What's the big deal about John Boyd?
Okay,
Probably stepping into a minefield here.
I was reading Selil's blog on the new Boyd book coming out and it got me thinking.
First, I'll admit ignorance similar to I had on EBO a few months ago. I've heard of OODA (big shrug of shoulders, failed to see how it could change my life in any away) and know he was a deep thinking fighter pilot who concentrated on how to do things faster/better/more efficiently. I also understand he was a magnetic personality, kind of a Tony Robbins for the military.
What continues to puzzle me is the almost Jesus-like devotion to the man by certain groups and organizations, like DNI and others. Reading some of the fanboi material I am wondering what he has done besides develop the OODA loop that makes him worthy of such reverence. I found this on an amazon.com review -
Quote:
Personally, after becoming acquainted with Boyd's work (I carry printed copies of his only published work, an essay called Destruction and Creation, in my computer bag read while traveling---giving copies to clients and friends) my business has changed and to a great extent, my life has changed. Boyd's method of synthesizing data from disparate sources has helped me to help clients solve problems and exposed me to areas I would have never investigated otherwise.
This book is important and highly recommended.
(emphasis mine)
Frankly, the level of messianic devotion of Lind & Co. kind of makes me wary of the stuff surrounding him. The tone of many of the DNI publications is invested with a certainty of opinion that rivals Paul Wolfowitz.
A recent paper discussed here termed him "The greatest American military strategist". A pretty strong assertion.
So educate me (I'm prepared to be convinced) - what is the big deal?
Boyd's contributions and impacts
I think the tone and terminology of religion is exactly appropriate here--"Jesus-like devotion" and "messianic" in particular. Because there are two things that Boyd's disciples (and that is a good term to use) exhibit: (1) there is salvation in the military "gospel" of Boyd and (2) a desire to "spread the good news." And I think you'll find, much like the early Christian church, two kinds of disciples: (1) those that knew Boyd (typically these are the most devoted) and (2) those who didn't but find his message addresses a great deal of their personal warfighting needs.
If you have the kind of itch that the Boyd message will scratch, you'll become one of the converts. If you don't, you won't. It's as simple as that.
As for me, I never got to meet John Boyd, but was tutored by some of the "disciples"--Mike Wyly, Bill Lind, John Schmitt, and Bruce Gudmundsson in particular...I've got my faded, dog-eared copy of Boyd's "Green Book" (a xeroxed collection of stuff he wanted people to read before he'd give his marathon lectures). I have an equally worn copy of Lind's/Wyly's MANEUVER WARFARE HANDBOOK. Back then when all this started we didn't have the commentators that we eventually got. This was all we had.
Apart from MW, Boyd's ideas on Energy-Maneuverability theory (and corresponding mathematics) and fast transients changed the way we evaluated, designed, and built fighter aircraft. The fact that he pushed this design philosophy through an entrenched Air Force bureaucracy that resisted him at every step makes him something of a hero in those circles. His guerrilla-style staffwork in the Pentagon after he retired, taking only the minimum of pay that would allow him to maintain a security clearance, made him an example of self-sacrifice that few saw before or since. That and his embullient, lively personality endeared many to him (and alienated many more).
His work in facilitating "fast transients" in fighter aircraft led to wider applications of the OODA loop into command and control as a whole. This concept--and it's application--is still only dimly understood by most and gets its most thorough treatment in Franz Osinga's book. It resonated with a lot of uniformed guys who saw the best diagnosis of what went wrong in Vietnam and contributed both to the Defense Reform Movement and to the "maneuver warfare" movement in the US Marine Corps. As I mentioned in the Discussion Board thread on "Fraud or Fuzziness?" it doesn't resonate nearly as well outside that context. This is why classic MW advocates always talk about it in the context of its theoretical opposite, attrition warfare (which is seen as personified in our conduct of the Vietnam War).
Certainly he's had the widest impact of anyone else within the U.S. in the late 20th Century in terms of military theory (admittedly, there's not a lot rivals for that title). I"d personally disagree that he's the greatest American military strategist--his contributions were not directly influencing American strategy, but American military theory that had (at best) an indirect influence on strategy, predominantly on military ways and means. But the Cold War thinkers like Herman Kahn, Bernard Brodie, etc., I think have that label of "strategist" best applied to them.
At issue (at least for me) is how well his ideas have translated into actual practice. Within the Marine Corps, we have those who will argue we got enough to make us more successful: Ray Smith in Grenada, Mike Myatt in the Persian Gulf War, and Jim Mattis in both the early days of Afghanistan and in the invasion of Iraq. All these men demonstrated practical mastery of "German School" MW tenets. Perhaps more importantly, the rest of the USMC understood enough to facilitate/support the kinds of things these men were doing--there was enough institutional inclination there as a result of MW to allow that style to be used in combat.
Of course, this is just a thumbnail sketch--to get a really good idea, one must read the books. I don't yet have the Roundtable book that Selil talks about in his blog that Cavguy mentions, but I'd have to recommend BOTH Grant Hammond's AND Robert Coram's biographies of Boyd, as well as James Burton's THE PENTAGON WARS. Those three books will explain Boyd's direct and immediate impact the best. As far as the ripples that flowed in all directions, we'll see if the Roundtable book addresses those.