OODA is for fighter pilots
Except at the most tactical, trivial level, the OODA loop is not a useful tool in wars such as we are fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq. Things move at such a glacial pace, for one thing. For another, the successful practitioner needs to learn to ignore much of the white noise generated by an insurgency. Trying to orient or reorient every time you receive a stimulus may seem wise, but it actually only leads to friction, exhaustion, inconsistency, and failure.
A very wise commander once told us planners our jobs was to reduce the number of decisions he had to make during an operation.
Hmmmm..... Interesting thought and interesting quote
Just a couple of days ago, I was sitting with a State Department (S/CRS) Planner discussing some new approaches they are considering/trying to find money to field. These included modular planning teams, HN Gov/t embeds, and PRT like organizations for the "long haul". All interesting but not relevant, what was relevant was an approach to the planning process that they intend to employ...
one in which no one (but the plan) is in charge and that it will be a self-adjusting mechanism amongst a team of peers (I think I got that mostly right). Well you can imagine my head spinning (think Linda Blair), as I struggled to keep a straight face and open mind. Well can't say that at that moment either I or my uniformed partners were able to wrap our minds around that little State Department "pearl".
But as I considered it further.... So long as the plan wasn't botched from the beginning (not perfect just good), then this might actually be a stroke of brilliance. The State Department contribution is by nature long-term (10-40 years). Their plan more than any other could use a little built-in bureaucratic non-sense to keep them from chasing their tail with every change in the wind direction. Having an engineered impediment to deviations is not only OK, but desired.
Now I'd sure like to see one of those good enough, self-syncronizing plans! Never quite crossed that threshold except in a game of monopoly.
Live well and row...
OODA in battlefield prep?
Ken White is correct, not everyone can be John Boyd. Maybe OODA is more useful in allowing a staff to assist in battlefield prep vs a squad leader or PL in contact.
A few brief comments on OODA
Hi Wilf,
You wrote:
Quote:
As a war gamer myself, I just see OODA as a description of one possible process.
The OODA Loop is a model of cognitive processing, there are indeed many other models. Boyd's OODA fits well with assumptions of (the entirely unrelated) Dual Processing theory in cognitive psychology. It also fits with some models relating to long term memory function.
Quote:
Wrong observation and all falls down.
I think Boyd would have agreed. Poor perceptions equate to faulty assumptions which could then lead to poor decisions.
Quote:
As it does with one wrong action and the process does not give you any indicators as to how to judge your "orientation" or understanding.
Disagree here. Wrong actions are learning experiences, though in war sometimes these experiences are not survivable ones. When your actions do not lead to the results that your assumptions led you to expect, it's time to re-check your premises and your observations.
Quote:
It only seems to explain why smart people do good things. It does not help train soldiers or officers that I can see.
It can also explain why inobservant, highly ideological or just plain dumb people do foolish things.
As for training, OODA is useful as a teaching tool to get people to start to pay attention to their own thinking (metacognition) and the thinking of others. Why do we have the preconceived notions that we do ? Why are we ignoring inconvenient facts staring us in the face?
Can you go through OODA as a conscious, step by step process ? Sure, if you have the luxury of time for calm reflection but your brain most likely does the OODA steps with a high degree of fast-processing automaticity.
The OODA Loop is a map, not the territory.
Eating the OODA Elephant One Bite at a time...
I think I've captured all the relevant complaints about the OODA Loop concept and hope to publish a series of postings here and in the other OODA Loop thread (they'll be mirroring each other for starters) to hopefully lend some clarity to the issue, at least WRT how we in the Marine Corps intended to deal with it. That said, the concept is grossly misunderstood, mistaught, misapplied, and misused...and weeding through all that is going to be difficult. But separating all that chaff to get the germ of the wheat should be productive, if nothing else but to cast some light on what the issues behind the OODA Loop concept really are. Like any other concept, OODA has uses in situations best suited for it--and it is irrelevant in others or just plain dangerous in the hands of the unskilled. It's very difficult to make generalities regarding the concept outside of situations/scenarios. But I'll make that attempt. You'll find, however, that in a philosophical/conceptual disagreement I'll quickly "go to ground" in specific scenarios and situations, both to illustrate what I think your qualms are and what I think the proper understanding and utility of the concept is.
