Every morning when Wyly arises, he asks himself, “What is my
Schwerpunkt
today?” And every morning he misses not being able to put on his Marine Corps uniform.
The Wednesday evening happy hour at Fort Myer is still running strong after thirty years. Many of those who attend are getting
a bit
long in the tooth: G. I. Wilson, Winslow Wheeler, Jim Stevenson, George Wilson, Don Vandergriff, Chuck Myers, Chris Yunker,
Dan Moore, and Greg Wilcox. They are laughed at now as old cynics and troublemakers and antitechnology types. But America
owes them a great debt. The occasional knowledgeable guest who knows their backgrounds looks around in awe, aware that he
stands among living legends. There are nights when several dozen people gather and the beer flows and the old stories are
retold and everyone laughs as if it were the first time they ever heard them. In 2001, the Air Force announced that its fleet
of some ninety-three B-1 bombers were being reduced to a force of about sixty. “Boyd called that one back in the early seventies,”
someone remembered.
Boyd’s work has been cited in almost three hundred magazines, journals, and books. His legacy to science and to aviation,
though he does not always receive credit, is exemplary and lasting. He contributed as much to fighter aviation as any man
in the history of the Air Force. He single-handedly moved the Air Force away from aircraft designed to fly at high speed in
a straight line and toward the highly maneuverable aircraft of today. And more than any other person he deserves credit for
creating America’s tactical Air Force of the past thirty years: the Air Force F-15 and F-16 and the Navy and Marine Corps
F-18 rule the skies because of Boyd. This is a claim that causes retired four-stars, whose own accomplishments are minimal,
to grow livid. They say Boyd was unprofessional, unreliable, and an embarrassment to the Air Force—a man who happened to have
a flair for math, and that’s all.
Boyd’s Energy-Maneuverability Theory did four things for aviation: it provided a quantitative basis for teaching aerial tactics,
it forever changed the way aircraft are flown in combat, it provided a scientific means by which the maneuverability of an
aircraft could be evaluated and tactics designed both to overcome the design flaws of one’s own aircraft and to minimize or
negate the superiority of the opponent’s aircraft, and, finally, it became a fundamental tool in designing fighter aircraft.
In the May 6, 1991, issue of
U.S. News & World Report
was an article about the innovative tactics that won the Gulf War. And it said the men behind the tactics were John Boyd,
Mike Wyly, and Huba Wass de Czege. The January 4, 1998, issue of the
New York Times Magazine,
the annual issue called “The Lives They Lived” that marks the passage of those who have made a great contribution to society,
includes a piece about Boyd.
The academics who know of Boyd agree he was one of the premier military strategists of the twentieth century and the
only
strategist to put time at the center of his thinking. That is as far as they will go. But Boyd was the greatest military
theoretician since Sun Tzu.
Academics snort in derision at such a claim. Von Clausewitz remains their favorite even though those who know the work of
both Boyd and von Clausewitz agree that Boyd revealed the gaping flaws of von Clausewitzian theory. Another reason that academics
are reluctant to rank Boyd with Sun Tzu is that he published so little. His ideas—while broadly disseminated by word of mouth—still
received relatively limited circulation (though not as limited as the circulation of many professional journals). Academics
dismiss Boyd because he left no text for them to analyze. They say that since his war-fighting strategy was never subjected
to critical review, they find it difficult to support the position that he ranks with Sun Tzu. Academics are a cautious group
that like to qualify their judgments. The absolute nature of ranking Boyd with Sun Tzu bothers them. “You just can’t say that”
is their final rejoinder.
