Patterns of Conflict Intro Slide

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict First Slide

OODA WIKI Edition

Let me tell you something before I get into the presentation. You know, some people like to be regarded as an analyst. They think that’s a term of endearment. I treat it as a personal insult if somebody calls me an analyst. A personal insult. There are two things you have to be able to do: analyze and synthesize. Analysis and synthesis. If you can do that in many different areas, tactics, strategies, goals, unifying theme, you can run businesses, you can do any goddamn thing you want.

But when a person calls you an analyst, you’re really only a half-wit. You only got half. Idiot. So there’s two things that I don’t like being called, one is an analyst and the other is an expert. Because an expert means he knows everything and can’t learn anything new. He’s rigid. And boy, if you’re an analytical expert, you’re really in deep trouble.

Some of you may feel a little uncomfortable with my presentation. I don’t start out with an executive summary and then after say, “here it is,” now we’re going to pack in only that data that supports the executive summary and summarily reject everything else. That’s how we get ourselves into problems. We’re going to go through this whole presentation— “Patterns of Conflict”— and we’re going to pull things apart, put them back together, pull things apart, put them back together all the way through.

Now why in hell are we going to do that for? It should drive you batty. The simple reason is that what you’re trying to find when talking about conflict are those things we call the “invariants,” the constancies, or what the physicists like to call the symmetries. Where you can look at things from different points of view, and you keep seeing the same thing popping out.

Two important points. This is not called Patterns of War and it is not called Patterns of Maneuver. There's a unique, historical aspect with greater context here. It's not that I want to look at the military per say, but I use it because conflict in that environment is sharp and brings us nuances, subtleties within a larger body of information.

The second point is this isn’t an a recipe or a formula for the way to think about conflict. It is a way to think about conflict. I can’t emphasis that enough. You'll notice through out the presentation. I might discuss some aspect or some phenomena in a certain way and later on discuss a similar phenomena in a different way. Let me illustrate:

Let’s assume you—and it’s an idiotic example but it makes my point—were taught all your life and only had the opportunity to see pyramids from the side. You’d go through life thinking pyramids are triangles. Now let’s say we got another group and they have only seen pyramids from the top. They’d think they were rectangles with intersecting diagonals. A square. Let’s say that group interacts with you and they start talking about pyramids. You'd say “these guys are goddamn idiots” and they would think you’re an idiot too. But you’re both talking about the same thing from a different point of view. You’re both correct, partially. But from a different point of view.

So what you want to do is examine these things from these different angles or points of view and find those things that tend to hold up. Then you’ve got a goddamn gem. They’re hard to find. But when you do you’ve got a gem, an invariant, a constancy, what the physicists call symmetry: the ability to find those same things that hold up, that don’t change, when you look at it from different points of view.

The university system, our intellectual system, in some ways, has done a disservice to us by always talking about definitive solutions. It really turns me off when I read a book and I see a definitive solution, because you turn around a year later and see the definitive solution didn’t work. So all you really want is something that’s workable, that you can use under the circumstances.

You'll notice as we work our way through the presentation, I'll be taking a whole and breaking it down into pieces. Then I’ll take bits and pieces and reconstruct the whole. What you'll see is we're working our way through the presentation. Pull things apart, put them back together; pulling things apart then putting them back together. It's a sequence and from there you’ll see the synthesis. Whereby we’re trying to get a richer, richer picture. We’re not only trying to understand what’s going on but to evolve a pattern or framework, different images so you can see. With that let's get into the presentation.

Quantico Transcription

[Begin Tape 1, Side 1]

John Boyd: You have your own copy. Can you all read it? If you can’t, pass the other copy around. It’s kind of close here. What we can do— Why don’t we get smart.

Michael Wyly: Do you want to move it back? [unintelligible]

Boyd: No, that’s alright. That’s fine— I think that’s good right there. [Cross talk] Did you get a pointer there, Mike?

Wyly: He’s getting one—

Boyd: Okay, has everybody read the abstract? What’d you get out of it? The most important paragraph is the second paragraph. Excuse me, the last paragraph. The last paragraph on the second page is the most important paragraph. Because that’s what this all what we’re going to be talking about today is all about.