As an intelligence officer, I have a particular interest in the concept/model from a practical standpoint in designing intelligence architectures, systems, techniques and procedures, and in training Marines. How the OODA Loop concept helps me do this is something I probably won't get to for some time, because I've got to lay a helluva lot of conceptual foundation/groundwork to establish before I get there.
The complaints I see in the threads revolve around two areas:
The validity of the OODA Loop Concept
The utility of the OODA Loop Concept.
If you don't buy the validity of the concept, you generally don't think much of its utility. Even if you buy the validity of the concept, you may still think it's not terribly useful from a practical standpoint.
My Particular Bents and Biases on the Subject:
First, I am a "German School" Maneuver Warfare advocate for reasons established in other threads that I won't repeat here. I was also an armor officer with a light armored vehicle battalion commander in my tank battalion at one time (he retired a three-star general)--he was pretty big on deliberately designing shorter decision cycles with no compromises made on quality of judgments, even though mistakes were generally tolerated. But more to the point, I also learned "Soviet School" MW when in grad school--I got fairly engrossed in Soviet tactical cybernetic theory (what they termed "Troop Control" theory) which had very much of a mirror concept to the OODA Loop. Interestingly, the Soviets spent a huge amount of effort on the "Orientation" piece, trying to simultaneously shorten the time required to achieve it and increase the quality of the understanding to be achieved in that phase. Most of my judgments on the utility of OODA Loop theory is going to be founded on Soviet School MW practice, although there is quite a bit of German School MW utility as well. I'll cover both, but the German School applications appear relatively squishy in comparison.
Secondly, I was and still am a big fan of MW influences in commercial hobby historical wargame design and development. There have been a number of efforts to model OODA loop processes for various historical periods, but the "German School" MW applications of C2--decentralized command to facilitate tighter OODA cycle time--has been the most problematic to model. So far the most successful effort I have seen (but still not the most perfect) is the Tactical Combat Series (TCS) games published by The Gamers and Multi-Man Publishing. Repeated play of these games--which are overwhelmingly focused on WWII, naturally--provides some compelling insights into what is theoretically (and practically) possible with the concept in ground warfare at the tactical level. There are other titles and game design systems that also do a good job, but a little more abstractly which makes them harder to visualize what is happening and accept some of the game outcomes. I'll get into that as well much, much later--probably at the end of my discussion.
Lastly, there are limitations and issues regarding the OODA Loop concept, and my interest here is to increase the understanding of what those truly are as opposed to what many perceive them to be. I may not be convincing enough as much depends on your particular background and desires. But it's worth a shot. If anything, if you fail to agree with how I lay this out, at least you understand why I'm thinking in the way that I do...and if we agree to disagree, it's because we're coming at the idea with widely differing assumptions borne from widely different experiences.
OODA Loop Catechism: Establishing Articles of Faith
If you are familiar with my posts in discussion threads elsewhere, you can perhaps better appreciate why I used the terms I did in the title.
Instead of plunging into Osinga's description of Boyd's concepts of the OODA Loop and "fast transients," I thought I'd start with the foundational MW theory as Marines understand it and work backwards. That way I can uncover the issues regarding validity and utility one onion layer at a time so we maintain some coherence in approach and cohesiveness in discussions. We'll eventually cover everything mentioned so far (and I expect a good deal more besides), but it's a very large subject and it must be tackled in layers. Each layer is going to build on the other layers.
Like theology, we've got to start with some foundational beliefs. There's a lot of reason and logical edifices that are erected, but none of that means much if you don't buy into the basics.
MW Essential Premise #1: Speed and Focus are two characteristics of successful operations in an environment of uncertainty.
What does this mean? While these are not the only two characteristics needed for success, these are the two characteristics that discriminate the MW style from other styles. Additionally, there is a belief that these characteristics are necessary (but not sufficient) for success in an uncertain environment. If the environment is relatively static and certain, then these characterstics may not play such a significant role. Siege operations (whether on a tactical, operational, or possibly even a strategic scale) would seem to put much less emphasis on achieving relative speed advantages and on focusing on a particular thing at the same time--at least until the "assault upon the works!" Ideally, a successful siege never gets that far--the place surrenders/succumbs before then.
MW Essential Premise #2: In such struggles, both sides are adapting to the situation in an attempt to undermine the enemy--the side that executes the faster and "good enough" transients will eventually beat the side that is slower, even if those transients are "near-perfect."
