Many people think they understand Boyd’s E-M Theory. But few men truly grasp the theory in all of its elegant simplicity.
Sprey would come to understand E-M and how to use it as well as Boyd and Christie.
The meeting between Boyd and Sprey in the Pentagon paralleled, in some respects, the meeting between Boyd and Christie at
Eglin. But while Christie became an indulgent uncle, Sprey became a brother.
Both Christie and Sprey sensed an innocence and purity about Boyd. They believed not only that he would make enormous contributions
but that he was a man who often needed protection. A few generals also knew this. But Boyd relied almost daily on Sprey and
Christie, while the generals usually appeared at times of crisis.
When the colonel who had unleashed Boyd asked how the meeting with Sprey had gone, Boyd smiled, gave him an evasive answer,
and said he was going to get back with the civilian and finish the job. The colonel went away pleased.
The F-X now became as much a part of Sprey’s life as it was Boyd’s. After most people departed the Building, Boyd and Sprey
were still at their desks. And then around 7:00 or 8:00
P.M
., Boyd wandered down to Sprey’s office. In the beginning they met maybe once a week, then twice, then three and four nights.
The men pored over E-M charts for the F-X, new designs, and arcane engineering data until long after midnight.
Then Boyd began showing his briefings to Sprey and asking for an opinion. Sprey often ripped the briefs to shreds. And he
did it in such a calm and irrefutable manner, reason stacked atop reason, logic atop logic, that it was impossible to disagree.
Boyd referred to a Sprey critique as the “Pierre Sprey buzz saw.” But he knew Sprey was making his work stronger and more
focused and virtually impervious to attack. “We’ve got to do our homework, Tiger,” Boyd often said to Sprey. “One mistake
and they will leverage the hell out of it.”
Boyd’s acceptance of Sprey was signaled when he began calling at 4:00
A.M
., tossing out new E-M iterations and new ideas about how to use those ideas in the design process. Sprey realized, as had
Christie before him, that being Boyd’s friend meant dedicating one’s life to Boyd’s causes. Very few men were ever invited
by Boyd to join forces with him. None ever refused. Each sensed intuitively that he was
being offered a rare gift. Each was to pay a terrible price for his friendship with Boyd. Each would have paid more.
It was seven years before the remaining Acolytes met Boyd. Each would know in his turn the opprobrium that Sprey was about
to experience. The calumny Sprey had received because of his interdiction study was nothing compared to what was about to
come his way because of Boyd. The Blue Suiters came to view the Boyd / Sprey relationship as a friendship forged in hell.
And they would unleash the seemingly omnipotent bureaucratic powers of the Building against the two men. The careers of many
would change; even the Pentagon would change.
Boyd and Sprey formed the nucleus of what in a few years would be the most famous, most detested, and most reluctantly respected
ad hoc group in the Building, a group that history would know as the “Fighter Mafia.”
B
OYD
was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
On one hand was Boyd’s belief that E-M could produce the most remarkable fighter in history. On the other hand was the implacable
and relentless nature of the Bigger-Faster-Higher-Farther fraternity to make the F-X bigger and heavier—and more expensive—by
loading it with every high-tech gizmo known to man.
Boyd was a man possessed. He bulldozed ahead, knocking over people and ideas and long-cherished beliefs. He was so intemperate
in his speech and actions that it seemed to many he was out of control. He was still angry and hurt about being passed over
for lieutenant colonel below the zone. “I’m a mere major,” he said again and again. The F-X was a glorious opportunity for
him not only to show the Air Force the practical value of his work but to serve as the vehicle that could ensure he made lieutenant
colonel within the zone.
To accomplish his goals, Boyd had to conquer a host of institutional obstacles. First, he had to overcome the technical incompetence
at Wright-Pat, where engineers had proven they were unable to produce a simple conceptual design for the F-X. At the same
time, he could not ignore Wright-Pat, as they were the only official Air Force source for basic engineering data on the aircraft.
He suspected much
of the data was incorrect, but he had to use it. Second, he had to make people understand that E-M was not just the best way,
but the
only
way to measure air-to-air performance in an airplane. Even though both the Air Force and industry were enamored of E-M, not
everyone yet grasped the full dimensions of what it could accomplish. It was new and different. And anything new and different
is feared by a bureaucracy. Finally, Boyd had to upgrade E-M from the area of tactics and move it more firmly into the area
of aircraft design.
