Conflict, tempo and the human mind

One thing I want to point out, that Bob pointed out—and it is a very important point—is that this is not called Patterns of War. ²

Before I get into the presentation, a few comments. As already indicated, there is a large historical content here. I didn't want to look at the military per se in a very strict sense. I wanted to use it because conflict in that environment is very sharp. It can bring out some very nice nuances and subtleties, because there is a large body of information. ²

You have already noticed my title. This isn't a recipe or a formula, or the way to think about conflict. It is a way. I can't emphasize that enough. I want to give you a way to build up as rich and wide a repertoire as possible. That will become evident through the presentation.

Another point: as I work my way through the presentation, I might discuss some aspect or phenomenon in a certain way, then later discuss a very similar phenomenon differently. In other words, you get a different image. Let me illustrate what I am getting at.

Let's assume that we in this room went through our whole lives and only saw pyramids from the side, with no other experience of them. We would think of a triangle. ⁵ Now take another group, and assume they saw them only from the top. They would think of a rectangle with intersecting diagonals.

Then let this group interact with the other group. You would both think the other one was crazy. You think about triangles; they think about squares. ⁶ As I work my way through, you will see some phenomena from different standpoints. The key idea is to be able to see from the top, from the side, from oblique angles, from the inside. Then you will get a rich view of the pyramid. That is a rather oversimplistic example. ⁸

So you don't come up with what I call the elegant or definitive solution. There are no elegant, no definitive solutions. I think our university system, our intellectual community, in some ways has done a disservice to us by always talking about the so-called definitive solution. It really turns me off when I read a book and see “the definitive solution,” and then you find out a year later it didn't work. Well, if it didn't work, how could it have been so definitive? I think all you really want is something workable under the circumstances.

One more comment before I go into the presentation. You will also notice that I will be taking wholes and breaking them down into bits and pieces, which we normally call analysis. Then I will take bits and pieces and reconstruct wholes. So you will see, as we work our way through, I am pulling things apart, putting them back together, pulling things apart, putting them back together: an alternating sequence of analysis and synthesis, whereby we are trying to get a richer and richer picture.

We are not only trying to understand what is going on; we are also trying to evolve a pattern, a framework, an image that might be different. Different. ⁹

With that, enough said. Let's get into the presentation. ¹⁰ We'll work our way through.

Now here is the outline of the presentation. Before I get into it, I will be leaving a black-and-white hard copy of the presentation I have here. ¹¹

The point of departure is air-to-air combat. There were certain things we saw there. I was very deeply involved in the evolution and design of the F-15 and lightweight fighters. That was really the first time we went through that process on high-speed computers. ¹² We had the so-called edge of technology, the IBM 7094. ² We could literally design all kinds of machines.

Typically, when you go through such a process, people tend to get what I call arrogant, a little more confident, because they can look at things from more vantage points than before. You tend not to worry too much about the test. But ultimately you have to submit to the real world. Some things are right and some things don't work out.

Then what the community likes to do is say, “Well, those are just anomalies,” and sweep them under the rug. After all, you have a schedule, a program; you don't want to interrupt the cash flow or the program you are trying to push. ² But it has been my experience that these anomalies are very troublesome later on. ¹⁴

When you begin to see these anomalies, you had better pay attention, even if you don't understand them. ^{15 2} People didn't understand them and just wanted to pretend they would go away because nobody else understood them. But eventually people do get to understand them. Then you have very serious problems.

As a result, this helped get me into what I call the historical investigation. Notice the term I use here: historical snapshots. Why? No matter how much history you read, there is a large volume of it. You can only look at it in a sort of snapshot form and see what is going on. ² As already indicated, this is the longest portion of my presentation.