What does this mean? Again, the situation is uncertain. Neither side knows as much as is desired and the grappling is part of the learning experience. To borrow Clausewitz's wrestling metaphor (the two-struggle or Zweikampf), it isn't the hold alone that wins the match, it's the moves leading up to the decisive and match-winning hold. And it's the moves in relation to each other. Which one is better? Which one is faster? There is some sort of accommodation between speed and quality--faster alone is not enough (and can actually be dangerous if the action is flat wrong). Perfect quality is not enough if executed too late and pre-empted or dislocated by the moves of the opponent (to use Leonhard's characterizations).
MW Essential Premise #3: Weapons, organizations, techniques, procedures, concepts of operation, and training to accomplish these must be oriented towards achieving higher quality "fast transient" actions when confronted with such situations.
What does this mean? If additional hitting power (strike) or force sustainment/survival (protect) cabilities are purchased at the price of speed and focus to gain leverage/advantage (maneuver), then the force is potentially off-balance vis-a-vis an opponent who enjoys better speed and focus and can leverage these to advantage. MW interpretations of history (and possibly narrow selection of examples--we can talk about those) are that, given the dilemmas regarding balancing strike/protect/maneuver capabilities, one is better off putting more initial emphasis on maneuver over strike and protect, given an uncertain situation.
MW Essential Premise #4: Where agility and action quality in executing "fast transients" have been historically seen as important and improvements made in weapons, organizations, techniques, procedures, concepts of operations, and training to accomplish these have been made, the explicit intent to design all aspects of military command and control around this idea is a relatively recent occurrence.
What does this mean? Command and control--in all its components and aspects--is to be explicitly designed to execute fast transients. What differentiates German School and Soviet School MW is how command and control is designed to achieve it; each reflects differing requirements, restraints, constraints, and compromises made between tempo and quality. German School MW uses Boyd's decision cycle as its means of explanation/analysis, whereas Soviet School uses a similar conceptual device but with different emphases in the subcomponents.
My next post will catalogue and investigate the challenges to these premises before we move on. Once that is done, we'll delve into the Bill Lind and the USMC interpretions of the OODA loop and the various challenges to the validity and utility of the concept.
Challenges to MW Essential Premise #1
To recap:
Quote:
MW Essential Premise #1: Speed and Focus are two characteristics of successful operations in an environment of uncertainty.
What does this mean? While these are not the only two characteristics needed for success, these are the two characteristics that discriminate the MW style from other styles. Additionally, there is a belief that these characteristics are necessary (but not sufficient) for success in an uncertain environment. If the environment is relatively static and certain, then these characteristics may not play such a significant role. Siege operations (whether on a tactical, operational, or possibly even a strategic scale) would seem to put much less emphasis on achieving relative speed advantages and on focusing on a particular thing at the same time--at least until the "assault upon the works!" Ideally, a successful siege never gets that far--the place surrenders/succumbs before then.
So here are the quibbles/challenges to this idea and the USMC Maneuver Warfare doctrinal responses:
Challenge: Speed alone is not enough. Even speed with focus means little if the focus is misdirected and/or speed only is in a single spurt and cannot be sustained.
Response. MW/OODA Loop theory has no argument with this particular challenge, but nevertheless maintains that an uncertain environment puts a premium on capabilities to enjoy greater speed of action/response than one’s opponent and the ability to focus that action effectively. The theory does not encourage reckless speed in a number of instances:
MCDP 1 Warfighting says (pages 62-64):
Quote:
In a military sense, there is more to speed than simply going fast, and there is a vital difference between acting rapidly and acting recklessly. With time we must consider the closely related factor of timing….Making maximum use of every hour and every minute is as important to speed in combat as simply going fast when we are moving….A good tactician has a constant sense of urgency. We feel guilty if we are idle. We never waste time, and we are never content with the pace which events are happening….We employ speed and use time to create tempo. Tempo is not merely a matter of acting fastest or at the earliest opportunity. It is also a matter of timing—acting at the right time.
Additionally, MCDP 1 argues (pages 65-66
Quote:
As with all things in war, speed is relative. Speed is meaningful militarily onlyl if we are acting faster than the enemy. We can do that either by slowing the enemy or by increasing our own speed.
