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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 09/04
A Swift, Elusive Sword: What if Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did a National Defense Review?
Col. (Ret.) Chester W. Richards
Center for Defense Information
February 2003
Abstract
What kind of question is: “What if Sun Tzu and John Boyd did a National Defense Review?” Sun Tzu, if he existed at all, has been gone some 2,500 years. The late Col. John R. Boyd, U.S.A.F., while intimately involved in fighter aircraft design during his active duty years, wrote practically nothing on hardware or force structure after he retired, when he created the strategic concepts for which he is best known today.
Yet these two strategists offer a solution to the dilemma now confronting the U.S. military: U.S. spending on defense exceeds by several times that of any combination of threats, but the services still face cancellation of weapon systems and shortages of money for training, spares, and care and feeding of the troops. The only solution offered by political leaders is to spend even more. Sun Tzu and John Boyd offer a way out because they considered the problem of conflict in a wider scope. They explored the essential, but limited, role of military force in resolving conflict, and they examined in some detail the issue of “What makes a force effective?” The answers they derived are largely independent of the particular age in which one dwells and the specific weapons one uses.
Sun Tzu (c. 500 B.C.) emphasized harmony on the inside in order to create and exploit chaos outside. If done well, such a strategy eliminated, or at worst greatly reduced, the need for bloody battles. Employing time as his primary weapon, Sun Tzu strove to create ambiguity in the minds of enemy commanders as the milieu for weaving his web of surprise, deception, and rapid switching between orthodox and unorthodox tactics. The ideal result is “to win without fighting.”
Similarly, Boyd (1927-1997) used his well–known “observe–orient–decideact” pattern to “operate inside his opponent’s decision cycles” generating first confusion, then frustration, and finally panic in the enemy ranks. Once thus set up, the enemy could be finished off with a bewildering array of distracting and probing attacks, leading to multiple thrusts aimed at destroying his cohesion and collapsing his will to resist. A primary measure of merit was prisoner — not body — count. To allow forces to sustain such high operational tempos, Boyd codified an “organizational climate” derived from such diverse sources as Sun Tzu, the German blitzkrieg, and the early Israeli Army.
Recently, officers primarily in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have completed detailed recommendations on how to change personnel management systems to foster Boyd’s organizational climate. Boyd’s formula of “people–ideas–hardware, in that order,” holds as well for warring states on the plains of ancient China as for guerilla warfare or national missile defense today.
