John Boyd (military strategist)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| John Boyd | |
|---|---|
| January 23, 1927–March 9, 1997 | |
 |
|
| Place of death | West Palm Beach, Florida |
| Allegiance | United States Air Force |
| Years of service | 1945–1947 1951–1975 |
| Rank | Colonel |
| Battles/wars | Korean War, Vietnam War |
| Other work | Military strategist |
Colonel John (Richard) Boyd (January 23, 1927–March 9, 1997) was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and military strategist of the late 20th century whose theories have been highly influential in the military and in business. Boyd was born in Erie, Pennsylvania and graduated from the University of Iowa (bachelor's in business) and Georgia Tech (master's in industrial engineering). He was known as "Forty-Second Boyd" for his ability to beat any opposing pilot in aerial combat in less than forty seconds.
He was the creator of the Energy-Maneuverability, or E-M, theory of aerial combat, as well as the chief architect behind the F-15 and (especially) F-16 fighter planes. He was the visionary for the Light Weight Fighter specification that led to the F-16 and later, the F/A-18. One of his six "Acolytes", Pierre Sprey, similarly developed the A-10 project.
A popular anecdote credits Boyd for largely developing the strategy for the invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War. Boyd was called to Washington, D.C. in the weeks preceding the war, to develop the plan under the supervision of the then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.
In a letter to the editor of Inside the Pentagon, former Commandant of the Marine Corps General Charles C. Krulak is quoted as saying "The Iraqi army collapsed morally and intellectually under the onslaught of American and Coalition forces. John Boyd was an architect of that victory as surely as if he'd commanded a fighter wing or a maneuver division in the desert."
Boyd's key concept was that of the decision cycle or OODA Loop, the process by which an entity (either an individual or an organization) reacts to an event. According to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one's opponent.
Boyd actually never wrote a book on military strategy. The central work encompassing his theories on warfare consists of a several hundred slide presentation entitled Discourse on Winning & Losing and a short essay entitled "Destruction & Creation".
In the "Destruction & Creation" essay Boyd attempts to provide a philosophical foundation for his theories on warfare. In it he integrates Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics to provide a context and rationale for the development of the OODA Loop.
Boyd inferred the following from each of these theories:
- Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem: any logical model of reality is incomplete (and possibly inconsistent) and must be continuously refined/adapted in the face of new observations.
- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: there is a limit on our ability to observe reality with accuracy.
- Second Law of Thermodynamics: The entropy of any closed system always tends to increase, and thus the nature of any given system is continuously changing even as efforts are directed toward maintaining it in its original form.
From this set of considerations, Boyd concluded that to maintain an accurate or effective grasp of reality one must undergo a continuous cycle of interaction with the environment geared to assessing its constant changes. Boyd, though he was hardly the first to do so, then expanded Darwin's Theory of Evolution, suggesting that natural selection applies not only in biological but also in social contexts (such as the survival of nations during war or businesses in free market competition). Integrating these two concepts, he stated that the decision cycle was the central mechanism of adaptation (in a social context) and that increasing one's own rate and accuracy of assessment vis-a-vis one's counterpart's rate and accuracy of assessment provides a substantial advantage in war or other forms of competition.
Boyd hypothesized that all intelligent organisms and organizations undergo a continuous cycle of interaction with their environment. Boyd breaks this cycle down to four interrelated and overlapping processes through which one cycles continuously:
- Observation: the collection of data by means of the senses
- Orientation: the analysis and synthesis of data to form one's current mental perspective
- Decision: the determination of a course of action based on one's current mental perspective
- Action: the physical playing-out of decisions
This decision cycle is thus also known as the OODA loop. Boyd emphasized that this decision cycle is the central mechanism enabling adaptation (apart from natural selection) and is therefore critical to survival.
Boyd theorized that large organizations such as corporations, governments, or militaries possessed a hierarchy of OODA loops at tactical, grand-tactical (operational art), and strategic levels. In addition, he stated that most effective organizations have a highly decentralized chain of command that utilizes objective-driven orders, or directive control, rather than method-driven orders in order to harness the mental capacity and creative abilities of individual commanders at each level. He argued that such a structure would create a flexible "organic whole" that would be quicker to adapt to rapidly changing situations. He noted, however, that any such highly decentralized organization would necessitate a high degree of mutual trust and a common outlook that came from prior shared experiences. Headquarters needs to know that the troops are perfectly capable of forming a good plan for taking a specific objective, and the troops need to know that Headquarters does not direct them to achieve certain objectives without good reason.
It is also important to note that Boyd divided warfare into three distinct elements:
- Moral Warfare: the destruction of the enemy's will to win, via alienation from allies (or potential allies) and internal fragmentation. Ideally resulting in the "dissolution of the moral bonds that permit an organic whole [organization] to exist." (I.e., breaking down the mutual trust and common outlook mentioned in the paragraph above.)
- Mental Warfare: the distortion of the enemy's perception of reality through disinformation, ambiguous posturing, and/or severing of the communication/information infrastructure.
- Physical Warfare: the destruction of the enemy's physical resources such as weapons, people, and logistical assets.
[edit] References
- Boyd, John. "Destruction and Creation" (PDF), available from Goal Systems International
- Coram, Robert. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. ISBN 0-316-88146-5 and ISBN 0-316-79688-3. Biography; contains "Destruction & Creation".
- Hammond, Grant T. The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. ISBN 1-56098-941-6 and ISBN 1-58834-178-X. An explanation of Boyd's ideas.
- Henrotin, Joseph. L'Airpower au 21ème siècle. Enjeux et perspectives de la stratégie aérienne. Bruxelles: Bruylant (RMES), 2005. Perhaps the best book (but in French...) on air strategy. Widely details John Boyd's theories.
- Lind, William S. Maneuver Warfare Handbook. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985. ISBN 0-86531-862-X. Based on John Boyd's theories.
- Osinga, Frans. Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2007. ISBN 0-415-37103-1. Aims to provide a better understanding of Boyd's ideas concerning conflict and military strategy. Contains a full description and explanation of all of his presentations. Takes reader beyond rapid OODA loop idea and demonstrates direct influence on development of Network Centric Warfare and Fourth Generation Warfare. Argues Boyd is first postmodern strategist.
- Richards, Chet. Certain To Win: The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business. Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation, 2004. ISBN 1-4134-5377-5 and ISBN 1-4134-5376-7. Develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business.
