This piece is the end of a series with part one being a collection of comments regarding Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loops and part two being a discussion on levels of war. While not part of the series, similar thinking led to notes from John Boyd on morality and created a piece regarding risk management with thoughts to what could happen versus what will happen.
This piece will look at applying the methods of John Boyd to the priorities of Charles Kenny. A short summary of John Boyd and his work comes first. Second is a reading of Charles Kenny’s concerns. Tying the two follows.
Many may know of John Boyd as the one to model decision making through OODA loops. Others may know him as the fighter pilot that created energy-maneuverability (EM) diagrams. Some for creating a renaissance in maneuver warfare. These are all true though perhaps understanding Boyd is best accomplished by a chronological sketch.
John Boyd served briefly as an enlisted man at the end of WWII then flew in the Korean War as a fighter pilot. After this he served as an instructor at the Air Force Weapon School. Here he was known as “forty second Boyd” as he could defeat anyone on his tail in forty seconds. Such involved a rapid energy depletion which flopped roles putting Boyd in the rear though he himself didn’t recommend the maneuver except as a last option as depleting the energy left one with no further options should he either miss the shot or the adversary have a buddy. Aside from this particular trick, Boyd worked to develop tactics culminating in dictating his Aerial Attack Study. After this Boyd went to study engineering at Georgia Tech. Near the end of his study, he came to the realization of the EM diagram. Subsequently, he expanded these ideas in his New Concept for Air-to-Air Combat. This work has been maintained and updated through his surviving acolytes. To understand these ideas, consider seeing one’s ability to rapidly trade energy states as well as lose or add energy as instrumental to dogfighting. Think of this as appreciating the interrelationship of potential energy by altitude, kinetic energy of velocity, the abilities both to interchange these as well as lose them by increasing drag, and add the ability of rapidly add chemical potential energy (fuel burn). Such really enabled taking full advantage of jet age thrust to understand and develop out-of-plane, combining horizontal and vertical for full three dimensional fighting. This influenced tactics almost immediately while subsequently creating a new means for aircraft requirements and aircraft design. For the non-aviator, think of an F1 race as opposed to NASCAR. NASCAR has banked turns to permit retention of speed throughout. An F1 car needs to be able to decelerate quickly to make hairpin turns, the accelerate quickly to race through straights. EM brought F1 racing to aviation. Boyd wasn’t fully satisfied with his EM work as he found that Russian aircraft should have done better in the Korean War. Digging into this, he concluded that bubble canopies of western fighters allowed for easier detection permitting un-countered initial moves if not complete surprise attack. Further, hydraulically driven control surfaces in western fighters versus direct mechanical links in Russian aircraft enabled western pilots to exploit higher force loads associated with speed while pilots in Russian craft fatigued quicker thus slowing their responses. These notions would sit in Boyd’s mind for some time to influence his understanding of decision making later.
Boyd would move to assist development of the F-15 though was disappointed in his overall level of impact; the aircraft design was more interceptor than fighter. Hence he would push the light fighter competition which would yield the F-16. Even in this, he found a sour taste with compromises in making the Viper. While the YF-17 lost the competition, its derivative would be the F/A-18 - the finest airplane of its time. During these efforts, Boyd would start to collect his acolytes. These men were jaded with the congressional-industrial-military acquisitions structure. They were bitter with the likes of the F-4, F-105, and especially the F-111. As noted in the Robert Coram Boyd biography, Boyd said, “What I want to know is why you guys built a goddamn eighty-five-thousand-pound airplane and called it a fighter... It’s too big to be a fighter and that goddamn little wing it’s got, it must take two states to turn the thing around. I’ll tell you something else. The pilot can’t see behind and he can’t see out the right window. He has to depend on his copilot to tell him what’s out there... It’s too goddamn big, too goddamn expensive, too goddamn underpowered. It’s just not worth a good goddamn. How much extra weight does that swing wing add to the airplane? Twenty percent? The entire weight of the wing goes through that pivot pin and you hide it all in that big glove. You’ll be getting fatigue and stress cracks in that fucker before it’s got five hundred hours on it. And the amount of drag you’ve created is aerodynamic bullshit. That pivot adds weight and degrades performance, plus you can’t sweep the wing back fast enough in combat to make a difference. The low-speed performance is lousy, the high-speed performance is worse, and the goddamn thing won’t maneuver.” Boyd and the acolytes successfully killed another swing wing in the B-1, per Coram, “The official position of the Air Force remained that the B-1 cost $25 million each. In