More John Boyd and OODA-loop
John Boyd and IBM Wild Ducks
Martial Arts "OODA-loop"
John Boyd and Innovation Management
Boyd would talk being very vocal about the electronic sensors on the trail not working, possibly as punishment he was put in charge of Spook Base. Spook Base reference ... gone 404, but lives on at wayback machine ... includes references to "Quacker" (pilotless drone). I was at Boeing (before joining IBM) about same time Boyd was at "spook base". His biographies mention "spook base" was $2.5B wind fall for IBM.
Note Boyd had story that they spent 18months making sure that Spinney was covered in all details in congressional testimony (all details had written authorization), however SECDEF blamed Boyd for the article and wanted him banned from the Pentagon and transferred to Alaska. Boyd had congressional coverage and Weinberger directive was rescinded week later. Gone behind paywall, but mostly free at wayback machine
... may have to click on individual page numbers (instead just "Next>>", not all pages captured). Supposedly Weinberger directed new classification "NO-SPIN" ... unclassified but not to be shared with Spinney.
A New Conception of War
PDF->kindle, loc1783-88: Boyd's collaboration with associate Pierre Sprey on the development of the A-10 close air support (CAS) aircraft sparked his exploration of history. The project was Sprey's, with Sprey consulting Boyd on performance analysis, E-M Theory, and views on warfare in general. When designing the A-10, Sprey had to determine what aircraft features provided the firepower and loiter time required by ground forces, while also granting survivability against the enemy ground fire that would inevitably be directed against it.4The German Wehrmacht had pioneered both the design and employment of dedicated CAS aircraft in World War II.
Boyd would also talk about doing something much simpler than F16, 1/3rd the maintenance hrs and 1/5th the costs ... something along the lines of F20-Tigershark. Recognizing that USAF/MIC would never accept cost optimized so they tried targeting export market. They got undercut by F16/MIC forces lobbying congress to offer "directed appropriation" USAID (could only be used to buy F16s) to the candidate countries. The claim is from the candidate countries that F16 was less appropriate for their needs, but the choice was getting F16s for "free" (USAID) or having to spend their own money.
Desert Storm, 17Jan91 to 28Feb91, only last 100 hrs was land war.
Desert Storm Air Power Effectiveness report A10s were so effective taking out Iraq tanks (million A10 30mm shells)?... that crews were walking away ... also finding a lot of abandoned tanks after end of hostilities (stories of fierce tank battles with coalition forces taking no damage, don't mention if the Iraqi tanks had anybody home). Burton's "Pentagon Wars" has them getting A10 30mm cost reduced by nearly a factor of ten ... the desert storm million 30mm shells *ONLY* costing $13M. Burton also suggest a mini-A10 that could be forward deployed and maintained ... however these days increasingly likely to be autonomous (Burton would say that Boyd destroyed his career when Boyd challenged him to do what was right).
related NYT article: Corrupt from top to bottom
Boyd is credited with the (desert storm) "left hook" strategy ... and all sorts of explanations why the Abram M1s weren't in position to cut off the retreating Republican Guard ... another possibility is Boyd didn't realize the disparity between the M1 rated speed and their effective speed (over distance) being so tightly tethered to supply & maintenance.
领英推荐
In the meantime, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney consulted one of his favorite military strategists, retired Air Force Colonel John Boyd. During the run up to Desert Storm, Cheney regularly met with Boyd, where Boyd developed "a version of the von Schlieffen plan" [5]. Boyd was intimately familiar with the Battle of Cannae, the Schlieffen plan, as well as the concept of strategic envelopment; he used his vast knowledge of history to inform his strategic advice to the DOD
Boyd would talk about "Fingerspitzengefuhl" in relation to OODA-loop and emphasize that all parts running constantly (and asynchronous) and observations should be made from every possible facet (countermeasure to biases; observation, orientation, confirmation, cognitive, etc).
related concepts
The concept may be compared to ideas about intuition and neural net programming. The same phenomenon, but conceptualized in a radically different way, seems to be described by D.T. Suzuki in swordsmanship teaching stories recounted in his Zen and Japanese Culture, and given in analytical detail in Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis.[5]
similar to "Coup d'oeil"
and EFBAS
... and "How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers"
To paraphrase one of our contacts, he said, "It's not that we don't want to tell you what TPS is, it's that we can't. We don't have adequate words for it. But, we can show you what TPS is."
We've observed that Toyota, its best suppliers, and other companies that have learned well from Toyota can confidently distribute a tremendous amount of responsibility to the people who actually do the work, from the most senior, experienced member of the organization to the most junior. This is accomplished because of the tremendous emphasis on teaching everyone how to be a skillful problem solver.
I've suggested Boyd could plausibly have taken 1846 Halleck
loc5019-20: A rapid coup d'oeil prompt decision, active movements, are as indispensable as sound judgment; for the general must see, and decide, and act, all in the same instant.
changing "see" to "observe" and added "orientation" for experience and learning ... however others say they've seen no evidence that Boyd read Halleck
In 1990 book introduction, one of the "fathers of AI", Bogh Andersen says that AI was done all wrong because it failed to take into account "context". I periodically equated that to the "OO" part of Boyd's OODA-loop, real time observation placed in context (orientation). Possible excuse was that the computers were not yet large enough and powerful enough to perform "context" processing ... just simply following set of rules.
... and computer equivalent to parallel, asynchronous OODA ... is the multiprocessor/multicore computer "holy grail" ... for a parallel programming language that can easily be used by population that is only familiar with sequential, synchronous, step-by-step operation. Articles from more than decade ago:
Intel's server chip chief knocks Itanium, Gates and AMD
Microsoft super sizes multi-threaded tripe
Is Parallel Programming Just Too Hard?
Boyd would also comment about former military officers were starting to contaminate US corporate culture with their rigid, top-down, command&control structure (& only those at the very top knew what they were doing). Scenario was that at entry to WW2, US has to rapidly deploy millions with little or no skill or experience?... the rigid, top-down, command&control structure was required to leverage the few skilled resources available. Boyd would compare 11% (growing to nearly 20%) US officers to maintain rigid, top-down command&control structure, compared to 3% (or less) for German army. However, this was about the time that articles were starting to appear that business school MBAs were beginning to destroy US companies with their myopic focus on short term results.