Preaching the gospel of E-M was an ongoing and ever-changing process, much of it dictated by day-to-day discoveries and iterations
and permutations as Boyd pressed ever deeper into an area of aeronautical engineering where no one had gone before. This could
not have happened without having Tom Christie at Eglin. On Christie’s staff was an Air Force lieutenant who did nothing but
E-M computer work. From the Pentagon, Boyd called the lieutenant three and four times daily about revisions and upgrades for
the E-M computer program and E-M charts. One night Christie’s phone rang and he knew it was Boyd. He looked at his watch.
The hour was late, and Boyd was so intense that Christie knew if he picked up the phone that he would be held captive for
hours. So he did not answer. He and his wife, Kathy, sat and talked and read and shook their heads in wonderment as the phone
rang for thirty-two minutes before Boyd gave up.
Christie’s work brought him to the Pentagon almost on a weekly basis. Every time, his briefcase was filled with new E-M data.
One Monday, Boyd told Sprey about the “Wild Hog” (as Christie was known because of his large appetite), and Sprey suggested
they go to Don Quixote, a restaurant in Shirlington that on Monday night served all the filet mignon a customer could eat
for a fixed price. Sprey, a refined man, ate two small steaks. Boyd’s competitive side was in full flower that night, and
he matched Christie steak for steak until the count was at five each. Christie sighed and sat back. Boyd grinned in satisfaction
and rubbed his stomach. He had eaten as much as the Wild Hog and to him that was a victory. But Christie was only taking a
break, allowing his food to settle to make room for more. After resting a moment, he again tucked into the steaks. Boyd watched
in amazement as Christie ate four more. Boyd was unusually silent as the three men walked to the door. Christie knew he would
pout all evening. It was only a dinner, but Boyd saw it—as he
saw most everything—as a contest. The three men stood in the door and looked across the parking lot for their car. Christie
smiled and turned to Boyd and said, “What say we go out for some pizza before we go back to work?”
Christie’s office kept preparing new E-M charts, and with each one came a new insight, a new approach, a new way to display
information. The deeper Boyd moved into the design applications, the more he had to experiment or explore new aircraft performance
fields such as agility or persistence. Incredible as it may seem, the F-X was the first fighter in U.S. history designed with
any
maneuvering specifications, much less E-M specifications. That is, the F-X was the first U.S. aircraft ever designed with
dogfighting in mind. (Aviation aficionados often say the P-51 of World War II and the F-86 of Korea were pure fighters. But
the P-51 was designed for range and speed, not maneuvering. It became the premier fighter of World War II only because the
British—over the vehement objections of the WrightPat bureaucracy—replaced its puny power plant with a big Rolls-Royce engine.
The F-86 was designed as a high-altitude interceptor. To reach high altitude, it had to have big wings, and because it had
big wings, it became, serendipitously, a great maneuvering fighter.)
Boyd was guided in his work by one simple principle: he wanted to give pilots a fighter that would outmaneuver any enemy.
He did not become fixated on technology or “one-point” numerical solutions. For instance, he did not say the F-X had to have
a certain top speed or a certain turning capability. He knew that it must have a high thrust-to-weight ratio if it were to
have neck-snapping acceleration. And he knew it had to have lots of wing in order to maneuver quickly into the firing envelope.
It had to have the energy to disengage, go for separation, then come back into the fight with an advantage. It had to have
the fuel to penetrate deep into enemy territory and sustain a prolonged turning fight. But all these criteria were vague.
The closest Boyd came to defining a specific technical solution was when he said the aircraft should pull enough Gs at 30,000
feet to “roll down your goddamn socks.”
Boyd faced opposition at every step. He constantly took things off the airplane to lower the weight. He had no specific figure,
but he wanted the F-X to weigh somewhere around thirty-five thousand
pounds, maybe less. But while Boyd worked daily to remove things from the F-X, seemingly everyone else in the Air Force—the
fire-control people, missile people, electronic-warfare people—wanted to add something. Maintenance people even insisted the
aircraft carry a built-in maintenance ladder. They said the aircraft might operate in a forward area where there would be
no ladders for mechanics.
