Patterns of Conflict
| The works of |
| Works of John Boyd |
|---|
OODA WIKI Edition
Quantico Transcription
Okay? So then, in a sense when you say here’s the essence, cloud and distort the signature. In other words, you don’t want to— you want to give that guy as little signature on you as you possibly can have, so he doesn’t know what the hell you’re doing. Indistinct, irregular.
Yet at the same time, you want to operate in such a way you have a focused effort going through there. It doesn’t appear like it’s focused, but it’s focused, where you can penetrate, shatter, and go mop up the disconnected or isolated debris, which is his system. Like you said last night, that’s another way of defeating him in detail. In fact, that’s a good way [unintelligible].
Okay. The intent then is quite— you’re actually using not tactical concentration. You’re using tactical dispersion. Because they were using tactical concentration, they were blowing their people away. Now they’re using tactical dispersion, but they’re doing it in a focused way, so they gain tactical success and expand the grand tactical success.
Now let’s go back to Napoleon. What was he doing? He was trying to use strategic success to gain grand tactical and tactical. These guys do it the other way, use tactical to gain grand tactical and hopefully strategic, which they didn’t get. It inverted the whole process.
Also remember what Napoleon had. He had strategic dispersion followed by tactical
concentration. Here we have a tactical dispersion followed by, with a strategic focus. That’s also inverted. But why were these things inverted? They’re doing it just the opposite of the Napoleonic method.
But why were they opposite? Anybody? They had to. They tried it to the other way. They were getting blown away. This is the way they had to adapt to the lethal aspects of modern firepower.
It’s a way they could survive and live and achieve.
So they were forced to. So they inverted both techniques. And the implication’s quite simple. They’re exploiting tactical dispersion but in a focused way, rather than large formations abiding the “principle of concentration.” They just worked their way through. They pumped the other guy’s friction and paralyzed his effort to bring about his collapse. So they turned everything around. Just the opposite.
You ever see those World War pictures, those guys coming out of those trenches all going together forward? They have actual combat films. That’s not just MGM or something. They actually have the combat films. Geez, I wouldn’t want to be in that outfit. That’s an unattractive way to do things.