Patterns of Conflict Slide 43

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 43

Quantico Transcription

Audience: Can we go back a second? I’m puzzled on how we, the friendly side, create the many centers of gravity simply by aiming at the decisive points with the one center of gravity and [unintelligible].

Boyd: Well, you want to know your adversary, first of all, you got to go back to understanding your adversary. What are those things that you can concentrate on that’s going— you can divide him up so he can’t function as a whole, not just physically but morally and mentally as well?

Wyly: So would your multiple thrusts be one example?

Boyd: Multiple thrusts, that’s— that’s one example. You know, we talked about that earlier. Yeah, that’s, a lot of it’s a physical sense, but it’s done physically on the other— well, you think multiple thrusts as— you can have multiple thrusts moral, mental, and physical too.

If you think of the battlefield, you tend to think of the physical. But you’ll also get moral and mental implications that flow out of that, even though it’s physical.

Audience: Is there such a thing as a center of gravity?

Boyd: Oh, that’s a good question. It’s hard. You’re talking about center of gravity. See, I think— you’ve heard people say— you’ve got a good question, colonel, because I don’t like the term, personally. And the reason why, people say we’re going to go after our adversary’s strategic center of gravity. I say, what the hell is that? We didn’t know our adversary. We didn’t know ourselves where we could find our strategic center of gravity. I find that a very interesting phrase.

And they say, they went after ours. I say, that’s not quite true. I say I agree that as a result the American society became divided, and that turned out to be our strategic center of gravity. But they didn’t know that ahead of time. They found out about it after the fact, and they levered it.

They didn’t start out that way.

I’m talking about Giap and his boys during Vietnam.

Audience: So John Schmitt’s warfighting manual, when he talks about vulnerabilities, we’re onto something better than the center of gravity.

Boyd: Yes, in fact I think that’s a much better term.

Audience: But also we don’t—

[Cross talking]

Boyd: Remember, as a matter of fact, Sun Tzu said it. Remember what he said? In fact, I got it in my— what manual do I have? This one [unintelligible] don’t know where I put the son of a gun.

It’s in my strategy kit.

Remember what he said, seize that which is the vulnerability, seize that which your adversary holds dear or values most highly. Then he will conform to your desires. That’s a vulnerability. He said that, Sun Tzu back 400, 500. Seize that which your adversary holds dear and values most highly. Then he will conform to your desires.

Audience: John qualifies that by saying “critical,” for example, his PX may be vulnerable, but it’s sure as hell not critical.

Boyd: That’s right.

Audience: So you’ve got to look to what’s vulnerable and to what’s critical.

Boyd: That’s right. But no, no, Sun Tzu said it. Seize that which your adversary holds dear or values most highly. That is critical.

Audience: But what if it’s not vulnerable?

Boyd: Well, it may not be. But I’m talking about— but he’s always talking about strength against weakness. He doesn’t say directly try to do that.

Wyly: You’re kind of feeling your way as—
Boyd: He’s feeling your way. See, he recognizes it.

Wyly: In fact, every vulnerability, essentially you get onto something.

Boyd: And you may not know that at the time, exactly what that is.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: Let’s say you’re going to penetrate a front— you want to go after your adversary’s weakness, strength against weakness. You may not know that exactly. One way of finding out, though, is multiple thrusts. Because some are going to get hung up. Some will leak through. The ones that are leaking through, you know they’re doing it. So then you can shift your schwerpunkt and ram it home through those.

In other words, you're adapting to circumstances. You see what I’m getting at?

Audience: I’m trying to put it all—
[Cross talking]
Boyd: You see what I’m saying? In other words, you’re— you say okay, they’ve outsmarted me here. But in the meantime, you ram some of them in there, see. And some are leaking through. The other ones are being hung up.

Okay. The ones that are hung up, you don’t reinforce those. They just have to sort of hold the position and keep the other guy tied up and reinforce or re-support those guys that are going through and ram that home real deep into the guy.

Audience: I’m not getting the connection between the successful thrusts and the vulnerability.

Boyd: I know what you’re saying. You have a— let’s differentiate between weakness and vulnerability. A weakness may not be real. A guy not be vulnerable because he’s weak. And

that’s what you’re talking about.

Audience: Yeah, because you’re going through there—

[Cross talking]

Boyd: You may find a weakness and go through, but he may not be too vulnerable necessarily. But also because you’ve got the weakness— because you act, then you can exploit that weakness. Then you can direct that out of that weakness and effort into his vulnerability.

Audience:[35:00] Okay, now the sixty-four dollar question—

Boyd: If you go after something that’s vulnerable, a critical vulnerability, he probably knows it is too. So therefore, he’s going to put a lot of forces there. Now you’ve got strength going against strength. In other words, you’ve got Verdun and all those battles [unintelligible]. Do you understand what I’m saying? So it’s sometimes better to exploit the weakness. As a result, you can get to the vulnerability.

Did you ever read Manstein’s thing on lost victories? Remember, he’s always talking about unhinging the front. You’ll never be vulnerable. What he’s trying to do is find a weakness and then start getting behind him. They’re going to abandon these areas where they’re vulnerable. So he gets at the vulnerability by getting to that weakness first.

Audience: We need to go through the intellectual exercise before the battle to think that through.

[Cross talking]

Boyd: Well, I think what you do, I mean, you don't want to recipe it. I wouldn’t want to recipe it.

What you want to do is you want to lay out the philosophy so your guys think this way, see. Because let’s say he’s a commander, and you give him a task to do something out in front. And he has to decide how to do it.

He may not know exactly where the guy— he may have sort of a feel and some
fingerspitzengefühl on where they’re weak. In the meantime, he can allocate his forces and go through, and then he says okay, these guys are succeeding, so I’m going to support that. You other guys hang on. Keep the other guy there and let’s ram home. Now I’m going to take advantage of that weakness, see.

Audience: If we try to time—

Boyd: In other words, it’s an opportunistic kind of thing. You see what I’m saying? You’re taking advantage of the situation as it unfolds.

Audience: As it unfolds. But I think what we teach is we teach identify the critical vulnerability, have the focus of effort towards it, and let your commander’s intent spell that out. But that’s kind of a neat prescription.

Boyd: That may cause you some problems, is what I’m saying. You may be allocating strength against strength. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because if you see it as a critical vulnerability, he probably does too. So he’s going to defend that son of a bitch.

Audience: We have to do something initially to try to draw him away from that.

Boyd: That’s okay. But what you’re doing, you’ve got to set up some kind of operation to exploit some weakness, which may not be critical. Then if you can get him to goddamn allocate toward that weakness and expose that vulnerability, there’s nothing wrong in that. But you’ve got to get the exposure first, otherwise you can’t get to it.

Audience: Yeah, I can follow that, but how does a commander’s intent, which is another tool we talked about that we need—

Boyd: What do you mean by intent? Let’s ask first, what do you mean by intent? Let’s
separate— we’ve got some confusion on this word. I’m going to give you three words so we can sort it out.

First of all, you give your guys a mission, what is to be done, right? What’s the difference between mission and intent? Anybody? We’ve got to distinguish between them, otherwise they don’t know what we’re talking about.

Audience: The mission being more specific? The who, what, where, and when somebody’s going to do something—

Boyd: Well, the mission generally is— you think of it as sort of a lower-level effort relative to the intent. The mission is what has to be done. The intent is the reason behind it and usually encompasses a larger effort. So in that sense you’re correct.

Okay, but then you’ve got mission. You’ve got the intent. And behind that it’s more, a little bit more insidious, you’ve got motive. Mission first, more specific as you like to say. Then the intent. Then the motive. So the mission is what you want done to these guys. The intent is the higher level intent behind it. And there also may be a political motive even behind that intent.

So you might say, okay, we want to direct this thrust in an initial operation out here, but our intent is to do this. Okay. You’ve got to lay something out ahead of time, but as it begins to unfold, you might want to change that intent too. As it unfolds a different way, say hey, I can gain leverage by this. Then you shift the schwerpunkt, you shift your intent, and tell your people why.

Don’t get too hung up in all these things, too much in these words. You want to give yourself fluidity. I look at the intent as the “why” behind a mission. The mission is the “what.” The intent is the “why.”

Audience: I’m thinking two things. One is—

Boyd: Or as he says— think of this, though, think of— you give a task to some company, see. Then you want to know, let’s say, the regimental intent behind it. In other words, he’s thinking a broader level, but they have more specific missions.

