Rorschach of Conflict is a better title. I was just re-reading "Patterns" the other day. I just don't see it personally. How this ever got as far as it did, is a mystery to me, especially in the UK.Originally Posted by Polarbear1605
Rorschach of Conflict is a better title. I was just re-reading "Patterns" the other day. I just don't see it personally. How this ever got as far as it did, is a mystery to me, especially in the UK.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Rorschach! Oh ya...know what you mean
Rorschach...lol...good discription! Agree but in its defense the slides are probably 25% of the information. Boyd's "Patterns" brief was 8+ hours of talking directly at and about those slides and Boyd talked like a M-60 machinegun. Unfortunately, except for the slides, Boyd never wrote his stuff down...I remember Lind and Wyly joking they were going to lock Boyd into an office and trade food for manuscript pages.
...and why? I asked Bill Lind this and no one seem to know. Boyd was working in the age of video tapes and cassettes. No ever seems to have recorded his presentations as a whole or sat down with him and asked him to do it.
What we have of someone who died in 1995, and was prominent from 1982 onwards is almost nothing, except several versions of some slides and the odd bit if video.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
lol...I did
I am surprised Lind didn't tell you. I reason I heard Boyd never wrote it down, on several occasions, was Boyd was afraid the Russians would get it. After AWS I learned my lesson and when a student at CSC I did record the brief on cassette. I guess I need to get that converted to CD so I can post it/send it out.
The Russians would get hold of Patterns? Sorry, why was that an issue?
Well that is Gold DUST!!! Cos that is the first I have heard of a whole brief being recorded!! Seriously!After AWS I learned my lesson and when a student at CSC I did record the brief on cassette. I guess I need to get that converted to CD so I can post it/send it out.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
There's about an hour or more on Youtube.
I know. It's still not all or even one of the briefs.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Afraid of the Communist Hordes!!
At the time, MW was a method to fight outnumbered and win, at least, that is what we said in those days. I think in Boyd's mind, if the Russians adopted it ...game over? Remember, this is back in 79-81 time frame and we were trying to think of how a Marine BLT could defeat a Russian Army Group.RIGHT!
I just dug the cassettes out of the old cardboard box room. There are eight 60 minute cassettes; 5 are labeled "Patterns in Conflict"; one is labeled "Organic C" (Command) and two are labeled "On Strategy". Looks like I managed to get three lectures. I remember CSC would not schedule Boyd as a lecture for the whole class but they did allow a small group of us to meet in a conference room. I threw a hand cassette recorder into the middle of the table...quality is not the best.
PM Sent
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Pretty new to the site...I've read a lot of your stuff and I'm not as well read as you are.
I currently teach tactics to LTs. I teach them about the OODA loop. I try to find holes in it, but I can't. I go back to my time in graduate school and compare research from those like Lazarus and his "appraisal theory", which states that every stimulus is appraised, then run through the 'CPU' and a reaction is then set into motion. Lazarus doesn't really give much consideration to any hard-wiring and instinctual reactions, even the startle reflex.
Then you have researchers like Davidson who wholeheartedly believe in some hard-wiring and would probably endorse a bit of a hybrid of appraisal and predispositions.
Even surveying vision research, and accepting the position that visual stimuli is received without us acknowledging it, visually, does not clearly elucidate what happens in our brains when something happens "out there".
All this taken into consideration, I cannot find a plausible reason to throw out the OODA loop, from a psychophysiological perspective.
We observe, orient, decide and act....I cannot find an alternative. If that was not the case we could not condition ourselves for immediate action drills, or to exercise tactical patience.
Whether or not Boyd got to the right answer by the wrong means is not so much my concern. I think it's a sound concept and it's a vital part to understanding how we win the tactical fight.
Also, there are quite a few seasoned professional that have been in many more two-way firefights than I have, and they completely endorse the utility of understanding "patterns" and the OODA loop.
I think it's a very useful construct and plays well with the study of maneuver warfare principles or any others you feel vital to winning at the tactical level.