To be consistent, superiority in relative speed must continue over time. It is not enough to move faster than the enemy only now and then because when we are not moving faster, the advantage, the initiative, passes to him. Most forces can manage an intermittent burst of speed but must then halt for a considerable period to recover between bursts. During that halt, they are likely to lose their advantage. We realize that we cannot operate at full speed indefinitely, and the challenge is to be consistently faster than the enemy.
I’d like interject here that most of the complaints I’ve read in the threads are about acting so fast that no good judgments are possible. Nobody is talking about the other half of the way to win the OODA Loop contest, which is by slowing the enemy down. If you think your force is going too fast to effectively understand what it’s doing before it does it, then there’s the other option of getting the enemy to slow down to the point where this is less of a risk to your force.
Challenge: An overemphasis on speed/tempo in this sense means there is little provision for times when it is best to wait for the situation to develop out of uncertainty.
Response: The MW/OODA Loop is designed to help us concentrate on building capacity for speed/tempo and focus in execution of operations. There is a difference between the German and Soviet schools on how this works in planning, which we’ll have to cover in the future. But USMC MW theory admits that knowing when to act—and when not to—is part of the speed/focus emphasis. Again, from MDCP 1 Warfighting (pages 64-66):
Quote:
Timing means knowing when to act, and equally important, when NOT to act [Emphasis in the original—EMW]…If our concept of operations involves a diversion, we need to allow time for the diversion to take effect. If we have laid an ambush for the enemy, we need to give the enemy time to fall fully into the trap. If a situation is still forming, we may want to develop it further before we commit to a course of action….Decisive action is our goal, and it must be timed to occur at the proper moment. There are times to act, and there are other times to set the stage and wait.
As has been said, simply using speed and focus is no panacea for effective thinking. Discrimination in application matters--and practice/experience in doing so is essential.
Challenge to MW Essential Premise #2--Part 1
To recap:
Quote:
MW Essential Premise #2: In such struggles, both sides are adapting to the situation in an attempt to undermine the enemy--the side that executes the faster and "good enough" transients will eventually beat the side that is slower, even if those transients are "near-perfect."
What does this mean? Again, the situation is uncertain. Neither side knows as much as is desired and the grappling is part of the learning experience. To borrow Clausewitz's wrestling metaphor (the two-struggle or Zweikampf), it isn't the hold alone that wins the match, it's the moves leading up to the decisive and match-winning hold. And it's the moves in relation to each other. Which one is better? Which one is faster? There is some sort of accommodation between speed and quality--faster alone is not enough (and can actually be dangerous if the action is flat wrong). Perfect quality is not enough if executed too late and pre-empted or dislocated by the moves of the opponent (to use Leonhard's characterizations).
Challenge: If the OODA Loop concept was originally designed to explain how the F-86 could generate a higher and better tempo in “fast transients” against a MiG-15 in a Korean War era dogfight, is it still relevant/valid in understanding missile versus aircraft engagements?
Response: I would argue it certainly is. This is very clear if we look back to Vietnam War surface-to-air missile engagements—Randy “Duke” Cunningham knew exactly when to put his F4 into a steep dive when one of those “flying telephone poles” would come up to greet him. Timing was everything; the advantage the pilot had was he knew how the missile would react—after all, missiles had no brain. So if the pilot understood the guidance system, the pilot knew the missile G-loading characteristics (which were usually more than what humans could tolerate), the pilot knew the characteristics of his own aircraft, he could devise a response based on what he knew the missile was capable of.
Certainly as guidance systems and missile performance has improved, this has gotten harder and harder to do. Certainly the OODA Loop as ONE of a number of analytical lenses would help to paint the problem. Still, aircraft countermeasures against missiles (whether inherent to the aircraft or from other aircraft executing SAM suppression missions) are aimed at lengthening the missile engagement OODA Loop to the point where the pilot can effectively react and negate the threat. If we need to get into specifics here, we can, certainly…even if we are talking about theoretical scenarios.