So a mission’s related to an intent, but intent— like he said, more specific or lower-level relative to the intent. In other words, the intent’s more general. That’s why I think it’s the “why.”

That’s why I say think of the mission as the “what,” the intent as the “why,” why you’re going to do that. That’s why— see in other words, you’re folding it into a larger— intent is a larger mission if you want to think of it that way. Or the mission is the smaller intent.

Audience: Initial discussion, getting back to vulnerability—

Boyd: Did I make sense out of that to anybody? Everybody?

[Cross talking]

Audience:[40:00] I think I [unintelligible] vulnerability, you’re equating that with the enemy’s critical point or center of gravity, I think as we’ve been referring to. We’re saying direct our strength against an enemy weakness, with the overall objective of that thrust being his center of gravity or—

[Cross talking]

Boyd: Nothing wrong if you want to get the vulnerability. But remember—

[Cross talking]

Audience: —that’s where the disconnect—

Boyd: You’ve got to get that exposed first. All I said is you want to get that exposed. If you don’t expose that first critical vulnerability, he knows it’s there. You’re going to get strength going against strength, and that’s the only argument I gave you.

See often, we think direct. There’s his vulnerability, we’re going to tear right through it, Christ, you lose a whole division. So you say, well, why do we have to go right after it? Couldn’t we hold him by the nose, come into the back door and do it? That’s what Patton said, hold him by the nose and kick him in the ass.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: That’s another way of, you know, what he’s doing.

Audience: I think initially that’s some of the confusion on the definition of vulnerability and weakness [unintelligible]. Initially, when we started talking about—
[Cross talking]
Boyd: Well, a guy can be weak in an area, but he may not be vulnerable.

Audience: That’s right.

Boyd: We know that. People use the word. And so that’s a fair question. He can be weak but not vulnerable. On the other hand, if it’s a critical vulnerability and he knows that, he’s going to put his forces there. And if you try to make a direct effort against it, you’re going to lose a lot of your people, and may not make the vulnerability.

So in some sense, what you’ve got to do is get him to expose that vulnerability by exploiting his weaknesses, whatever they are, or creating weaknesses, whatever they are. Does that make sense? We seem to be still hung up on that.

Audience: I have no problem with the intent being a wider relation to a task. When you’re looking at a force, he’s going to assign his subordinate units tasks. Now, when we talk about this thing called a commander’s intent, somewhat—
Boyd: What he wants to achieve, the commander.

Audience: Right. And—
Boyd: That’s a higher-level achievement.

Audience: Well, no. That mission that he’s been assigned with a purpose or the “why,” an intent, from the higher headquarters, he’s going to translate that to his subordinates in numerous tasks. But this intent now, the commander’s intent, not as it relates to the tasks, the glue and hopefully the way he envisions this operation, this thrust unfolding in general terms, general, broad.

Boyd: See, then you’re going to choreograph— I’m thinking you’re choreographing, and I get nervous when you say it that way.

Audience: Colonel Boyd—
Boyd: I get nervous when you say— I don’t know why, I feel very uncomfortable with that.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: Maybe I’m [unintelligible].

Audience: What you were saying could be solved. When you receive a mission with a purpose or an intent from a higher headquarters, that’s your mission. Now you have to go ahead and put up a plan, okay, which is going to have to include—
Boyd: Oh, I see what you’re saying.

Audience: —tasks for your subordinate units. So now, how do we— between that mission and intent from a higher headquarters and then—
[Cross talking]
Boyd: Let me ask you something. I’m getting a little confused here. Are you separating tasks from mission?

[Cross talking]
Boyd: We’ve got a problem here.

Audience: Let’s say the division’s mission is to seize the airfield. The intent, the reason we’re going to seize it, is to permit the introduction of follow-on forces. So if we want that airfield so—
Boyd: Nothing wrong in that.

Audience: Okay. Now as a division commander, I’m going to have to tell—
Boyd: Why do you want to prevent that? Because you’re trying— you don’t want those forces there because you’re trying to conduct other operations.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: I understand. Whatever it is. That’s fine.

Audience: So we want that airfield intact so we can bring the C-140 [unintelligible].

Boyd: Right. Right. Got it.

