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

for a process of learning, of evolving. Using this construct, the crux of winning vice losingbecomes the relational movement of opponents through their respective OODA loops, i.e.,their organizational learning and adaptation processes.Adaptation naturally follows from Boyd’s view of war as being about survival. Thestrategic aim, he asserts in Patterns, is ‘to diminish adversary’s capacity to adapt whileimproving our capacity to adapt as an organic whole, so that our adversary cannot copewhile we can cope with events/efforts as they unfold’. He deliberately adopts a Neo-Darwinist/CAS perspective, hence the centrality of the theme of adaptation. Boyd seeks tocreate organizations that are adaptive. The themes of interaction-isolation, novelty,uncertainty, the dynamic in war of doctrine-counter doctrine, the existence of severalcategories of conflict, each with their own logic, and their logical responses, must be seenwithin the context of organisms that aim to survive and therefore need to adapt within adynamic environment.Boyd argues that adaptation occurs across various timescales, not unlike the onesproposed by Gell-Mann, and he develops a view on what adaptability means and requires ateach level. Each level knows its specific “name of the game”. At the tactical level and operationallevel actions, movements, attacks, feints, threats, etc, disrupt the enemy’s organizationalprocesses, confuse commanders and personnel, attrit his forces and dislocate his units.Confusion, fear and lack of information or the ability to react upon correct perception of thethreats degrade trust, cohesion, and courage, and thus the ability to cohere and respondcollectively and to take the the initiative, i.e., to adapt adequately as an organization.Adaptation is rather direct.At the strategic level adaptation is more indirect and takes longer time intervals. Itrevolves around adjusting doctrines and force structures and disorienting the opponent’sorientation patterns, or mental images.At the grand-strategic level it revolves around shaping the political and societalenvironment, and selecting a form of warfare. The theme for vitality and growth lists as theaim improving fitness as an organic whole to shape and expand influence or power over thecourse of events in the world. This also surfaces as the national goal. Here, Boyd movesaway from the OODA loop, in any case it is less pervasive. Instead the emphasis is on theeffective combination of isolation and preservation strategies in all the dimensions, themental-moral and the physical. Another major issue is the absence of emphasis on thetemporal aspect because success here is not (only) overloading the opponent’s OODAsystem but derives comes from the interplay of leveraging across multiple dimensions.Success is the result of playing the game of interaction and isolation well.So, Boyd’s theory is comprehensive, suggesting key factors for victory at each level.The OODA loop as an abstract model is still relevant but the narrow interpretation of goingthrough the OODA loop more rapidly than the opponent less so. Beyond the tactical level,the other features embedded within the OODA loop surface as more important.A new synopsisHis work shows a strong consistency and logic when viewed from the perspective of generalorganizational adaptation, as the following synopsis of his work shows. In abstract andgeneral terms, an ability to adapt requires maintaining a minimum level of freedom of actionfor each level of an organization as well as maintaining a range of options for future action.It requires a variety of organization levels and in subsystems, orientation patterns and inresponse options. It requires subsystems sufficient latitude so as to enable them to respondin a timely manner to the events in their immediate environment with the means at their274