Remember, I am going through this sequence of analysis and synthesis to try to understand what is happening, to develop a new image or another impression. ¹⁶ As a result, we can evolve and develop what I call categories of conflict—not static, very dynamic categories. I will show you in the next chart what those categories are. Some of them you have seen in the newspapers. ¹⁷ You will see some very powerful relationships and associations with those pictures. That will come later in the presentation. Remember, we will work our way forward, building the pictures. ²

Then I go into what I call a super-synthesis. In other words, I grab all this stuff and try to get an overall super-image, or super-synthesis, of what is going on. We get a real good lens to look through. That gives us a picture. The next chart will indicate the key things we are looking for in that synthesis.

In effect, we have a new lens. Then I go back in two different instances and look at military history. I have different kinds of lenses; now I want to look at certain events or phenomena that took place. Guess what? If you look at the world with one kind of lens, you get one kind of image. Look at it with a different kind of lens, and you get a different kind of image. By looking at the same phenomenon, you can draw out different interpretations, a different idea of what occurred.

Remember, we are prisoners of our own images, our own filters, our own views in our minds. We tend to see and interpret through them. So we will do that.

After that I go into what I call a super-condensation, the wrap-up chart, where I squeeze everything down and say, “What are those things we have really been looking at?” I will show you that. Of course, at this point you say, “Gee, why don't we throw Boyd out of here and just go to the wrap-up, and save this whole presentation?” ² That is the normal way. Unfortunately, if I showed you the wrap-up first, it wouldn't have much meaning to you.

The meaning is built up by going through this. You are looking at it from a different frame of reference. You see the words, but you say, “What is all that?” ¹⁹ So we have to build up. That is the rite of passage here. Then, after you go through, you say, “Yes, these are very significant. These are the kinds of things you have to pay attention to.” At least you will have this sort of impression through which to view the world.

Now notice another term down here: epilogue. As I went through the presentation, I became a little unsettled. Consciously or unconsciously, I was juxtaposing the ideas I was sorting out against the so-called principles of war. ²⁰ These things don’t look quite the same. In the epilogue I am going to take on the principles of war. As I work my way through, I will have some rather sharp comments about them. ²¹

Audience: You might tell us—or are you going to tell us—[…]?

Boyd: Oh yes, we'll get to it. I'll show you what the principles are. What you are going to find is that there is no one set of principles. Different countries have different principles. That right there should tell you something. Some countries don't even have them, and they are not necessarily unsuccessful. You want to keep that in mind.

We have this august body in this country, high priests who don't want to let those principles of war go. Remember, you don't want to be a mastodon. There are no mastodons left on the earth—at least we don't think so. Of course, some of you say, “Well, we still have a few.” ^{2 23}

What I am trying to point out is that you don't want to hold on to things so tightly that you can't see the world from a different angle. That doesn't mean you want to throw your traditions out, either.

I won't brief off the sources, but you will see them all in the back. With that in mind, let's start talking about our presentation.

This is what I call the focus and direction of the presentation: a quick overview of what we are doing. The immediate mission is what we are trying to do.

One: we want to make manifest, or make evident, these aspects of conflict: moral, mental, physical. You can think of these as three categories of conflict—moral, mental, physical.

Many of you have heard Napoleon's famous statement: the moral is to the physical, the moral is to the material, as three to one. Whether it was three to one or ten to one is not the point he was trying to make. The moral is more important than the physical aspect; you draw a great deal more leverage out of it.

We see that nice statement, and we want to put pressure on it. What are we really talking about when we say we have moral strength, moral authority, moral values? How can we use those in conflict, so we get that moral leverage? We want to put pressure on it. We will work through that in the presentation.

As it turns out, since we start with air-to-air combat, we are primarily starting on the mental side. Fighter pilots, one working against another, are pretty much in a mental game. Then, as we start looking back in military history—early military history—we will pick up the physical. Then we will start weaving them together, letting one interact with the other. When we get back to the categories of conflict, we will look specifically at those things and draw out what I think are rather important features, things you really want to think about.

The next point is a pattern for successful operations. ²⁴ If we are going to be in a competitive, conflict, or adversarial relationship, what can we do to gain leverage over an adversary? Or, likewise, deprive him of leverage against us?

