Boyd, like Sun Tzu and Napoléon, believed in attacking with “moral conflict”—that is, using actions that increase menace,
uncertainty, and mistrust in the enemy while increasing initiative, adaptability, and harmony within friendly forces. As an
example of the moral game played right, Boyd told how the appearance of a few Mongol horsemen often was enough to collapse
resistance in the enemy and cause chaos and panic. Guerrilla leaders had to master moral conflict to ensure the support of
civilians as they engaged larger and better-funded government forces.
The mental and moral aspects of maneuver conflict do not sit well with most military minds, particularly those who use a managerial
approach or those who prefer the slugfest of attrition warfare. They don’t like the mental agility, the intellectual innovation,
the placing trust in subordinates. They don’t like the rapidly changing, free-form tactics of probing for weak spots rather
than concentrating more fire-power on selected targets. Why tiptoe through the tulips, the conventional mind asks, when war
is blood and guts?
The question would never be asked by a commander with a true understanding of the OODA Loop and its deadly power.
Boyd showed that maneuver tactics brought victory. To attack the mind of the opponent, to unravel the commander before a battle
even begins, is the essence of fighting smart.
But most modern commanders have serious problems with maneuver tactics and, by extension, the OODA Loop. The experience of
General George Patton in World War II is a good example. Patton was the American general most feared by the Germans. He out-blitzed
those who made the Blitzkrieg famous. His tanks rolled across Europe and into Germany and could have punched through to Berlin
in a matter of days. In fact, the German high command thought the war was over. But Eisenhower did not understand this
kind of conflict and, at the very moment of victory—egged on by jealous and conventional British officers—he grew afraid for
Patton’s flanks and supply lines and ordered Patton to stop. The Germans were amazed at the respite. One school of thought
says that Eisenhower’s timidity cost another six months of war and a million additional lives.
A crucial part of the OODA Loop—or “Boyd Cycle,” as it has come to be known—is that once the process begins, it must not slow.
It must continue and it must accelerate. Success is the greatest trap for the novice who properly implements the OODA Loop.
He is so amazed at what he has done that he pauses and looks around and waits for reinforcements. But this is the time to
exploit the confusion and to press on. Patton knew this intuitively. He ignored his flanks and kept his armored spear pointed
at the heart of the enemy.
A little over halfway through the briefing, Boyd begins building his snowmobile. He looks back and rehashes attrition warfare
as practiced by Emperor Napoléon (as opposed to the far more creative strategies practiced earlier by General Bonaparte).
He talks of maneuver conflict and the moral weaponry of guerrilla warfare.
This begins the most difficult part of the brief. Now Boyd begins slicing the same idea from a different direction simply
to provide another shading of the same point. And it shows why simply reading the slides fails to give a full understanding.
Boyd begins the section on maneuver conflict with two crucial words: “Ambiguity, deception…”—the essence of maneuver tactics.
This is General Patton’s approach to fighting the Germans. It is Muhammad Ali saying he will “float like a butterfly and sting
like a bee.”
One of the most important charts in the briefing is utilized when Boyd begins to pull everything together to show how the
key to victory is operating at a quicker tempo than the enemy. While the briefing continues through 185 slides, for all practical
purposes it ends some forty slides earlier, when Boyd begins a series of repetitious examples of how to use the OODA Loop
in war. This latter part is of interest primarily to soldiers and military historians. The theme of this section is consistent:
disorient the enemy, then follow with the unexpected lightning thrust.
Boyd’s briefing, then, is an updating and affirmation of Sun Tzu and a repudiation of von Clausewitz. In fact, if the briefing
could be reduced to two simple thoughts, they would be: 1) the essence of warfare is
cheng
and
ch’i,
and 2) to practice this most effectively a commander must operate at a faster OODA Loop than does his opponent.