Let me tell you something, preliminary before I get into the presentation. You know, some people like to be regarded as being an analyst. They think that’s a term of endearment. I treat it as a personal insult if somebody calls me an analyst. A personal insult. If you’ve read the last paragraph, I’ve showed there are two things you have to be able to do: analyze and synthesize. Analysis and synthesis. And if you can do that in many different areas, tactics, strategies, goals, unifying theme, you can run businesses, you can do any goddamn thing you want. And so when a person calls you an analyst, you’re really only a half-wit. You only got half. Idiot. So there’s two things that I don’t like being called, one an analyst, and the other is an expert. Because an expert means he knows everything and can’t learn anything new. He’s rigid. And boy, if you’re an analytical expert, you’re really in deep trouble.

So some of you people may feel a little bit uncomfortable with my presentation, because I don’t start out with an executive summary. And then after, we say, “here it is,” now we’re going to pack in only that data that supports it and summarily reject everything else. That’s how we get ourselves into problems. We’re going to go through this whole presentation— “Patterns of Conflict”—going back in history that I’ve laid out here in the outline we’re going to go through. And we’re going to pull things apart, put them back together, pull things apart, put them back together all the way through. Now why in hell are we going to do that for? Should drive you batty. The very simple reason, and what you’re trying to find out if we’re going to talk about conflict, you want to reach back, you want to find out those things we call the “invariants,” the constancies, or what the physicists like to call the symmetries. Where you can look at things from different points of view, and you keep seeing the same thing popping out.

Example: let’s assume you people here in this room—and it’s an idiotic example but it makes my point—were taught all your life, or you only had the opportunity to see pyramids from the side. Only from the side. You’d go through life thinking pyramids are triangles. Now let’s say we got another group, different from our group here, and they only got to see pyramids from the top. They’d think there were rectangles with intersecting diagonals. A square. So now let’s say this group then interacts with the other group, and they start talking about pyramids, and say “these guys are goddamn idiots.” And it’s you he’s talking about and he thinks you’re an idiot. But you’re both talking about the same thing from what? A different point of view. You’re both correct, partially. But from a different point of view.

And so what you want to do is, you want to examine these things from these different angles or points of view, and find those things that tend to keep holding up. You’ve got a goddamn gem that you find. They’re hard to find. You’ve got a gem, an invariant, a constancy, what the physicists call symmetry. Symmetry is the ability to find those same things that hold up, that don’t change when you look at it from different points of view. Any physicists in here, anybody study physics? Ever heard that term symmetry? Well I ask you, what’s pure or perfect symmetry? Give me an object, an example of perfect symmetry, where you examine from different points of view, a physical object. Doesn’t change no matter how matter you examine it.

Audience: Sir, a sphere?

Boyd: That’s right a sphere. Not a circle, a circle you don’t [unintelligible]. [05:00] A sphere, no matter how you examine it from different angles, perfect symmetry. Unfortunately that’s a physical object; now we’re going to look at moral, mental, and physical. When you go off the physical, you start looking at mental, it gets a little bit more difficult. So we’re going to go through, and basically we’re trying to find those invariants.

We’re going to go from Sun Tzu to the present, what kind of things still hold together? And that’s why you don’t just take Sun Tzu and say “kkkkkkk,” template him today, you’re going to do that, or you take Clausewitz and you’re going to template him today, or Jomini or who else [unintelligible] you’re going to make a horrible mistake if you do that. But there are certain things they said that still hold true, if we uncover them. The answer is there. And you’re going to see how that’s done. So we’re not going to start with the answer. We’re going to start with a confusing bunch of goddamn data and we’re going to try to pull it together.

We’re going to do both. Breakdown, which is the analysis, pulling it back together with synthesis, pull that apart, breakdown, bring it back together and pull it apart, always feeding in more and more stuff and rejecting more and more stuff as we go along. To find those things that hold true, whether in the past, today, and also in the future. For those people that study Clausewitz, think that we’re just going to use Clausewitz as the lens filter to look at the problem, you’re going to make a horrible mistake. It’s a disaster. Because all you’ve told me is your thinking hasn’t proceeded beyond 1832, and a lot of things have happened since 1832. [unintelligible]

So I can’t overemphasize it. Now I want to talk about one other thing before I hop into the presentation. One thing I want to point out, and I’m going to make it again and again. Terrain does not fight wars. Machines don’t fight wars. People do it and they use their minds. So you better understand the people, because if you don’t understand them, you ain’t going to make it, period. Now it doesn’t mean you don’t pay attention to terrain, you don’t pay attention to machines but: person, the human being, and the people are what counts. Top and foremost priority. The terrain is just the means through which you operate. The machines are just tools that you use. All they are. Of course, you can use them badly, or use them well. But the point is, that’s all it is. I want to drive that home. I’ll show you, when you make that mistake, when you begin to think that terrain is the most important thing, you’re going make some very serious mistakes.

