Inside Our OODA Loops?
by chet ~ November 25th, 2007. Filed under: Boyd's Theories.In 1988, a retired Army general, James H. Polk, wrote a short piece for Armor magazine called “The Criticality of Time in Combat.” In it, Polk listed several of the effects of what we would call “operating inside an opponent’s OODA loop”:
- Surrender after token resistance
- Abandoned equipment
- Gaps in minefields not fused and armed
- Road barriers not in place
- Campfires still burning
- Rations still being cooked
- Vehicles or couriers blundering into your lines
- Abandoned wounded or operational aid stations left behind
- Stacks of ammunition or other stores
- Excess artillery ammunition at empty gun positions
- Shelling of your last position after you left
Polk noted that “with a time advantage, numbers don’t count,” a sentiment that Boyd and Sun Tzu would not contest.
One way to describe the effects of operating inside an opponent’s OODA loops is to classify them as physical, mental, or moral. So long as you don’t take the distinctions between them too seriously, this is not a bad system. Boyd used it, and as you can see from at least the first bullet, Polk was aware of the non-physical aspects of time.
Boyd, however, carried the development much further than Polk (it should be noted that Patterns of Conflict was completed about 18 months before Polk published his article). Boyd identified a variety of mutually interacting effects of operating inside an opponent’s OODA loops:
- Physical: asymmetric fast transients, as suggested by Polk’s bullets after the first, and the physical shattering of the opponent via penetration by multiple thrusts
- Mental (against individuals and groups): surprise (also discussed by Polk), deception, shock, and ambiguity
- Moral (against groups): menace, uncertainty and mistrust, resulting in disintegration of cohesion and the moral fragmentation of the opponent into many non-cooperative centers of gravity, which pumps up friction.
As Chuck Spinney observes in a posting on DNI today, a plethora of “leaked” information about a strike against Iran suggests that we are planning to go for Polk’s first effect, surrender, by employing attrition warfare on a massive scale (”1,500 aim points”).
As Chuck also notes, there is very little evidence to suggest that this will work. One could carry the argument further: If the Iranians do not shatter quickly, they can attempt to operate inside our OODA loops, causing some of Boyd’s effects in us. All they have to do is in any way change the situation more rapidly than we can comprehend.
Oddly enough, for OODA loop strategies to work, they don’t actually have to “do” anything. If the Iranians don’t give up quickly, or if we cannot verify destruction of any nuclear weapons program within a few days, they meet the definition of “operating inside our OODA loops.” Think of the Serbs in the NATO-Serbian War or Hezbullah against Israel. Think about it: The situation is changing and we can’t figure out why …
The last element of Chuck’s article is, perhaps, the most interesting because it concerns the question of moral strength. If history is a guide, then bombing would likely improve Iran’s. We, on the other hand, have been so weakened by the factors Chuck lists that we might start to see deep fractures in our national identity as a result of a prolonged engagement against Iran. Many non-cooperative centers of gravity. It is not that they could defeat us, or that Osama - who would benefit the most - could do it, but that we are more than capable of defeating ourselves.
November 25th, 2007 at 5:11 am
Agree very much with Spinney—it’s the Giulio Douhet fantasy of Kosovo writ large. We can’t win and the Iranians know it too. So our threats are empty, and each time we rattle sabers we look weaker to them.
November 25th, 2007 at 5:51 am
What we can do is make it clear to the Mullahs and the world that should a nuke go off in CONUS or another major US location that they will bear the brunt of the retaliation. It doesn’t matter who the real perp was but that they will be the first and only target. That will make them sit up and take notice. They will understand that ’strong horse’ argument.
November 25th, 2007 at 11:21 am
I’d say that proclaiming our intent to attack Iran if somebody else nukes us will only give Iran the moral high ground, motivate them against us, and alienate us further from the rest of the world. Overall, our “strong horse” arguments don’t seem to working very splendidly.
It also begs the question, “Is Iran really that big a threat?”
November 25th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Robohobo — well, first they’d have to believe we would actually do it. And then there’s the small problem of whether someone like Osama cares whether we nuke the establishment mullahs. He probably hopes that we will since he considers many of them to be apostates and toadies of corrupt governments. Plus, it would make a huge number of converts for his cause.
I would like to think that we’re on a somewhat higher moral level than the ideological gangs that we’re fighting. If not, what’s the point?
Jason - plus, it’s generally not considered good strategy to telegraph your punch.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:36 am
And then there is the possibility that the Iranians will unleash Hezbollah against American targets all over the world.