Of course, that word “leverage” is nice. What do we mean by leverage? As we go through the presentation, we want to understand not only what leverage means, but what gives you leverage against somebody, and what you can do to diminish somebody's leverage against you. These things will show up in the synthesis: patterns of successful operations. We will build up to it and lay down what kinds of things are important.

Notice the third bullet: trying to generalize tactics and strategy. As we work through, you will see different tactics and different strategies. You can lay out any number for a particular situation. You would like to think you could subsume them under more general notions, and it turns out you [can/can't—the negation is unresolved]. What are those general notions under which you can subsume the specific tactics, strategies, and so forth? You will see that we can come up with something like that, and we can use it.

Before we go into the presentation, I would like to make a couple of comments. When we speak of tactics and strategy, you can think of them in terms of means and ends. Think of tactics as execution, activity, dynamics directed toward some end—an aim, a goal, an objective, whatever it might be. In that sense a tactic is a means toward an end, the means being an action of some kind.

You can think of strategy in terms of means and ends too: strategy as the design, the architecture, the scheme, the plan, also directed toward some end—an aim, a goal, an objective. Or another way to think of it: tactics as the means toward the end.

You don't want to get any tighter. Keep it loose, because if you start closing down too much on those definitions, you exclude possibilities. That is one thing you don't want to do in conflict. You want to be able to entertain many possibilities. If you have more in your head, […], he doesn't know what to do. Panic, chaos, confusion, disorder. ² You don't want the definitive, elegant solution. If the other guy understands what it is, he can get leverage over you.

In that sense, variety is very important, particularly if you can have a wider variety. ² That is why you don't want to limit yourself to these definitions. Once again, the key idea is to come up with a general impression, a general view of tactics and strategy, under which you can subsume the other notions.

The final bullet: a basis for grand strategy. For the most part these first three bullets are what I call destructive behavior—pulling the guy apart so he can't cope, trying to gain leverage over him, putting him in confusion and disorder. You would like to think that should lead to some constructive end, or constructive behavior.

In this sense, I tend to use grand strategy as a connecting link between destructive behavior on one hand and constructive behavior on the other. That doesn't mean you have to do it that way. It is a sort of fallout from the way I went through my investigation. That will become evident as we work through.

Finally, my intent: why are we doing all this? Very simply, to really understand the nature of conflict, survival, and conquest. When I talk about survival and conquest, I am not simply talking about taking a club and beating your adversary to death. I am talking about being very soft, intermediate, or very sharp. It is not just physical; it is moral and mental as well. You can cope with competitive pressure. You can deal with that environment.

That is the character of the presentation. With that in mind, let's go to our first point on the outline.

Point of departure. I have already indicated I was very deeply involved in the evolution and design of the F-15 and the lightweight fighter. We had some problems there. Even though we had all this theory, eventually we had to face up to the real-world test. We came up with some anomalies. Explaining those anomalies took some time.

I am going to give you some insight into what you will think is a very trivial statement, but at the time we were investigating, it was not. Out of that activity we came up with this generalization and related statement.

We needed a fighter that could both lose energy and gain energy more quickly while out-turning an adversary. ²⁹ Before we deal with that statement, what do I mean by energy?

You can think of energy, in the sense I am using it, as mechanical energy: the sum of your potential and kinetic energy. Potential is altitude; kinetic is airspeed. If I am going to maneuver and gain energy, I have to gain altitude, airspeed, or some combination thereof. If I am going to lose energy, I have to lose altitude, airspeed, or some combination thereof.

We use energy because it shows the relationship between those two things, altitude and airspeed. That is why it is convenient and useful. You say, “My God, that is a really trivial statement.” A few years ago it wasn't. The general perception then was that you wanted to gain or conserve energy while trying to out-turn an adversary. That doesn't say conserve energy. You might want to pump it out in order to gain that leverage. ³¹

That was one of the things we found out. As you will see, it led me—drove me—into the whole Patterns of Conflict we are getting into right now.

The pilots also said other things. What they really wanted was an airplane with which they could dominate the circumstances of engagement. They could pick the engagement opportunities. ³² But they go on; they become more specific. They want a fighter that can either force an overshoot by an attacker or stay inside a hard-turning defender.