But as the years go by and Chet Richards continues to deliver his lectures to large corporations, the word will spread. Richards—considering
that he has a Ph.D. in mathematics and is a retired intelligence officer—has a rather unusual assessment of Boyd: he thinks
Boyd is the most recent link in a chain that began with Sun Tzu and continued with Musashi, the sixteenth-century samurai,
and then with Mao Tse Tung. Richards says the similarities between Musashi and Boyd are many: Boyd’s shiny fighter aircraft
was like the lacquered armor of a samurai. Both went into battle one-on-one. Both had personal habits that caused others to
think them uncouth. Both lived by an austere code of honor and self-sacrifice. Both believed that if they confused an enemy
before the battle, they had won even before the fight. In combat, neither ever lost a battle. Both read widely and were single-minded
in their search for enlightenment. Both loomed large in their times. Both evolved from fighters into teachers and both left
works that lived long after their death. Musashi’s famous work was
A Book of Five Rings
and Boyd’s was the OODA Loop. The
OODA Loop is in five pieces, the “Loop” itself being the fifth. “Boyd
was
the old warrior,” Richards says.
Graduate students now are writing papers on Boyd. The two Web sites created by Chet Richards receive three hundred thousand
visits annually and the numbers continue to increase.
Boyd was not as interested in his career as he was in the fate of the American fighting man, the man who—as the military says—is
at the pointy end of the spear. He wanted these men to have the best possible equipment, whether it was an airplane or a tank.
That was his life.
Boyd made men believe they could do things they never thought they could do. And most of them were men of integrity and accomplishment
even before they met Boyd. He encouraged all that was good in them and galvanized them and sent them forth renewed. Boyd’s
ideas and work are out there, still germinating, still spreading in an inkblot fashion, with the isolated and widely separated
blots coming together and forming even larger pools of knowledge. Some say Boyd has become a cult figure. But no one who knows
the Acolytes or the U.S. Marines or the growing use of Boyd’s ideas in business believes this is cultish activity.
After the initial media coverage of the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, newspaper and
magazine reporters began mining their sources for the deeper meaning of the tragedy. A few weeks later stories began appearing
on “fourth-generation warfare” and the October 1989 piece in the Marine Corps
Gazette
was rediscovered. The article, written more than a decade earlier, was so frighteningly prescient in its description of how
terrorists might operate in America that it was reprinted in the November 2001 issue of the
Gazette
. Colonel G. I. Wilson suddenly was perceived as a prophet.
One of the Web sites devoted to Boyd suddenly was receiving as many as one thousand six hundred hits per day, many visitors
pulling up the 1989 article. A surprising number of the visits originated from the Pentagon, where a mighty battle was waged
over how to respond to the terrorist attack. The deployment of B-1 and B-52 Bombers meant the traditional Air Force mind was
at work. But Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated following Boyd’s ideas. Powell appeared
on national television and
talked of a response involving multiple thrusts and getting inside the adversary’s decision cycle.
Vice President Cheney has his own ideas about Boyd’s place in military history. “We could use him again now. I wish he was
around now. I’d love to turn him loose on our current defense establishment and see what he could come up with. We are still
oriented toward the past. We need to think about the next one hundred years rather than the last one hundred years.”
The military itself does not have such certitude.
After Ron Catton delivered his emotional eulogy at Boyd’s funeral, he stopped by the office of his congressman, George Nethercutt,
to ask a favor. Catton wanted the Air Force to recognize Boyd in some formal fashion. Today Catton is a multimillionaire financial
consultant and one of Spokane’s most prominent citizens. If he asks something of his congressman, chances are, he gets it.
The initial response from the Air Force was that Grant Hammond, who teaches at the Air University, was writing his book and
that should be enough recognition for Boyd. Nethercutt disagreed and on September 17, 1999, the Air Force dedicated Boyd Hall
at Nellis AFB. It is a small building across the street from the Weapons School. The original version of the dedication speech
was twenty minutes, but a retired general said Boyd was not worth twenty minutes and ordered the speech cut by half. This
same retired general read the prologue to this book on the Internet several years ago and sent an e-mail to friends in which
he denigrated Boyd and said when Boyd was at the Fighter Weapons School, “I had to wax his ass” in simulated aerial combat.
The claim brought howls of derision from those who knew both men.
The Fighter Weapons School has gone through a name change. Because crews for the B-1 Bomber and the B-52 and other aircraft
are now trained there, the “Fighter” was dropped and it is now the “Weapons School.” In the summer of 1999, to celebrate the
fiftieth anniversary of the school, the Air Force published a special issue of
USAF Weapons Review
. The featured article was titled “Air Combat Maneuvering” and was from Boyd’s “Aerial Attack Study.” His name was not mentioned.