The briefing has a number of problems. It is repetitive in the extreme. Boyd often threw in a slide that said ?—
RAISES NAGGING
QUESTION
—? when, in fact, the question had not been raised except rhetorically by Boyd. Periodically he had a slide titled
INSIGHT
, which is little more than a platform for him to launch into a tangential cadenza. The cluttered slides were jammed with
ponderous and virtually impenetrable sentences. None of the discipline of the academic existed. Boyd was force-feeding his
audience, another hallmark of the autodidact and a characteristic manifest in his insistence of “full brief or no brief.”
Considering the impact of the briefing, these are niggling faults. And they speak more to Boyd’s personality than to the content
of the briefing. The purpose of the briefing was not to reveal the “Answer” but to jar listeners out of complacency and into
thinking on their own. Boyd abhorred the idea that his briefing might be considered dogma. In fact, he often said listeners
should take the briefing out and burn it before they considered it dogma.
The brief followed the ink-blot theory of growth. First a small group of men—the Acolytes—heard it. Then congressional staffers
led by Winslow Wheeler, who worked for Senator Nancy Kassebaum, heard it. Dozens of reporters heard it. A number of junior
officers stationed in the Pentagon heard it. Slowly, day by day, week by week, the numbers grew. And then the groups began
touching and merging to form larger groups. By now the core group, Boyd and the Acolytes, were known far and wide as “Reformers.”
One day Boyd was in his apartment working on an update of the briefing when he received a phone call. Jim Burton was not only
passed over for promotion to colonel but was fired from his job and told to leave the Pentagon. It was not entirely unexpected.
Burton was unwilling to bend to the ways of the Building. When Donald
Rumsfeld became secretary of defense in November 1975, Burton prepared a briefing chart showing the F-16 had better turning
performance than did the F-15. While true, this did not sit well with Air Force leadership and Burton was ordered to change
the chart to show the two aircraft had equal turning performance. He refused to do so. Burton also advocated canceling the
B-1 because it performed far below specifications and because the Air Force could not afford it.
When Boyd heard the news, he called Burton and asked, “How did you like that kick in the stomach?”
Burton was devastated. Throughout his career he had been one of the golden boys. Now, after sixteen years—not enough time
for retirement—he had been passed over, a clear signal that his career had ended. In a year he would have another chance at
promotion, but once a man is passed over, his chances are slim.
“I know you are disappointed,” Boyd said. Then came the lines he had recited to Leopold long ago: “You still have an opportunity
to be promoted. But now you are at a fork in the road with your life. You have to decide if you really want that promotion
and all the trappings that come with it. You can’t have a normal career and do the good work.”
Boyd continued, giving Burton the “To Be or to Do” speech, and ended by saying, “Do you want to be part of the system or do
you want to shake up the system?”
The water-walker decided he wanted to shake up the system. He wrangled an appointment to Andrews AFB and stopped thinking
about promotion. He started thinking only of doing what was right. And he came to find that freedom from the concerns that
governed the lives of most officers was remarkably liberating.
Not long after Burton left the Building, Boyd received a phone call from Tom Christie. The Finagler now was one of the top
nonap-pointed civilians in the Pentagon, and he offered Boyd a job in the TacAir shop. It was clear from the way Boyd dressed—tattered
Ban-Lon shirts, madras-patterned polyester pants, and slippers—that he needed money. But he refused to accept a salary from
Christie. Boyd was horrified that he might be called a “double dipper”—a man who had both a government pension and a government
job.
At the Pentagon, Boyd occasionally performed the duties expected of an analyst. But Christie hired Boyd more to give him a
base of operations
than anything else. Boyd needed access to telephones and copy machines. He worked about five years with no pay before word
came down that the Pentagon could not have unpaid consultants. Boyd griped and complained and said he wanted the smallest
salary possible, $1 per pay period. But the minium time a consultant could be paid for and remain on Pentagon rolls was one
day every two weeks. So henceforth Boyd was paid for one day’s work every two weeks.
Boyd dove deeper and deeper into the study of war. He realized that while wars take place between nations, every person experiences
some form of war; conflict is a fundamental part of human nature. To prevail in personal and business relations, and especially
war, we must understand what takes place in a person’s mind. And what better place to continue work on a study of conflict
than in the Pentagon?
