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

emphasized being more responsive, anticipatory, and flexible in decision-making andmovement than an enemy to avoid enemy strength and exploit vulnerabilities. Finally,synchronization emphasized coordinated action and an all-pervading unity of effort 159 .The great relevance of the American theoretical adventure derives from the factthat it represents the first conscious attempt of any Western army to apply a systemicapproach to the field of operations. In the course of its new conceptual enterprise, resultingfrom the post-Vietnam professional perplexity, American military mentality moved from anaddiction to attrition based on tactical parochialism and technology to the adoption of theoperational maneuver 160 . However, the true significance of this period for the US Army wasnot the crafting of AirLand Battle, but the inculcation of a tradition of creativity andintrospection. It institutionalized creativity and conceptual thinking in the US Army 161 .A Discourse as product of interactionThus, his work matured in direct response to an obvious requirement and by virtue of theinteraction with his audience. His work reflects the themes discussed at the time while thesediscussions were influenced either directly by Boyd or through Boyd’s group of followers.Boyd developed, expanded and articulated his own thoughts in part in response to thedebates and his interaction with the military and civilian audiences. As Coram remarked,Boyd needed the dialectic of debate 162 . This explains also the format of a presentation toconvey his ideas. The reason why he chose to make slides instead of a book lies in the factthat in his view slides were a better tool for communication, in particular in the militaryenvironment which has a visually oriented culture in which overhead slides featuredprominently, and slide shows can be expanded and amended, books not quite that easily.Indeed, Boyd recognized that his work was never going to be complete 163 . The slideswere his medium to get his point across. As one author who walked the halls of thePentagon stated, ‘Boyd was a tireless briefer […] and indeed made a major contribution to anentirely new Pentagon Zeitgeist on the use of force’ 164 . Using his slides as an educational tool,he guided his audiences through his ideas. He made them go through the same step by stepprocess of analysis and synthesis. To understand Boyd nowadays, one needs to regard hisslides as the manifestation of this learning process. Reading his slides must be considered alearning process, for not the OODA loop is the message, but getting to that insight is.But it was also a discourse, a two way process. And while Hammond rightlyobserved that ‘there is little doubt that Boyd’s hundreds of Patterns of Conflict briefings aroundthe Pentagon and throughout the US military had prepared the ground for a differentapproach to war fighting for the American military’ 165 , equally, this interaction and thebackground of the interaction produced A Discourse; they stimulated the growth of ideas andconceptual innovation in two ways. First, the condition, the institutional problems, the recentexperiences and needs of the US armed services provided an input in the nature of the159 Hallion, pp. 77-78.160 Naveh, p.252.161 Metz, p.40.162 Coram, p.322.163 Cowan, p.17.164 Peter Faber, ‘The Evolution of Airpower Theory in the United States’, in John Olson (ed),Asymmetric Warfare (Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, Oslo, 2002), p.109.165 Hammond, p.154.76