Linking Target Selection to Political Objectives

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Since airpower strategists began seeing the enemy as a single system made up of groups of components, our targeting philosophy has evolved from trying to effectively blow things up to blowing things up for effect. Our goal is to find and effect the targets that will ultimately lead to attainment of our political objectives. Yet, how do we logically link a target to the desired political objectives? If we consider the enemy as a system, we realize that an action on one part of the system will often result in unexpected reactions in other parts of the system. We must take a systems approach to targeting. However, the experts on systems theory are not in the military but in the business world. One such expert is Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt. He has developed a logical method for exposing links in complex business systems, called the Theory of Constraints. Military planners can use these same tools to uncover links within and between an enemy’s centers of gravity.