Over the course of the next several months, Warden’s ideas would evolve in the basement of the Pentagon—the meeting place of the U.S. Air Force’s Checkmate Division—to become Operation Instant Thunder. Instant Thunder was the first step in the historic air campaign known as Operation Desert Storm, which rapidly incapacitated the Iraqi opposition and forced a surrender in only 40 days and a mere 100 hours of land operations. However Desert Storm’s success for the Air Force—although it was a massive one by many metrics—was less centered on how quickly the U.S. military was able to force a surrender from Iraq, but the Air Force’s notably dominant role in joint operations that involved many other service branches, including the Army. In short, Desert Storm was able to prove to many that airpower could be a decisive, war-winning factor when it came to international conflicts. 

You see, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had come at the tail end of a notable paradigm shift that had characterized the U.S. Air Force in the half-century following the end of World War II. During the war in Vietnam, much of the battlefield burden had fallen on the tactical efforts of Air Force fighter pilots, which could explain why many of the Air Force’s top leadership positions were gradually assumed by fighter pilots for the next several decades. In the U.S. Air Force’s relatively short life span up to this point, the use of aircraft in war was largely limited to small-scale, tactical missions, in support of offensive efforts oriented around the troops on the ground. Even when air-based missions weren’t directly supporting ground troops—such as in extended bombing campaigns like Operation Rolling Thunder, which essentially involved the continuous battering of North Vietnam with the intention of getting Ho Chi Minh to quit—the operations weren’t perceived to be very effective. All in all, the prevailing assumption for any military operation was that a war could not be won without boots on the ground (i.e., not the Air Force). 

Thus, what John Warden and the Checkmate team had proposed with Instant Thunder—that airpower alone could defeat Saddam Hussein and decisively end the war—was considered risky and naive, even to some top Air Force officials who continued to hold onto the belief that victory necessitated a ground invasion. However, its success had given the Air Force a precedent for which a statement could be made: when employed effectively, airpower was an undeniably dominant force on the battlefield that could decide the results of wars for years to come. 

Interviewing Warden wasn’t just a remarkable experience because of his notability as an individual, but the delight that I got in recognizing that even in conversation, Col Warden was every bit the man that his biographers and colleagues had described him to be. In every word he spoke, the palpable conviction that lay behind his eyes alone spoke volumes about the lengths that he would go to achieve any objective he believed in. Here’s what I learned from our conversation:

Centers of gravity exist everywhere. Change happens when you target them.

The concept of a center of gravity was developed by 19th century military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and survives today to refer to a “characteristic, capability, or source of power” that allows a military organization to continue fighting. This concept of particular relevance to Col Warden specifically, considering that his Instant Thunder plan involved using aircraft to strategically eliminate Iraqi centers of gravity to render them ineffective. 

However, he implored me to try to interpret the concept in broader contexts citing from his own experience as a business consultant that this concept was often indistinguishable between business and warfare. For example, supply routes that are often the target of interdiction campaigns in war could be analogous to the supply chain for a certain design part that might be essential to trying to lower the cost of assembly of a particular product. Reducing the system of your opposition—be it a battlefield or the market for a particular widget—to component centers of gravity allows you to concentrate your efforts on the true crux of what will return your desired results. 

Business doesn’t necessarily have to be where this method of thinking stops. One of the most memorable lines from a biography of Warden that I’d read noted that he was strategizing to “go for the jugular” against the military opposition. “Going for the jugular” is a very simple way of saying that in order to do something in the most efficient way possible, you really should understand the hierarchy of control within the system—and could also be implying that often times, much of our efforts in various parts of our lives might be better placed in more carefully picked centers of gravity. 

Warden also made sure to point out that a center of gravity wasn’t necessarily limited to factors that lay outside oneself or one’s organization. Recognizing the existence of internal centers of gravity is just as, if not more important when it comes to driving motivation toward a particular goal. This might look like understanding which individuals or groups within your organization hold sway in key decisions or attitudes, or perhaps even personal philosophies or discomforts that might be keeping you from moving toward the place you want to be. 

  The most efficient means towards any particular ends may constantly be changing; placing disproportionate value on means or methods can cause blind spots.

As Col Warden and I talked through example business and war scenarios in our conversation, I noticed that the more we spoke about addressing centers of gravity, the conversation naturally oriented itself to be more focused on the objective—rather than the means by which it would be achieved. With just a reframed mindset, I’d suddenly become more interested in what needed to happen to get to the end state most efficiently, rather than being hung up on how it was going to happen. It really was quite liberating, encouraging me to think of ways in which I’d discounted unconventional ideas of my own simply by nature of the fact that the method of realizing them might be different or difficult. 

The conversation also shed light on the fact that a lot of drill-based preparation is inherently centered around a specific method and can thus be limiting in its practice of solving novel problems. We spoke about the Air Force’s Red Flag exercise (which I’ll preface with Col Warden in saying that it is one of the best tactical exercises for air combat in the world). Red Flag is an allied effort that takes place at Nellis AFB three times a year and involves mock combat settings between a “Blue” team of pilots against a team of “aggressor” pilots that work to maneuver against them. 

Despite its incredible effectiveness in training pilots for set combat scenarios, Warden noted that it can fail to provide the squadrons with a broader picture of how extended combat over the course of weeks or months can drastically change the needs and priorities of the operation. Outside of the military context, I couldn’t help but wonder how much preparation across all kinds of disciplines is done with emphasis on one particular method of accomplishment. 

Begin with having a very definite idea of where you want to be. 

During his career, Warden had earned a no-so-affectionate nickname of “Right-Turn Warden,” in reference to his habit of making a sharp right turn at every superior who would turn down his ideas to proceed onto a higher ranking officer (Warden chuckled when I brought up the nickname, saying that he didn’t know about it while he was an officer). In any case, the nickname was a testament to Warden’s unwavering conviction, and to this day, he continues to use a method clearly envisioning what the desired end state is at the very beginning of the planning process for his clients. 

A stark lesson that I picked up from his story was the reality that new ideas are inherently uncomfortable, and thus have to be fervently protected. Col Warden was no exception to the manner in which his vision for the Air Force had to be defended (with quite some vigor), but shows that when the time passes, it will have been worth it all along.