early 1977, when Jimmy Carter assumed the presidency, one of his first acts would be to kill the B-1. No Air Force generals would resign or complain to Congress or wage a guerrilla war to keep the program.” Unfortunately, “In early December, Christie, Boyd, and Spinney went to Nunn’s office and gave him the full briefing. They told Nunn the Reagan Administration was about to start throwing money at the Pentagon and that more money would only exacerbate already serious problems... Ronald Reagan came into office in January and no president could have been less interested in military reform. Upon taking office, one of Reagan’s first actions was to resurrect the B-1 Bomber manufactured by Rockwell in his native state of California. The B-1 later flunked its specifications for the radar cross section it presented to enemy radar, flunked its range specifications, and flunked its electronic countermeasures specifications. A combat-loaded B-1 cannot fly over many mountain ranges... But none of this mattered. The aircraft that Jimmy Carter killed because its cost had risen to $167 million a copy was at last going into production… now at a cost of $287 million per copy.” The acolytes correctly saw the maintenance challenges for the swing wing F-14 too. The acolytes improved live fire testing while fighting the procurement of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle and generating the A-10.
While Boyd’s technical and tactical contributions along with his programmatic acquisitions integrity seem plenty of contribution for one person, his best known work is in studying how we think. He applied this to combat situations though others have readily adapted it to all competitive endeavors. Shortly, we will look at application in cooperative efforts.
Boyd created then continued to refine through the rest of his life his Discourse on Winning and Losing. It is in here that his insight as to western fighter advantage in Korea landed. This, in turn, was blended with studies of military theorists and battle histories across time and region. He put proper priority in people first then ideas then hardware.* Boyd recognized that a common understanding of situation and more importantly of intent tied levels of effort together and could reduce both misunderstandings created by communication and quicken the time as directions could be reduced. Rather than force on force attrition, Boyd created a renaissance for maneuver warfare. He emphasized mission command and trust in subordinates as crucial.
One complaint we may find with Boyd was that he felt we weren’t killing enough persons in training. In this he meant training should be hard to approximate and acquaint trainees with actual combat. Accident aversion left trainees insufficiently prepared in his mind. His was a time efficiency over material efficiency in which students are part of the material. Competent combatants were the product. Such thinking should scare us in today’s environment. It shouldn’t necessarily discount Boyd’s view, however. Boyd functioned during actual wars, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Important was producing a high volume of able warriors in short time. Risk in training was more tolerable so long as the volume needed of sufficient quality arrived fast enough. Throughput was priority while waste tolerable if it kept production up. One could think of this as trying to reduce combat losses at the expense of training ones. This in turn could become a balancing act looking to minimize the total losses between the two so long as forces delivered never fell below forces demanded. In our peacetime training, we have a luxury that we can take a little extra time to more safely train with equal or better quality procured at the expense of this time.
Similarly, Boyd worked in zero sum world of superpower competition. The first world faced off against the second world while both tried to recruit allies and partners from the third world while fighting proxy in that third world. He also existed while resource competition still ruled. Much like pushing more aggressive training, being locked into zero sum thinking was a product of Boyd’s time.
This brings us to the economist Charles Kenny. Kenny has written many articles to include but not limited to those in Politico here and here, Barron’s here and here, and with The Center for Global Development. And he has authored a few books, one of which being linked here. All of these works rest upon a fundamental understanding after reviewing security problems. As Kenny wrote in the linked book, “The new global threats include the warming atmosphere, polluted seas, disease, financial instability and international crime. These threats require collective response to shore up the global commons and preserve and extend our positive sum gains.” This really hits it all. Here are the priorities and they all require positive sum game solutions. He captures this with a previous success story “The new threats to national security are based on problems that will take global cooperation to solve. And, in the past, the United States has shown itself fully capable of leading that cooperation. With the support of the US under President Ronald Reagan, the world has already headed off one planetary threat through a series of protocol agreements to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons –which were damaging the ozone layer. Without action there would have been 6.3 million additional skin cancer deaths in the US alone.”
