File:Levels of war, target categories by Jeffery R. Barnett.jpg

English: Target Categories: Levels of War table, presented by Jeffery R. Barnett.

The theory of near-simultaneous attack across multiple target sets is nothing new. Airmen have recognized it for decades. A large number of attacks in a day has far more effect than the same number of attacks spread over weeks or months. In his report to President Truman at the end of WWII, Gen Hap Arnold asserted that strategic air assault is wasted in sporadic attacks that allow the enemy to readjust or recuperate.

Historically, however, airmen lacked the military capabilities to implement near-simultaneous attack. During all of 1942–1943, for example, the Eighth Air Force attacked a total of only 124 distinct targets.10 At this low attack rate (averaging six days between attacks), the Germans had ample time to repair and adapt between raids.

Contrast this WWII rate of attack with the 1991 Gulf War. In the first 24 hours of Operation Desert Storm, coalition air forces attacked 148 discrete targets. Fifty of these targets were attacked within the first 90 minutes.11 Targets ranged from national command and control nodes (strategic) to key bridges (operational) to individual naval units (tactical). The goal was to cripple the entire system to the point it could no longer efficiently operate, and to do so at rates high enough that the Iraqis could not repair or adapt. Coalition forces, knowing an incredible amount about Iraq, efficiently orchestrated thousands of sorties, reached key vulnerabilities with high certainty, and, once in the target area, hit specific targets. The end result was near-simultaneous attack across hundreds of key Iraqi targets. Under this intense attack, Iraq was unable to either regain the initiative or orchestrate a cohesive defense.

Such targeting, conducted against the spectrum of targets in a compressed time period, is called parallel war. The goal of parallel war is to simultaneously attack enemy centers of gravity across all levels of war (strategic, operational, and tactical)—at rates faster than the enemy can repair and adapt. This is a new method of war. Previous generations of military strategists could not prosecute parallel war. They had only the sketchiest knowledge of the enemy’s key strategic and operational targets. The enemy was opaque prior to contact.