Boyd needed someone he trusted to work beside him. He talked to Christie and Christie called Chuck Spinney, who was now working
for a think tank and studying for his Ph.D. “Come see me,” Christie said. When Spinney arrived, Christie said, “Do you want
to work for me in TacAir? You’ll be working with Boyd.” That was all Spinney needed to hear. To work with Boyd meant conflict
with the Pentagon, and Spinney was born for conflict. He remembered what Boyd often said: “There are only so many ulcers in
the world and it is your job to see that other people get them.” Spinney said yes on the spot.
TacAir had no job openings but this was not a problem for the Finagler. He created a job and Spinney went to work two weeks
later.
In the eyes of the Air Force, TacAir had been suspect ever since the old Systems Analysis days of McNamara. Now word was beginning
to get around the Pentagon and to a few Air Force bases about Boyd’s new briefing and the group of people around him. They
were part of the old Fighter Mafia crowd, goddamn insurrectionists and seditionists, civilians all and not a team player
among them. Calling themselves “Reformers” and saying they were part of the “military reform movement.” What the hell was
there to reform? When officers dropped in to chide Boyd about his reform movement, they could not resist the temptation to
ask him how his ideas fit in with a military placing greater emphasis on technology. “Machines don’t fight wars,” he responded.
“Terrain doesn’t fight wars. Humans fight wars. You must get into the minds of humans. That’s where the battles are won.”
The officers laughed and wondered why Tom Christie had brought Boyd back to the Pentagon. Didn’t he know Boyd’s background?
And Christie had hired a new man by the name of Franklin Spinney. Wasn’t there an Air Force captain by that name involved
in the B-1 budget studies?
What the Air Force did not know was that the Finagler was flying top cover for Boyd and was about to unleash Spinney on a
study that would put the Air Force on the defensive for years. The Air Force figured Christie was a team player—their team.
But Boyd and Spinney were about to turn TacAir into a little shop of horrors, ground zero for the reform movement.
Because Boyd was paid for one day every two weeks, he was free to come and go as he chose. He continued to travel to the Air
Force Academy, where he lectured to cadets in Ray Leopold’s classes. In the beginning the lectures had taken the form of briefings
on “Destruction and Creation.” Now Boyd was introducing “Patterns of Conflict.”
On one visit, Leopold picked Boyd up at the airport in Colorado Springs. As Boyd and Leopold walked down the concourse, Boyd
looked out the window and saw two F-16s taking off. He stopped and stared, mesmerized, as the sleek little aircraft climbed
into the Colorado sky. Then, almost as if talking to himself, he said this was the first operational F-16 he ever saw. He
shook his head as he remembered another airplane. “You know, they told me I could fly in an F-15 when I was at the Pentagon.
But every time I was scheduled they cancelled the flight.”
Leopold drove Boyd to the Academy campus, nestled against the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. As they drove up the
knoll toward the famous “Give Me Men” statue, Leopold looked in his rearview mirror and said, “The superintendent is behind
us.” Boyd twisted around and recognized Bob Kelly, a three-star whom he had known as a fighter pilot at Nellis back in the
50s. He rolled down the window, leaned out, and began pumping his right arm—middle finger erect—up and down.
Leopold was horrified. Cadets marching to class were even more horrified. They saw the superintendent’s car, popped to attention,
and snapped off salutes. But their eyes were on the shouting and
shabbily-clad civilian leaning out of a car window giving the finger to a three-star.
“Stop the car, Ray,” Boyd insisted.
“John, don’t do this,” Leopold said as he pulled over.
Cadets stared as Boyd jumped from the car, shirttails flying, and held up his hand to stop the superintendent. “Hello, Bob,”
he said. Then, in a voice heard across half the campus, he said, “Three stars! Goddamn. Whose ass you been kissing?”
The two men shook hands and the general asked Boyd what he was doing on campus. After a few minutes of conversation about
the old days, Boyd returned to his car and the cadets continued on their way.
Leopold was dismayed. “John, you shouldn’t have given the superintendent the finger.”
“Ah,” Boyd said dismissively. “That’s a fighter pilot’s salute.”