I realize cooperative positive sum thinking can be hard to digest. We’ve grown most our lives partaking in competition while most human history has been conflict over resources to include other persons as resources. Kenny addressed this through his works, seen here from the first Politico link “Through most of history, global power and wealth have been determined by control of people, land and resources. Wars were fought over bodies and territory in zero-sum conflicts in which the victor took the spoils. Caesar was considered a Roman hero because he brought as many as 1 million slaves back from his Gallic wars alone. And as late as World War II, physical resources were still a key concern—Japan’s need for oil, Germany’s desire for Lebensraum (“living space”). But power and wealth today are determined by technology, ideas and institutions... And the technological underpinnings of high productivity, such as the engines and solar panels and property rights, are “non-rival”—we don’t have to fight for them. If I occupy land, you cannot. If I use the technology of the internal combustion engine or double-entry bookkeeping, you can use it at the same time. In fact, if we both use the same technologies, we both benefit even more.”
Here’s the thing. Working with partners is positive sum. Working within a team is positive sum. The zero sum aspects of competition arise when considering the adversary. This means while Boyd was overall looking at zero sum games, we can slice out the positive sum portion. He has already shown us how to work positive sum. Swap out adversaries and swap in the global challenges.
Kenny highlighted Global Warming as the biggest security threat followed by pandemics, cyber vulnerabilities, and financial risk. He showed these requiring us to all cooperate, essentially everyone and anyone will win together. Alternately if we squabble between nations failing to accomplish anything will result in all of us losing. With this we turn back to Boyd. Boyd wrote that internally we need to try to reduce or eliminate discord while increasing harmony. This is best done with common understanding of intent while building trust across all levels. We should maintain a moral position to recruit allies and partners while deterring such from going to the side of the adversary. We should try to reduce harmony and sow discord within the adversary. And with allies and partners secured, we should promote harmony with them as they become internal to the team. In the positive sum world, we should seek common understanding of intent essentially being the goal to accomplish. Then we build trust to enable harmonized efforts to achieve the intent. As we have no adversary we have no need to worry about getting inside anyone’s information decision space. We have no fear of such against us. Instead we can be open with what we’re doing, where, and how. Such may even more quickly build trust hastening harmony. Why we do things should already be understood through that common intent.
Below are excerpts from Boyd’s Discourse on Winning and Losing that highlight for our positive sum game we should strive for common understanding of intent and build trust to harmonize efforts for the mutual win:
“The simpler organisms—those that make up man as well as man working with other men in a higher level context—must cooperate or, better yet, harmonize their activities in their endeavors to survive as an organic synthesis.”
“Surface as well as find ways to overcome or eliminate those blemishes, flaws, or contradictions that generate mistrust and discord so that these negative qualities neither alienate us from one another nor set us against one another, thereby destroy our internal harmony, paralyze us, and make it difficult to cope with an uncertain, ever-changing world at large... Emphasize those cultural traditions, previous experiences, and unfolding events that build-up harmony and trust, thereby create those implicit bonds that permit us as individuals and as a society, or as an organic whole, to shape as well as adapt to the course of events in the world.“
“With respect to others (i.e., the uncommitted or potential adversaries) we should: Respect their culture and achievements, show them we bear them no harm and help them adjust to an un- folding world, as well as provide additional benefits and more favorable treatment for those who support our philosophy and way of doing things; yet Demonstrate that we neither tolerate nor support those ideas and interactions that undermine or work against our culture and our philosophy hence our interests and fitness to cope with a changing world.”
“Emphasis upon creation of implicit connections or bonds based upon trust, not mistrust, that permit wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative—yet, harmonize within intent of superior commanders. Benefit: internal simplicity that permits rapid adaptability.”
“The atmosphere of war is friction. Friction is generated and magnified by menace, ambiguity, deception, rapidity, uncertainty, mistrust, etc. Friction is diminished by implicit understanding, trust, cooperation, simplicity, focus, etc. In this sense, variety and rapidity tend to magnify friction, while harmony and initiative tend to diminish friction.”
“Physically we interact by opening-up and maintaining many channels of communication with the outside world, hence with others out there, that we depend upon for sustenance, nourishment, or support. Mentally we interact by selecting information from a variety of sources or channels in order to generate mental images or impressions that match-up with the world of events or happenings that we are trying to understand and cope with. Morally we interact with others by avoiding mismatches between what we say we are, what we are, and the world we have to deal with, as well as by abiding by those other cultural codes or standards that we are expected to uphold.”