Let me explain what I mean by overshoot. Let me use my hands. If I make an attack on somebody and the guy bends the airplane very hard, I am forced to overshoot his flight path. He can come in behind me, and I am in a bad position. Contrary-wise, if I am on the defensive, I want to force the guy to overshoot my flight path so I can slide in behind him and take him out. It is a sort of classic maneuver. All the other things you are doing are to get into that position.

On the offense, you don't want to be forced to overshoot. On the defense, you want to get that overshoot. Think about it and you can see the spatial relationship. In a very general sense, you want to force your adversary into a wider maneuver space than you are in, so you can get inside. You want to get inside his maneuver space so you can gain leverage over him. This specific point will be generalized.

As it turns out, making those hard maneuvers is not an easy thing to do. The maneuver may be easy, but the drag goes up enormously above the thrust of the engine. When drag goes above thrust, you have to lose altitude, airspeed, or some combination thereof. Bend those airplanes so hard, build the drag so high, and you go down almost like an Otis elevator. You lose energy very quickly and spiral yourself right into the ground. A pilot is not going to do that, for one thing.

The other thing is, remember, it is not just a duel, one-on-one. There are other people working in the weeds up there. When you are working against somebody, somebody else will try to blindside you and take you out. You don't want to engage too long with anybody. Get in, do the job, get out. Get in, do the job, get out. When you are working on somebody, somebody may be working on you.

It is not healthy to get what we call tunnel vision and keep your eyes on one guy up there, because somebody else is going to take you out. That is where the word comes from, tunnel vision. You have probably heard it quite often: don't get tunnel vision. You have to stay alert all the time.

You don't want to get wrapped up too long. Keep the engagement short. You are doing these very hard maneuvers for very short intervals of time. They are very jerky, very hoppy, very skippy. You have a space problem; you have a time problem. Jerky maneuvers in time. We call that a transient. In other words, they are very fleeting. Notice the double-underlined term, fast transient.

We are trying to get inside our adversary's maneuver space while denying him that same opportunity against us. We are going to do this over very short intervals of time so we don't get blindsided by somebody else. In some sense that gives a basis for controlling engagement opportunities. We call it a fast transient.

Think about that for a moment. You say, “That's a very specific situation. That's just for air-to-air combat.” But then the idea begins to occur to me: very sharp-turning, hoppy, skippy, jumpy kinds of things in life could be useful in other kinds of competitive behavior, where a guy can't get an image or picture of what is going on.

Can we generalize, or expand on, that idea? If we do, where does it go? That is exactly what we are going to do right now.

The first one that came to mind, and threw me into a historical investigation, was blitzkrieg versus the Maginot Line. ⁷ In the very first book I picked up, everybody was talking about the very fast tempo, the very fast pace the Germans were going at, and the French couldn't keep up. Pretty soon: confusion, disorder, panic, chaos. ³ I said, “That's very impressive.”

I knew it happened because so many accounts depicted it. But what I didn't know was this: what were the internal dynamics associated with blitzkrieg that permitted them to do this? It is one thing to know the result; you really want to understand the dynamics. If you understand the dynamics, maybe you can do it to somebody else, or make it very difficult for somebody else to do it to you. Once again, not just in a physical sense, but in a moral and mental sense too. It would be important to understand that, if you can.

I am not going to bring it out here, because that is why I went into the historical investigation. When we get into that, we will show what happened in terms of those blitzkrieg dynamics, and why they could get leverage over their adversary so he couldn't cope with it.

Here is one I am very familiar with: the F-86 versus the MiG-15. ⁸ Until very recently, people thought the MiG-15 was a more maneuverable airplane than the F-86. That was the general contention. I will dispel that. I'll show you why, and make it compelling and convincing.

For one thing, we have a new frame of reference through which to compare those airplanes. We have the OODA loop: observe, orient, decide, act. We'll use that frame of reference, juxtapose them against each other, and see what happens.