At the Air Force Academy, seniors take an advanced course in aeronautical engineering. The textbook is primarily an explication
of the E-M Theory. Boyd’s name is not in the book and those who teach
the course do not give Boyd credit. When a group of graduating seniors was polled, not one cadet knew the name of Colonel
John Boyd.
The U.S. Army has forgotten that one of its generals stopped three nights in the desert during the Gulf War and today proudly
proclaims that it practices maneuver warfare. The Army also says that Boyd had nothing to do with the doctrinal changes of
the late 1970s, that those changes came from within.
And then there is the Marine Corps. When Boyd died, Commandant Charles Krulak wrote a moving tribute in a Pentagon newspaper
saying Boyd was the architect of America’s victory in the Gulf War. He later elaborated, saying it was “the concept of maneuver,
intent, and agility that led to victory.” Young Marine officers know of Boyd and study his work. Twice a year retired Marine
officer Chris Yunker sponsors a Boyd Symposium to discuss Boyd’s ideas.
The Marine Corps Research Center at Quantico is a soaring building of brick and glass. Mike Wyly greatly influenced its design.
When a visitor enters the large airy lobby, straight ahead are two brass cannons gleaming as bright as the day they were cast.
On the walls are pictures of stern-faced Marine generals and of battle scenes dating back to America’s beginnings. Wings of
the building and the conference rooms are named for famous three- and four-star Marines. This sacred and hallowed hall is
the repository of the mystique surrounding one of America’s most elite fighting forces. This is a hall that commemorates Marine
warriors. But the eye quickly roves past all of this and is drawn straight ahead and to the left, to the most prominent display
in the lobby: the figure of a man in a blue flight suit. Behind the figure is a model of the F-16 and on his shoulders are
the silver eagles of a colonel. The name tag over his right breast is in big bold letters and says
JOHN BOYD
. In his outstretched arms rests a thick briefing book with a faded green cover: “A Discourse on Winning and Losing.”
And finally there is Erie, Pennsylvania, where Boyd returned year after year, finding renewal and seeking approbation. A half
dozen or so of Boyd’s boyhood friends read his obituary in the
New York Times.
They might have later seen Jim Fallows’s glowing tribute in
U.S. News & World Report
and perhaps even the widely reprinted eulogy written by David Hackworth. They were amazed. John Boyd, the fellow they grew
up with, the man they considered a loud-talking
salesman, really did all those things he said he did. They journeyed down to Washington for the memorial service and heard
the eulogies from Ron Catton and Pierre Sprey, and they were proud that a boy from Erie had gone so far.
They wished they had known earlier.
The house on Lincoln Avenue has gone through several owners and today is empty. While the
Erie Times-Union
did a full-page story about Boyd several years before he died, and while the publisher occasionally mentions Boyd in his
columns, the city has never formally recognized Boyd. Erie has a statue commemorating Colonel Strong Vincent, a man generally
overlooked by historians. The city is proud of how in the War of 1812 Oliver Hazard Perry fought aboard a ship built in Erie.
Yet Erie does not recognize its most accomplished son. The children of Erie do not know of John Boyd.
But then, Erie always was a hard town.
Boyd was obsessed with wanting to understand how he had developed his Energy-Maneuverability Theory when many far better-educated
engineers had not discovered it. “Destruction and Creation,” one of the few things he ever wrote, is his effort to understand
his own thought processes. It is a window into his mind.
DESTRUCTION AND CREATION
John R. Boyd
September 3, 1976
Abstract
To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of meaning. The purpose of this paper is
to sketch out how we destroy and create these patterns to permit us to both shape and be shaped by a changing environment.
In this sense, the discussion also literally shows why we cannot avoid this kind of activity if we intend to survive on our
own terms. The activity is dialectic in nature, generating both disorder and order that emerges as a changing and expanding
universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality.