Patterns of Conflict
| The works of |
| Works of John Boyd |
|---|
OODA WIKI Edition
See Intro slide first
Quantico Transcription
I might add, this is not patterns of war, it’s not patterns of maneuver, or patterns, it’s patterns of conflict. We look at it in different ways. It’s not “pattern”, it’s “patterns”. You know, there’s different kinds of things going on.
Here’s the outline of the presentation. Got to get my glasses, I’m getting to be old. Point of departure: turned out I really didn’t intend to do this kind of stuff. Actually I was worried about fighter airplanes, I didn’t do it when we were designing the F-16, F-17, then -16 and -18. We found out certain kinds of phenomenon, and if you generalized that phenomenon, it seemed, it would apply to more than just air-to-air combat. It would apply not only to conflict; but as it turns out now there are uses in business and elsewhere, it’s coming out in business. It’s used in many different areas. And we’ll bring that out here. But that was the point where I started.
[15:00] As a result of that, knowing that it looked like it could be generalized, I was forced to go into history, what I call “historical snapshots.” And you’ll see I go all the back to Sun Tzu, up to the present and then other people. Since I can’t look at the whole goddamn realm of military history, since you know I’d be dead before I ever do that, I take snapshots of very key areas, and then as we said before, we’re going to pull them apart and then bring them back together. In fact, this is the longest portion of my presentation, historical snapshots, to show you how different things and different episodes, and how many of these ideas are flowing through to the present time.
As a result of this, you can lay out what I call “categories of conflict,” which we’ll show you soon, three categories on the next chart. Doesn’t mean you have to lay them out this way. They’re dynamic, some people like to categorize conflict, when they do they really only stay in one department, they just got three different features in one department. We’re going to operate in three different departments, totally different. We’ll show you what they are, and they’re very dynamic. And then finally, as you’re pulling all this apart and putting it back together, you go into what I call super-synthesis. Put it all together.
In a modern sense, what are the kind of things we’re really worried about? In order to gain leverage over our adversaries as opposed to having him gain leverage over us. And what do we mean by that? And then finally, [unintelligible] if we believe these ideas, then we should be applying them in a certain way, and I’m going to show you some of the application. As a matter of fact since I put the application, I’ve since modified [unintelligible] it’s even more crisp, even more powerful than the way I got it in here. And then finally I go into what I call, I say okay, let’s just boil it down into five charts, wrap the whole thing up into five charts, really supercondensed and compress all the information.
[unintelligible] because you can’t, these books they write on managing a crisis, got to have a checklist here, a checklist there, you can’t remember all that crap, you shouldn’t try to remember. Just like you won’t remember all these pages, but there are certain key ideas you can remember, then you can [unintelligible] in your own mind. If you’re going use this for checklists, [unintelligible] matter of fact, some guys, they wanted to use this as a sort of a checklist, I say, “I got a recommendation for you”. He says, “what?” I say: “burn the son of a bitch.” And then an epilogue.
And the reason why I took on the epilogue, I’ll preempt myself a little bit, is I keep seeing these principles of war. Everyone talks about the principles of war. And as a result of going through this presentation, I don’t understand what the hell they’re talking about, so I take on the principles of war [unintelligible]. Now today what we’ll do, we’ll go through all the way up to World War I, tomorrow we’ll pick it up and take it the rest of the way. Okay?
Lightfoot Transcription
Now, here's the outline of the presentation. Incidentally before I get into it I will be leaving a hard copy of the presentation. But here's the outline of the presentation. Point of departure. There are certain things that we saw there. I was very, very involved in the evolution design of the F15 lightweight fighter. And we went through that process of the work. At that time, really the first time we did on high speed computer because we could do literally thousands of designs. At that time, we had a so called edge of technology called the IMB 7094. Where we could really designing all kinds of machines. Technically what happens when you go through such a project people tend to get an arrogant [inaudible] and so you tend not to worry so much about the test. But ultimate you gotta submit it to the real world. Typically what happens is somethings are right and somethings don’t work out so well. So then what the community likes to do, then they say we’ll say these are anomalies and sweep it under the rug. After all you got to schedule a program you don't want to interrupt. [Inaudible] it has been my experience the details [inaudible] what I call [inaudible]. Eventually people do get to understand and then you have a very [inaudible]. So that's what happened. The result of that then threw me into what I call historical examinations.
No matter how much history you read you can only look at certain snapshots [inaudible]. Once again remember I'm going through the sequence of analysis and synthesis to understand what's happening. [Inaudible] that's what I like to call [inaudible]. As a result of that process we can evolve what I call categories of conflict--not static, very dynamic. I'll show you in the next chart and some of you've seen in the newspaper people don't realize what they are seeing. You see these very powerful relationships and associations, and that's what I will do when we come later on presentation. Remember we work our way forward [inaudible].
And then I go into what I call a super synthesis, I just grab all the stuff to get an overall synthesis going on to get a good [inaudible]. Now that gives us a picture and the next TRP those key things that we're looking for [inaudible]. Now, as a result of that, in effect we do have a new lens then I go back two different instances. I've got different kinds of lens I want to look at certain events for certain phenomena at play. Guess what, you look at the world with one kind of a lens you get one kind of image, you look at the world with a different kind of lens you get a different image. And so you see by the same phenomenon you draw off different interpretations or different ideas [inaudible].
Remember we're a prisoner of our own images, our own filters, our own views in our mind--we tend to see, we want to look through them. So we do that. Then what I do is called a super condensation [inaudible] squeeze everything down. What are those things really worth looking at. At this point you say, 'why don't you throw old Boyd out of here, save everyone some time.' That's the normal way, but unfortunately, if we did that I showed you the [inaudible] first we wouldn't have much. Remember the meaning was built up by going through this. You're looking at a different frame of reference. You see those words you understand. In other words, that's the right pattern.
Then after you go through that, yeah these are very significant. The kind of things you have to pay attention to. At least have this sort of impression to which you're [inaudible]. Now you'll notice another term down here called Epilogue. As I went through the presentation I became a little bit unsettled because unconsciously or consciously or in sort of a subdued sense I was juxtapositioning the ideas that I was trickling out versus the so-called [inaudible].
So what I'm going to do in the epilogue, I'm going to take on [inaudible]. You notice as I work my way through I'll have rather sharp comments about [inaudible] and you'll see why [inaudible]. I'll show you what the principles are and what you're going to find out the problem is there is no one set of principles. Different countries have different principles. So that right there should tell you something. And then some countries don't even have, they're not necessarily unsuccessful. We want to keep that in mind. We have this august flag in this country, you know high priest don't want to let this principle work. Remember, you don't want to be a mastodon when there are no mastodons left on the earth, at leas we don't think so. Of course some of you people say, well we still got a few in some parks [laughter] but nevertheless we have some too. I'm trying to point that out to you. You don't want to hold onto things too tightly so you can't see the world. That doesn't mean you want your traditions to go away either.
Now the sources I won't [inaudible] you'll see [inaudible] back. So with that in mind let's start the presentation.