November 26th, 2007 at 3:14 am
plus, it will give the green light to everyone who wants to nuke us and who isn’t Iran, since they will get off scot-free.
November 26th, 2007 at 7:26 am
One other factor is that I fear the US military has fixated on speed. You need both speed and accuracy in your decision cycle. If you lose accuracy, it doesn’t matter how fast you pick out targets.
Eg, an iranian counterattack against general middle eastern oil infrastructure (eg, a suicide boat into an oil tanker x 3, surface to ship missiles, mines, whatever), would be slow by US military standards but well targeted on a grand strategic level, and would definatly affect our morale and moral level due to the general disruption in world oil prices, but would not need to be a “swift” action to operate in a way which disrupts our decision cycle.
November 26th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
nweaver - a VERY important point - thanks. I’ll be blogging on this topic a lot, starting later tonight.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Dr. Richards,
First and foremost, thanks for publishing your blog, maintaining d-n-i.net, and writing your book. Through your works, you have made John Boyd’s work more accessible and raised the level of strategic discourse.
This comment is slightly off-topic for this particular post, but it does relate to OODA loops, auftragstaktik (mission-style orders), a concept you cover in your book, and the importance of not losing in the moral plane.
I would like to point you and your readers to an interesting post relating a speech that Robert Greene, author of 48 Laws of Power et al., made to West Point cadets (http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/archives/the_terrorist_d.phtml) about terrorism. Note that I followed this link from John Robb’s weblog, so I claim no credit for discovering it.
Greene, without referencing the OODA concept by name, shows the centrality of Orientation in strategy. His primary illustration is the Prussian reaction to Napoleon. He also covers Russian reaction to 19th century terrorism and the current reaction to terrorism. A nice quote showing the need to mark your beliefs to market (in finance parlance):
“To me, this story illustrates what happens to humans in the face of revolution and chaos in any endeavor. It forces most people, like Hohenlohe, to become more conservative and fearful, to react by relying on clichés and conventions from the past; to become even more obsessed with tactics and operational details. Once this happens to us, we fall further and further behind changing events, the innovating enemy operating on much faster transients. We exist in a kind of dream world in which what we see is a reflection of our wishes, our fears, our past experiences…”
All in all, a nice illustration having someone in your OODA loop (too nice to be coincidental?) and the importance of Orientation. Note the words “faster transients”, an expression that strikes me as distinctly Boydian.
The author also mentions the importance of auftragstaktik in Napoleon’s initial victories over the Prussians and the importance of not losing in the moral plane (particularly through over-reaction to terrorist incidents).
Sorry for the longish and slightly off-topic post. I just thought you and your readers might find Greene’s post both interesting and relevant to your and Boyd’s work.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Jason — very interesting. You’re quite on topic - this is a blog with a distinct Boyd flavor, like Greene’s article. Both Boyd and Clausewitz were essentially synthesists, although as Frans Osinga observes, Boyd had another century and a half of rapidly progressing science to work with. Perhaps for that reason, Boyd (and the Wehrmacht) took the notion of Auftragstaktik and individual initiative much further down the organizational ladder than Clausewitz did.
Greene has a nice site - recommend it.
November 28th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
Chet,
I am perplexed by Douhet’s seemingly vise-like grip on contemporary pundits of airpower. It might be worthwhile for them to re-read Chapter III (Aerial Warfare: GENERAL PRINCIPLES), specifically the basic tenet “To inflict the greatest damage in the shortest possible time.” Douhet’s purely attritionist calculations are plainly laid out in his force structure logic: how many bombs are needed to level how many square kilometers of industrial capacity, how many planes will be needed to carry those bombs (accounting for failures in take-off and landing), etc. And his fascination with speed (i.e., readiness to react) accounts for nearly all of the “Independent Air Force” effectiveness (”90 per cent”, cited in Chap. III, p. 56 of the Ferrari translation).
December 21st, 2008 at 2:06 pm
perplexed by Douhet’s seemingly vise-like grip on contemporary pundits of airpower. It might be worthwhile for them to re-read Chapter III (Aerial Warfare: GENERAL PRINCIPLES), specifically the basic tenet “To inflict the greatest damage in the shortest possible time.” Douhet’s purely attritionist calculations are plainly laid out in his force structure logic: how many bombs are needed to level how many square kilometers of industrial capacity, how many planes will be needed to carry those bombs (accounting for failures in take-off and landing), etc. And his fascination with speed (i.e., readiness to react) accounts for nearly all of the “Independent Air Force” effectiveness (”90 per cent”, cited in Chap. III, p. 56 of the Ferrari translation).