Description
To say John Warden was committed to his ideas about air warfare was to say Mozart was slightly musical. Warden's work as a leading air warfare theorist was innovative and brilliant but also often controversial. His ideas, and the way he applied them in Operation Desert Storm, cost him dearly. Olsen (strategic studies, Royal Norwegian Command and Staff College, Oslo) closely analyzes Warden's approach and personality and does not hesitate to let readers know when Warden's ideas about the strategic use of air warfare technology went too far. He takes Warden from his birth to the Air Force Academy to his first assignments, the publication of his stunning book on air campaigns, and his work on Operation Instant Thunder. Olsen also details Warden's fortunes in political and military matters and his continued contributions to military strategy education and matters of air warfare. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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****Included on the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force's reading list for 2008 and the Royal Air Force's Centre for Air Power Studies 2008 Reading List****Dr. John Andreas Olsen has written an insightful, compelling biography of retired U.S. Air Force colonel John A. Warden III, the brilliant but controversial air warfare theorist and architect of Operation Desert Storm's air campaign. Warden's radical ideas about air power's purposes and applications, promulgated at the expense of his own career, sparked the ongoing revolution in military affairs. Legendary in defense circles, Warden is also the author of The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (republished by Brassey's, Inc. in 1989). Presenting both the positives and negatives of Warden's personality and impact in this objective portrait, Olsen offers a trenchant analysis of his revolutionary ideas and great accomplishments.
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