John Boyd on competition and conflict

Abstract

This article reprises central aspects of John Boyd’s thinking about competition and conflict, including his unwavering reliance on analogies and connections between disciplines as disparate as fighter tactics, decision theory, history, philosophy, and physics. We trace how elements of Boyd’s ideas about winning and losing have been incorporated (or neglected) in the doctrines of the U.S. military services. Given the richness of Boyd’s ideas there is much we can learn from the view of decision making underlying the Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) loop, for which he is best known, as well as the analogical reasoning embodied in slide presentations such as his massive “Patterns of Conflict.”