OODA Loop and John Boyd

OODA loops originated from Colonel John Boyd’s experiences as a jet-fighter pilot in the Korean War. He synthesized his observations about dogfighting with intense studies of history and philosophy to create a fascinating way of thinking about thinking. OODA stands for Observe Orient Decide Act. From what I understand of Colonel Boyd’s ideas, these processes are constantly looping around in an individual’s consciousness, with the ultimate underlying goal of each individual being to increase their capacity for independent action and therefore their chances of survival. Each phase of the cycle is informed and altered by the preceding one; a picture of reality is generated in the mind of the individual which is then used to determine actions consciously or unconsciously.

When two entities are in conflict or competition with each other, the entity which has the ability to iterate through these loops faster has superiority. But the key is not that they are just doing more things faster. Instead, if one side can iterate through their loops fast enough, self-correcting on the basis of new observations each time, they can alter the context in which their opponents are making decisions. This is known as “getting inside the opponents loop”.

Once this occurs, the opponent will be making decisions and acting on the basis of a reality which no longer exists, leading to incorrect analysis and unexpected results. By forcing the opponent into an increasingly chaotic mode where they are constantly reacting to confusing signals, they will eventually be brought into a state of total collapse.

(This is my very simplified interpretation of Boyd’s concepts, I am still trying to understand them)

A question that arises from thinking of conflict in this way is:
in the current struggle which is variously called the “Global War on Terror” or “World War IV”, which side does a better job of cycling through OODA loops?

Links:
a comprehensive site related to Boyd - make sure to check out the “Patterns of Conflict” download, a 200-page PowerPoint presentation (also in PDF version). There is a lot of fascinating material on this site; if I had understood when I was younger that this was the type of work that could be done in the military, I would have been much more likely to join. Being a physical weakling and a bit of a worm, I opted not to do that.

Wikipedia entry for Colonel Boyd.

I was first exposed to Boyd’s concepts through an unlikely source, an MSDN article by Roger Sessions in which Sessions describes how lessons from Korean War jet-fighting can be applied to enterprise architecture.

Written by Parker on August 8th, 2006 with comments disabled.
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