Okay, how many people here have read the book, The 25-Year War? Anybody read it? By Bruce Palmer. Anybody read The Army and Vietnam, by Andrew Krepinevich? I understand he’s been here, as a matter of fact. Anybody read it? Let me tell you what they— I want to bring it out. The reason why I take those two is they’re sort of— in a sense diametrically opposed, but I’ll show in a way they aren’t. Bruce Palmer—and I’m not saying in a pejorative sense—has written his book from what I call more of a conventional mindset. And it’s not pejorative, in other words I’m not talking down. In other words, he’s looking from a more conventional viewpoint.

Whereas Krepinevich is the radical, the young radical, looking at it through counterinsurgency, guerrilla warfare, and that thing. So they come in from two, remember I said, two different points of view. They’re looking at the pyramid from different sides, is what I’m trying to tell you. Looking at that pyramid from different sides. But interestingly enough, if you read both books very carefully, guess what? They both come up with the same conclusion, and I’ll lay them out to you.

Item one: Palmer says, “we didn’t understand our adversary.” He quotes Sun Tzu. Same thing Krepinevich said. Item two: he didn’t say directly, but infers it: we didn’t even understand ourselves! Remember Sun Tzu, “know your enemy, know yourself, you win a hundred battles.” Krepinevich says the same thing. Totally different viewpoint. Item three, in terms of tactics: Palmer didn’t address the tactics, he said, “I don’t want to address that, that’s not the scope of my book.” He went off on the strategic level. Krepinevich does, and he says, as a corporate body we didn’t understand the tactics that should have been used over in Vietnam, southeast Asia.

However, he did say there were people that did understand it, but they were swept aside. Get them the hell out of here, you know, they’re not going to let us do the war the way we want to do it. In terms of strategy, both of them said we didn’t understand the strategy. Palmer and Krepinevich. And both of them said we didn’t understand the nature of that war. Christ, if you don’t understand your enemy, you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand strategy, you don’t understand the nature of the war, of course, it raises the question: what the hell did we understand? Anybody know? Logistics.

[10:00] Do you know how I know that? Because everybody was living off our logistics system, Viet Cong, everybody was living off of it, including ourselves. That means you’ve got a goddamn good logistics system. Now I’m coming down hard, and the reason I’m coming down hard, people don’t like to talk about Vietnam. Well, you don’t want to talk about it, you’re not going learn any new lessons. You’re going to continue to think the same old way, and your adversary will take you apart the same old way.

If you recall, that was what Wellington said at Waterloo. Remember what he said? Napoleon came on the same old way, and we beat him the same old way. Because he figured out the tactics that had to be used against Napoleon down in Spain. And so guess what: Napoleon saw those tactics didn’t work, he still used them at Waterloo, and he got hammered one more time.

Audience: The book, 25-Year War, uh—

Boyd: by Palmer—

Audience: —talked about the Marine Corps for a short period there, where [unintelligible] the NCO strength and everything was good in the Marine Corps, however the officers, the senior officers were not professionals with the reality of what was going on there. He says—

Boyd: —as a matter of fact, since you wanted to pin it down, what he really comes down very hard on is the senior leadership in all the services. In fact, that’s what he pinned down, except I wanted to talk about, all I was trying to show you was the points of agreement between he and Krepinevich, even though they came in from two different viewpoints. That’s exactly right. Remember he took after senior leadership in the Army and elsewhere too.

Audience: Yes, sir.

Boyd: And what was the Marine Corps? He says it was a disaster. That’s right. And, you know, look at Krepinevich, he said there are some guys that understood what had to be done. Not only in the Marine Corps; in fact, he gave the Marine Corps high grades, particularly with their CAP teams and that. Also gave the Green Berets, the Special Forces, high grades initially, except they were siphoned off and had to do other things that were wasting their time. And there were some other instances too. But I don’t want to get into that.