But just an example, Missile Warning gear is intended to alert the pilot that a missile is in the air, giving him the option to divert or abort (or press on). In other words, it provides an “earlier” observation than he might otherwise get, leaving him more time for “orientation” and “decision” and “action.” “Wild Weasel” missions flying support for strike packages have a number of options that can be described in OODA terms. Is this the ONLY way to express what is going on? Certainly not. There are a number of other tools that are necessary to understand what is happening, what can be done, etc. Especially for the air defender, there’s a lot of game theory/queuing theory going on before the engagement so that decisions can be made in split seconds. Is that an application of the OODA Loop concept? One can argue it either way. On the one hand, some will say that “orientation” and “decision” times must be cut to an absolute minimum, so automated/algorithmic solutions are sought. On the other hand, some might argue that the OODA loop as the maneuver warfare advocates portray it is pretty much useless in such scenarios. Okay. This is a technical argument—I think the OODA concept applies, but I’d readily concede you won’t find any discussion of “reconnaissance pull,” “commander’s intent,” and “mission tactics” in this. Roger. But given what we have talked about regarding maneuver warfare, this would be seen as a relatively arcane discussion compared to the “larger” issues regarding command and control of larger units on the ground. That’s where most the arguments come in.
Challenge to MW Essential Premise #2--Part 2
Challenge: What makes us think the OODA Loop concept—if we believe it works to explain single entity versus single entity conflict—can apply to understanding aggregates of entities fighting aggregate of entities?
Response: This is perhaps the most important question regarding the applicability of the OODA Loop. Certainly a number of thread posters have expressed doubt about this. So this deserves a lengthier response.
We’ve already talked about the wrestler analogy—this is perhaps most akin to air combat maneuvering. A single decisionmaker pitted against another single decisionmaker. I need to elaborate a bit here, because Wilf and others have brought up chess players as an analogy—where does application of the OODA Loop work for chess?
I’d ague it doesn’t. For the simple reason that chess play is regulated by turns. Each side will ALWAYS get to react to the move of the opponent’s last move. There are no possibilities to get in two moves instead of just one. I get a move, you get a move. So the pace/tempo of the game is regulated by the rules.
Now, it’s been brought up that, given timed moves, a player that exhibits superior OODA capabilities should be able to apply this to win. True, but irrelevant to OODA loop implications that I’ll get into in a bit. Sure, expert players can “orient” and “decide” better and faster. But the issue is ultimately about quality of the moves. The players (or the tournament) decide ahead of time how long the chess clock limits are. Those limits never change. And the question comes down to quality of decisions made in that never-changing time limit. I just don’t think this equates to war very well.
Now, for those familiar with Ed Glabus and Aegis Corporation’s old InfoChess game, elements of the OODA are introduced. It’s a double-blind game with the ability to buy Information Operations capabilities. It’s very possible in that game that the opponent won’t get to execute his move when it’s his turn, particularly if he’s the victim of a successful Electronic Attack (EA) mounted by his opponent. But this is relatively rare—most of the issues in InfoChess involve quality of the moves. Players are bent on deception and operations security versus intelligence and counterintelligence most commonly. Even in InfoChess, there is still that pacing function. Sure, you have a better shot at getting into two moves to the opponent’s one given a successful EA operation, but this is an example of lengthening the enemy’s OODA Loop and not tightening your own and dealing with the consequences of that.
Maneuverists do talk a good bit about chess masters. But mostly it’s about expertise—and how that expertise means that true experts take much less time to orient and decide. That’s why MW is so difficult. You need experts—and you need to develop them. The maneuverists argue that the results are worth the cost. If you disagree with that—that the U.S. military cannot grow that many experts—then the argument is pretty much over. You and the “German School” maneuverists have different assumptions and value systems; you aren’t going to be able to agree on anything. However, you may have something in common with the Soviet school, more on that later.
Anyway, back to the issue at hand--
An understanding of OODA Loop theory, developed from F-86 versus MiG-15 dogfights, explains much regarding why some ACM matchups in Vietnam worked the way they did. And Boyd certainly applied this understanding to E-M theory, which revolutionized how we design and evaluate fighter aircraft. Okay. If somebody wants to attack that idea, I’d welcome it. But let’s assume for a minute that this is true. What makes Boyd make the leap into other realms of war, particularly those involving larger formations?