Audience: Okay. But now as a division commander, I’m going to have to give tasks. As I envision I’m going to do that, I have a concept of how I’m going to do it. I’m going to give tasks—

Boyd: Or missions. Subordinate missions.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: That’s why— yeah, you had me confused. You’re talking about subordinate missions. Audience: Subordinate missions.

Audience: Yeah, subordinate missions. Okay.

Boyd: See, I’d rather call that— see, when you say tasks, okay, as long as you think of a subordinate mission, I have no problem with it.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: Okay. We’re saying the same thing.

[Cross talking]
Audience: —a task from a higher headquarters translates to my mission— Boyd: No problem.

Audience: —as a subordinate.

Boyd: So the tasks are just subordinate missions.

Audience: For example, I’ve identified a large force to the southeast of this airfield, and I say to the 8th Marines, occupy positions to the southeast of the airfield in order to keep the enemy from interfering with our operation. So I want him to go where he needs to, southeast of here, to keep the enemy from interfering.

Boyd: Okay, but I’m a little confused now. Are there any troops in that area? You say occupy— you’re going to take out the troops first, or you’re going to occupy the position? I mean, you're saying seize the airfield.

Audience: I’m just trying to do this conception that I said from the division.

[Cross talking]
Audience: You’ve got to seize this airfield in order to permit the introduction of follow-on forces.

Boyd: I hear you. I’ve got that.

Audience: Now as a division commander, as I look at it, I’ve identified the major enemy here to the south. And I say those guys—
Boyd: Can I raise a question at this point?

Audience: Sure.

Boyd: What about around the airfield? Are there any enemies there, or is it vacant?

Audience: No.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: This is a very important question to me.

[Cross talking]
Boyd: Are there any enemies there or is it just a void, it’s vacant? Nobody there?

Audience: It’s being protected.

Boyd: Well, then, see, now I have a problem then. See, that’s why I asked that question. In order to occupy this position, you’ve got to take out the force first. Why don't we get rid of those, then we can occupy the position. So you’re going after the terrain. I want to get rid of the force. You say there’s a for— I said, is there any people there?

Audience: Yeah. I guess what I’m trying to illustrate is each one of those regiments has got to have—
Boyd:[45:00] See, because if you take out those people, you’re going to own the airfield. Then you can say okay, set your perimeter up, whatever you want. But I have to go first things first. Not occupy— I want to get those people out of there so I can own that airport.

Audience: He didn’t say occupy terrain or anything like that, sir, you said do something— Boyd: You said occupy position. I just—
[Cross talking]
Audience: —identified enemy force that was threatening the airfield.

Boyd: No, I understand. There’s an enemy force out here that can bother you. I said, are there any enemies at the immediate position at the airfield? I asked that question. The answer was yes. Well, I want to take those out, so then I can occupy those positions after I take those out, so I can hold off the enemy force. But I’m trying to go first things first, is all I’m saying.

Audience: Yeah, I’m with you. So I’m going to have to give—

Boyd: That’s why I asked that question.

Audience: —one or two of my regiments—

Boyd: See, that’s why I asked if it was vacant. If there was nobody there, I’d say fuck it. Take the positions. I have no problem with that, see.

Audience: But then you’re going to— you may have to be fighting inside out, okay? You may not be able to hold that then. That’s why it’s so hard to discuss, because it’s so situational.

Boyd: But let me tell you why I raise that question as so important. Patton said it very well.

Trouble is, when you get fixed on something, guys want to go. They want to fight someone. They dig in to fight. Hell, you don’t want to dig in and fight. Take them out so you can hold the position first. In other words, you get things twisted about, you get yourself all hung up.

And that happened in Grenada. And Patton told his people, I don’t want to hear anybody telling me they’re trying to hold ground. He said let the other son of a bitch worry about holding ground. Take them out. He said it over and over again.

And so that’s why I asked whether there was any people. If there were no people, I’d say fine,

we have no problem. Just take it. I mean, we’re talking about resisting. When I say people, you know people are going to resist the attack, of course.

So I think we have to think that through, because if you don't do it right, your people— [46:53]
[End of Tape 2, Side 1]

[Begin Tape 2, side 2]

Boyd: —concept, and then you’ve got to get them hands on, get them out in the field to practice those concepts. Not only that, be fair to yourself. Remember, because you laid out a concept, doesn’t mean you have it all right the first time. You may think it through. So, if you see things happen, you say okay, now we’ve got to take the practice and go back to concept and revise the concept. You go back and forth until it works after you do a number of cases. So then they get that— Now they’re getting to fingerspitzengefühl the Germans talk about, because they’re getting the practice.

