Col. John Boyd - Congressional Record, Volume 143 Issue 37

[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 37 (Thursday, March 20, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2610-S2613]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

COL. JOHN BOYD

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am very sad to report that Air Force
Col. John Boyd died in West Palm Beach, FL, on March 9, 1997.
He was 70 years old.
He passed away after a long and difficult fight with cancer.
His remains were laid to rest today in Arlington Memorial Cemetery.
John was a native of Erie, PA. But John came to Iowa to go to
college.
Iowa is where his Air Force career began.
He won an athletic scholarship to the University of Iowa and enrolled
in the Air Force ROTC program.
After graduating in 1951, he went to flight school. He earned his
wings and began flying the F-86 Saber jet.
Then he went to Korea with one goal: shoot down a MiG.
Fortunately, for everyone concerned, that conflict came to an end
before his wish came true.
But to John that was one of the biggest disappointments of his life.
Mr. President, I am proud that John Boyd was educated in Iowa.
He was a great American who dedicated his life to public service.
I would like to honor him by speaking briefly about some of his most
important accomplishments.
First and foremost, John Boyd was a legendary Air Force fighter
pilot.
But John was no ordinary jet jockey. He applied his vast intellect to
understand the dynamics of air combat maneuvering at which he excelled.
To do that, though, he had to teach himself calculus so he could work
the formulas to quantify the problem.
This was the problem he saw.
Why did the heavier and slower American F-86 achieve near total
domination of the superior MiG-15 encountered in Korea?
John wanted an answer to the question.
After doing some truly original and pioneering work, he began
advancing a theory.
His tactical ``Aerial Attack Study'' became the bible for air-to-air
combat training.
It was instrumental in the creation of the Fighter Weapons School at
Nellis Air Force Base, NV.
That's the Air Force equivalent of the Navy's ``Top Gun'' program.
John being John, he never slacked off. He kept right on working and
developing his theory of aerial combat.

[[Page S2611]]

He wanted to take it to a higher plane.
And he did.
It culminated in the Energy Maneuverability Theory.
This was a very important piece of work.
John Boyd's Energy Maneuverability Theory was seminal in the
development of two of our premier fighters: first the F-15 and then the
F-16.
That theory helped to shape the design of those two very important
airplanes.
So, Mr. President, John Boyd was truly a giant in the field of air
warfare.
When I first met John in early 1983, he was applying his genius in an
entirely different field.
He had retired from the Air Force and had set up shop over in the
Pentagon.
He was given a small consulting contract and a cubbyhole-size office
to go with it.
His Pentagon cubbyhole was the birthplace of some very important
ideas.
That's when I met John Boyd. He was just beginning his reform
crusade.
He was the leader of the Military Reform Movement.
At that point in time, I was wrestling with the Reagan
administration's plan to pump up the defense budget.
I was searching for an effective strategy to freeze the defense
budget.
Cap Weinberger was the Secretary of Defense, and he kept asking for
more and more money.
The DOD budget was at the $210 billion level that year.
But Cap Weinberger had plans to push it first to $300, then $400, and
finally to $500 billion.
The money sacks were piled high on the steps of the Pentagon.
It seemed like there was no way to put a lid on defense spending--
that is until John Boyd walked in my office.
To this day, I don't know how he got there. Ernie Fitzgerald may have
introduced us. I don't quite remember.
But John had a secret weapon.
His secret weapon was Chuck Spinney.
Chuck was an analyst in the Pentagon's office of Program Analysis and
Evaluation, or PA&E.
He had a briefing entitled ``Plans/Reality Mismatch.''
John's plan was to use Spinney's material to expose the flaws in
Weinberger's plan to ramp up the defense budget.
So I asked DOD for Mr. Spinney's briefing but ran smack into a stone
wall.
At first, the bureaucrats tried to pretend it didn't exist.
For example, Dr. Chu, Spinney's boss, characterized Spinney's
briefing as nothing more than: ``Scribblings and writings gathered up
and stapled together.''
Well, that didn't wash. It just added fat to the fire.
DOD could no longer suppress the truth.
The Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe had already published major
reports on Spinney's briefing. A number of other newspapers had it and
were ready to roll.
The press knew this was a substantial and credible piece of work.
John's behind-the-scenes maneuvering finally led to a dramatic
hearing that was held in the Senate Caucus Room in February 1983.
It was an unprecedented event.
It was the only joint Armed Services/Budget Committee hearing ever
held.
In a room filled with TV cameras and bright lights, Spinney treated
the committee to a huge stack of his famous spaghetti charts.
This was Spinney's bottom line: The final bill of Weinberger's 1983-
87 defense plan would be $500 billion more than promised. It was
devastating.
Mr. Spinney's outstanding performance won him a place on the cover of
Time Magazine on March 7, 1983.
And it effectively put an end to Weinberger's plan to pump up the
defense budget.
Two years later, my amendment to freeze the defense budget was
adopted by the Senate.
If John Boyd hadn't come to my office and told me about Chuck
Spinney, the hearing in the Senate Caucus Room might not have taken
place.
And if that hearing hadn't happened like it did, I doubt we would
have succeeded in putting the brakes on Weinberger's spending plans.
The Plans/Reality Mismatch hearing was just one episode in the
history of the military reform movement, but it is the one that brought
me and John together.
There were many others. John was always the driving force behind the
scenes, giving advice, planning the next move, and always talking with
the press.
John Boyd always set an example of excellence--both morally and
professionally.
Mr. President, since John died, there have been several articles
published about some of his exploits.
There was a truly beautiful obituary--if such a thing exists--in the
March 13 issue of the New York Times.
It describes John's vast contributions to air warfare.
Second, there is a more colorful piece, which will appear in the
March 24 issue of U.S. News and World Report.
That one is written by Jim Fallows and is entitled ``A Priceless
Original.''
Mr. Fallows describes some of John's important contributions against
the backdrop of his unusual character traits.
Then, there is the letter from the Marine Corps Commandant, General
Krulak.
General Krulak describes John as ``an architect'' of our military
victory over Iraq in 1991.
That's an oblique reference to John's ``Patterns of Conflict''
briefing. This piece of work had a profound impact on U.S. military
thought.
It helped our top military leadership understand the advantages of
maneuver warfare. Those ideas were used to defeat Iraq.
And finally, Col. David Hackworth has devoted his weekly column to
John Boyd. It is entitled: ``A Great Airman's Final Flight.''
I ask unanimous consent to have these reports printed in the Record.
Mr. President, we have lost a great American--a true patriot. I will
miss him.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the New York Times, Mar. 13, 1997]

