John Boyd (military strategist)
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Col. John (Richard) Boyd (USAF) (January 23, 1927–March 9, 1997) was a fighter pilot and military strategist of the late 20th century whose theories have been highly influential in the military and in business. 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 F-16 fighter planes. 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, Current Vice-President of the United States.
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".
For more on Boyd's strategy see Military Strategy (John Boyd).
References
- Coram, Robert. Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. ISBN 0316881465 and ISBN 0316796883. Biography; contains "Destruction & Creation".
- Hammond, Grant T. The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. ISBN 1560989416 and ISBN 158834178X. An explanation of Boyd's ideas.
- Richards, Chet. Certain To Win:The Strategy Of John Boyd, Applied To Business. Philadelphia: Xlibris Corporation, 2004. ISBN 1413453775 and ISBN 1413453767. Develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business.
External links
- Boyd & Military Strategy (http://d-n-i.net/second_level/boyd_military.htm)
- War, Chaos, and Business (http://www.belisarius.com/)
- Striking at the Achilles Heel of Integrated Marketing (http://www.marketingprofs.com/4/syrett2.asp) by Matthew Syrett; An application of Col. Boyd's strategy work to integrated marketing.