Hey, don’t assume this stuff is written in concrete because this is simply me trying to gain perspective and understanding to the Boyd OODA loop, patterns of conflict, so all of the following is my learning curve. Take it for what it is, an attempt at understanding. Everything that follows is simply the first step I take to reach that understanding. Rory Miller started this, because his latest article on the loop simply slapped me upside the head and I realized that my concepts and understanding were linear and mechanical, like my karate and martial arts were in my early years (still trying to break that freeze frame of understanding).
Take this as an example, when you take up the book I recommend on Colonel Boyd’s life and experiences you will note some very specific characteristics. To start, he spent an exorbitant amount of time and effort studying this stuff. His life experiences actually set the tone and stage that led him to his life long work as a true warrior of the blue skies, a fighter pilot.
Much like some advocate in karate and martial arts, he spent time studying those who came before as to combat and war and all that entails. He studied Sun Tzu and many others of like mind and like writings on the art of war. Like them he created his patterns of conflict in a way that it is used in all aspect of life’s conflicts be it sport, business, self-defense or war - it transcends one discipline and embraces them all. Similar to the book of five rings used as a tactical tome of the Japanese businessman.
It is another epiphany of karate and martial arts where the current teachings are also mechanical and linear in nature, not the true intent of those disciplines. We are stuck in a mechanical linear way of teaching, learning and applying it. We say it is for self-defense, we then teach a mechanical form, i.e., your attacker does this, you perform a set or combination of often complex karate-like techniques in response and then when the adversary goes down you continue on to make them fear ever attacking you again. Very mechanical in its implementation from the teachings, very linear in that you follow a specific path to reach a goal. There is no give or room for the chaos of violence and conflict.
I write about that mechanical linear form or model through the concept and philosophy of things like “Shin-gi-tai and Shu-ha-ri.” The mechanical and linear are the novice level teachings but to achieve real holistic wholehearted understanding and applications you have to go beyond and that apples as well to learning, understanding and applying the Boyd OODA (Patterns of Conflict as he likes to refer to it).
One note of interest when you read his story is that once he created his system he refused to shorten it, make it terse in nature and to simply provide a synopsis of his teachings and I believe it was because he naturally and instinctively understood the length of time, breadth and depth of the material as well as its understanding could only come from his six hour introduction before delving into the meat and bones of his OODA and Patterns of Conflict.
Many karate and martial arts and self-defense disciplines end up taking shortcuts to appease the masses who pay their fees but in the end the product is not worthy of its distinctive intent and goals as a system of fighting, combatives and self-defense. This is my attempt at understanding and integrating a more complete and comprehensive understanding of OODA as well as karate, martial arts and self-defense.
The following are my notes and attempts of making sense of a complex system, one that goes way beyond the terse simplistic symbolic reference of OODA or Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. I am looking at it as a terse goku-i of a Boyd nature that warrants a lot of study beyond the surface cover like presentation in just saying and assuming what OODA really means. Here we go:
UNDERSTAND THIS: This is just the beginning, I expect there will be a whole lot more. It is like my studies of self-defense, like Marc MacYoung and Rory Miller would write, “It is a complex thing.” I have discovered by my studies that it is complex, deep, wide and complex - so is OODA or Patterns of Conflict by Colonel Boyd.
Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)
Time-Scale: Achieve a faster tempo than your adversary; Gain a superior position and put the adversary into a inferior position simultaneously; Stay one or two steps ahead of your adversary; Operate inside your adversary’s time-scale; transition quickly from one tactic to another; Rapidly change the environment by engaging quickly, creating adversary disorientation and create adversary uncertainty; Make your rate of change faster/quicker than your adversary’s; Inhibit the adversary’s ability to adapt; Make the adversary over-react; Enter the implicit orientation phase; Know your enemy/adversary/opponent, i.e., know their cultural beliefs, genetic heritage, new information of the adversary, his previous experience and experiences, and analyze/synthesize the process of the person doing the orienting - Integration.
Non-linear Feedback System: The inherent unpredictability of the system is crucial to success with the OODA or patterns of conflict. Achieve a deep intuitive understanding of the chaotic ever-changing environment of conflict and violence. This is how we bypass parts of the OODA. It is the creation of this adaptability that provides the loops awesome power. Compress Time, the time between observing a situation and taking action. Time-compression cause the adversary’s time to be stretched out causing him to fall further behind resulting in a kind of OD trap, i.e., trying to make relevant decisions to unravel the problem. Use temporal discrepancy (fast transience) to select actions (lease-effective to disorient the adversary?).
Shape the Environment: Use variety, rapidity, harmony, and intuitiveness to shape your environment.
- Variety: Use principled based multiple methodologies quickly, aggressively and intuitively.
- Rapidity: Application of multiple principled based methodologies rapidly. Once you begin, commit, continue to apply actions quickly and relentlessly until the fight ends, it must not slow or hesitate anywhere in the process, ever (It must continue and it must accelerate).
- Harmony: To harmonize our efforts proactive and avoid passivity. To harmonize the multiple principled methodologies of our tactics while maintaining a cohesion of our strategies and goals.
- Intuitiveness: Assuming a high tempo, rhythm and cadence quickly and consistently while rapidly exploiting gifts or those opportunities you create and the adversary presents to take the intuitive and press that hard, fast and with proactive effort.
Target the adversary’s mind, not his body or his actions. The mind follows the body, the body follows the mind and when disrupted, disoriented and disabled the body freezes and so are the actions of the body. The ultimate goal in this is to so disorient and disrupt the mind-state and mind-set they fail to enter the physical realm of conflict and violence, they quit before they start.
Never let success result in a pause, hesitation or stopping until appropriate to the situation (often driven by social and legal standards in self-defense). No matter the means of the conflict and violence involved be it direct physical conflict to the more electronic predatory acts of on-line adversary’s it always, always, comes down to human involvement. Humans fight and you must get into the minds of your adversary’s!
Boyd Quotation: “Shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos. Develop an instinctive and intuitive sense of what is going on and what is needed in ta fight or in any conflict.”
Sun Tzu’s Quotation: “Sun Tzu’s on Conflict: themes as deception, speed, fluidity of action, surprise, strength against weakness, tactics that disorient and confuse, and shaping the adversary’s perception of the world.”
Boyd Quotation: “[Periphrasis] Conflict is a fundamental part of human nature. To prevail, and especially war, we must understand what takes place in a person’s mind.” - Colonel Boyd - In other words (my words), know your adversary!
Temporal Discrepancy: To create a situation for your adversary when they are not ready for it.
Time Compression: Time compression, also known as space-time or time-space compression, refers to the creation of a situation that alters the quality of and relationship between real time and perceived time, i.e., between space and time. To compress time in a conflict is to slow the adversary’s perception of time allowing you to be faster.
Boyds Quotes: On technology in war, “Machines don’t fight wars, terrain doesn’t fight wars. Humans fight wars. You must get into the minds of humans. That is where battles are won.”
Bibliography (Click the link)
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