Grant T. Hammond: The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security

Abstract. 

Probably most readers will have heard of the OODA (Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action) loop or ‘Boyd Cycle’ as a concept to describe the sequence of decision and action within military operations. Some will probably be aware that this concept was developed by John Boyd, a United States Air Force officer, to explain his finding that the USAF’s less manoeuvrable and slower climbing F86 Sabre fighter aircraft still managed to consistently defeat Chinese Mig 15s during air-to-air combat over Korea. Yet few will know enough of the life, career and thoughts of John Boyd to assess his place as a military thinker and strategist of the 20th century. Colin S. Gray, the strategic theorist, leaves no doubt of his assessment when he describes Boyd’s work as able to: '... apply to the operational, strategic, and political levels of war, as well as to tactics for aerial dogfights. Boyd's theory claims that the key to success in conflict is to operate inside the opponent's decision cycle. ... The OODA loop may appear too humble to merit categorization as a grand theory, but that is what it is. It has an elegant simplicity, an extensive domain of applicability, and contains a high quality of insight about strategic essentials, such that its author well merits honourable mention as an outstanding general theorist of strategy.'[1 ] It should, therefore, be cause for considerable interest when a biography is written to explain John Boyd’s life and work. In this case, the author Dr Grant T. Hammond is the Director of the Centre for Strategy and Technology [ 2] at the Air War College, Air University, United States Air Force. Dr Hammond first met John Boyd in 1991 when the latter presented a briefing on his theories at the Air War College. Hammond had gone along sceptical of another one of ‘the seemingly endless array of colonels and general officers that someone thought had something significant to say’ and went away convinced that he had encountered ‘no ordinary mind’.[ 3] From this chance meeting Dr Hammond was drawn into Boyd’s wide circle of contacts, becoming almost a disciple. It is from this background that Hammond writes this biography. Boyd had a fascinating life, achieving considerable success in four spheres of his life’s work, but never being fully accepted by the organisation that he belonged to, the United States Air Force, and, despite his talents, never rising above the relatively modest rank of Colonel. The first stage of his life was as a fighter pilot, qualifying as a pilot in time to fly fighter jets in the closing stages of the Korean War and then on into peace time service. In this field he first made an indelible impression at the USAF Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base as an instructor and tactician. At that time he was known as ‘40 Second Boyd’ because of a standing $40 bet that within forty seconds he could turn a position of disadvantage into a winning position against any other pilot in a mock dogfight. Here he channelled his experience and study as a fighter pilot into the Aerial Attack Study monograph. This book summed up Boyd’s expertise on air-to-air combat into one authoritative source for training future fighter pilots. This book underpins the fighter tactics used up to this day by the USAF and most other air forces in the world.[4 ] The second stage of Boyd’s career was at USAF Systems Command where he developed an intuitive understanding of the performance differential between different types of fighter aircraft into a theory that could plot and predict the envelope of performance of any fighter aircraft. Equally importantly, this assessment could be displayed graphically in an easily understood and compared form. The book describes Boyd’s ‘a-ha’ moment, whilst when drinking beer and eating hamburgers with fellow engineering students, he realised that air combat could be considered as a trade-off between energy states to give manoeuvrability. As Hammond has it ‘nearly all of Boyd’s major insights seem to be associated with bars and scribbling on cocktail napkins and tablecloths.’[5] Working in conjunction with Tom Christie, a mathematician at USAF Systems Command, and using stolen computer time, Boyd conducted the calculations to validate his initial insight into a rigorous theory. This was ‘the first quantitative global analysis by which one could accurately compare one aircraft against another throughout their performance envelope.’ [ 6] A frightening implication of Boyd and Christie’s work was that it showed that Soviet fighters were certainly more manoeuvrable and, in many ways, more capable than US fighters. His work on energy manoeuvrability theory lead John Boyd to his next assignment in the F-X Project for a new USAF fighter, the aircraft that eventually became the F15. Boyd, working through the operational requirements team, orchestrated the changes in the design of the F15 that made it over from a heavy, unmanoeuvrable two-seat multi-role aircraft into a highly manoeuvrable, one-seat fighter, with an unprecedented power-to-weight ratio, and dedicated to air superiority. Not content to rest on the laurels for his work on the F15, Boyd had a vision for a radically different fighter aircraft--lighter, far more manoeuvrable, cheaper and simpler allowing it to be built in quantity. This was exactly the aircraft that the hierarchy of the USAF did not want as it violated their approach of using high technology to produce more capable, but significantly more expensive aircraft that could only be afforded in small numbers. With Pierre Sprey, a civilian analyst, and Rich Riccioni, another fighter pilot, Boyd formed what became known as the Lightweight Fighter Mafia. Through a mastery of the manipulation of politicians, the media and the Pentagon bureaucracy, they succeeded in getting their lightweight fighter adopted as the F16, probably the most successful fighter program in the world since the Second World War. A new phase of Boyd’s career began now as he