Most of the maneuverists will point to how basketball players play basketball. Or soccer players play soccer. Or hockey players play hockey. Or so on. Sure, offensive/scoring ability counts, defensive skills count, but being able to manipulate the tempo of the game is something each team strives to achieve. In “blowout” games, usually it’s pretty clear the winning team completely dominated the opposition, being able to pre-empt, dislocate, and disorient the other team. Those maneuverists, such as John Schmitt, will explain this effect in OODA Loop terms. IN such instances, Schmitt points to the lateral communication between the team members—the coach is unable to influence much of the play from the sidelines compared to other games such as American football or baseball. The game is in the hands of the players. These kinds of games show recon-pull in action. When gaps or holes in the defense are found, players naturally gravitate to it/exploit it without waiting for someone (like the coach or the team captain) to tell them.
The question is whether you can believe that this analogy will hold for larger aggregates of units in violent competitions where there are higher levels of uncertainty.
Both the German and Soviet school advocates will concede that this holds—the OODA Loop is applicable in such instances. The difference between them is with regard to where the experts are. For example, to use the basketball analogy—do I have a team that’s played several seasons together? If I do, the players are able to decentralize command and control and implement “recon pull” to immediately exploit discovered gaps. The commander doesn’t have to explicitly direct such exploitation. Soviet school pretty much assumes you have a “pick up”/”back lot” basketball team—team members don’t know each other, implicit communication is at a minimum, and so on. So there’s much more emphasis put on preparation—speed and focus is achieved through better planning BEFORE the operation, as opposed to German school which depends on speed and focus occurring DURING the operation.
So the basic question that differentiates the two schools boils down to this: do you have people that can make independent decisions? If you believe that can’t happen at lower levels—such independence is reserved for senior levels—then you are a Soviet school advocate. If you think you can grow that kind of effective independence at low levels, then you’ll lean to the German school.
Commercial wargaming provide some potential insights. My favorite system to explore this is the MMP/The Gamers Tactical Combat System. In this game, players have to write operations orders with sketches in order for units to conduct operations. You must designate objectives, provide control measures (where to move, what unit boundaries are, etc), and so on. The interesting thing about the game system is that units don’t obey orders as soon as they get them. A number of variables come into play. The first (and some say the most important) variable is how quickly the inherent command and control system accepts new instructions. There are other variables, such as whether the formation is currently in contact or is out of contact (better). And so on. Every turn that an new order is levied against a formation, a die is rolled. The player cannot possibly be sure WHEN a formation will accept and then execute a given order. Playing the numerous games in this series leads players to prefer the sides that have the lowest implementation values. In other words, players want to play the side that accepts and executes orders faster. While they can’t predict when orders will be accepted and executed, there is the possibility that one side will accept and execute orders faster than the other side. While there are exceptions on a case by case basis (i.e., occasionally luck will cause the slower unit to execute orders faster than the faster unit), overall the faster implementing side will get the majority of “jumps” on the opponent in conducting operations. This is a huge insight and leads to a depth of understanding regarding how the OODA Loop works in practice.
But this won’t be convincing to a number of people who will want to judge how well this works given historical examples. Maneuverists will point to a number of well-worn examples where shorter OODA cycles (for the German School, this typically involves recon-pull examples) contribute to situations where the enemy’s actions are rendered “too little, too late.”
Challenge to MW Essential Premise #2--Part 3
Challenge: If one admits that the OODA Loop concept does apply to aggregates of entities fighting aggregates of entities (i.e., it is indeed valid), how can one know that one is being effectively faster in such a context? By the time you detect/see the results of your speed, isn’t it too late to effectively exploit it?
Response: This is another extremely serious question. The kind of answer you get depends on which MW school you belong to—German school or Soviet school.
First of all, Boyd wasn’t the only one who believed the OODA Loop concept applied to aggregates. The Soviets believed much the same thing as articulated in their “Troop Control” algorithms. Their basic equation for Troop Control ran like this: Tcon (Time needed for effective Troop Control) was equal to T1 (time for effective reports to HQ) + T2 (Headquarters functioning, to include direction from higher headquarters) +T3 (time for orders and signals for the headquarters to reach the unit of action. According to the Soviets, C2 was operative if “Tcon (T1 + T2+ T3) + Top (the time it took for the receiving unit to execute) < Tcrit…with Tcrit being the “critical time” or the time within which the operation must be executed to have the intended effect. A great deal of foundation work in this regard was laid out by Altukhov in “Fundamentals of the Theory of Troop Control” in 1984. It’s difficult to say whether Altukhov was influenced by Boyd or not. We just don’t know.