Col. John Boyd Is Dead at 70; Advanced Air Combat Tactics

(By Robert McG. Thomas, Jr.)

Col. John R. Boyd, a legendary Air Force fighter pilot
whose discovery that quicker is better than faster became the
basis of a far-reaching theory that helped revolutionize
American military strategy, died on March 9 at a hospital in
West Palm Beach, Fla. He was 70 and had lived in Delray
Beach.
The cause was cancer, his family said.
To combat pilots of the late 1950's, it was always high
noon in the skies above the Nevada desert. A pilot, a crack
instructor at Nellis Air Force Base, perhaps, or a hotshot
Navy flier passing through would get on the radio to call him
out and within minutes Colonel Boyd would have another notch
in his belt.
They did not call him 40-second Boyd for nothing. From 1954
to 1960 virtually every combat pilot in the country knew that
Colonel Boyd, a former Korean War pilot who helped establish
the Fighter Weapons School at Nellis, had a standing offer:
take a position on his tail, and 40 twisting, turning seconds
later he would have the challenger in his own gun-sights or
pay $40. Colonel Boyd never lost the bet in more than 3,000
hours of flying time.
A high school swimming champion who won an athletic
scholarship to the University of Iowa, Colonel Boyd, a native
of Erie, Pa., had superior reflexes and hand-eye
coordination, but what made him invincible in mock combat was
something else.
At Nellis he taught himself calculus so he could work out
the formulas that produced his repertory of aerial maneuvers
and led to his 1960 report, ``Aerial Attack Study,'' the
bible of air-to-air combat.
His combat experience was limited to a few missions in
Korea, but they were enough to produce a breakthrough
insight. Wondering why the comparatively slow and ponderous
American F-86's achieved near total domination of the
superior MIG-15's, he realized that the F-86 had two crucial
advantages: better visibility and a faster roll rate.
This, in turn, led Colonel Boyd to develop what he called
the OODA Loop, to denote the repeated cycle of observation,
orientation, decision and action that characterized every
encounter. The key to victory, he theorized, was not a plane
that could climb faster or higher but one that could begin
climbing or change course quicker--to get inside an
adversary's ``time/cycle loop.''
The fast-cycle combat theory, expanded by Colonel Boyd into
a lecture he later delivered hundreds of times, has since
been widely applied to fields as diverse as weapons
procurement, battlefield strategy and business competition.
One implication of the theory was that the best fighter
plane was not necessarily the one with the most speed,
firepower or range. Colonel Boyd, who enrolled at Georgia
Tech

