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

He developed the ability to see air combat as a contest of moves and countermoves in time,a contest in which a repertoire of moves and the agility to transition from one to anotherquickly and accurately in regard the opponent’s options was essential. He managed todevelop the intellectual and analytical tool kit to translate his insights from practice intobetter weapon systems. Because of this insight, and armed with it, he became involved inconcept definition, basic engineering and setting performance characteristics of thegeneration of fighter aircraft that to a large extent defined Western air power and air forcesfrom the 1980’s and well into the first decade of the 21 st Century. He changed the art ofdesigning fighters. Boyd’s methodology showed trade-off parameters in the design and itbrought rationality to the design processes by showing the net contribution of optionaltechnical modifications and equipment. Importantly, his work on fighter design providedalso the core of his strategic thinking.Already the core of Boyd’s later ideas appears in the pivotal presentation A NewConception for Air-to-Air Combat, albeit in rudimentary form. Those few themes aboveresurface in subsequent work in expanded and sometimes slightly adjusted form. The abilityto adapt, and a strategy aimed at undermining the opponent’s ability to do so featureprominently as key themes in Boyd’s theory for winning. At the time, thinking aboutoperating at a quicker tempo, not just faster, than the adversary was a new concept in wagingwar, as was the expression of military operations within the context of the process ofadaptation.Rediscovering old mastersReading HistoryOne month later, on September 3, 1976 he completed the eleven-page paper Destruction andCreation which manifests Boyd’s growing interest in various scientific disciplines which wouldbecome a distinctive formative factor of Boyd’s thinking. At about the same time work onPatterns of Conflict resulted in a first draft. Patterns of Conflict points clearly at the most obviousand initially also dominant formative factor: military history and existing strategic theories.This presentation slowly evolved through several “Warps” into a coherent framework thatformed the vehicle for arguing doctrinal change within the US military establishment.Even a casual reading of his main presentation, Patterns of Conflict, will suffice toconvey the suggestion that Boyd was influenced directly by various strategic theories and hisstudy of military history and, moreover, that his ideas bear close resemblance to those of avariety of authors. His study covered every known strategist from Sun Tzu, Genghis Kahnand the Mongols, Maurice de Saxe, Pierre de Bourcet, Compte de Guibert, Napoleon, Baronde Jomini and Karl von Clausewitz, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant,Alfred von Schlieffen, Eric ovn Ludendorff, the British theorist Julian Corbett, J.F.C. Fuller,T.E. Lawrence and Basil Liddell Hart, the German theorists/practitioners Heinz Guderian,Eric von Mainstein, Hermann Balck, Erwin Rommel, as well as theorists of revolutionaryand guerrilla warfare such as Karl Marx and Vo Nguyen Giap, to name the most familiarones.The bibliography of this presentation also includes books on specific battles andwars (for instance D-Day, Yom Kippur, Vietnam), biographies of and autobiographies bysoldiers, generals and statesmen (Napoleon, Mao Tse-Tung, Patton, Rommel). As can begleaned from Annex B, these books cover the tactical, technical, psychological, operational,the strategic as well as the political dimension. Some deal with deception and intelligence,others with the Greek art of war, or command and control or tank-tactics. Nuclear strategy47