Continued from YKW's thread http://www.kungfumagazine.com/forum/...d-by-4-strikes
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_...st)#ReferencesOriginally Posted by -N-
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energ...ability_theory
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Conflict
Interesting that US military strategy realized only in the 20th century what TCMA has known for hundreds of years.
Some relevant sections from the listed articles:
The OODA Loop
Boyd's key concept was that of the decision cycle or OODA loop, the process by which an entity (either an individual or an organization) reacts to an event. According to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one's opponent. The construct was originally a theory of achieving success in air-to-air combat, developed out of Boyd's Energy-Maneuverability theory and his observations on air combat between MiG-15s and North American F-86 Sabres in Korea. Harry Hillaker (chief designer of the F-16) said of the OODA theory, "Time is the dominant parameter. The pilot who goes through the OODA cycle in the shortest time prevails because his opponent is caught responding to situations that have already changed."
John Boyd during the Korean War
Boyd hypothesized that all intelligent organisms and organizations undergo a continuous cycle of interaction with their environment. Boyd breaks this cycle down to four interrelated and overlapping processes through which one cycles continuously:
Observation: the collection of data by means of the senses
Orientation: the analysis and synthesis of data to form one's current mental perspective
Decision: the determination of a course of action based on one's current mental perspective
Action: the physical playing-out of decisions
Of course, while this is taking place, the situation may be changing. It is sometimes necessary to cancel a planned action in order to meet the changes. This decision cycle is thus known as the OODA loop. Boyd emphasized that this decision cycle is the central mechanism enabling adaptation (apart from natural selection) and is therefore critical to survival.In order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries--or, better yet, get inside [the] adversary's Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action time cycle or loop. ... Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries--since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.
[...]
The key is to obscure your intentions and make them unpredictable to your opponent while you simultaneously clarify his intentions. That is, operate at a faster tempo to generate rapidly changing conditions that inhibit your opponent from adapting or reacting to those changes and that suppress or destroy his awareness. Thus, a hodgepodge of confusion and disorder occur to cause him to over- or under-react to conditions or activities that appear to be uncertain, ambiguous, or incomprehensible.
[...]
The approach favors agility over raw power in dealing with human opponents in any endeavor. John Boyd put this ethos into practice with his work for the USAF. He was an advocate of maneuverable fighter aircraft, in contrast to the heavy, powerful jet fighters that were prevalent in the 1960s, such as the F-4 Phantom II and General Dynamics F-111. Boyd inspired the Light Weight Fighter Project that produced the successful F-16 Fighting Falcon and F/A-18 Hornet, which are still in use by the United States and several other military powers into the 21st century.How many times have you learned, heard, or seen this in TCMA?E-M background
Boyd was a US Air Force colonel who had developed the energy–maneuverability theory of air combat. This was based on formulas that revealed a fighter aircraft's ability to maneuver, allowing direct comparison between different designs using simple metrics. This work became extremely influential over time, resulting in changes to the design of the F-15 Eagle, and producing the basic design parameters of the F-16 Fighting Falcon.[3]
Much of the E-M theory was based on the idea of generating rapid "transients", continual changes in position and maneuvering. The idea was for a fighter pilot to keep the enemy continually guessing his intentions, thereby delaying the decision-making process to the point that the enemy would be unable to predict the future position of his aircraft. To do this, a fighter craft would need to be able to quickly gain or lose energy, as well as having a high roll rate in order to generate out-of-plane maneuvers.[4]
Patterns is essentially a generalization of this concept, applying to the entire war fighting experience instead of a single dogfight.
Introductory material
Patterns opens with a short discussion of the E-M theory, although not by name. It calls for a fighter that can "choose engagement opportunities - yet has fast transient ... characteristics."[5] It continues by stating that the idea of fast transients in a fighter suggests that the key to winning any engagement is to have a faster tempo of operations. Boyd then introduces the concept of the OODA loop,[6] and suggests that a fast enough response loop can "[c]ollapse [the] adversary's system into confusion and disorder by causing him to over and under react to activity".[7] The aim was to make a series of actions that were so confusing that the enemy would expend too much of his resources on small actions and not enough on large ones, eventually causing his forces to be out-of-place and subject to encirclement.
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