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

Slowly his writings matured. In 1960, at the age of 33, he published what is stillconsidered the encyclopedia on air-to-air combat; Aerial Attack Study. In 147 pages it detailsevery maneuver possible, in words and graphic illustrations, for a pilot to use in a dogfight.An important feature of it was that Boyd did not advocate one maneuver over another but itrepresented the options available to the pilot and his opponent in relation to each other. Hewanted to show people a variety of moves and countermoves to have in a repertoire. Itscontent became part of an official Air Force Manual on air-to-air tactics and wasdisseminated through official and informal channels to other services in time for good useduring the Vietnam War. Not one new maneuver has been added since, illustrating thecomprehensiveness of Boyd’s effort and subsequently this publication, in various guises stillforms the basis in all jet air forces today 6 . Thus, he changed the nature of the premier airtactics school of the US Air Force.In the Summer of 1960 he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to get a degree in industrialengineering at Georgia Tech. At Nellis he became aware that, if he wanted to make furtherheadway with the discoveries he had made, he needed to expand his intellectual tool kit withknowledge on mathematics. Industrial engineering would add physics, production lines,thermodynamics, and other fields. At Georgia Tech his interest lay not in the mathematicaldetails, but in the underlying concepts. Here he developed the taste for synthesis. And thisresulted in another remarkable and very important contribution to air combat, an insight thatbrought him back to the question concerning the relative excellence of the F-86 in Korea.At Georgia Tech Boyd wrestled with the study of thermodynamics.Thermodynamics concerns the study of energy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics iscalled the law of entropy, and postulates that in a closed system the transfer of heat (energy)goes in one direction, from a high temperature to a low temperature. If two separatevolumes of water, one with high and one with low temperature, are mixed, the highlyordered states of the separate volumes disappear and are replaced by a less ordered state. Thetemperature changes until the temperature across the entire system is uniform, and it is nonreversible.The entropy in the system has increased. The system has moved from order todisorder. In engineering the concept refers to the fact that more usable energy always goesinto the system than comes out. No system is 100% effective 7 .Using the insight from thermodynamics he discovered he could explain air-to-aircombat in terms of energy relationships, in which altitude is potential energy to be traded forspeed - kinetic energy - and vise versa. Turns became energy consuming maneuvers, with therate of consumption depending on the number of g-forces of the turn, and engine power anenergy provider for gaining altitude, gaining speed or sustaining a turn, or a combination ofthese. These relationships could be expressed in calculable equations and the outcomes couldbe plotted in graphs displaying energy/maneuverability characteristics of a fighter. Thevalues at various points form the ‘flight envelope’ of an aircraft. By overlaying andcomparing such graphs of different fighters the speed/altitude areas of relative advantagebecame immediately obvious. Moreover, it would provide invaluable information for aircraftdesigners for they could see under what conditions where, when and how an aircraft couldgain an advantage. It was ‘as fundamental and as significant to aviation as Newton was tophysics’, Coram rightly notes 8 .This was a brilliant and novel insight, if still only in theory. However it requiredexpensive computer time to make calculations and explore this insight. He managed to6 Hammond, pp.44, 46-47; Cowan, pp.11-12.7 See Coram, pp.127-134 for an anecdotal account of the way Boyd gained this insight and made theanalogy to air combat.8 Ibid, p.127.42