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The theories on how to use airpower as coercion are divided between those who advocate strategic bombing and those who advocate support for land operations. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether Pape and/or Warden´s airpower theories applied on Operation Allied Force can explain how NATO´s air force was used.

The result shows that both the Warden´s Enemy as a system and Pape´s Denial strategy can partly explain the outcome. Warden´s 5-ring system is the only variable in the survey assigned with a high variable value; this is because the analysis shows that it is judged to influence the outcome extensively. Parallel attacks occurred at low frequency and have a low variable value. Pape´s theory occurred with high frequency in variable support for the ground forces, however, the analysis shows that no variable value from Pape´s theory received higher variables than the medium.

The conclusion is that both theories can explain how NATO used airpower during the operation but to different degrees.