Helloooo MoveOn: Inside Your OODA Loop pwning Your Orientation!

Written by Ralph BenkocloseAuthor: Ralph Benko Name: Ralph Benko
Email: ralphbenko@gmail.com
Site:
About: Ralph Benko is a principal of Capital City Partners, of Washington DC. He is also the author of The Websters’ Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World, for policy and advocacy groups to use the Web powerfully.See Authors Posts (11) on October 27, 2009

Every once in a while, a true maverick genius slips through the System’s opulent defenses and does something … magnificent.

One of these rare figures is the late Col. John Boyd.

Described in Publisher’s Weekly review of his biography, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram,

John Boyd (1927-1997) was a brilliant and blazingly eccentric person. He was a crackerjack jet fighter pilot, a visionary scholar and an innovative military strategist. Among other things, Boyd wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat, was primarily responsible for designing the F-15 and the F-16 jet fighters, was a leading voice in the post-Vietnam War military reform movement and shaped the smashingly successful U.S. military strategy in the Persian Gulf War. His writings and theories on military strategy remain influential today, particularly his concept of the “OODA (Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action) Loop,” which all the military services — and many business strategists — use to this day. Boyd also was a brash, combative, iconoclastic man, not above insulting his superiors at the Pentagon (both military and civilian); he made enemies (and fiercely loyal acolytes) everywhere he went.

Coram’s publisher describes as follows:

John Boyd was the greatest fighter pilot in American history. From the proving ground of the Korean War, he went on to win renown as the instructor who defeated — in less than forty seconds — every pilot who took him on. But what made Boyd a man for the ages was what happened after he left the cockpit. Boyd made a career of challenging the intractable Pentagon bureaucracy, making enemies and a few devoted disciples who would become known as “The Acolytes.” Boyd transformed the way military aircraft-in particular the F-15 and F-16-were designed with his revolutionary “Energy-Maneuverability Theory,” fighting the Air Force’s entrenched ideas every step of the way. He then dedicated lonely years to a radical theory of conflict that at the time was mostly ignored, but now is acclaimed as the most influential thinking about conflict since Sun Tzu.

A man of daring, ferocious passion, and remarkable stubbornness, John Boyd was that most American of heroes—a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune, but for his country. And in BOYD, Robert Coram finally tells his incredible story. Until now, John Boyd has been the great secret hero of the American military. No longer.

Well, sure, F-16’s are one thing.  But what the heck’s an OODA loop?

From the Wikipedia:

The OODA loop (for observe, orient, decide, and act) is a concept originally applied to the combat operations process.

Diagram of a decision cycle known as the Boyd cycle, or the OODA loop.

It has become an important concept in both business and military strategy. According to Boyd, decision-making occurs in a recurring cycle of observe-orient-decide-act. An entity … that can process this cycle quickly, observing and reacting to unfolding events more rapidly than an opponent, can thereby “get inside” the opponent’s decision cycle and gain the advantage.

***

Boyd’s diagram shows that all decisions are based on observations of the evolving situation tempered with implicit filtering of the problem being addressed. These observations are the raw information on which decisions and actions are based. The observed information must be processed to orient it for further making a decision. In notes from his talk “Organic Design for Command and Control”, Boyd said,

“The second O, orientation – as the repository of our genetic heritage, cultural tradition, and previous experiences – is the most important part of the O-O-D-A loop since it shapes the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act.”

As stated by Boyd and shown in the “Orient” box, there is much filtering of the information through our culture, genetics, ability to analyze and synthesize, and previous experience. ***

In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries–or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary’s Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. … Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries–since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.

***

It was distilled, said Col. Boyd, from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics…

***

The approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor.

Although the Air Force’s FX proponents remained hostile to the concept because they perceived it as a threat to the F-15 program, the ADF concept … gained civilian political support under the reform-minded Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard.  ***

In the late 1960s Boyd gathered around him a group of like-minded innovators that became known as the “Lightweight Fighter Mafia.” ***

Over 4,400 F-16s have been sold to 25 foreign air forces.

EACH F-16 Fighting Falcon costs less than $20 million (in 1998 dollars).

And the F-16’s successor, the magnificent F-22A Raptor?

$250 million.  Each (including development costs).

Yes, that’s right.  Ten Raptors cost about as much as the entire Project Mercury manned space program.

Col. Boyd is long gone to the great Dogfight in the Sky (where he very likely is shooting down Lucifer’s Aces — presumably in 40 seconds or less).

$250 million!  Could, just a remote possibility, the Pentagon be back to its old tricks?

John, come back.  Secretary Gates needs you!

***

But at least we have his legacy and not only with the F-16.

Boyd was called back to help develop the strategy for Desert Storm and is credited with influencing its powerful “Left Hook.”

And today: his ideas about of maneuverability, rather than musclebound power, and his OODA Loop, especially the importance of Orientation, that of our adversaries, and that of ourselves are developing widening circles of influence.

And Parcbench’s readers — while enjoying its savvy effort to get inside the HuffPo’s OODA Loop — can enjoy the treat of reading Boyd’s writings on such fundamental issues as winning and losing, destruction and creation, and other elemental aspects of life, here.

And even of watching a few tapes of Col. Boyd presenting, here.

***

Helloooo MoveOn!

We are inside your OODA Loop, pwning your Orientation.

—

Ralph Benko, who takes his OODA Loops for breakfast with a splash of almond milk, is a principal of Capital City Partners, of Washington DC. He is the author of The Websters’ Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World (The Websters’ Press, 2008), which shows how policy and advocacy groups — and bloodless-coup- minded citizens! — can use the Web powerfully.  It is available as a free eBook from www.thewebstersdictionary.com and perfect bound on actual paper from Amazon.com and finer bookstores everywhere.