So, I realize you are not "buying it", but I can't understand why. Knowing what goes on within the anterior cingulate cortex and how omnipresent its activation is with just about every volitional act, there is no alternative for a layman's perspective than to express it as an OODA loop. I'm sure Boyd had no idea and had no intention of linking his patterns or OODA loop to any psychophysiological data, but it meshes rather well in my opinion.
Do not be fooled! Reading means nothing in this game unless you can translate that into clear advice and guidance.
The OODA loop describes one possible set of actions. Looking, understanding, making a decision and then acting upon it, are things that people do. However it does not describe how people actually think for real. It describes one possible sequence of decision making. What if the observation is coloured by action already taken? It describes a possible process. It does not guide you as to how make decisions.I currently teach tactics to LTs. I teach them about the OODA loop. I try to find holes in it, but I can't.
Well I think Manoeuvre Warfare is at best a crutch for poor understanding.I think it's a very useful construct and plays well with the study of maneuver warfare principles or any others you feel vital to winning at the tactical level.
Do you teach the "Core Functions." FIND, FIX, STRIKE, EXPLOIT? Far more useful than the OODA loop. They provide clear explicit guidance, and each action is only successful if the previous one has been performed effectively.So, I realize you are not "buying it", but I can't understand why.
Does that help?
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Armchair adds
Wilf cited:From my "armchair" and for very different reasons I found the F3EA concept very useful; yes similar to Wilf's text: Find, Fix, Finish, Evaluate & Analyse. There are a few open source references to the concept.Do you teach the "Core Functions." FIND, FIX, STRIKE, EXPLOIT? Far more useful than the OODA loop. They provide clear explicit guidance, and each action is only successful if the previous one has been performed effectively.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 05-06-2016 at 10:03 PM. Reason: Remove links no longer working.
davidbfpo
The language used strongly implies that who ever came up with F3EA, did not understand the Core Functions. If they did, they would not have come up with the new words!
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Since the topic of conversation is turning to the Core Functions I'd like to clarify something that's been nagging at me:
- Where did they (the core functions) come from?
- Where are they written into doctrine?
I think they are a very powerful framework but I only ever see them referred to here and never in military literature, no matter where I look.
'...the gods of war are capricious, and boldness often brings better results than reason would predict.'
Donald Kagan
They can be traced to Ferdinand Foch in about 1906 or 1911. He was certainly translated into English by 1918. Liddell-Hart knowingly plagiarised them as the "man in the dark theory" in the 1920's, and claimed them as his own.
They were explicitly written into UK doctrine in 2005 in a complete form (as opposed to just "find, fix strike"), but they are strangely absent from the vast majority of written doctrine, yet seem well understood.
I gave a presentation of Core Functions to the Royal Thai Army "COIN" symposium in 2007 and it was all new to them!
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
F3EA update
In post 270 in 2010 I statedAfter a query from a UK observer of such matters I searched for an original article on the F3EA cycle and found this article JFQ in 2008:http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...f&AD=ADA516799
Note one of the authors is now MG Flynn, of ISAF Intell fame.
davidbfpo
...of interest, has there been any new Maneuver Warfare literature? Seems like a dead concept to me.
The MW celebrities have passed their creative period. There are few post-2000 MW celebrities, and those few tend to have their own area of specialty.
They Missed The Whole Point!
After listening to The Boyd Tapes from Polarbear IMO there is very little Boyd in the Handbook, in fact the Marine Corps just about missed the whole point of Boyd's theory. Boyd was not a Maneuverist........ he was a Stonewall Jacksonist "Mystify,Mislead and Surprise!" That is a condesed version of the Boyd theory.....bit more to it. I especially like his M&M theory on creating matches and mis-matches in the enemy. More as I have time. oh yeah there is a whole lot of Warden in Boyd's theory
Not much but it is out there
The Blogs seem to be the only one publishing some of this current ideas.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/
just started re-publishing the "Attritionist Letters" from the Marine Gazette
Project White Horse also has some here:
http://blog.projectwhitehorse.com/
and zenpundit sometimes has some things generally at the strategic Level:
http://zenpundit.com/
"If you want a new idea, look in an old book"
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