[[Page S2612]]

after his Nellis tour, was helping a fellow student with his
homework over hamburgers and beer one night when he had an
insight that led to a way to quantify his ideas. The
resulting Energy Maneuverability Theory, which allows precise
comparisons of maneuverability, is now a standard measure of
aerial performance.
Assigned to the Pentagon in 1964, Colonel Boyd became an
important figure in a movement that started in response to
$400 hammers and other headline excesses of Defense
Department spending and soon expanded to question the need
for many hugely expensive weapons systems.
Although he had allies in the Pentagon, Congress and
business, Colonel Boyd's ideas often went against the grain
of a military-industrial bureaucracy devoted to the
procurement of the most advanced, most expensive and (not
coincidentally, he felt) most profitable planes.
Although his design ideas helped give the F-15 a big, high-
visibility canopy, his major triumph was the F-16, a plane
lacking many of the F-15's high-tech, expensive features, but
which is far more agile and costs less than half as much,
allowing for the purchase of many more of them for a given
expenditure.
Top Air Force officers were so opposed to the concept of
producing a plane that did not expand on the F-15's cutting
edge technology that Colonel Boyd and some civilian allies
developed it in secret.
The plane was hailed for its performance in the Persian
Gulf war, a war whose very strategy of quick, flexible
response was based largely on ideas Colonel Boyd had been
promoting for years.
Colonel Boyd, who maintained that the lure of big-money
defense contracts invariably perverted weapons assessment,
was so personally fastidious that during his years in the
Pentagon he became known as the Ghetto Colonel because he
lived in a basement apartment.
He carried his notion of propriety to such an extreme that
when he retired in 1975 and began some of his most productive
work, as a Pentagon consultant, he insisted that his family
live on his retirement pay. Initially offering to work full
time without pay, he was persuaded to accept one day's pay
every two-week pay period, because he had to be on the
Pentagon payroll to have access to the building, before
retiring in 1988.
He is survived by his wife, Mary; three sons, Stephen, of
Springfield, Va., Scott, of Burke, Va., and Jeff, of Delray
Beach, Fla.; two daughters, Kathryn, of Delray Beach and Mary
Ellen Holton of Centerville, Va.; a brother, H.G. Boyd of
Pompano Beach, Fla.; a sister, Marion Boyd of Erie, and two
grandchildren.
____

[From Inside the Pentagon, Mar. 13, 1997]

Letter to the Editor

To the Editor: I was deeply saddened to learn of the
passing of Colonel John Boyd, USAF (Ret.). How does one begin
to pay homage to a warrior like John Boyd? He was a towering
intellect who made unsurpassed contributions to the American
art of war. Indeed, he was one of the central architects in
the reform of military thought which swept the services, and
in particular the Marine Corps, in the 1980's. From John Boyd
we learned about competitive decision making on the
battlefield--compressing time, using time as an ally.
Thousands of officers in all our services knew John Boyd by
his work on what was to be known as the Boyd Cycle or OODA
Loop. His writings and his lectures had a fundamental impact
on the curriculum of virtually every professional military
education program in the United States--and on many abroad.
In this way he touched so many lives, many of them destined
to ascend to the very highest levels of military and civilian
leadership.
Those of us who knew John Boyd the man knew him as a man of
character and integrity. His life and values were shaped by a
selfless dedication to Country and Service, by the crucible
of war, and by an unrelenting love of study. he was the
quintessential soldier-scholar--a man whose jovial, outgoing
exterior belied the vastness of his knowledge and the power
of his intellect. I was in awe of him, not just for the
potential of his future contributions, but for what he stood
for as an officer, a citizen, and as a man.
As I write this, my mind wanders back to that morning in
February, 1991, when the military might of the United States
sliced violently into the Iraqi positions in Kuwait.
Bludgeoned from the air nearly round the clock for six weeks,
paralyzed by the speed and ferocity of the attack, the Iraqi
army collapsed morally and intellectually under the onslaught
of American and Coalition forces. John Boyd was an architect
of that victory as surely as if he'd commanded a fighter wing
or a maneuver division in the desert. His thinking, his
theories, his larger than life influence, were there with us
in Desert Storm. He must have been proud at what his efforts
wrought.
So, how does one pay homage to a man like John Boyd?
Perhaps best by remembering that Colonel Boyd never sought
the acclaim won him by his thinking. He only wanted to make a
difference in the next war . . . and he did. That ancient
book of wisdom--Proverbs--sums up John's contribution to his
nation: ``A wise man is strong, and a man of knowledge adds
to his strength; for by wise guidance you will wage your war,
and there is victory in a multitude of counsellors.'' I, and
his Corps of Marines, will miss our counsellor terribly.--
Proverbs 24:5-6
Sincerely,