In reviewing Boyd for these circumstances, I have an interesting aside. While working for Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan (now retired), I found he had a strong disdain for “synchronize” and any derivation of the word. Meanwhile, Vice Admiral Kevin Scott (now retired), whom I worked for while he was a Rear Admiral, had recently signed joint doctrine publications that used the word synchronize. According to Coram’s biography of Boyd, he came down strongly against synchronize. This didn’t make sense to me as all accepted “coordinate.” I saw synchronize as synonymous with coordinate. I’m obviously not alone in this because of Scott’s position.
In my head, I saw synchronize as like a machine of gears and sprockets. You could have a common drive running gears in parallel. You could have gears chained in series. Gears would be of different circumference such that each had its own periodicity. There could be a clutch or multiple that allowed certain gears to be taken out or put in as circumstances required.
Turns out Donegan and Boyd were correct that others may interpret synchronize differently. They may take it to mean “phase” as to “align” or get in phase such as a laser versus normal light. Coram points to Boyd’s concern for synchronize as the third tenant of the army maneuver warfare doctrine and cites the army’s slowing to align after the initial left hook in the 1991 Gulf War as proof. So, if synchronize can create such difference in its understanding, we should probably stick with coordinate. I do, however, find this ironic as all players use the word “harmony” and its derivatives.
As I understand it, harmony is the ultimate in alignment or getting in phase. The harmony adds notes about the melody. The melody is over time while the harmony is plural or parallel efforts at the same moment of time. To harmonize is the very definition of the feared version of synchronize. Perhaps better would be to look at the rhythm and beat which could include points of syncopation. After all, multiple percussion lines can run through a piece while the melody still plays. The harmony adds flavor, volume, resonance though getting that temporal variance that at times appears out of phase would be through different beats. Even these beats, however, still adhere to the rhythm. They’d have a common denominator and all would hit points in phase with regular periodicity. Just as the harmonics have a consistency in their frequency step with multiples of regular defined intervals, these beats have a common time step of regular defined intervals. I’m not a musician. Nor am I a music theorist. I have a brother who is, however. What he tells me is that “300 years of western music theory exists to resolve discord.” Interesting.
Taking another aside, how would Boyd be and is Kenny taken today? Obviously Kenny has challenges as he’s swimming against a current of wrong headed but commonly accepted zero sum thinking with spending patterns entrenched along those lines. As for Boyd sanctified if not deified by the United States Marine Corps for his work in decision making, mission control, maneuver warfare, he’d be hard pressed too. He was regularly reading from multiple subjects and while not associated with a specific ivory tower, he very much would receive the academic intellectual smear. We should recognize that while fully anti-communist, Boyd didn’t live or endorse a capitalist lifestyle either. He dedicated his entire life to public service. He had a full military career then went to work initially for free consulting at the pentagon. As he was later forced to take compensation, he ensured he got the minimum tolerable by being paid only for one day every two weeks. Often he’d fail to cash travel reimbursements. Boyd is the definition of a loser and sucker.
Taking Boyd to Kenny, we need to generate cooperation to deal with our biggest security challenges. To generate cooperation, we need to invest in the sources that create harmony and don’t cause discord abroad. We need to reach mutual intent and build trust. Then we can work to resolve the common threats.
Other Fffflats pieces include a critique of a recent Atlantic article on safety of school openings as well as a piece regarding false equivalence on a massive scale and a piece regarding scapegoats. While written well before, such thinking guided a bit on doublespeak and a question regarding mutual exclusivity and feasibility. Moral hazard constituting its own systemic risk certainly falls in this line as does circular tracing. A full list of works through this site is here.
* Interesting side thought here with artificial intelligence advances, should people, ideas, stuff be modified as autonomous thinking entity, ideas, things?
Saturday, Jan 16, 2021 · 9:59:01 PM +00:00
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Fffflats
I’ve recently discovered 3 Blue 1 Brown who have several excellent mathematical visualizations for easy understanding. They did one for pandemic, which is both of current concern and was/is one of Kenny’s big concerns over the past several years. It’s under the link and I’m adding it to all my stories that even in the most remote way touch on pandemic as well as needing to adapt to circumstances with shifts in effort to match feedback.