So, given the Soviet algorithm. T1 = Observation. T2 had elements of Orientation and decision contained within. T3 and Top were the “action” elements of the OODA. It is very clear they understood that you had to tighten the Tcon loop to beat the Tcrit parameter.
Here is where the German school diverges from the Soviet school. To the Soviet school, the problem of detecting change in time to effectively take advantage of it is huge. Basically, they admit that it can’t be reliably done—and “reliably” is the operative term. So the focus is on preparation before the operation. Likely outcomes are calculated ahead of time and when conditions roughly approximate the preconditions for one of the options, then that option is chosen and pushed through. Here the idea is that the high command will be ready for certain sets of conditions with a “branch plan” or “sequel” ready for execution. If something unexpected comes up, it isn’t seized upon, even if it appears to be advantageous. That’s just how it is. So if you believe that a command and control system cannot possibly take advantage of the unforeseen in a reliable way, you tend to subscribe to Soviet school MW. The way to deal with uncertainty is to prepare like nobody’s business and execute violently but according to the plan (with all its branches and sequels).
On the other hand, German school embraces uncertainty and expects to “recon-pull” its way through the problem. So the German school adherents also admit that higher headquarters can’t judge the outcomes of actions in enough time to take advantage of them. So what the German school adherents advocate is decentralization—units see local conditions and act immediately, consistent with the higher commander’s intent. Decentralization buys the required speed—the cost is possibly the unity of effort. Commander’s intent is supposed to provide that unity of effort. Sometimes that occurs, sometimes it doesn’t. The criticism against German school MW is basically that you may not be able to rely on commander’s intent to govern initiative. If you don’t have cohesion, if you don’t have practiced experts, then I’d agree that they are right.
Of course, the requirements for expertise and cohesion throughout the system to accomplish this are much higher than it is for the Soviet school. It’s a lot less efficient but judged to be more effective. Like the basketball team, the players move the ball down the court and make the shots—there’s not much the coach can do on game day. His role was getting the team ready to play.
The German school advocates have a number of illustrations to show what they mean—and let’s admit it, these examples are pretty much a “best case” solution set. My favorite is SSgt Ruhbarth on the Meuse in 1940, pretty much pulling Guderian’s river crossing behind him (you can read all about that in Robert Doughty’s excellent book, The Breaking Point). And there are other equally compelling examples. But what is lacking are case studies that show breakdowns in this kind of command and control system. We have no shortage of cases showing the failures of Soviet School Maneuver Warfare (and I can provide those if anyone is interested). But we lack a comprehensive body of cases that show the risks in German school MW. Robert Leonhard tried to suggest one—Guderian’s conduct of the Battle of Yelnia in 1941—but I’d argue it’s not a good case (and I can provide my rationale why to anyone who asks—just send me a Private Message and I’ll send you a paper on it). Yet, I bet there are others. That said, I sense that these cases are illustrating poor applications of the theory rather than flaws in the theory itself. Of course, one might say the same thing about the Soviet school failures.
There are a number of cases that suggest the disadvantages of the German school approach that I will get into later. As far as the Soviet school failures, I would hope these are relatively self evident, but they may not be to some reading this thread. All I will say is that--despite these failures--they were good enough against the Germans and Japanese at the operational level of war to achieve success. This why Soviet School MW (and their understanding of the OODA Loop) is alive and well, even to this day.
There was no way the Soviets could attempt a German school solution. They had too many languages, conscription (even for NCOs) meant only a two to three year obligation, professionals were only to be found in the officer class—and of these, only at the field grade level (if at that) and above. The operative Soviet school problem was the risk that the situation would outrun the plan. They solved that through the echelon concept—basically, units would only be asked to do one thing and one thing only. Once they were done with that one thing, other units would follow them and carry on the fight. Therefore there was a huge emphasis on reconnaissance so units could prepare and plan to do that “one thing” and nothing more. Once units completed their mission, they were “expended.” Nothing further was asked of them. Other units continued the operation.
I’d hope this illuminates the effective challenges to this very key “MW Essential Premise.” Much depends on your particular experiences, studies, biases, and preferences as to whether you buy into Soviet or German school interpretations of the OODA Loop and how to implement it, or reject it altogether.