John Boyd and the Value of Direct Competition
The case the the value of the combative martial arts
John Boyd. The name resonates among many, who know ‘of’ him through his concept of the “OODA” loop (observe, orient, decide, act), a model which is embraced by almost all ‘conventional’ militaries (guerrillas are another matter, and a topic for another day). Boyd thought deeply about competition and conflict.1 In his 1977 oral history, he offered some very interesting insights relating “direct” competition—as we find in martial arts like boxing, wrestling, or…swordsmanship.2 Through these kinds of competition, Boyd believed, key traits can be developed that yield advantages on the modern battlefield, even though hardly anyone wrestles or wields a sword in a firefight. If they do…well…. In any event, extending Boyd’s discussion only slightly, it becomes clear that there are real, tangible benefits for serious practitioners of combative martial arts, like swordsmanship.
As an Air Force officer, Boyd fell in love with air-to-air combat, a love that gave him at once his greatest insights into conflict and the biases which would lead the Fighter Mafia and the Defense Reform Movement into bitter arguments with the Air Force establishment.
I’m writing about these in the book project I’m doing right now, Eagles, Falcons & Warthogs: Gen. ‘Bill’ Creech, Col. John Boyd, and the Struggle to Remake the Tactical Air Forces in the Wake of Vietnam.3 I’m working on a section of the book that examines the realistic training both Creech and Boyd advocated in the 1970s, a period that coincides with the rise of the prestigious Red Flag exercises at Nellis AFB, led by Moody Sutor. Col. “Lucky” Anderegg and Dr. Brian D. Laslie have written persuasively about the importance of such training—read Anderegg if you want a cockpit view of the problem; Laslie if you want a skillful overview.4
Speaking to his interviewer, Boyd passionately discussed the qualities he felt were crucial for a fighter pilot to excel in air-to-air combat; in Boyd’s words, “I frankly feel that there must be a competitive environment in which reward or penalty is dependent upon your skill.”5 This rigid and brutal self-reliance stood out to Boyd, evincing as the passion, the drive, the “killer instinct” necessary to excel. He argued that, to bring out this sense, required a competitive environment, one that brought real reward or penalty, and the two discussed the merits of various sports, tennis, golf, football, boxing and wrestling, though Boyd made it clear that sports was only one potential route for such development: the important thing was the reliance on one’s own skills, and the reward for success contrasted with the penalty for failure. Boyd hoped that future research into different forms of competition, sport and stress might yield important data for realistic combat training.
Tennis, Weightlifting & Golf:
Degrees of Direct Competition
Boyd contrasted tennis, which he associated with “direct” competition, with “golf,” which was less direct.
At tennis, for example, you are trying to drive yourself down the other guy's throat. So in comparison to golf, tennis tends to be a more direct sport, as well as wrestling and boxing. In track, of course, the competitors are going for the tapes. So it is not as indirect as golf yet not as direct as boxing, wrestling, or tennis…Now weight lifting is kind of an indirect competitive sport in a sense. They lift the weights, but they do not throw them down. They do not hit the other guy over the head with them is what I am trying to say.6
The more direct competition, the more Boyd felt the mechanisms of reward and penalty, which he discussed as mainly internal but requiring external component, would help to hone the “hunter instinct” he thought necessary to dominate in a conflict environment.
In discussing golf, Boyd conceded that the sport was competitive, “For example, golf--you want to get 70 and if the other guy gets 72, you beat him. But that is on a scorecard, you do not compete against him directly in that sense.”7 The interviewer countered that “You are there with a 5-foot putt, and he has a 3-foot put to make. If you can make your 5-foot put, you are going to climb his goat right there.”8
But Boyd countered, “But…do you take the club and hit the other guy over the head and knock him off the course?”9
Team v. Individual
The talk also contrasted tennis with golf, focusing on the individual versus the team. The illuminating section really helped me to clarify part of the gulf between Boyd and the Fighter Mafia’s position and that of the Air Force establishment, in this case personified through General Bill Creech, himself a superb and accomplished wartime fighter pilot.
You have two kinds of athletes; the kind who tends to be very team oriented and the kind who is not very team oriented, the type who depends upon his own individual skills. I am most familiar with tennis and football, which is why I am expounding on tennis. Football is a good sport but it is necessary to depend on the other players to win the game.10
Boyd and the Fighter Mafia of the era viewed the Air Force’s mission of “air superiority” through his bias of air to air combat, a bias shared by other members of the talented Mafia members, including fellow test pilot Col. Everest Riccioni, Northrop representative Chuck Myers, all self-described Boyd “acolytes.”
