Christie was a master at bureaucratic maneuvering and had sheltered Boyd at Eglin. But now Boyd would be on his own, and Christie
wondered if he would survive.
One night Boyd and Christie and a defense contractor went to dinner and afterward went to a movie. Boyd liked aviation movies
and action movies, so he picked the newly released
Blue Max,
a story of German fighter pilots in World War I. The movie has many air-toair combat scenes, and during one of them Boyd
began mumbling, “Hose him. Hose him.”
Christie and the defense contractor smiled. Boyd was being Boyd. But then Boyd’s voice grew louder. “Hose him!” People seated
nearby turned to look. Christie elbowed Boyd. “John,” he admonished, “it’s just a movie.”
Boyd was quiet for a few moments. But during the next aerial engagement, as the German fighters played a deadly game of grabass
with British fighters, Boyd disapproved of the tactics.
“Break left! Break left!” he shouted.
Now people for several rows around were turning to look. “John,” Christie said. He was so embarrassed he almost moved to another
seat.
Boyd was so intense in evaluating the air-to-air combat that he forgot he was in a movie. Finally he could take no more. He
stood up, waved both arms, jabbed one hand toward the screen, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “You missed the goddamn
shot! Hose him, you stupid bastard!”
Christie shook his head in dismay. Not for Boyd, but for those in the Pentagon. They were bureaucrats. Boyd was a warrior.
A
STORY
is told in the Pentagon of a colonel waiting in the outer office of a four-star general. The colonel’s face is twisted in
anguish. He looks at his watch and he looks down the hall and he looks over his shoulder at the general’s door. Everything
about the colonel shows a man twisted and torn by powerful emotions.
Moments earlier a subordinate had rushed to inform the colonel that his wife called to say their house was on fire. Her call
was suddenly cut off, presumably by the fire. The colonel did not know if his wife was safe, if his children were safe, or
if his house was burning to the ground. Every ounce of his being as a husband, every iota of his soul as a father, dictated
that he drop everything to rush to his family. Yet he stayed. The chance to have a one-on-one meeting with a four-star general,
the chance to advance his career, is more important.
Such is the way of life for many in the Pentagon.
From Eglin AFB to the Pentagon is a long way, not so much in distance as in style and pace and atmosphere. The distance was
especially great for Boyd. He was a thirty-nine-year-old major who had demonstrated at Eglin that he did not care about military
politics, human nature, and the ways of the world. He wore the ribbons and decorations of two wars on his chest and he wore
commendation ribbons
rarely found on young majors. He also had a reputation as a pilot and a thinker unmatched by any man in the Air Force. Physically,
he was in his prime. Regular workouts had widened his shoulders and deepened his chest. When he spoke, which was often, there
seemed to be no filter between what he thought and what he said. He was not intimidated by the Pentagon. He still was angry
about not being sent to Vietnam. Soon the anger would be ameliorated by the joy he found in shooting down generals.
The Pentagon is tricky and treacherous, and can be immensely rewarding. No assignment in the military is more desired, more
detested, and more necessary to an officer’s advancement. It is said that Air Force careerists—“Blue Suiters”—would put on
track shoes and climb up the backs of their mothers for such an assignment. If an officer is to be promoted rapidly, he must
have a protector, a guardian, a rabbi—what the Navy calls a “sea daddy”—to prepare the way. No better protector can be found
than a man with stars on his shoulders. A general who bestows his blessings on a young officer can see that the officer receives
assignments that prepare him for ever-higher commands. A general’s support automatically puts an officer’s career on the fast
track. For a Blue Suiter who craves face time with generals, the Pentagon is the ultimate assignment.
All the things that make the Pentagon so prized by careerists make it loathed and detested by warriors. The self-promotion
and sycophancy and backstabbing treachery are all anathema to a warrior. A warrior wants his country to be prepared for war,
to win against all enemies, to prevail at all costs.
Duty
and
patriotism
and
honor
are not buzz words to a warrior; they are his creed. A warrior speaks the truth to generals and congressmen. Being promoted
is not the top priority of a warrior. Thus, warriors do not fare well in the Pentagon.
But then, there are few true warriors in the Air Force.
