Aerial Attack Study Boyd revolutionized air-to-air combat by authoring the classified Aerial Attack Study, which in 1960 became official
Air Force doctrine, the official tactics manual for fighter aircraft, the bible of air combat. Boyd changed how pilots thought; prior to his tactics manual, pilots had thought that air-to-air combat was far too complex to ever be fully understood. With the release of the Aerial Attack Study, American pilots realized that the high-stakes death dance of aerial combat was solved. With its eventual declassification, so did pilots around the world. Boyd stated that a pilot entering each aerial maneuver must know two things: the position of the enemy and the velocity of the enemy. Given the velocity of an enemy, a pilot can anticipate what the enemy can do. When a pilot understands what maneuvers the enemy can perform, he can then decide how to counter any of the other pilot's actions.
Energy–maneuverability theory In the early 1960s, Boyd, together with
Thomas P. Christie, a civilian mathematician, created the
energy–maneuverability theory, or E-M theory, of aerial combat. A
maverick by reputation, Boyd admitted to stealing the
IBM 704 computer time to do the millions of calculations necessary to prove the theory. A civilian employee had previously barred Boyd from performing the calculations, but Christie provided Boyd a project number. An investigating
inspector general commended Boyd and his computer work. E-M theory became the world standard for the design of fighter aircraft.
F-X project With Colonel Everest Riccioni and
Pierre Sprey, Boyd formed a small advocacy group within Headquarters USAF that dubbed itself the "
Fighter Mafia". Riccioni was an Air Force fighter pilot assigned to a staff position in Research and Development, and Sprey was a civilian statistician working in systems analysis. The Air Force's F-X project was then floundering, but Boyd's deployment orders to Vietnam were canceled, and he was brought to the Pentagon to redo the tradeoff studies according to E-M theory. While assigned to work on the F-X, then nicknamed the Blue Bird, Boyd disagreed with the direction the program was going and proposed an alternative "Red Bird". The concept was for a clear-weather air-to-air-only fighter with a top speed of Mach 1.6, rather than the Blue Bird's Mach 2.5+. The top speed would be sacrificed for lower weight (and therefore better maneuverability and lower cost). Both Boyd and Sprey also argued against an active radar and radar-guided missiles, and they proposed the concept to Air Staff. The proposal went unheeded. Boyd's work did help save the project from being a costly dud even though its final product, the
McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle, was larger and heavier than he had desired.
LWF project The Secretary of Defense, attracted by the idea of a low cost fighter, gave funding to Riccioni for a study project on the
Lightweight Fighter program (LWF), which became the F-16. Both the Department of Defense and the Air Force went ahead with the program and stipulated a "design to cost" basis no more than $3 million per copy over 300 aircraft. The USAF considered the idea of a "hi-lo" mix force structure and expanded the LWF program. The program soon went against the
Fighter Mafia's vision since it was not the stripped-down air-to-air specialist that they had envisioned but a heavier multi-role fighter-bomber with advanced avionics, an active radar, and radar-guided missiles.
Harry Hillaker, an F-16 designer, remarked that he would have designed the plane differently if he had known that it would become a multi mission aircraft.
OODA loop Based on his experiences in Thailand during the
Vietnam War, Boyd conjectured that that the attrition-firepower model of warfare (prevalent since the
Industrial Revolution) would become less important in future conflicts, and the ability to rapidly and accurately acquire and act on information would grow in importance. In the early 1970s, he developed these observations into a key concept called the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, repeat), a decision making cycle that provided an entity (either an individual or an organization) with foreseeable and planned responses to external events. The OODA loop has since been used as the core for a theory of
litigation strategy that unifies the use of
cognitive science and
game theory to shape the actions of witnesses and opposing counsel. It has also been proposed as a tool for work-based learning and management education.
Maneuver warfare and Marines In January 1980 Boyd gave his briefing
Patterns of Conflict at the US Marines AWS (
Amphibious Warfare School), which led to the instructor,
Michael Wyly, and Boyd changing the curriculum. That was with the blessing of
General Trainor, who later asked Wyly to write a new tactics manual for the Marines. Wyly, along with
Pierre Sprey,
Raymond J. "Ray" Leopold,
Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, Jim Burton, and Tom Christie, were described by writer Coram as Boyd's "
acolytes".
1991 Gulf War Boyd is credited for largely developing the strategy for the invasion of
Iraq in the
Gulf War of 1991. In 1981, Boyd had presented his briefing,
Patterns of Conflict, to
US Representative Richard "Dick" Cheney. By 1990, Boyd had moved to Florida because of declining health, but Cheney, now Defense Secretary in the
George H. W. Bush administration, called Boyd back to work on the plans for
Operation Desert Storm. Boyd had substantial influence on the ultimate "left hook" design of the plan. In a letter to the editor of
Inside the Pentagon, the former
Commandant of the Marine Corps General
Charles C. Krulak is quoted as saying, "The Iraqi army collapsed morally and intellectually under the onslaught of American and Coalition forces. John Boyd was an architect of that victory as surely as if he'd commanded a fighter
wing or a maneuver
division in the
desert."
Military reform Boyd gave testimony to Congress about the status of military reform after
Operation Desert Storm. ==Death==