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Joseph Fouche blasts eminent scholar Dr. Colin S. Gray for doing to strategic theorist John Boyd what Gray’s fellow Clausewitzians complain that Martin van Creveld does to Carl von Clausewitz:

Libeling Boyd

Contrast this passage with two passages from Gray’s Another Bloody Century, published seven years later:

Air Force Colonel John Boyd touted a tactical insight derived from personal experience from aerial combat as a general theory  of conflict. His OODA loop, standing for Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action, is revered by many as summarizing the wisdom of the ages on how to win. The core notion is that success rewards the warrior who can operate within the decision cycle of the enemy. It is a sound idea, but as the philosopher’s stone for victory for victory at all levels of warfare it is distinctly sub-Clausewitzian. A major problem with the OODA loop is that its devotees assume that a tactical insight, even principle, will be no less valid at the operational and strategic levels of warfare. It is fairly clear this is not the case.

…and…

As we noted earlier, Colonel John Boyd, USAF fighter pilot turned guru, applied his tactical knowledge of air combat to warfare at all levels  by means of his simple formula of the ‘OODA loop’. Unmatched speed in the sequence of observation, orientation, decision, and action is held to be the key to victory. This insight, banal statement of the obvious, or panacea-take your choice-is probably the most important concept undergirding the current US programme of long-term military transformation. The OODA loop is a formula for decisive success in a manoeuvering style of warfare. American technology, particularly in the realm of the real-time gathering, processing, and diffusion of information, enables US forces to act effectively with a speed that leaves their enemies gasping in their wake. At least, that is the theory.

This is like reading from Baby’s First Boyd Briefing and reflects a child’s understanding of Boyd’s theory. Dr. Gray, a distinguished strategist of the ultra-Clausewitzian school, often complains about the van Creveld School’s shallow (or, in my opinion, actively duplicitious) reading of Clausewitz. Keegan and van Crevald get taken out back for a well deserved whipping for their mis-characterization of Clausewitz and somehow John Boyd gets taken along in the same sordid ranks. Gray sees this:

Faster! FASTER!

and reduces Boyd to a child who runs along side a children’s carousel shouting “Faster! FASTER!”. If the carousel spins fast enough, victory is at hand. If it slows down, defeat is inevitable. This is the vulgar version of Boyd’s theory, the one that the marketing directors of defense contractors can understand and spout. If Dr. Gray is, as he frequently claims to be, a professional strategist, he should be able to see that Boyd’s OODA loop, inasmuch as it really is….

Much more here.

Outstanding post.

“Libeling Boyd” seems to me to be an accurate call by Joseph Fouche. I find it difficult to believe that a defense intellectual of Dr. Gray’s caliber does not know the difference between the ideas of John Boyd and Art Cebrowski. Or that there are Soviet antecedents of the Pentagon’s RMA. Or that Boyd’s history as an anti-defense contractor Pentagon gadfly is unknown to him. Or that Gray was too lazy to look up easily available material on the OODA Loop. If it would help, I’d be happy to send Gray a copy of Col. Frans Osinga’s Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd .

Whether it would help though, is debatable.

“In the wake of the latest failed terrorist incident, the TSA announced a new round of security procedures designed to greatly inconvenience millions of air passengers without doing anything to increase their security…”

Here’s an idea. Let’s start using basic counterintelligence principles to screen prospective travelers to the United States and bar those young, unmarried, Muslim men having affiliations with radical mosques, madrassas, imams, extremist Islamist political groups or a history of  mental illness and erratic behavior from receiving visas to enter the United States. This clown should never have been able to get a visa. His own father, a senior government official of a foreign nation, was trying to red-flag him as a potential al Qaida terrorist  for us(!).

Would such a policy catch every prospective terrorist? No. Nothing will.

But it should at least keep out the no-brainer cases who currently are admitted to the U.S. under our politically correct TSA-DHS-State immigration regime. There’s really no upside to allow radical activists, recruiters for Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hezbollah fundraisers, and other enemies of civilized existence into our country. Or better yet, any Western country. Sure, CAIR will complain but as that organization is an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism case, in terms of civil rights, they are not exactly the NAACP.

In the meantime, maybe the airlines will start distributing catheters to pasengers whose landings are delayed.