Boyd was a genius, and perhaps devastating in a close-in dogfight, but the Air Force establishment took a wider view, noting that even air superiority was more challenged by surface to air missiles and AAA guns than by enemy fighters, and that the Tactical Air Command’s other two missions, close air support and interdiction, were in greater demand, and might contribute directly to a joint force victory. This was a team sport, like football, from the establishment’s perspective, while for Boyd and his Fighter Mafia supporters, fighter pilots were talented individual contributors.
One key problem with Boyd’s conception was that it revolved around talent, or perhaps what Carl von Clausewitz might have characterized as genius. Early in the conversation, Boyd asserted, “Going back to my analogy; if you are a competitive sportsman, isn’t the desire there? If you are a real true competitor, doesn’t the desire just come naturally?”11
Boyd’s undoubted skill in Aerial Combat Maneuvering, ACM, brought out his own sense of competitiveness, which he felt was crucial for fighter pilots (as opposed to bomber pilots, which required a different kind of steel, often going directly into the teeth of the enemy defenses, knowing one was not in complete control of the outcome.
The Air Force, for it’s part, seemed to have been looking to technology through the William Perry / Harold Brown “offset” strategy, in order to compensate for a shortage not only of pilots and airframes, but also geniuses. This is part of the story I’ve pieced together looking through a seemingly endless supply of documents from the 1960s-1980s connected to the controversy between the Fighter Mafia/Defense Reformers and the Air Force establishment. The F-15, F-16, F-117 and the A-10 were the products of the battles between the establishment and the reformers.
But, getting back to Boyd, and the role of competitive activity and success in combat, or in conflict…
The Hunter
Boyd felt that an individualist—like himself—(he did reflect that perhaps he was projecting too much), would be unhappy on a team sport, like football, because what drove them was an innate desire to conquer, mano-a-mano. A direct competitor reveled in the conflict, whereas, he theorized, one less enamored with direct competition might gravitate towards a team sport like football.
There are issues with this idea, as Boyd rightly cautioned at the time. Personally, I’m not a seeker of direct confrontation, but I greatly enjoy the kind of direct competition one gets in the practice of swordsmanship, or in Pente, for that matter. I suspect that what Boyd was describing here was only a slice of the successful fighter pilots, but a slice that he best understood.
I think a good analogy is “the fighter pilot has the hunter instinct,” the desire. He is the hunter…I don’t think he is going to dive into a boiling caldron. He is a hunter using all the cleverness, guile, strategy, every scheme he can throw in to come out on top; the mechanisms for keeping score. Whatever he is hunting, whether it is an animal, shooting down an airplane, or whatever the case is, he will get it.12
The extreme sense of individualism does characterize sports such as wrestling, boxing, and swordsmanship. Today’s e-sports are less direct, because the penalties are less physical, I think, though, like Pente and other strategy games, they do exercise the mental and some of the psychological aspects. Boyd felt this way too, but he clearly would have sympathized with John Madden, whose focus on winning in the NFL caused him to quip, “It’s only cheating if you get caught.”13
He is the killer and he is the winner. He ends up with a Gold Medal, stands on a Dias with everyone talking about him. He received the reward dependent upon what he did, upon his own ability. Notice that, “dependent upon what he did,” the track star, the gymnast, the boxer, the swimmer.…”14
Dealing with the Stress of Change
What was it about these individualized competitions that separated them, and gave their adherents that special “hunter” quality? It was stress.
That is the point. Now on the other hand, if you know you have to compete against me and you might get your head knocked off like in boxing or wrestling--they might not be the right sports, might not give you the right dynamics for a fighter pilot to reckon--this is only an analogy to get the direct stress situation, a one-on-one competition, where you are really going against the other guy. If you are good, you get the reward; if you are not good, you get the penalty.