Audience: That I can grasp. I think what we tend to do in the military is, we want— once we understand the concept, we want some sort of a tool, prescriptive tool to make it work, and that’s when you begin to get in trouble.

Boyd: That’s right. And what I’m saying is when you have a concept, let the guys try it under different circumstances out there, and don’t let the officers or the leaders interfere too much. Just

give them the task and let the other guy do it. If he’s going to screw it up, let him screw it up so you can learn what the screw-up is, and then have your critique afterward. That’s how you learn. Instead, everybody sets it up so nobody screws up. Fuck them. I want to see a lot of screw-ups.

Audience: It’s got to be force-on-force.

Boyd: That’s right. You want to see a lot of screw-ups, because you’re not sure what are going to be screw-ups and what aren’t, because all you’ve got is a concept. It might turn out some are good, some are bad. That’s part of the thing. So that’s how you get that fingerspitzengefühl.

Audience: So stay away from the prescription?

Boyd: I would.

Audience: And academia, we can only go so far, sir. You’ve got to get out there—

Boyd: Let me give you a good example in air-to-air combat. Here’s a fighter pilot back there, okay. We go through a long ritual which we started at Nellis many years ago. Before then they had a favorite maneuver. We taught them all these fundamental maneuvers: high speed yo-yos, low speed yo-yos, barrel roll attacks, diving spirals—what do you call it? Pirouettes. Christ, I can’t even remember them all, and I was so deeply involved in them. And a guy’s trying—I said,

“Don’t try to remember that stuff, for Christ’s sakes. Don’t even think of it.” When you try to remember it, you know it’s like, “Am I going to steer the wheel this much in a car?” Do you know how far you’re going to turn the wheel? You don’t even think about it. Or how far you’re going to push the accelerator down or how far you’re—? I said, “What you have to do is, we’re going to go out there and we’re going to teach you that so after a while it becomes part of your fingerspitzengefühl.”

We teach them maneuvers, what you do and why you do it. Then we take them out and work it over again and again and again. Pretty soon, he doesn’t even have to think about it. So, you don’t have to worry about the goddamn manual. You just do it. That’s why I’m saying if you teach the concept and you don’t give them the hands on, they’re never going to get the fingerspitzengefühl.

So even though we didn’t know the term at the time, what we were teaching the fighter pilots was fingerspitzengefühl. So they could do those things. They could do the chops, the counter-chops, the maneuvers, the counter-maneuvers, the yo-yos when they had to, the low speed, the high speed, the scissors, the vertical rolling scissors, et cetera. You know what I’m talking about.

You’ve been through it all. They’ve got to have those fundamentals. If they don’t have it, they’re going to be dog meat for everybody else. A guy’s going to go, “What should I do?” [smacking sound] He’s out. So it’s got to be right there. He can’t think about what page number is that on, what manual or so and so, and get the checklist out. That’s bullshit. He either has it now or he doesn’t have it, period. So you’ve got to get him out there again and again, and give him that practice. Pretty soon they get—I’ll tell you, these guys get good. They’re not even sure how they get good but they get good.

Audience: I think our dilemma is within the school environment we’re limited in the way we can accomplish that: war games, map exercises—

Boyd: I understand that.

Audience: And that actual, for the hands-on has got to take place somewhere—

Boyd: Yeah, but when you get out to your unit, you should do that all the time. When you get out to your units—I mean I agree. You’re going through a school. You don’t have the—We didn’t have the time to teach them all that in Fighter Weapons School at Nellis. We gave it to them, we sent them back to the unit, and tell them keep cycling through again and again. We’ll get guys out there, and so pretty soon they start getting what we now call fingerspitzengefühl.

That’s what you want to have your officers and your men to get. So when they get out there they’ve just got that goddamn—boom [smacking sound] they can take those son-of-a-bitches out.

