards influencing the public via the power of disinformation.

During the last decades airpower has become a useful tool for military interventions. Earlier research argues that air operations during the first Gulf war proved that strategic bombing could be effective due to modern technology and precision guided munitions. John Warden developed a theory based on strategic bombing, where he sees the enemy as a system, which is illustrated by a five-ring-model. The theory is widely discussed in the modern airpower debate, and has also been criticized because it has not been proved in any large-N study. Therefore, this essay aims to test Wardens five-ring-model in a comparative case study where two modern air operations have been chosen for investigation. The two operations are Operation Deliberate Force that took place Bosnia, 1995, and Operation Odyssey Dawn/Unified Protector that took place in Libya, 2011. The two operations have many similarities but differ in the time it took to reach their designated goals. The results indicate that Wardens theory is not capable of explaining why the two operations differed in the time it took to achieve its goals. The operations did not act according to Wardens five-ring-model to a sufficiently large extent when other targets were more frequently attacked than the ones that Warden advocates to be the most effective. Warden states that his theory is very general and can be used for any opponent, but the results of this essay indicate that it may be to general to be able to explain the outcome of an operation.

Since the beginning of the 20th century air power has been seen as an offensive instrument in warfare. During the Cold War, Sweden had one of the largest air forces in the world despite a clearly defensive strategy. Today's Swedish Air Force has been reformed since the Cold War and there are uncertainties about how this has changed the use of air power. The purpose of this study is to investigate what changes occurred in the Swedish Air Force related to offensive and defensive use of air power. This is illustrated by examining and comparing the use of air power in the Air Force during the Cold War and today. The study is based on the theories of air power and illustrates the use of air power from multiple perspectives in order to provide as broad picture of the Air Force as possible. The results demonstrate that a change has occurred where air forces moved more towards working together with other forces over a broader range of applications than during the Cold War.

Airpower has shown its usefulness throughout many wars and was seen as a key instrument in the Libyan war 2011. However, the use of airpower and how it should be applied has been a highly debated topic for as long as airpower has been around. Two theorists, John A. Warden III and Robert A. Pape, have received a lot of attention and there is a debate regarding which one of these theorists has the best solution on how to use airpower. The purpose with this essay is to apply some of the two theorists’ ideas on the Libyan war 2011 and investigate their explanatory power in the conflict. To reach an answer, a case study has been used with a theory testing method which would further seek to contribute to the debate that exists between the two theorists. Results show that some parts of the theorists’ ideas have a high explanatory power in the conflict and some parts do not. As individuals, they cannot explain the whole war, but together their ideas have a high explanatory power in the conflict. Based on the ongoing debate that provides two different ways of using airpower, the conclusions suggest that a combination of the two theorists’ ideas might be the answer to how airpower can be employed in the best way for future operations. Further research is required to investigate this thesis. / <p><strong>Uppsatsen skriven VT 2017 under Termin 4 Officersprogrammet 15-18 med inriktning</strong><strong>mot flyg. Examen genomförs VT 2018. </strong></p>

In the spring of 1999 NATO started the air campaign Operation Allied Force against the Serb president Slobodan Milošević’s dictatorship. Operation Allied Force unfolded during a 78-day long campaign in former Yugoslavia. The aim of the operation was to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians in the Serb province Kosovo. The operation, that initially was supposed to be over in a week, continued for almost three months. Why did the campaign take such a long time compared to what was predicted? The aim of this study was to analyze Operation Allied Force from a time perspective to be able to tell why the operation became so protracted. The analyze was made by consuming two of the best well-known air power theories written by Robert A. Pape and John A. Warden. The result showed that there were several different factors that contributed to the protracted process. Too strict rules of engagement, few targets, lack of resources and the lack of a unified strategy inside NATO are believed to be the main factors that caused the lengthy process.

This study examines the unexpected outcome of the six day war between Israel and it’s neighboring countries. Israel who managed to fend off four aggressors in a war that lasted only six days, where the success was greatly attributed to the Israeli air force. This outcome played an important role for the future of airpower and gave rise to the theoretical framework we have today. Two of the most established theories that arised after the war is John. A. Wardens ”The enemy as a system” and Robert. A. Papes ”Bombing to win”. These theories advocates different approaches to the use of airpower and how to generate success. The aim of the study is to analyze in which way Israel used their air-force to generate this success and to challenge the view of a single theoretical framework as superior over the other. The result indicate that the success in the use of airpower in the six day war was achieved by a combination of methods from both theories where air superiority was a critical factor. The result also challenges the view of Wardens five ring model and how strategic effect is actually generated. The final conclusions of the study is hard to generalize due to the specific circumstances of the war and more research is needed.

Operation Rolling Thunder was a United States led operation, with the political aims of interdicting and preventing the North Vietnamese support of the South Vietnam rebellion, during the later stage of the Vietnam war. Despite being a superpower, Operation Rolling Thunder failed, and the USA lost the war. In this essay, the air power theorists John A. Warden and Robert A. Pape, and their theories regarding how air power should be used to reach success, are used to analyze this failure. The use of these theories in a parallel manner enables to comprehend empirical sources and in turn recognize anomalies in the decision making and missteps of the American leadership. By keeping the case of Rolling Thunder in focus and thereby try and understand what happened, the aim is to create an understanding for why the potent power of the US Air Force made an inadvertent turn despite exercising air superiority throughout most of the operation. This examination concludes that there were three deciding factors in the American failure, which are: (i) absence of efficient attacks against the North Vietnamese leadership, (ii) lack of correlation between strategy and political aim, (iii) lack of experience and communication within the American leadership.