I was trying to show you the point that even though they were coming from different viewpoints, we find that their conclusions, [unintelligible] the same way, and that’s the point I want to drive home, that they came out the same way. Now some of you might have one more persuasive than the other and I don’t want to dictate one way or the other. But I want to show you it’s very interesting, when you come in from different viewpoints and the conclusions come out the same, you’re on to something. That’s what I want to bring in [unintelligible].

Another example is the Packard Commission. Remember when they had that big commission, how they were going to re-manage the Defense Department? It didn’t get any better. It’s not going to get any better that way. And I know Mr. Packard, he’s a nice person, I know him very well as a matter of fact. Because of my design work in the building. And I’ve talked to him since. He agreed, I said, “here’s what has to be done,” he said, “well, we can’t get that done.” Well, it’s not going to get any better. He agreed with me.

But one of the things they talked about: command and control. Remember the thing, they’re always knocking that in the JCS,5 we got to smooth out the lines of command and control, streamline command and control. What’s wrong with that? It’s a buzzword. Washingtonian buzzword. Because if you read it very carefully, it’s only top-down, they’re only looking topdown. They want to get you under control so you can do it just the way they want you to do it, understand? That’s what they’re thinking about. They don’t even look at the goddamn bottomup. How can you decide what’s going be top-down until you understand what’s bottom-up? You have to gather it in first, figure out what the hell you’re going do

Like for example, you got to know your people, you know, a few minor things like that. I might add I’m being facetious, they’re not minor. Major. And the techniques you use for gathering information up are totally different than going down. And they even had the thing in there that we should address bottom up, and they never did. We should look at that in the future. And of course that’s the crucial part of the argument. That is a crucial part. And that’s why I bring that up.

So we’re going to look into those kinds of things. I’m just trying to clean that up. But we’re not going to start with the answers. I’m going to show you the outline for the presentation.

Lightfoot Transcription

Source: Stop at 4:11 mark.

One think I'm going to point out, that [Inaudible] pointed out, that was very important point.

This is not called Patterns of War.

[Inaudible] One other thing before I get into the presentation, I would like to point out that first of all, there's a whole unique, large historical aspect of large historical content here.

It's not that I wanted to look at the military per say, or for a strict setting.

I wanted to use it for conflict in that environment, very sharp, and bring us [Inaudible].

A couple other comments I wanted to make.

Now, you already noticed my title, the other comment I could make is this isn’t an A recipe or a formula for the way to think about conflict.

It is A way to think about conflict.

I can’t emphasis that enough.

I want to [Inaudible] wide a repertoire as you can [Inaudible].

The other point is, if I look my way to the presentation, you'll notice that I might discuss some aspect or some phenomena in a certain way.

And later on, I'll discuss very similar phenomena, but in a very different way.

Let me illustrate what I'm getting at.

Let’s assume that we in this room went through all our life and we saw a [Inaudible] before the sun.

[Inaudible].

Now, let's take another groups and let’s assume the saw [Inaudible] example.

[Inaudible].

Then let's say this group interacted with the other group, and both think the other group is crazy.

[Inaudible] they think its a triangle, excuse me, rectangle, [Inaudible].

With the EID you want to see the top, side, or back angles, and inside, then you'll get a rich view of what we're getting.

You can [Inaudible] oversimplistic example, in some ways you’ll see [Inaudible], so you don't come up with what I call a so-called [Inaudible] intended solution.

[Inaudible].

I think that university system, our intellectual system, in some ways, has done a disservice to us by always talking about the so-called [Inaudible] solution.

Really turns me off when I read a book and I see [Inaudible] solution.

[Inaudible].

Then you turn around a year later and see the [Inaudible] solution didn’t work. If it didn’t work [Inaudible].

I think all you really want is something that’s workable, can use, under the circumstances.

I think one more comment, before I go into the guided presentation.

You'll also notice as we work our way through the guided presentation, I'll be taking a hole and breaking it down into pieces.

And then I’ll take bits and pieces and reconstruct the whole.

And so what you'll see is we're working our way through the presentation [Inaudible] apart put them back together, take them apart, put them back together.

A sequence, and then you’ll see the synthesis.

Whereby we’re trying to get a richer, richer picture.

We’re not only trying to understand what’s going on but we’re also trying to get [Inaudible].

So you can see [Inaudible]. With that, enough said, let's get into the presentation.