C.C. Krulak,

General, U.S. Marine Corps,
Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Editor's Note: Col. John Boyd, who retired from the Air
Force in 1975, died March 9 at age 70. A fighter pilot of
legendary ability, Boyd was the author of several pivotal
explorations of warfighting theory, including ``Destruction
and Creation'' (1976), ``Patterns of Conflict'' (1981), and
``Conceptual Spiral'' (1991).
While still in the Air Force, Boyd was largely responsible
for the early design of the F-15 and F-16 fighters, and
contributed significantly to the design of the A-10 close air
support aircraft. His ``energy maneuverability theory'' is
still in use in designing aircraft for maximum performance
and maneuverability.
Boyd is probably best known for developing the concept of
the ``OODA Loop,'' short for ``observe, orient, decide,
act''--effectively a guide to anticipating enemy moves in a
fast-paced battle and heading them off at the pass. The term
was widely used during the 1991 Persian Gulf war in reference
to the U.S. force's ability to get ``inside'' Iraq's
decisionmaking cycle.
Boyd is considered the father of the Air Force's original
``fighter mafia'' and, after his retirement, a key leader of
the military reform movement in the 1980s.
____

[From U.S. News & World Report, March 24, 1997]

A Priceless Original

(By James Fallows)

True originality can be disturbing, and John Boyd was
maddeningly original. His ideas about weapons, leadership,
and the very purpose of national security changed the modern
military. After Boyd died last week of cancer at age 70, the
commandant of the Marine Corps called him ``a towering
intellect who made unsurpassed contributions to the American
art of war.'' Yet until late in his life, the military
establishment resisted Boyd and resented him besides.
Boyd was called up for military service during the Korean
War and quickly demonstrated prowess as an Air Force fighter
pilot. More important, he revealed his fascination with the
roots of competitive failure and success. U.S. Planes and
pilots, he realized, did better in air combat than they
should have. In theory, the Soviet-built MiG they fought
against was far superior to the F-86 that Boyd flew. The MiG
had a higher top speed and could hold a tighter turn. The
main advantage of the F-86 was that it could change from one
maneuver to another more rapidly, dodging or diving out of
the MiG's way. As the planes engaged, Boyd argued, the F-86
could build a steadily accumulating advantage in moving to a
``kill position'' on the MiG's tail.
Boyd extended his method--isolating the real elements of
success--while maintaining his emphasis on adaptability. In
the late 1950s, he developed influential doctrines of air
combat and was a renowned fighter instructor. In the 1960s,
he applied his logic to the design of planes, showing what a
plane would lose in maneuverability for each extra bit of
weight or size--and what the nation lost in usable force as
the cost per plane went up. Within the Pentagon, he and
members of a ``Fighter Mafia'' talked a reluctant Air Force
into building the F-16 and A-10--small, relatively cheap, yet
highly effective aircraft that were temporary departures from
the trend toward more expensive and complex weapons.
Warrior virtues. After leaving the Air Force as a colonel
in 1975, Boyd began the study of long historical trends in
military success through which he made his greatest mark. He
became a fanatical autodidact, reading and marking up
accounts of battles, beginning with the Peloponnesian War. On
his Air Force pension, he lived modestly, working from a
small, book-crammed apartment. He presented his findings in
briefings, which came in varying lengths, starting at four
hours. Boyd refused to discuss his views with those who would
not sit through a whole presentation; to him, they were
dilettantes. To those who listened, he offered a worldview in
which crucial military qualities--adaptability, innovation--
grew from moral strengths and other ``warrior'' virtues. Yes-
man careerism, by-the-book thought, and the military's
budget-oriented ``culture of procurement'' were his great
nemeses.
Since he left no written record other than the charts that
outlined his briefings, Boyd was virtually unknown except to
those who had listened to him personally--but that group grew
steadily in size and influence. Politicians, who parcel out
their lives in 10-minute intervals, began to sit through his
briefings. The Marine Corps, as it recovered from Vietnam,
sought his advice on morale, character, and strategy. By the
time of the gulf war, his emphasis on blitzkrieglike
``maneuver warfare'' had become prevailing doctrine in the
U.S. military. As a congressman, Dick Cheney spent days at
Boyd's briefings. As defense secretary, he rejected an early
plan for the land war in Iraq as being too frontal and
unimaginative--what Boyd would have mockingly called ``Hey
diddle diddle, straight up the middle''--and insisted on a
surprise flanking move.
John Boyd laughed often, yet when he turned serious, his
preferred speaking distance was 3 inches from your face. He
brandished a cigar and once burned right through the necktie
of a general he had buttonholed.