But if you’re just treating a concept like here on a chart? Bullshit. Burn the goddamn thing. You’ve got to practice, and you’ve got do—Not only that. Do it every different way you can think of. And you should not grade a guy because he does it a different way. Say, “Bullshit. That wasn’t the school solution. F. You’re out.” I don’t care what’s different. If you realize his tactic works out good, say, “Hey that’s good. I wonder why that worked.” If he can explain it, fine. That’s another option. You want to keep widening that repertoire. You want to make that repertoire as wide as possible, because you become more unpredictable. The wider your repertoire, that means you’ve got a wide angle lens and the other guy’s got the narrow angle lens.

You’ve got the wide band. He’s looking at things through the narrow band. You’ve got the wide band filter. You want him to have the narrow band filter.

Audience: One of the things that you hit on, and that here at the school in answer to the colonel’s question is, is it training as repetition, and the more that you do something and the more that you’re exposed to something, whether it’s a map exercise where you’re going to have to make a decision and you have to have input in. You have experience; therefore, you’re going to generate output. So in the academic environment, the more that you can exposure yourself to that kind of rapidity, and quickness, and speed of effort—

Boyd: But remember, you’ve got to be very careful—

Audience: —you’re better off than you are otherwise.

Boyd: No, you’re very good, except for one thing you’ve got to keep in mind, which I— I have another part in another one of my lectures. [05:00]Whenever you do that, you always want to do it so they have a variety of different circumstances when you’re doing it. If you don’t do that, then pretty soon you’re choreographing things. You have a narrow repertoire, and you’re going to get cleaned out when you’re thrown in another environment. There’s a very big danger of people like to look good, so they have this narrow repertoire. You want to throw different things at them, as many as you can, so they’re developing a rep— I mean a fingerspitzengefühl across a wide spectrum. Really, I can’t overemphasize that. This is crucial, because this is what makes you adaptable and unpredictable. Remember, I keep using those words. Those are two key words, be adaptable and unpredictable. And then you’ll gain leverage. Because the moment you start becoming rigid or non-adaptable and predictable, you know the game’s over. The game’s over. And that’s the danger of doing it with very narrow repertoire, because you want to look good and the commander to be all— Practices is goddamned thrilled. Well, you choreographed it.

Audience: Let me come from the top of an academic department. Concepts—
Boyd: Well, you can’t do an academic but you can give them at least the basic stuff so they can go out and do it themselves. We should be looking at doing this—You see what I’m saying? Audience: I think we probably give it to them in the sense in terms of map drills.

Boyd: Fair enough.

Audience: With the concept of some very, very general tools.

Boyd: That’s right.

Audience: Academic exercise.

Boyd: That’s right. And map drills are good, but then you want to set up the map drills many different ways, too. Then in the end, they’ve still got to connect it up with the actual operation when they get out in their own unit. That’s what I’m trying to say. So they can actually develop that fingerspitzengefühl. I can’t overemphasize that. Let the other guy not have the
fingerspitzengefühl. That feels good. You’re cleaning his clock and he can’t even figure out why. Maybe you can’t either but you know you’re doing it.

Audience: You’re saying— what you mean, Colonel, you’re going to expose us.

Boyd: That’s right.

Audience: You’re giving us exposure. You’re not going to teach us; you’re going to expose us to why.

[Cross talk]
Audience: Educate.

Audience: We made a mistake because we spent a hell of a lot of time on staff planning. If we loosen up the staff planning some and do more—add some more exercises.

Audience: Well you know, we’ve only done staff planning once and that’s at the first part of the year.

Audience: I think instead of throwing so many different models at you, we throw you one simple model.

Audience: Yes, sir.

Audience: You get through three or four different models.

Audience: One thing I think, I think Command and Staff College, you’re exposed to an awful lot of material. I don’t think we were taught very much. I just think we had the exposure, we had the references to go to. The other thing I think, I think training—military training and military education are two different things.

Audience: Oh yeah.

Audience: They’re not one and the same. Then I think the problem with having hands-on time is time itself.

Boyd: Heck yeah. That’s how you get the feel. You’ve got to get— Because then, what you’re doing is you’re taking your concepts, your ideas and your training and you’re putting it all together to get that fingerspitzengefühl. That’s what you want to get.

Audience: But the time— we fight time. Time is our enemy.

Boyd: I understand that. He can’t do everything, but at least he can expose you to these things in the end when you go on the field. We couldn’t do everything at the Fighter Weapons School, but we gave them exposure, said now you guys have got to practice yourselves. We can’t do that for you. We can only give you so many different combinations.

