OODA Rethought

[William F. Owen]

Very astute. Based on my own research, I can tell you that Boyd's work is not well understood or well used in defense circles. It actually is typically better understood (if less often referenced) in business.

Thanks for the compliment. I would agree Boyd's work is poorly understood, but I am extremely skeptical about how useful it was in the first place, other than his work for the USAF.

As a military thinker and theorist, I think you can safely ignore Boyd and come to no harm. If you want to know what's wrong with modern military thought, then his name comes up pretty quickly.

OODA is a psychological model (represented by a rather nice process flow diagram on wikipedia) that shows an opponents decision making process in a manner that you can exploit it.

So it shows you how your enemy thinks? I submit that this is a fallacy. It shows you how you think you think, and not how you actually do. There is a vast body of simulation and C2 staff evidence to show that commanders rarely based their decisions on what they know or can observe.

Example - Poker. By exhibiting certain behaviors, I can influence other players at the table to make assumptions about my hand. A Bluff in poker is the classic example of using an opponent's observation to manipulate his decision making.

So OODA can be used to describe "Deception" and "Distraction." - both of which are methods of gaining "surprise." - How is this useful? A more skilled player may well detect your "bluffing." In real world operations the feedback needed to sustain that rationale is almost always totally absent, until you are committed.

But Chess has a very limited number of moves, a small enough number of tactics and scenarios that a chess master has them all memorized. Chess matches are decided by who has the best memory, and in timed matches who has the fastest pattern recognition.

OK, so why is Chess NOT a competition of OODA loops? Because the options are limited? Isn't pattern recognition somehow important? - eg Understanding?

I'm not sure I am THE Boyd sceptic here, but I'm in the top-5. If you read through my posts here, on other threads, I think you'll see why I am no fan of Boyd. Nothing personal against they guys, except I want to run a big red pen through a lot of his slides.

[William F. Owen]

On a more positive note, something I recently discussed with Fanz Osigna and Chet Richards is that OODA does have a good use for formulating the procedures and processes associated with operational learning. This is currently being done by IDF, and in a slightly different way the UK as well - though I am more familiar with the IDF process...

That is how to take those things troops and commanders learn from on operations and ensure that they become best practice for all in theatre. This goes someway to ensuring that the enemy is hopefully learning slower than you are, but that has little to do with speed and everything to do with actually doing it in an audit-able, methodical and systematic way.

[Hacksaw]

and I thought we had little in common!!!!

[slapout9]

Wilf, you all ready understand OODA and so do most other Army folks, except we call it maintaining the initiative. If you maintain the initiative you are inside his OODA loop because he is always reacting to you. I don't know why the OODA people want to make it so mysterious.

[Fuchs]

http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/201...some-boyd.html