[[Page S2613]]

He would telephone at odd hours and resume a harangue from
weeks before as if he'd never stopped. But as irritating as
he was, he was more influential. He will be marked by a small
headstone at Arlington Cemetery and an enormous impact on the
profession of arms.
____

[From King Features Syndicate, Mar. 18, 1997]

Defending America, A Great Airman's Final Flight

(By David H. Hackworth)

Col. John R. Boyd of the United States Air Force is dead.
Future generations will learn that John Boyd, a legendary
fighter pilot, was America's greatest military thinker. He's
remembered now by all those he touched over the last 52 years
of service to our country as not only the original ``Top
Gun,'' but as one smart hombre who always had the guts to
stand tall and to tell it like it is.
He didn't just drive Chinese fighter pilots nuts while
flying his F-86 over the Yalu River during the Korean War, he
spent decades causing the top brass to climb the walls and
the cost-plus, defense-contractor racketeers to run for
cover.
He was not only a fearless fighter pilot with a laser mind,
but a man of rare moral courage. the mission of providing
America with the best airplane came first, closely followed
by his love for the troops and his concern for their welfare.
Many of the current crop of Air Force generals could pull out
of their moral nose dive by following his example.
After the Korean War, he became known as ``40-Second'' Boyd
because he defeated opponents in aerial combat in less than
40 seconds. Many of his contemporaries from this period say
he was the best fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force.
Not only was he skilled and brave, but he was also a brain.
The Air Force recognized this and sent him to Georgia Tech,
not to be a ``rambling wreck,'' but to become a top graduate
engineer. It was there that he developed the fighter tactics
which proved so effective during the Vietnam War, and the
concepts that later revolutionized the design of fighter
aircraft and the U.S.A.'s way of fighting wars, both in the
air and on the ground.
He saved the F-15 from being an 80,000-pound, swing-wing
air bus, streamlining it into a 40,000-pound, lean and mean
fixed-wing fighter, which Desert Storm proved still has no
equal.
Boyd was also a key player in the development of the F-16,
probably the most agile and maneuverable fighter aircraft
ever built, and costing half the price of the F-15. The top
brass didn't want it. To them, more expensive was better.
Boyd outfoxed them by developing it in secret.
Chuck Spinney, who as a Pentagon staffer sweated under
Boyd's cantankerous, demanding tough love says, ``The most
important gift my father gave me was a deep belief in the
importance of doing what you think is right--to act on what
your conscience says you should act on and to accept the
consequences. The most important gift Boyd gave me was the
ability to do this and survive and grow at the same time.''
Boyd never made general--truth-tellers seldom do in today's
slick military because the Pentagon brass hate the truth, and
try to destroy those who tell it. They did their best to do a
number on John. But true to form, he always out-maneuvered
them.
Norman Schwarzkopf is widely heralded as the hero of Desert
Storm, but in fact, Boyd's tactics and strategy were the real
force behind the 100-Hour War. Stormin' Norman simply copied
Boyd's playbook, and the Marines were brilliant during their
attack on Kuwait.
As USMC Col. Mike Wyly tells it, Boyd ``applied his keen
thinking to Marine tactics, and today we are a stronger,
sharper Corps.''
His example inspired many. He affected everyone with whom
he came in contact. He trained a generation of disciples in
all the services, and they are carrying on his good work,
continuing to serve the truth over self.
For those who know, the name Boyd has already become a
synonym for ``doing the right thing.'' His legacy will be
that integrity--doing the hard right over the easy wrong--is
more important than all the stars, all the plush executive
suites and all the bucks.
God now has the finest pilot ever at his side. And He, in
all His wisdom, will surely give Boyd the recognition he
deserves by promoting him to air marshal of the universe.
For sure, we can all expect a few changes in the design of
heaven as Boyd makes it a better place, just as he did planet
earth.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

____________________

Col. John Boyd - Congressional Record, Volume 143 Issue 37 clipping