worked to apply the lessons he had learnt from the bureaucratic infighting of the lightweight fighter saga to the wider arena of defence reform. This drive and vision would continue even after Boyd’s retirement from active duty in the Air Force in 1975. He continued to work at the Pentagon for 13 years after his official retirement, but receiving only one day’s pay per month as the minimum he could receive and still retain access to the building. During this time he was the linchpin of a loose collection of like minds, the Military Reform Movement, consisting of servicemen, defence civilians, interested journalists and a few politicians. During this period Boyd read deeply on military conflict, past, present and future, and synthesised it with his study in other apparently unrelated areas of physics, biology engineering and philosophy. How many other military theoreticians would make one of their key points: ‘According to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics one cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself. Moreover, attempts to do so lead to confusion and disorder.’[ 7] Boyd was not a writer, and he never wrote a book to explain his theories of warfare larger than a sixteen-page essay, ‘Destruction and Creation’. His chosen medium to share his insights was the face-to-face briefing. He dates from before the PowerPoint generation, but his typed briefing packages are still widely circulated and available at a number of web sites.[8 ] Supported by his impassioned delivery, these briefings were very influential within the defence reform movement and the wider defence community. The US Marine Corps, at that time developing its maneuver (sic) warfare doctrine, was particularly receptive. Indeed, it is the USMC, not the USAF, which asked for and received Boyd’s collected papers on his death. A prophet often goes unhonoured in his own country! This use of face-to-face briefings was typical of a man who was intensely verbal, but remains a real weakness for any attempt at examining and understanding his theories on warfare from the remaining evidence. His briefing packages are cryptic, being written in a short hand that the live presence of John Boyd could fill with wide ranging argument, discussion and analogies. Unfortunately, without his enlivening presence, the remaining documents are too brief to do more than hint at his theories. Here his lack of academic training, ambitions and pretensions have let posterity down. The Mind of War is above all else a story about a man of character--at times ‘a 24-karat pain in the ass’ [ 9], but always independent, worth listening to and all too often right. He was a man whose opinions were arrived at by a process of deep and wide ranging thought, and then tenaciously upheld against all without fear or favour and certainly regardless of rank. This single minded approach to doing what was right, not what was expedient in a large part contributed to the fact that Boyd left the USAF as a Colonel, but he lived it on the basis he wanted, one where he could retain his independence and self respect. Boyd’s attitude of doing the hard right, rather than the easy wrong, is best summed up by a quote from another of his disciples, USAF Colonel James Burton: ‘... you have to make a choice about what kind of person you are going to be. There are two career paths in front of you, and you have to choose which path you will follow. One path leads to promotion, titles and positions of distinction. To achieve success down that path, you have to conduct yourself a certain way. You must go along with the system and show that you are a better team player than your competitors. The other path leads to doing things that are truly significant for the Air Force, but the rewards will often be a kick in the stomach because you may have to cross swords with the party line on occasion. You can’t go down both paths, you have to choose. So, do you want to be a man of distinction or do you want to do things that really influence the shape of the Air Force? To be or to do, that is the question.’ [ 10] All his life, Boyd chose not to be, but to do, often at considerable cost to his career. This book tries to tell that powerful story. Colin S. Gray says of it ‘At last, John Boyd has found his Boswell. This is the book that tells the story of Boyd’s ideas as it should be told.’ [ 11] Whilst enjoying this book and finding it interesting, especially as a study of character in action, I do not think it is the definitive telling of John Boyd’s life or of his theories of warfare. It is too much of a hagiography to be fully objective, although Hammond candidly admits his close friendship and deep admiration of John Boyd. What a shame that Boyd never wrote the masterwork to explain his theories. Unfortunately, like Clausewitz, Boyd’s ideas will have to be re-assembled from the cryptic messages he left behind. The opportunity still exists for a comprehensive biography and critical analysis to help achieve this. [1] Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford University Press, Oxford UK, 1999, p. 91. [2] http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awccsat.htm. [3] Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security, Smithsonian Institute Press, Washington, 2001, p. vii. [4] ibid, p.45. [5] ibid, p.53. [6] ibid, p. 59. [7] Excerpt from the Boyd briefing 'Destruction and Creation’ as quoted in Hammond, ibid, p. 158. [8] Start at the USAF Air War College site devoted to John Boyd at http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-thry.htm#boyd, and follow this up with http://www.d-n-i.net/boyd/pdf/poc.pdf for a copy of Boyd’s ‘Patterns of Conflict’ Briefing or http://www.belisarius.com/default.htm for articles and discussion on Boyd’s theories, especially their application to business. [9] Hammond, op cit, p. 2. [10] Colonel James Burton, from his book The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard, as quoted in Hammond, ibid, p. 10. [11] As quoted on the back dustcover of Hammond, ibid.

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