However, normally if you are real good, you do not think you are ever going to get the penalty anyway because you are guile and clever, you know all of the dirty tricks, ruses, and strategies to come out on top. As far as you are II concerned, I have to keep score, but l know l am going to win. We are just going to keep score to be sure everybody else knows that I did, in fact, win. It is obvious that it is going to happen, that I will win." You see, the guy already knows he will win, which means that he is going to overcome his stress; he is going to be able to deal with that stress.15
Not necessarily physical stress, though Boyd probably did conclude that the physical plane brought a new level of stress that more directly. Boyd saw the utility in practical exercises of this kind because they gave the practitioner a valuable tool against the stress of disruption his (or her) enemies were likely to cause. The ability to “deal with” and “overcome” the stress is a confidence in skills, that the skills and knowledge give crucial advantages so that the game is no longer quite “fair.” Boyd said,
…you do not think you are ever going to get the penalty anyway because you are guile and clever, you know all of the dirty tricks, ruses, and strategies to come out on top.16
Essentially this seizing of every advantage, through personal preparation (training and education), combined with creativity, creates the confidence that puts one over the top. Preparation, via study and experience, taught “all the dirty tricks, ruses and strategies” while talent and experienced combined with “guile” and “cleverness” yield the creativity necessary to overcome an opponent.
Zero Sum Disruption
Boyd seems to have seen disruption in a binary fashion. “I have to keep score, but I know that I am going to win. We are just going to keep score to be sure everybody else knows that I did, in fact, win.”17 This phrase definitely gives crucial insight into Boyd’s character—while he was trying to generalize, he was talking about himself, even if subconsciously. But Boyd does appear to have believed in a zero-sum relationship between winning and losing; a modern perspective that challenges conceptions of chivalry and sportsmanship, where both competitors might win renown in the competition, even if one does earn more by winning.
In that sense, one of us is going to be able to cope with an environment and the other one is not; he is going to lose. He is not going to be able to cope. He is going to become unglued. You will see this in my presentation when it comes out.18
That presentation became Boyd’s second masterpiece, Patterns of Conflict, a behemoth of a briefing that ran between five and twelve hours.19 It covered Boyd’s theory of land combat, but, “The idea came from air-to-air combat originally, but then I started to think about it and thought, ‘Now, wait a minute. This is a very general idea. If it is true, then it should apply to warfare in general.’”20
Essentially Boyd’s theory is that, by “turning inside” of the opponent’s decision cycle, one disrupts his world enough to require his re-observation, re-orienting, re-deciding and perhaps, re-acting. This what is meant by seizing the initiative, which disrupting the opponent’s mental map of the world and which can paralyze decision-making.
Applying this to modern combatives
Because Boyd’s approach to combat is anchored in time advantage, sports and the martial arts have special use in terms of training the mind to ward off the threat and experience of stress that results from being out of the control envelope. While strategy games like Pente, Chess and Go are excellent for exercising positional initiative (expressed more as mass in Go), only sports really capture the temporal and physical stress that go along with warfare.21 Combatives—as with the boxing and wrestling Boyd mentioned—are perhaps at the pinnacle for honing these skills under the stress of one on one competition.
Boyd would even set up his dialogues with other people as combatives, “In many things that I do, I will set up an adversary relationship—not that I do not like the guy, that is not the point—because it sharpens me.”22 I don’t advocate this approach, because it also left a trail of broken relationships and anger that made it harder for Boyd to convince others that he was right. Formal debate—in person, NOT online—can do this also. But combative sports also exercise these skills, and they likely bring the lessons home faster than purely intellectual exercises, and certainly much more than online ones, because the risk is greater, so too the learning may be faster. Today, fencing, boxing, MMA, wrestling, and historical swordsmanship all offer combative sports that are accessible and effective at teaching these lessons.
I choose to practice historical, medieval swordsmanship, in part because of this same sense of challenge and accomplishment that Boyd so clearly describes. In work in armour—both because I love how the armour looks and recalls the historical context for the art—but also because we can fight much closer to the edge in harness, not having to pulls blows back as much, which invests more of the emotional side, as well as the logical side. Sword-fighting is fast, precise, and agile; all the things Boyd talks about. Yet there is also an underlying set of principles; victory usually goes to the one who adapts faster, working through those principles. The spear, while less complex than the sword, is even faster! And it’s also fun.
Fighting in armour crystallizes the essence of Boyd’s OODA loop. He or she who acts first with a viable action, has a chance to seize the initiative; the more creatively his or her action—but without violating the underlying dynamic principles—the greater chance that it will discomfit the opponent, and cause them to start the observe-orient-decide-act cycle all over again. They capture the stress of competition, communicating in a visceral way. If Boyd’s theories are correct, that might yield the confidence needed think, and to act—and thereby seize the initiative, under conditions of conflict.
