[angkor]

There's an Acrobat version of Patterns Of Conflict here, and indications that Boyd is becoming a cult figure at http://www.belisarius.com/.

[walkingdead]

bump

[Tallguy]

Boyd was the first military thinker whose ideas incorporated the use of time itself as an important (or even in Boyd's thinking, crucial) element of warfare.

On arriving late to a battle Napoleon was quoted as saying to his on-scene commander, "There isn't enough time to win this battle, but there's time to win another." He also said something about his pocketwatch being his most important tool, or something like that.

Coram: When Cheney became secretary of defense, he was rare in that he knew more about strategy than most of his generals did. He called Boyd out of retirement in the early days of the Gulf war, and from him got an updating, if you will. And it was Boyd's strategy, not [Gen. Norman] Schwarzkopf's, that led to our swift and decisive victory in the Gulf war.

According to Bob Woodward's book, "The Commanders," Schwarzkopf was "playing" the DC warplanners when he gave them his initial battle plan (Hey-diddle-diddle, Up-the-middle). He expected that it would be rejected and that he would therefore get the extra troops he was asking for.

[ArmstedFragg]

Extremely interesting, and well written, but Swanson fell victim to the same confusion about "shock and awe" that has afflicted the reporting on the campaign.

Shock and Awe is a land warfare doctrine that, essentially, encompasses Boyd's designs. It simply involves the application of force that is so intense and rapid that the enemy either is paralyzed and therefore incapable of reacting (shock) or is so fearful of the consequences of reacting that he fails to do so. (awe) The doctrine was applied quite extensively during the final part of the 3ID's move on Baghdad.

Somehow, the media picked up the phrase "Shock and Awe" and attached it to leaks about the opening air campaign. Then, having created an unrealistic expectation, they were able to file stories deriding the failure to achieve it. It was sort of the classic case of a media-created issue. Mostly what DOD did was, simply, not correct their mis-impression.

We had "shock and awe"... significant amounts of it... in the land war, which is where the doctrine is intended to be applied.

Good find, though.

[John from Manhattan]

Thanks a lot for this post! A significant amount of my academic research is funded by DARPA, and I am always looking for resources like this (as a person coming from a non-military background) to help me understand the "big picture" concerning some of the projects that I'm engaged in.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Personally, I thought Rumsfield made it quite clear early on that the bombing was only one aspect of "Shock and Awe." I didn't see that many (if any) of the reporters understood. Apparently this guy doesn't totally understand either. Personally, if I was an Iraqi, the mere speed of manouver of the U.S. forces would have shocked and awed me...

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[DeweyCA]

The book by Robert Coram on Boyd definitely is a great read. Fun, exciting, highly informative.