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

involvement with fighter development did not end with Boyd’s short assignment to Thailandfrom April 1972-April 1973. The bureaucratic processes behind these programs have beendiscussed elsewhere in detail 12 . Suffice here to conclude that the end result was a LightWeight Fighter fly-off competition between the YF-16 and YF-17 (later to develop into theF-18), fighters with unsurpassed maneuverability, excellent visibility, high acceleration andsustained turning capability and relatively low costs. These types have proved their worth inthe inventories in most Western air forces.The last design Boyd had an influence on was the A-10, and, interestingly, hisinvolvement with the A-10 development would influence Boyd for it was one of twoprojects that induced him to study military history. The A-10 was designed for Close AirSupport and killing tanks, an entirely different mission than gaining air superiority. CASmissions normally are flown close to the ground and over the frontline. Subsequently, CASaircraft are exposed to intense ground to air threat. When invited to look at the project by aclose colleague, Boyd subsequently needed to develop a new set of trade-off studies anddesign parameters. German World War II experts were interviewed to learn about Germantactics, the time required to detect and attack ground targets and the maximum time availablefor aiming and delivering ordnance before air defense systems were cued for effectiveengagement of the attacking aircraft. This exposed him to the need to look into the historyof Close Air Support and air-ground coordination, and German military tactics and strategyof World War II in general 13 . The A-10 too, proved its worth, most notably duringOperation Desert Storm where it demonstrated an awesome capability for taking out tankscombined with the ability to absorb considerable damage.From Air Combat to a general theory of warFrom this research he discovered that grasping the essentials of military victory required athorough reading through military history. In a time that more air force officers could quotePeter Drucker than Clausewitz, Boyd climbed inside the minds of every theoretician from400 B.C. to the present 14 . Out of this forray into military history the first sketches of Patternsof Conflict emerged the first draft of which would be ready in 1977. In it he makes a seeminglyradical and perhaps unwarranted jump from air combat to operational art. The transitionfrom air combat theory to strategic theory occurred in 1975 when he started working on apresentation titled A New conception for Air to Air Combat, while working on Patterns of Conflictand Destruction and Creation simultaneously. While A New conception for Air to Air Combat is notincluded in A Discourse, it is the stepping stone between two periods. In it he combinesinsights he had already developed in his research for Destruction and Creation with hisknowledge of air-to-air combat, and the suggestions he advances here are directlyincorporated in Patterns of Conflict, the briefing that was going to form the main body of ADiscourse together with Destruction and Creation.A New conception for Air to Air Combat was produced because of a request by NASA.On August 4, 1976 he finished this research. In it he looks again at the issue ofmaneuverability due to the fact that in the fly-off competition the YF-16 had unexpectedlydramatically outperformed the YF-18 while EM diagrams had predicted a close contest. Testpilots however lauded the YF-16 capability for sudden very tight “buttonhook turns” (albeit12 See Hammond and Hallion for instance.13 Hammond, pp.121-123.14 Burton, pp.46, 49.45