Take the first O, observation: F-86 versus MiG-15. The MiG-15 was slightly smaller than the F-86, so from the size viewpoint it would have an observation advantage. It might be insignificant, but it is still there. On the other hand, the F-86 had what we call a super-bubble canopy; the MiG did not. In the ability to see out, the F-86 was much better. Pilots who flew both airplanes commented that it was easier for an F-86 pilot to see a MiG-15 than for a MiG-15 pilot to see an F-86. The ability to see out more than washed away that small size disparity. From an observation viewpoint, the F-86 had the advantage over the MiG-15.

Orientation and decision I will keep together. That depends not only on observation but on your previous experience and training. If that is pretty bad, your orientation will be screwed up too. You will make inappropriate decisions. ⁹ We generally accorded our pilots, at least as a corporate group, better training and more experience than their counterparts.

Now let's go to action, where this thing really comes out and seems to show that the MiG might be better than the F-86. Compare the MiG and the F-86, and you find the MiG-15 could out-climb and out-accelerate the F-86 throughout the entire flight envelope—in some parts by a very significant amount. Out-climb and out-accelerate the F-86. In the ability to sustain a turn, the MiG was also superior throughout the entire flight envelope.

In the ability to go instantaneously up to pitch-up or stall in the airplane, there were areas where the F-86 was better than the MiG, and vice versa. If you integrated all that, pulled it together, you would say, “On that basis, ergo, the MiG-15 is superior to the F-86.” On that basis it is not a bad conclusion. Unfortunately, some things were left out.

The F-86 had what we call a super-hydraulic flight-control system for that time. High-powered hydraulic flight controls, just as you have power steering in a car. Twenty-eight hundred pounds per square inch. ¹¹ You could move the stick from one way to the other and make the airplane pop very quickly from one direction to the other, and pull back. The MiG did not.

When an F-86 got bounced by a MiG, it would lag a little, but it could flip-flop its turn quickly in the other direction. The MiG took a long while. The F-86 could flip-flop its direction again, do a very quick scissors maneuver, and just stuff the MiG out in front. Even though the MiG, for one particular maneuver, could stay behind the F-86, the F-86 could transition or shift from one maneuver to another more rapidly than the MiG.

By making very quick reversals, which the MiG couldn't do, you just stuff him forward. Remember, you have to overcome the air loads. The faster you go, the greater the air load, and the more muscle power you have to use. You put a substitute in there: hydraulic power, like power steering in a car. It makes it happen.

Are we going to say the ability to roll, or pitch, or use a roll-pitch combination isn't part of maneuverability? That's absurd. It certainly is. If that is part of maneuverability, how can you say the MiG could outmaneuver the F-86? ^{12 13}

The pilots noticed things happening. When they began to get leverage over another pilot, his maneuvers tended to get disjointed, bizarre. They commented on it: it seemed like their minds were coming unglued. Getting inside their minds—in terms of fear, doubt, uncertainty; the guy is going to die. ¹⁵

Go back to World War II. There is an account by Don Gentile, a P-51 pilot—you might have heard of him—a P-51 ace over Europe. He commented on a couple of instances when he fought Germans in either Me 109s or Focke-Wulf 190s ¹⁸. ¹⁷ The fights started out pretty equal, but as he began to get leverage, the other guy's maneuvering became disjointed. One guy literally flew into the ground—literally just flew right into the ground. ¹⁹ He made the point that he could almost see their minds coming unglued.

He also referred back to a day when he wasn't doing so well, when all that started welling up in him, and he had a hard time staying on top of the situation. ²⁰

Think about your own life. Think back to times when you had things you wanted to do, you were under time pressure, and you weren't sure you would make it. Then somebody loads something else on you. You start to get very nervous. The first thing you try to do is relieve that pressure so you can get this done and that done. If you can't relieve it, it bothers you, particularly if it is of value. ²¹ That is the menacing. It happens; we have seen it.

