Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

the Air Force. His expertise developed slowly over a long period of time and was the resultof a huge synthesis of nearly everything he learned, formally and informally 3 .John Boyd left the military community a stack of hard copies of his presentationtitled A Discourse on Winning and Losing. Started because of his involvement with thedevelopment of the A-10 Close Air Support aircraft, which led him to study the nature andhistory of close air support, his investigations in military history evolved over the years into acomprehensive theory of strategy. A Discourse on Winning and Losing consists of four briefingsand an essay. The set has also been labeled as The Green Book. It was completed in 1987,although subsequently frequently specific wording on slides was revised. The essay Destructionand Creation was written in 1976. This forms the philosophical foundation for his propositionthat uncertainty pervades everything. It is a window to Boyd’s mind, according to RobertCoram, one of the two biographers 4 . In it Boyd states that uncertainty is a fundamental andirresolvable characteristic of our lives, no matter how good our observations and theories forexplanation are. The way to go about this, is to make sure one has (a) the ability to recognizethe extent to which one’s mental model is correct and the ability to use different modelssimultaneously.Patterns of Conflict forms the historical heart of his work and is the longest of hispresentations. First draft completed in 1977, it has turned into the opus of Boyd’s researchon conflict and warfare. This briefing contains 193 slides. It is a historical analysis of warfareand theories for victory. This analysis is the vehicle that Boyd used to construct hisargument. It also provided him a tool to guide the audience through the several stages andpropositions of his argument. Each slide elaborates upon the previous one, differing oftenonly through a short addition of a term or suggestion or by a slightly different interpretationof a term he used before. In the end he derives from his survey of military history patternsfor success. This presentation represents, in Boyd’s own words, ‘a compendium of ideas andactions for winning and losing in a highly competitive world’ 5 . It also contains anintroduction to the conceptual heart, the condensed essence of Boyd’s thought: the OODAloop model or the Boyd Cycle. In simplified form, it looks like the following figure.observationactionorientationdecisionOODA stands for observation, orientation, decision, action. Explained in brief,observation is sensing yourself and the world around you. The second element, orientation,is the complex set of filters of genetic heritage, cultural predispositions, personal experience,and knowledge. The third is decision, a review of alternative courses of action and theselection of the preferred course as a hypothesis to be tested. The final element is action, the3 Grant Hammond, The Mind of War, John Boyd and American Security (Smithsonian Insitution Press,Washington, D.C., 2001), p.56.4 Robert Coram, Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Little Brown and Company, Boston,2002), p.451.5 John Boyd, ‘Abstract’, in A Discourse, p.1.2