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

Observation is the task that detects events within an individual’s, or group’s, environment. Itis the method by which people identify change, or lack of change, in the world around them.While it is not the sole basis for Action, it is a primary source of new information in thebehavioral process.Note, Boyd stresses however, ‘how orientation shapes observation, shapes decision,shapes action, and in turn is shaped by the feedback and other phenomena coming into oursensing or observing window. Without the context of Orientation, most Observations wouldbe meaningless. Boyd is particularly detailed about Orientation. To survive and grow within acomplex, ever changing world of conflict it is necessary to have insight and vision, focus anddirection, he had stated earlier. To that end, Boyd posits, we must effectively and efficientlyorient ourselves; that is, we must quickly and accurately develop mental images, or schema,to help comprehend and cope with the vast array of threatening and non-threatening eventswe face. This image construction, or orientation, is nothing more than the process ofdestruction (analysis) and creation (synthesis) he discussed in his briefings. It is how weevolve.Also note how the entire ‘loop’ (not just orientation) is an ongoing many-sidedimplicit cross-referencing process of projection, correlation, and rejection’. It is the processof examining the world from a number of perspectives so that we can generate mentalimages or impressions that correspond to that world. Done well, it is the key to winninginstead of losing. Very illuminating is Boyd’s expansion on the nature of Orientation. Itshows why “the big O” is indeed central and what elements constitute this filter and thedynamic at play. Indeed, in “the big O”, we find represented the first three of the five keystatements. The mental images we construct are shaped by our personal experience, geneticheritage, and cultural traditions, but they are also measured up against incoming newinformation to validate existing schemata. The entire OODA loop is a double-loop learningprocess, but the Orientation element itself thus also contains such a double loop feature.Observations that match up with certain mental schema call for certain decisionsand actions. Significantly, whereas the D and A of the OODA loop generally are seen tostand for Decision and Action, in this model Boyd offers his own view on the meaning ofboth words by tying Decision to Hypothesis and Action to Test. Decision is the componentin which actors decide among action alternatives that are generated in the Orientation phase.Boyd discusses actions more than he does with the decision component. Actions, accordingto Boyd, should be rapid, surprising, ambiguous, menacing and varied. Translated intoaction, decisions thus feedback into the systems as validity checks on the correctness andadequacy of the existing orientation patterns.The OODA loop model as presented by Boyd therefore represents Boyd’s view onthe process of individual and organizational adaptation in general, rather than to a militaryspecific command and control decision making proces it is generally understood to depict. Itrefers to the conceptual spiral as discussed in the previous presentation, to the process oflearning, to doctrine development, to command and control processes and to thePopperian/Kuhnian ideas of scientific advance. The (neo-)Darwinists have their place, as doPiaget, Conant, Monod, Polanyi, and Hall, and the non-linearists such as Murray Gell-Mannare incorporated through Boyd’s final key statement in the final slide that follows the OODAloop picture 113 :113 Ibid, p.5.The key statements of this presentation, the OODA Loop Sketch and related insightsrepresent an evolving, open-ended, far from equilibrium process of self-organization,emergence and natural selection.271