The Israeli raid is another example. ²² In and out in ninety minutes, right? ²³ Can you think of any others? I'm just laying these out for you now.

In any case, if we stitch all that together, we come up with a new conception. It has really been there all the time. Somehow we just didn't see it.

Let's go back to human nature. We are going to get down to very simple fundamentals to start with. First, I think we want to survive. ²⁶ As a group, we want to survive. Not only survive: we tend to want to survive on our own terms. We don't want to have to survive under onerous circumstances. We want some control over our survival, some freedom of action.

In some sense, then, we want to improve our capacity for independent action, whether we are talking about individuals, groups, nation-states, political parties, or what have you.

But we live in a world of limited resources—not only physical things: skills, talents, the whole nine yards. If we improve our capacity for independent action, and resources are limited, we tend to deprive somebody else of their capacity for independent action. If we improve our ability to survive on our own terms, we tend to deny him that. If we really get sharp, we can make it impossible for him to survive at all.

You people don't have to worry about survival in your jobs, do you? Remember, we are not only talking physically. ³ The implication is quite clear: life is conflict, survival, and conquest. Period. It can be soft, it can be intermediate, it can be sharp. That is the way it is.

World War I was the war to end all wars. That didn't work out too well. World War II: preserve the world for democracy. That hasn't gone […]. I could go on and on. And you people don't have to compete for your particular jobs anyway. It’s a gift. Free lunch. ²⁸

So you have not only conflict, but survival and conquest in many different modes or nuances. That being the case, it leads me to this comment.

We are not only talking about the conduct of war. We can also bring in other ideas, like the theory of natural selection. Creationists might not like that too well. One of the interesting things about natural selection is that some of it is under challenge today too—not all of it. ³

Whether you are talking about war or these ideas of evolution, they impinge very much on conflict, struggle, coping, adapting. Many different views are brought out, and we want to look at those views. Remember, I said we don't want the elegant solution or the definitive solution. ³ If our adversary has an elegant solution, and we know his plus some others, then we have […]. I will bring that out in different ways as we go through.

That doesn't mean you want to accept your adversary's viewpoint. You had better understand it. We like to mirror-image: “We've got it right; the hell with them. We'll just take them out before we get into trouble.” You have to understand. I'll make that evident.

That is why I want to look through these kinds of things. What happens when we do that? I am going to give you an overall initial impression, then go right back to 400 BC. After a few years of looking through it, things started kicking off in my head. I was looking at a lot of data, in many different forms, and this is the impression I was left with.

I'll let you read it, and then comment. Can you all read it all right? Do I get out of your way? Reading pause.

Notice what I am referring to under this first double-dash statement: variety and rapidity. To give you a feel for why they are important, turn the argument around. Say we don't have variety and can't operate rapidly. What does that mean? You lose your ability to adapt. You also become predictable. In conflict, you want adaptability and unpredictability. You have no choice. ³¹ That is why those so-called elegant or definitive solutions get into trouble.

You also have to learn how to work with other people, so you can work as a concerted whole. You have to harmonize your activities, or cooperate. If you don't, you can't work together. If everybody has ultimate freedom of action, you have a mob, everything going off in all directions. You can't work. You can't function.

There must be things you invoke that permit people to focus. ³² We have to harmonize our activities. We will get into that in detail.

Finally, even if you can operate rapidly, with variety, and harmonize your activities, you can't just sit there and let the world take care of you. It won't. You have to take initiative. Do you want to be a shaper, or do you want to be a reactor? You have to take initiative.

This is where the military has it screwed up; I will bring it out later. They don't understand this. They confuse it with offensive and defensive. I can take initiative whether I am on the offense or defense, or wherever I am. Those are incorrect terms. It is initiative, whether you are moving forward, backward, sideways, or in any direction. As long as you use the initiative, you can get that leverage. We will make it evident as we go through.

These are very important qualities. Later we will not only bring them out, but show how they tie together. We mesh them with the so-called OODA loop and show how they play together. That will become evident as we work our way through the presentation.

With that in mind, let's step back to the earliest known treatise on war.