Combative sports come close to combat, but they are not combat—the element of danger is missing. This is why, in the fifteenth century, the Burgundian champion Jacques de Lalaing won acclaim by fighting with his visor raised—he risked more, therefore he won more; a medieval perception first articulated by the fourteenth century knight Geoffrey de Charny, but one that applies just as certainly today.23 And it is likely the reason that medieval tournaments were so highly valued: as simulacrum of battle, as medieval scholar Juliet Barker termed it.24
Winning is Important
Boyd argued strongly that winning and losing were binary. While that is not wholly true in combative sports, historically or today, fighting does yield a kind of binary that Boyd thought crucial,
In some sense—maybe I’m wrong in saying this—the guy has to see the results of his own personal victory in part. He gives his all during that one-on-one competition and he needs his due reward or penalty.25
In a fight, “winning” the fight can be overturning the opponent, or it can mean overcoming a key challenge. For example, in sparring, especially against a less experienced combatant, I might well restrict my pallet of actions in order to exercise something I have less confidence in, or do less often. In so doing, I place myself at a disadvantage for a specific purpose—not to coddle the opponent (though from a teaching perspective I do like to make it possible for my student-opponent to find an opening, if they work hard enough)—but rather to give us both something work on. In this context, “winning” is overcoming despite that handicap.
Regardless of how winning is defined, Boyd seemed to be speaking of the psychological effect of winning, which he found not only valuable, but of foundational importance.
Even today, the stress is heightened in a tournament; the larger and more public the tournament, the more fame/renown to be won, and so the greater the effect. In this way sparring is very different from tournament. As Boyd noted, “There is competition. They are going to find out who is best; a head-on competition.”
Conclusion
The essence of Boyd’s character provided the kernel of his influential theories. His focus on air-to-air combat during the 1950s and 1960s and his single-minded focus yielded profound influence which can today be generalized, through forms of “direct competition,” especially in combatant arts, generating more confidence under stress than can be leveraged in any conflict activity.
Don’t yet practice a competitive combat art? I can recommend one: www.scholasaintgeorge.org.
The most recent discussion of Boyd’s ideas may be found in Ian T. Brown’s A New Conception of War: John Boyd, the U.S. Marines, and Maneuver Warfare, Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2020, especially chapter 4. For a deeper look at his ideas, blended with biography, see Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 2001. For the deepest dive, see Frans P.B. Osinga, Science, Technology and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, New York: Routledge, 2007. Boyd’s full biography was written from the perspective of the Defense Reformers by Robert Coram, Boyd: the Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War, New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2002.
John Boyd, oral history by Lt. Col. John K. Dick, Jr., Washington, D.C.: United States Air Force Historical Research Center, 1977, originally classified CATEGORY 2, “permission to review required from AFHRA/CC,” but the interview was released two years after Boyd’s death, 9 March 1997. There is also an earlier oral history, done in 1973, also by the U.S. Air Force, but I’m not citing from that document here.
Under contract with Naval Institute Press, forthcoming.
C. R. Anderegg, Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade After Vietnam, Washington, D.C.: Air Force History & Museums Program, 2001. Brian D. Laslie, The Air Force Way of War: U.S. Tactics & Training after Vietnam, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2016.
John Boyd, oral history, 74.
John Boyd, oral history, 72.
John Boyd, oral history, 72.
Ibid.
Ibid.
John Boyd, oral history, 71.
John Boyd, oral history, 69.
John Boyd, oral history, 78.
Heard on a Madden interview, late 1990s, California Bay Area radio station, by the author.
John Boyd, oral history, 70.
John Boyd, oral history, 76.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Boyd’s first masterpiece is probably the paper he co-authored with Tom Christie on Energy Maneuverability, which gave a mathematical depiction of fighter characteristics, enabling the comparison of different designs. EM theory remains in use today. Boyd himself, and his acolytes, might include his manual of fighter tactics, and his trade-off studies that informed the F-X / F-15 designs, or the lightweight fighter F-XX / F-16 & F/A-18, all three of which are flying today.
John Boyd, oral history, 92.
Video games and e-sports, it might be argued, convey the temporal aspect. They certainly can, but they lack the immediacy that presence and physicality offer, and so are probably less effective tools than are combative sports.
John Boyd, oral history, 80.
For Jacques de Lalaing, see Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments, New York: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 1989, 118-120.
Juliet Barker, The Tournament in England, 1100-1400, Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986, 145.
John Boyd, oral history, 79-80.