Audience: We only give the concept. Then all he does is go— Boyd: That’s right.

Audience: Someone says, “Hey, show us how to do it.” Boyd: You can’t give a prescription.

Audience: You’ve got to get the foot in the door of how to do it—
Boyd: You can’t give him a prescription to do that. Then it’s a choreographed dance. You really can’t do that. I mean, I don’t think so. Maybe I’m wrong. I just don’t know honestly how that works.

[Cross talk]
Audience: I don’t think anybody disagrees.

Audience: The question that always needs to be answered, or at least discussed somewhere along the line, which is: who is ultimately responsible for the success of any operation? You have to work that out once you come to that.

Boyd: Well, the commander has to take the responsibility. In the end, it’s his responsibility. In the end, it’s the commander’s responsibility. It’s his responsibility. He can’t throw that off. I don’t think he can throw that off. If one of the lower guys screws up, well, they work for you. Audience: By responsibility in this case, I meant the execution— who actually executes it and is responsible.

Boyd: Whoever executes it—whoever does the “how,” but the higher level guy still has some responsibility, in a sense, because he laid out the mission.

Audience: As an organization, we push that responsibility down to the bottom, lowest man. The philosophy is—
Boyd: Oh, I see what you’re getting at. Okay. No, that’s good.

Audience: If we keep the responsibility defined.

Boyd: That’s not what I meant.

Audience:[10:00] The men below— wherever we draw that line of responsibility, at whatever rank, the level below that ceases to operate—
Boyd: No, you’ve got a good point. I agree with that. I’m just saying at the end, the commander can’t absolve himself of responsibility. What you want to do is make the people down below more and more responsible, and that has to be done. It’s very important. In other words, they’ve got to feel like they’re part of the thinking process, the action of that too, and that’s exactly what you’re suggesting and I agree.

Audience: To make them responsible, you have to hold them accountable.

Boyd: Hold them accountable. That’s right. You’ve got to hold them accountable.

Audience: [unintelligible]
[Cross talk]
Boyd: Yeah. I didn’t see what he was getting at. I see what you’re getting at.

Audience: It’s a dangerous— It’s a tricky thing.

Boyd: What do you want? Do you want a bunch of goddamn automatons working for you down here? It doesn’t work. A bunch of automatons is bullshit. That’s what you’re saying. That doesn’t work. You can’t do it. I mean, you might think you can but it’s not going to work. You know, I’m just taking the opposite extreme.

Audience: I continually relate this to the athletic field of endeavors, and my limited successes on

those fields. As I look back in retrospect, I wasn’t thinking. Once I started thinking, I started reacting to the situation and it became a reactive role. That goes back to the field. That’s hard to acquire, though.

Boyd: Oh, oh, I didn’t say it was easy. No way. That’s right, it takes time. But that’s why you want a variety, do it different, and do it different ways. So in the end, you know you’re doing something that just feels right. And it’s because you’ve accumulated all this experience, you say, “this is right.” You don’t even know why. You’re making all these connections in your brain many different ways. Not only if it doesn’t work out right—Even if it didn’t work out, you’ve got about five or six options. You start shifting gears. Fighter pilots do that naturally. Boy, they start shifting gears real quick if they’re any good. They really do. They’re pretty good at it.

Audience: They are maneuvering one piece of gear—

Boyd: I understand that. Land combat is more difficult. I’ll agree with that. On the other hand, you made it a little bit too simple. They may maneuver one piece of gear. Remember, there are a lot of guys out there, and they’ve got to work with their buddies, as well as try to take out the other guy. They all have to work a super-fingerspitzengefühl together, so they build that harmony

so they can do that. In the end, though, your job is tougher. I’ll agree with that. There’s no way I wouldn’t agree with that. Yours is tougher. In a sense, they have more— It is easier for them to operate. You’re on the ground. Many of the things you’ve got problems with— It’s a tougher job. But some of those things they learned in a simple situation, you could take advantage and take aspects of it, and use it in a more complicated situation, like in land warfare or ground combat. The Germans did it. They use the word. Rommel used it, finger— It’s amazing how they all used it, want to get that sure feel. We got off track, didn’t we?