Now, to go back to the beginning, Boyd said there are two ways to manipulate information gleaned from observation: analysis
and synthesis. We can analyze whatever process or event we are observing by breaking it down into individual components and
interactions. And from this we can make deductions that lead to understanding. Or we can synthesize by taking various sometimes
unrelated components and putting them together to form a new whole.
Boyd thought analysis could lead to understanding but not to creativity. Taken to the extreme, he thought analysis was an
onanistic activity, gratifying only to the person doing the analyzing. He talked of “paralysis by analysis” and said Washington
was a city of ten thousand analysts and no synthesizers. “They know more and more about less and less until eventually they
know everything about nothing” is how he put it.
Boyd’s favorite example in “Destruction and Creation” was a thought experiment that took his audience through his exegesis
on the nature of creativity. It went something like this: “Imagine four separate images. Let’s call them domains. Each domain
can be easily understood by looking at its parts and at the relation among the parts.”
Boyd’s four domains were a skier on a slope, a speedboat, a bicycle, and a toy tank. Under “skier” were the various parts:
chair lifts, skis, people, mountain, and chalets. He asked listeners to imagine these were all linked by a web of relations,
a matrix of intersecting lines. Under “speedboat” were the categories of sun, boat, outboard motor, water skier, and water.
Again, all were linked by the intersecting lines. Under “bicycle” were chain, seat, sidewalk, handle bars, child,
and wheels. Under “toy tank” were turret, boy, tank treads, green paint, toy store, and cannon.
The separate ingredients make sense when collected under the respective headings. But then Boyd shattered the relationship
between the parts and their respective domains. He took the ingredients in the web of relationships and asked listeners to
visualize them scattered at random. He called breaking the domains apart a “destructive deduction.” (Today some refer to such
a jump as “thinking outside the box.” But Boyd believed the very existence of a box is limiting. The box must be destroyed
before there can be creation.) The deduction was destructive in that the relationship between the parts and the whole was
destroyed. Uncertainty and disorder took the place of meaning and order. Boyd’s name for this hodgepodge of disparate elements
was a “sea of anarchy.” Then he challenged the audience: “How do we construct order and meaning out of this mess?”
Now Boyd showed how synthesis was the basis of creativity. He asked, “From some of the ingredients in this sea of anarchy,
how do we find common qualities and connecting threads to synthesize a new and altogether different domain?” Few people ever
found a new way to put them together. Boyd coaxed and wheedled but eventually helped the audience along by emphasizing
handle bars, outboard motor, tank treads,
and
skis
.
These, he said, were the ingredients needed to build what he called a “new reality”—a snowmobile.
To make sure the new reality is both viable and relevant, Boyd said it must be continually refined by verifying its internal
consistency and by making sure it matches up with reality. But the very process of making sure the reality is relevant causes
mismatches between the new observation and the description of that observation. It is here that Godel, Heisenberg, and the
second law come into play. The mismatches are inevitable and expected because, as Boyd said, “One cannot determine the character
or nature of a system within itself. Moreover, attempts to do so lead to confusion and disorder.” This never-ending cycle
of mismatches, destruction, and creation is the “natural manifestation of a dialectic engine.” This “engine” is the relationship
between the observer and whatever is being observed. The idea that a two-way relationship exists between the observer and
the observed, that the process of observation changes what is being
observed, and that our awareness of these changes causes us to restructure the relationship is present in subtle and often
unseen ways in almost every facet of our lives. It is a vital part of how we cope with our world; it shapes our decisions
and actions. The danger—and this is a danger neither seen nor understood by many people who profess a knowledge of Boyd’s
work—is that if our mental processes become focused on our internal dogmas and isolated from the unfolding, constantly dynamic
outside world, we experience mismatches between our mental images and reality. Then confusion and disorder and uncertainty
not only result but continue to increase. Ultimately, as disorder increases, chaos can result. Boyd showed why this is a natural
process and why the only alternative is to do a destructive deduction and rebuild one’s mental image to correspond to the
new reality.
Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher of science, and Joseph Schumpeter, an economist, recognized the destructive side of creativity.
But Boyd was unique in his explanation of how the process is grounded in fundamentals discovered by Godel and Heisenberg and
by entropy.
The dialectic engine, once refined and elevated, was to become the intellectual heart of the new war doctrine so craved by
elements within the U.S. military.
O
NCE
he completed “Destruction and Creation,” Boyd was a man possessed. It seemed he could hear at some subliminal level the voices
of young military officers crying out for change, for a manifesto that would make them victorious in battle. To Boyd, nothing
less than America’s national defense hung in the balance. Two more briefings tumbled from him within a month. People began
moving into place and events began forming, the end results of which would not be seen for years and then would seem a mosaic
of impossible serendipity. The fast transients brief is dated August 4, 1976. It is the application of “Destruction and Creation”
to an operational issue—that is, a better and more thorough definition of “maneuverability.” The ability of an aircraft to
perform fast transients does two things, one defensive and one offensive: it can force an attacking aircraft out of a favorable
firing position, and it can enable a pursuing pilot to gain a favorable firing position. The advantage gained from the fast
transient suggests that to win in battle a pilot needs to operate at a faster tempo than his enemy. It suggests that he must
stay one or two steps ahead of his adversary; he must operate
inside
his adversary’s time scale.
Even though it was the superiority of the YF-16 over the YF-17 that precipitated his research, Boyd went back to his beginnings
for
the brief—to Korea, where the F-86 achieved such a stunning kill ratio against the MiG-15, a superior aircraft in energy-maneuverability
terms. He used additional examples: Germany’s Blitzkrieg attack against France in 1940 and the Israelis’ lightning-fast raid
at Entebbe Airport to free hostages seized by Uganda. In both instances the ability to transition quickly from one maneuver
to another was a crucial factor in the victory. Thinking about operating at a quicker tempo—not just moving faster—than the
adversary was a new concept in waging war. Generating a rapidly changing environment—that is, engaging in activity that is
so quick it is disorienting and appears uncertain or ambiguous to the enemy—inhibits the adversary’s ability to adapt and
causes confusion and disorder that, in turn, causes an adversary to overreact or underreact. Boyd closed the briefing by saying
the message is that whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives.
The briefing revealed that the central theme of Boyd’s work—a
time-based theory of conflict
—was beginning to take form. And it marked a significant transition in Boyd’s work with its references to the Blitzkrieg and
the Entebbe raid; he was becoming interested in ground warfare.
A month after the fast-transients briefing, Boyd was ready with the first version of his “Patterns of Conflict” briefing.
He was to give it hundreds of times in coming years, so many times that it became known as “Patterns” or simply as the “brief.”
“Patterns” was a work in progress that would evolve until more than a decade later, when the slides were finally put together
in a booklet. Boyd designated the first version “Warp I” (after the references to “warp speed” in Star Trek, a favorite television
program of his children). Modifications within a warp were referred to as “wicker.” (
Wicker
is a bureaucratic term that means “weaving” or “patching together.”) Boyd first wrote the contents of each slide on a legal
pad, then had them typed. He saved changes and additions until he reached a critical mass, then retyped the entire brief and
gave it a new warp designation. The brief went through a dizzying nomenclature that changed almost weekly. By December 8,
he was at “Warp VI, Wicker 2.” By September 16, 1977, he was at “Warp X.” In October 1977, he changed the title: “Warp XI”
was “Patterns of Conflict: Cheng, Ch’i, and Schwerpunkt.” By “Warp XII” he was back to “Patterns of Conflict.” After
“Warp XII,” he stopped using the “warp” and “wicker” designations and used only “Patterns of Conflict.” Each new version was
dated and signed with his bold, sprawling signature. He did not keep every version and often called Burton to ask something
such as “How did I say this in ‘Warp Six, Wicker Three’?” or “What was the wording for this part in ‘Warp Nine’?” Burton kept
almost every version and, as far as can be determined, is the only person to do so; it is a stack of papers about two feet
tall. In the beginning Boyd took an hour to deliver “Patterns.” A decade later, when Boyd put all his work into a collection
titled “A Discourse on Winning and Losing,” he took about fourteen hours—two days—to deliver it.
