Military Strategy (John Boyd)

Col. John Boyd was a modern military strategist who wrote the first official "doctrine" on fighter pilot strategy, extended his insights from individual combat to military battles and grand strategy, and had a significant influence on planning for the 1991 Gulf War.

Unlike most other military strategists, Boyd never wrote a book on strategy. The primary works reflecting his perspective on warfare are Discourse on Winning & Losing (a several hundred slide presentation) and "Destruction & Creation" (a short essay). (These materials are available at [1] (http://www.d-n-i.net/second_level/boyd_military.htm).)

In the "Destruction & Creation" essay Boyd attempts to provide a philosophical foundation for his theories on warfare. In it he integrates Darwin's Theory of Evolution, 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:

• Godel'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. Any small observational error introduced in calculations can produce ever widening mismatches over time. (see Butterfly effect)
• Second Law of Thermodynamics: The entropy/chaos 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. Furthermore, whatever actions we take to influence any system will have unintended side-effects that may actually increase the rate of entropy increase (and hence the chaos) of the system.

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 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, and that the 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.

References

• Lind, William S. Maneuver Warfare Handbook. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985. ISBN 086531862X. Based on John Boyd's theories.