A few points, then I have to run to the airport. I love 6AM flights.

Context is important when discussing maneuver warfare. The concept was never new - and it was a reaction to the American involvement in Vietnam. Lind challenged the old ways of thinking and the old Guard in the 70's when he wrote a public rebuttal to the FM 100-5 which in its initial draft was more of the same old #### that helped get 58,000 Americans dead in Vietnam. I've often felt that he was a useful whipping boy for many American officers = never served in uniform, so how could he know about warfare? The Manuever Warfare handbook was the culmination of 15 years of trying to reintroduce some concepts into the American way of war that seemed to have perished after Korea. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Boyd is far, far more complex than the OODA Loop. Unfortunately, it seems that this is destined to be his fate - another victim of a military culture that has become the ultimate in reductionist thinking. Hey, we have to get this concept down to the 9th Grade level of thinking and writing. I suggest you read Frans Osinga's book on Boyd's theories to see how complex his writings actually are, and more important, to see how the military has simplified his theories. Boyd talked about friction quite a bit, and questioned Clausewitz and Jomini at length, and finally said that dealing with friction was not necessarily bad, as long as you could reduce it as much as possible on your side and increase it as much as possible on your advisaries side. I would go as far as saying that Boyd is the most misunderstood theorist of the modern era because of the inherent complexities of his work - a lot of the scientific background baffles me to a great extent.

At least the FMFM1-A was something to read about the nature of 21st Century war. The US Army took 6 years to produce a new counterinsurgency manual after the invasion of Afghanistan, and it is still using an operations manual from before the war.

I try and read as much as possible from a variety of sources and theories in order to shape my mental impressions about war and the conduct of war. Lind and Boyd may not be perfect (no theory ever is), but they have introduced concepts that were either ignored, forgotten or in the case of Boyd, never codified in the first place.

I do not hold any one theorist in greater regard than another. Like Boyd said about doctrine in general "The day after it's written, it becomes dogma. Don't talk to me about German, Russian, British doctrine - learn them all and use them as necessary."