King's College London

 

Developed with the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) Air and Space Warfare Centre, the Lab challenges curious BA and MA students to apply foundational airpower theories through hands-on team exercises.

Last year’s Lab focused on a single wargame based on Giulio Douhet’s theory of strategic bombing. Following popular demand, this year’s programme expanded to two wargames: one revisiting Douhet’s ideas and a second based on John Warden’s Five Rings model. Both were applied to different scenarios, forcing the participants to engage with the theories not just in the abstract, but in a tangible, problem-solving context. These were not just academic exercises; they were an opportunity to think deeply about how to apply some of the most influential ideas in air warfare.

The wargames drew students mostly from the BA Military Strategy and MA Strategic Thought modules, both taught by Dr John Stone. Squadron Leader Colin Bell ran the exercises, while senior serving or retired RAFs officers were assigned to assist each team by questioning the logic and priorities, refining the tactics and strategies, and encouraging them to view the problem from different perspectives.

Wargame 1: Douhet’s Strategic Bombing in a Russian First Strike (2022)

Squadron Leader Colin Bell opened the wargame by introducing Douhet’s theory before students broke into teams to tackle the scenario. Giulio Douhet’s The Command of the Air (1921) lays out a vision of strategic bombing that aims to win wars by directly targeting an enemy’s critical infrastructure and civilian morale. Douhet identified five primary targets for airpower: industry; transport infrastructure; command, communication, and control networks; government (political and military leadership); and the will of the people. His doctrine advocates a three-step bombing sequence: explosives to destroy structures, incendiaries to ignite the wreckage, and chemical weapons to prevent firefighters and rescue crews from responding. His aim was to break civilian morale and allow follow on ground forces to quickly advance with minimal costs. The brutality of his ideas is part of what made this wargame so compelling— and tricky.

Students applied Douhet’s theory to a Russian first strike against Ukraine in 2022, with three teams given different constraints within the air domain:

• Team 1 prioritised speed, seeking the fastest possible military victory through a combination of targeted strikes;
• Team 2 had a more conventional approach, using airpower to coerce Kyiv into surrender through calculated strikes on military and government targets, but they had an important restriction: avoiding civilian casualties where possible;
• Team 3 was specifically required to fully embrace Douhet’s doctrine, including the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The big question the wargame posed was: would Douhet’s ideas hold up in modern warfare? The teams with limits on force debated how much Air Power was necessary to achieve their objectives without triggering unintended consequences. Meanwhile, Team 3’s heavy handed approach, though devastating, ran into the conundrum that mass destruction does not automatically lead to surrender – if anything, it can strengthen resistance both within the target country and abroad. Ukraine’s actual response to Russian attacks in 2022 proved that national will is not so easily broken. The first two teams converged on what Russia did struggled to break civilian morale through airpower alone. Meanwhile, the third team with the mandate to use chemical weapons still struggled to overcome Ukrainian defences.

Reflecting on the wargame, Nick Munson, MA in War Studies, said: “It was a fantastic warm-up to thinking about strategy in a wargame environment, and prepared us for the more in-depth planning in part two.”

Wargame 2: Warden’s Five Rings and Tactical Airpower

If the first wargame forced the students to critically analyse the value of bombing strategic targets, the second shifted the emphasis towards the tactical. This time, students drew from Colonel John Warden’s Five Rings model, which treats the enemy as a system with five concentric layers, with the insight that the targeting the centre (of gravity) would break the enemy’s military system:

1. Leadership – command and control centres;
2. Organic Essentials – energy, food, and water supplies;
3. Infrastructure – transport and communications networks;
4. Population – the civilian base supporting the war effort;
5. Fielded Military Forces – army, navy, and air force.

The objective of the second wargame was to write a plan to secure the safe entry and exit of a cargo plane retrieving high-value passengers from a hostile zone. The emphasis was to minimise risks, which suggested limited force to ensure mission success.

Unlike the Douhet wargame, where the objective was victory and coercive violence, this scenario required greater tact and careful prioritisation. Both teams ultimately made remarkably similar operational choices. One team focused more on neutralising enemy air defences and disrupting the adversary’s situational awareness to create a safe corridor for extraction. The other prioritised disrupting enemy leadership and communications, using Warden’s model to systematically disable the adversary’s response capability, and then extract the high value personnel.

In both cases, safeguarding the cargo plane was the defining measure of mission success, so brute force attacks could be counter-productive and alerting the enemy. This is a major difference in emphasis between the two air power theorists. Dr John Stone, who helped organise these wargames, highlights that “a key difference between Douhet and Warden resides in their views on targeting. For Douhet, bombing should focus on collapsing the enemy’s will to resist. For Warden, it is destroying the enemy’s capability for resistance that matters.”

Lessons Learned

At the conclusion of the Lab, Chris Hurt, MA in National Security, said that he “loved getting the opportunity to not only learn from experienced officers but also from my group. Using the skills and nuances of my team made it more enjoyable and taught me more!”

These wargames were a reminder that military theory is a starting point, not a blueprint. Air power theories like Douhet’s and Warden’s give frameworks for thinking about airpower, but they must be adapted to the unpredictable realities of war, especially in the presence of an adaptive adversary. The advising RAF officers in particular helped the teams reframe and refocus on the relevant questions. As we move forward in our studies and careers, these exercises push us to critically evaluate doctrine, question assumptions and sharpen our strategic thinking. War may seem simple in a wargame, but as Clausewitz reminds us, even the simplest things are difficult in practice.

Finally, we would like to thank FASI, the organisers and the RAF officers who assisted the teams, and King’s College London for another year of the challenging and insightful Applied Airpower Lab.

Dezso Wyner, MA in War Studies, is researching military strategy, with a focus on the evolution of drones in modern conflict.