The nature of Boyd’s briefings changed radically after he became a civilian. He went from being one of the best briefers in
the Air Force, a man known for his spare and elegant slides and his brilliant presentation, to a man whose slides were jumbled,
dense with bullets, and packed with long sentences. They remained ambiguous because Boyd still believed ambiguity created
opportunities for unexpected richness. Some briefs are self-contained; one can look at the slides and receive the full measure
of the brief. That was no longer so with Boyd’s; his briefs were virtually impenetrable without an explanation. Boyd also
became uncompromising—some would say arbitrary, perhaps even arrogant—about delivering his briefing. A person’s available
time did not matter. If someone wanted to hear the briefing, they had to hear it all. That was okay when the briefing was
about an hour in length. But as it grew to six hours, Boyd often was asked for a condensation. “Full brief or no brief” was
his response. And he would not let anyone see a copy of the slides or the executive summary until after they heard the brief.
Even though Boyd was a civilian, he spent a lot of time in the TacAir office at the Pentagon. Sprey was there one day and
overheard part of a conversation in which Boyd said, “I’d be glad to give him the brief. It takes six hours.” The person on
the other end obviously wanted a much shorter version. “The brief takes six hours,” Boyd repeated. Sprey saw Boyd’s face tightening
and then heard him say, “Since your boss is so pressed for time, here’s an idea that will save him a lot of time: how about
no
brief?” He slammed the phone down, turned to Sprey, and said, “That was the exec for the CNO.” And that was how the chief
of naval operations did not hear Boyd’s
briefing. After the same thing happened with the Army chief of staff, the chief’s executive officer, a full colonel, marched
to Christie’s office in a state of high dudgeon and demanded that Christie order Boyd to give a one-hour brief to the CSA.
The colonel was flabbergasted when Christie said Boyd was a civilian whom he could not order around.
Several things did not change. Boyd’s method of research remained as it always had been. He stayed up much of the night reading
book after book. The final source list for “Patterns” numbered 323. And Boyd’s phone calls to the Acolytes continued. The
breadth and depth of subjects covered was nothing short of phenomenal. Boyd dove into the history of warfare as few men ever
have. To outsiders his course of study seemed rambling and disconnected. It seemed to lack focus, but only until they heard
the briefing.
As with much of Boyd’s work, the building blocks for “Patterns” are mostly well-known ideas. But the synthesis of these ideas
produced a reality new to the U.S. military. “Patterns” is one of the most monumental snowmobiles ever constructed, one of
the most influential briefings ever to come from a military mind.
“Patterns” is also an example of how Boyd thought by analogy, a process that Sprey, ever the pragmatist, found extremely unsettling.
Reasoning by analogy not only is backward from the way most people think but is dangerous; one misstep, especially in the
beginning, and the entire process can go careening off into idiocy. Sprey found it even more unsettling that Boyd was always
right.
One cannot study modern military history without studying the German Army, especially the period from 1806—when Napoléon defeated
Frederick and the Prussian armies at the Battle of Jena and Auerstadt—through World War II. After Frederick was defeated,
a group of five men set about to rebuild the Prussian Army and to institutionalize military excellence. They called themselves
“Reformers.” Scharnhorst and von Clausewitz are the best known of the group, Scharnhorst because of his military brilliance
and von Clausewitz because of his book
On War
.
William Lind, a tall, roly-poly, ruddy-cheeked civilian who drops historical allusions by the bushel and knows more about
warfare than do most people in the Pentagon, was a congressional staffer working for Senator Gary Hart when he heard “Patterns.”
Sensing a parallel
between Boyd’s intellectual circle and the Prussian military masterminds, Lind dubbed Boyd and his followers “Reformers.”