Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

fs.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 99 posts

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#71

Post by Jtsummers »

dheera wrote: post #66
Jtsummers wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The eureka was giving it a name in order to articulate its importance in tactical and strategic thinking. That's really it. Other people, throughout history, have operated in the same fashion but either not described what they did or described it in different terms.

Hmm interesting. Maybe I should give a name to shoveling dirt. Look, Align, Poke, Scoop. LAPS. The most efficient way to get the most dirt shoveled is the LAPS loop. It's revolutionary. Can I be famous?

Perhaps if it leads to a better way to discuss or perform the task itself. I mean, someone came up with PASS (pull, aim, squeeze, sweep) but I don't think they became famous for it.

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#72

Post by pretendscholar »

>Although Boyd is regarded as a military strategist, he didn’t confine himself to any particular discipline. His theories encompass ideas drawn from various disciplines, including mathematical logic, biology, psychology, thermodynamics, game theory, anthropology, and physics.

This guy is really setting off my bs radar. Godel's theorem, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, entropy, this is like gpt-reddit.

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#73

Post by dragonwriter »

jfarmer wrote: post #59
dheera wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unclear as to what's novel about OODA. Can someone give me an alternative model for context? It seems like all other permutations, e.g. DOAO or ADOO or DOOA wouldn't make sense, so what is the "eureka" about OODA? Also, separately, it just sounds to me like perception (OO), planning (D), control (A) renamed so I'm still not seeing what's novel about it.

It seems like "perception, planning, control" is used for autonomous vehicles? That's all I see when I google it. Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s, so it's "novel" in the sense that it came ~30 years earlier. From a human perspective, I think the novelty is that that it focuses attention on hard-to-see aspects of decision-making. It's not about the quality of any given decision, but about your ability to keep the song…

> Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s

Every source I find says sometime in the mid-1950s. (The vagueness seems to be because he published very little, and the OODA loop was presented predominantly in oral brieifings; most of his writings that have been published or mined by other writers weren't intended for publication, but are briefing notes.)

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#74

Post by chriselles »

I’m a non-resident fellow at the Krulak Center for Creativity & Innovative, Marine Corps University.

It wasn’t just fighter pilots, the United States Marine Corps were deeply influenced by John Boyd’s work and his body of work is held by MCU.

Major Ian Brown has written a great book on John Boyd that is available free on PDF that is really quite good:

https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/ANewConceptionOfWar.pdf?ve...

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#75

Post by jfarmer »

dragonwriter wrote: post #73
jfarmer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like "perception, planning, control" is used for autonomous vehicles? That's all I see when I google it. Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s, so it's "novel" in the sense that it came ~30 years earlier. From a human perspective, I think the novelty is that that it focuses attention on hard-to-see aspects of decision-making. It's not about the quality of any given decision, but about your ability to keep the song…

> Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s Every source I find says sometime in the mid-1950s. (The vagueness seems to be because he published very little, and the OODA loop was presented predominantly in oral brieifings; most of his writings that have been published or mined by other writers weren't intended for publication, but are briefing notes.)

He would've been 23 in 1950, so that seems unlikely.

Nothing from the 50s listed here: https://www.colonelboyd.com/boydswork

AFAIK you first see the core concerns driven home here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a3add7e3df28d9fbff4...

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#76

Post by enraged_camel »

px43 wrote: post #60
nateberkopec wrote: post #7

For anyone interested in OODA, the Robert Coram biography of John Boyd, and "Certain to Win" by the Boyd disciple Chet Richards are good entry points. The value of OODA isn't really in providing a model for individual-level decisionmaking. The value is as a model for intra-organizational conflict: that one obtains strategic advantage (i.e. tempo) by running through one's OODA loop faster than competitors or opponents…

I feel like when I learned about the OODA loop, the big strategic advantage came from getting inside your opponent's OODA loop. It's less about being faster than them, and more about matching their tempo such that you're always one step ahead of them. In a fighter pilot context, this makes a lot of sense, and gives you a model for figuring out who is chasing who. One person controls the flow of battle, and one ends u…

Yes, precisely. Speed of execution of the OODA loop isn’t the goal in and of itself. The goal is to keep your opponent in a reactive state, and yourself in a proactive state.

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#77

Post by AndrewKemendo »

dragonwriter wrote: post #73
jfarmer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like "perception, planning, control" is used for autonomous vehicles? That's all I see when I google it. Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s, so it's "novel" in the sense that it came ~30 years earlier. From a human perspective, I think the novelty is that that it focuses attention on hard-to-see aspects of decision-making. It's not about the quality of any given decision, but about your ability to keep the song…

> Boyd outlined OODA in the 1970s Every source I find says sometime in the mid-1950s. (The vagueness seems to be because he published very little, and the OODA loop was presented predominantly in oral brieifings; most of his writings that have been published or mined by other writers weren't intended for publication, but are briefing notes.)

OODA was formalized in the 1960-70s with his destruction and creation briefing/seminar, and later EM theory work. However Boyd came up with the theory in the 1950s while he was a fighter instructor at Fighter Weapons School (TOP GUN for the Air Force).

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#78

Post by [deleted] »

earthboundkid wrote: post #51
joosters wrote: post #27

Before stating *how* fighter pilots make fast and accurate decisions, surely we need to study *if* fighter pilots make fast and accurate decisions? I mean, do they really? What evidence is there that pilots are great, or even above average, decision makers?

A lot of the discussion here is assuming that the US military is good at what it does, but we've been losing for twenty years to people who live without electricity, so either the Taliban has a lightning fast OODA loop or the concept is basically useless as applied.

[deleted]

Re: The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions

#80

Post by WJW »

mamon wrote: post #37
WJW wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that the OODA loop is most often presented as a (fairly obvious) decision model for individuals, the model itself is not the big idea. Rather, the primary value comes from the realization that in a competition (like war, or business, or sports, etc) between two or more individuals/groups the ones who can "cycle through" the OODA loop will be able to adapt faster and often gain the upper hand through sup…

> delegate your decision making to the lowest possible level [...] this will make the average decision slightly worse. I don't think that's necessarily true. Information going up the chain of command will always be a bit outdated, distorted, and incomplete (unless you can just live-stream video with sound to your command center). So with properly trained soldiers decisions made at lower level can actually be better t…

The soldiers on the ground can make better decisions about their own situation, yes. On the other hand, they will never know whether they could be even more useful 100 km further down south unless HQ tells them. Whether that kind of information actually matters changes from operation to operation.
Post reply on HN