Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
As I've posted before, I still think OODA is perhaps most applicable in the realm it was first designed for: one on one air-to-air combat. As soon as you start adding people in, and bringing in new factors, it can easily degenerate into a series of poor decisions based on inadequate information and time pressure.
Well, as the chief Psychologist for the Swedish Armed Forces, famously asked, "How does explaining the OODA loop to a fighter pilot make him a better fighter pilot?" - and in Air to Air combat it is only applicable to one pilot looking at one other aircraft he is reacting to, or acting against.

That said, I think the concept can be expanded to areas other than air-to-air combat, but the framework needs to change. OODA in the wrong hands can (and I'm sure has) lead to badly-informed decisions made solely on the pretext of being "fast" and thus "first." To tie back to the original thread, technology can make this worse by creating an illusion of complete information and complete communications.
The problem is a nut shell, and one that would not exist if we didn't buy into OODA as accurately explaining the process in hand.
It does not accurately model how humans thing or make decisions (simple and idealised).
It's not a planning tool, and it's not even a good analysis tool.