“Tell them to get some goddamn orange crates and climb on those,” Boyd growled, trying with little success to explain the
term
growth factor
. A twenty-pound maintenance ladder does not simply add twenty pounds to the aircraft—not if the aircraft is to maintain the
same performance. Dozens of subtle additions are caused by the ladder until finally the ladder adds not twenty pounds but
perhaps two hundred.
Boyd wanted the F-X to carry a small radar. But electronics people wanted a radar that could acquire and track a MiG at forty
nautical miles, a criterion that meant the aircraft must carry an enormous radar dish. The size of the dish was driving the
size of the fuselage, which was driving the size of the F-X. Wright-Pat’s structural engineers also wanted a stronger wing,
which meant more weight. The Tactical Air Command was calling for more fuel and a top speed of Mach 3. Because the Air Force
had been flying the Navy F-4, which had a tail hook, someone decided the F-X, even though it had extraordinary short field
landing performance, needed a tail hook. Boyd insisted the F-X have an internal gun, while Wright-Pat’s electronics gurus
wanted only missiles. Boyd’s early design work indicated that while a swing-wing aircraft had certain aerodynamic benefits,
the extra weight and drag inherent in the swing-wing design destroyed more performance than was gained. Still the Air Force
insisted on the heavy swing-wing design.
Boyd was being pecked to death by a thousand ducks. He drank about ten cups a day of what he called “smart juice”—black coffee.
He smoked a dozen or so Dutch Masters. Several times each day he loped down to the concourse and bought dozens of chocolate
candy bars. He arrived for work at 11:00
A.M
. or noon, usually unkempt and unmilitary in appearance. Several times his boss said, “John, get a haircut or get lost.” Once
he added, “While you’re at it, get your shoes shined and your uniform pressed.” He thought about telling Boyd to adopt regular
working hours, but he knew Boyd was staying at his
desk until 3:00 or 4:00
A.M
. He knew because several nights a week Boyd called to exult over a new equation he had derived or to shout about a design
problem he had solved.
One man who knew Boyd at the time said he was like a radio in which a button is locked down so it cannot receive; it can only
transmit. “Boyd is on
transmit
today” became a warning phrase for visitors.
For several years, the defense industry had been involved in preliminary design work on the Air Force’s new aircraft. Now,
as the design process gathered speed and the defense industry realized the Air Force was approaching the big-money decisions,
representatives of America’s biggest defense contractors began making their way to Boyd’s office.
Harry Hillaker, the project director for the F-111 and the man who met Boyd at Eglin, was one of the first. Hillaker and Boyd
had stayed in touch and found they had much in common in their beliefs about fighter aircraft. Each wanted to work with the
other. Hillaker had an extra incentive, as General Dynamics was reeling over the bad press about the F-111 and was seeking
a way to redeem itself. But the company was not agile enough, could not move quickly enough, and didn’t invest enough design
effort and soon was thrown out of the running. Eventually, they would have another chance.
Defense contractors had a cozy relationship with the Pentagon. Their friends were congressmen and senators, cabinet officers
and administration officials, and top generals. But it was a peculiarity of the military that to get something done, the contractors
had to go through young project officers, usually lieutenant colonels or full colonels. They were used to swaying these men
by taking them to expensive Washington restaurants and ordering lobster and steak and wine and picking up the tab. Defense
contractors are powerful men. And they thought this young major, this John Boyd, could be easily influenced.
When the contractors came into Boyd’s briefing room, he was loaded with smart juice and smoking a Dutch Master. He stood atop
a small platform, looked over his congregation of contractors, and preached a new gospel, the gospel of E-M. When the contractors
understood, when they had a vision of the promised land, Boyd’s high-bugling laugh could be heard far down the halls. But
when they did not understand or, even worse, when they ignored his vision and
presumed to tell him what his ideal fighter should be—usually a modification of one of their existing airplanes—he held a
clenched fist in the air and moved it up and down and shook his head and scornfully said, “Stroking the bishop. You’re just
stroking the bishop.”