There are officers of great patriotism, however, who are appalled by what they see in the Pentagon. They say to themselves,
“I’ll go along for now. But when I get to be colonel, I’m going to change things.” What they don’t realize is that they will
be promoted to colonel only if their superiors think they
won’t
make changes. Study after study shows that the higher in rank a military officer ascends, the less likely he is to make change.
It is sad indeed to look upon a patriot whose ideals have been destroyed by the Pentagon. But even
sadder are those who simply stand aside and do or say nothing, allowing those who sold their souls to have their way.
Those who work in the Pentagon call it the “Building”—a 6.5-million-square-foot structure covering twenty-nine acres and
containing more than twenty thousand workers, the bureaucratic nerve center for a worldwide network of airmen, soldiers, sailors,
and marines who operate weapons of scarifying lethality. The Pentagon has clothing stores, bookstores, bakeries, and a shopping
mall; it even has its own battery-powered ambulances called “white wagons.” The need for ambulances is not surprising when
one considers the plague of inter-service rivalries in the Building. The depth of these rivalries is difficult for civilians
to understand. Even an Air Force officer who has never served in the Pentagon is amazed when he arrives and finds his primary
job is to see that his branch of the service gets more money than any other branch of the service. He finds the real threat
facing America is not a despotic foreign power or rogue terrorist groups; the real threat is that an officer from the Navy
or Army or Marines might cut a deal with Congress that gives his branch of the service more money.
Officers of all ranks are found in the Building, but the preponderance are lieutenant colonels and above. If the Building
could be squeezed, generals would pop from every orifice. So many generals are here that full colonels are often little more
than errand boys or coffee pourers. Senior generals have access to helicopters or well-appointed jets and are treated as royalty
when they visit military bases. They have retinues of horse holders whose jobs are to see that the general’s path is paved
with convenience and covered with roses. A general is a sovereign whose look of disapproval can banish an officer from his
presence and wreck that officer’s career. Generals rarely are reluctant to use their powers. Blue Suiters and warriors alike
find that the Building is more dangerous than an unmapped minefield. The slightest misstep can wreck a career.
Boyd was near the bottom of the food chain when he walked into the Building. Yet he was about to demonstrate how one man could
seize control of the Building’s bureaucracy and have a profound influence—far out of proportion to his age and rank—that is
still being felt today.
Boyd also was about to demonstrate how he rarely met a general he couldn’t offend.
Boyd came to the Building at a pivotal time in Air Force history. The swashbuckling World War II generals who led the Air
Force were retiring in large numbers and being replaced by a new breed of officer, graduates of the Air Force Academy, men
who could hold their own with Research and Development intellectuals, men who were far more sophisticated in dealing with
defense contractors but just as anxious to get the maximum number of dollars for the Air Force. Paradoxically, while the type
of Air Force leader was changing, the dogma of Bigger-Higher-Faster-Farther was as entrenched as ever. The best example was
the deeply troubled F-X project.
The Navy was a big part of the Air Force problem. Navy admirals earlier snookered Secretary McNamara by saying they would
accept the Air Force’s F-111 for Navy duty if they could continue development of their favorite jet engine, the TF30, and
their favorite anti-bomber missile, the Phoenix. McNamara agreed. The Navy plan, brilliant in its bureaucratic manipulation,
was to dillydally for another year or so over whether or not the F-111 was carrier compatible, turn down the aircraft, then
go to Congress and say, “We have a good engine. We have a good missile. Give us the dollars we would have gotten for the F-111
and we will use them to build a truly great Navy airplane.” That airplane was the F-14. Now there was a very real danger that
the Navy would impose the F-14, or the F-14 follow-on, on the Air Force.
The Air Force knew Congress would never fund a new aircraft that looked like the F-111, and the F-X was a virtual carbon copy.
In addition to obvious F-X design problems and a looming fight with the Navy, the air war in Vietnam was becoming intense.
Air Force leaders were stunned to discover that big, expensive, complex F-4s and F-105s were the wrong aircraft for that war.
Not only that, but in a development predicted by Boyd and ignored by Air Force tacticians, the vaunted missiles that were
to have ended the era of the gunfighter had proven highly unreliable. A pilot was lucky to get one hit out of every ten missiles
launched. The Air Force had long advocated that maneuverability be built into the missile rather than the airplane, and now
it suffered the consequences. If a gun-firing enemy is on his six, a fighter pilot can disengage and go for separation. He
can dive and outrun the enemy. But a jet can’t outrun a missile. Vietnam proved that a pilot has to be able to turn and burn
in order to defeat a
missile chasing him across the heavens. In fact, missiles meant that fighter aircraft should be
more
maneuverable than in the past.
The host of troubles facing the Air Force allowed Boyd to take over the F-X project. His takeover was de facto rather than
de jure, as he was far junior in rank to people who made design and acquisition decisions and to those who, on organization
charts, led the F-X program. Later, some senior officers would question the significance of Boyd’s role in developing the
F-X. To prove their point they would say, “He was only a major.” But Boyd’s contributions depend upon the power of the microscope
used to examine his work. If someone looked at the F-X project through a Pentagon microscope, the four-star generals who led
the Tactical Air Command and the Systems Command were the decision makers. A two-star general was directly in charge of the
F-X. Under him was a one-star, numerous full colonels, and, somewhere down near the bottom, Boyd. Each of these officers has
a different perspective when he talks of the F-X. But if one uses a more powerful microscope, if one knows which decisions
about the F-X were crucial and who made those decisions, one sees that Boyd was driving the train that would deliver the F-X.
He knew more about fighter tactics and what made a great fighter aircraft than any man in the Air Force. Government, industry,
and academia were now developing E-M techniques for optimal aircraft maneuvers and beginning to apply them to fighter design.
The calculus of variations, optimal control theory, dynamic programming, differential game theory, and steepest-descent techniques
were being discussed at a floating crap game that moved between the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Pat and
the Air Force Academy. Boyd attended most of the meetings, and even though he had more than his share of enemies at Wright-Pat,
his E-M work made him the center of every meeting.
In addition, Boyd had support from the top, invaluable in a bureaucracy. Few in the Building knew that Air Force Chief of
Staff John McConnell was a Boyd fan. It was General McConnell who cancelled Boyd’s Vietnam tour and brought him to the Pentagon.
He knew of Boyd, the legend: fighter pilot and creator of the E-M Theory. But he needed Boyd, the maverick: the obstreperous
and independent officer who cared more for his work than for his career. Only such a man could save the F-X from being cancelled
and prevent the
Air Force from being outmaneuvered by the Navy. Only such a man could save the Air Force from itself.
From the moment he walked into the Pentagon, Boyd was embroiled in conflict.
According to a monograph from the Office of Air Force History, the colonel for whom Boyd worked gave him a copy of the F-X
design and asked for comments. The monograph says Boyd “summarily rejected it.”
What actually happened is far more graphic. Boyd’s boss was about to become known as the man who caused the Air Force to eat
another saltwater airplane. The nervous colonel looked with curiosity at the famous young major who had been brought to the
Pentagon to bail out the F-X. He pointed to a voluminous stack of design studies.
“Your first assignment here is to review these requirements and the design package for the F-X,” the colonel said in effect.
“We’re having trouble getting it approved by Congress. Take two weeks and report back to me with recommendations.”
The colonel expected Boyd to do what subordinates in the Pentagon do when given a big project: they compile a lengthy briefing
to demonstrate how smart and how diligent they have been, or they do a bit of cosmetic work on an old report and pretend that
it is new.
Boyd said, “Yes, Sir,” gathered the papers, and carried them to his office. He pored over them day and night, growing ever
more disgusted with the intransigent and hidebound nature of the Air Force R&D bureaucracy. The weight had been trimmed down
to about 62,500 pounds, but the fighter was still overweight and underwinged, too complex and far too expensive. And because
it was a multirole aircraft, Boyd knew it could do none of its jobs very well. A fighter is designed one way, a low-level
nuclear bomber another, and an all-weather interdiction bomber still another. Put all these requirements inside the skin of
one airplane and all you get is trouble. Imagine designing a high-performance sports car that must also haul gravel and take
a family across country and you get the idea.