Talk:John Boyd (military strategist)

Incest ?

A paragraph of the Incest article leads the reader to this John Boyd Article.

Sometimes the word "incestuous" is also used metaphorically to describe other inappropriately close relationships, for example between an authority figure and a subordinate, or between people in the same profession or creative field. The term "incest group" is also common in high school, and denotes a group of friends that only date others within their group. Institutions such as churches, colleges, and sometimes whole nations can be described as incestuous when inappropriately close relationships, corrupt conflicts of interest and secret collusions occur inside the institution and especially within the institution's top echelons such as in cases John Boyd exposed in the Pentagon.

Please verify. 69.196.4.153 15:20, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

The article reads too much like an advertisement for Boyd, accepting his claims uncritically. For instance, that stuff about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem has very little to do with what the theorem actually states. It is rather doubtful that Boyd understood any of it. Leibniz 11:31, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually it has a lot to do with what the theorem states. The essence of the theorem is that a static logical system cannot fully capture all truth. If Boyd didn't understand it then I would have to say Chaitin didn't either http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/sciamer3.html because both of them concluded the same thing that a static logical system would not work according to Godel's theorem and would require the addition of new axioms in the light of new information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.52.163.84 (talk • contribs) 04:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

• No. A "static logical system", as you put it, is a set of axioms in some formal language, e.g. the Peano axioms, stuff like that. That has nothing to do with what some Colonel knows or does not know about what the enemy is up to. Chaitin's pop-logic salesmanship is lamentable if it promotes such confusions. Leibniz 13:19, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

No offense, but that Colonel did have a Master's degree in engineering. Please don't judge the work unless you've read it - Boyd's work (which is available online in many sources) adapted concepts from multiple disciplines to achieve new conclusions and techniques for command and control theory.

Now the language may need to be toned down in terms of advertising. But the guy wrote the Air Force Air to Air tactics manual, ran the air force's "Top Gun" equivalent school for years; developed energy maneuverability theory (which is now industry standard for fighter design); consulted on the F15 program, developed the F16 and consequent F18 program; not to mention lots of later esoteric work that was fully embraced by the USMC and many foreign militaries. He made several legitimate contributions to military science over several decades. Arguing semantics of a sound bite from his work hardly seems relevant unless you can authoritatively compare and contrast his work in detail using verifiable sources. The remarks about Boyd's adaptation of or inspiration from Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem is verifiable in several references. This is encyclopedic content; not a debate on validity of academic theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.82.126.100 (talk) 22:00, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

wars

My recollection from reading a biography on Boyd was that he served in Vietnam, but not as a pilot like he was in the Korean War. In fact he intentionally got himself sent to Vietnam and ran a small base if not mistaken, just so he could be recognized for that service. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Whidbey (talk • contribs) 08:50, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

No source material supplied for that recollection. --Born2flie (talk) 03:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The Time as a base commander in Vietnam is in the Coram Biography referenced at the bottom of the article. Not to mention available in Air Force Service records. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.82.126.100 (talk) 22:05, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Confused Theories

The article similarly confuses Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with chaos theory. Uncertainty in the common venacular says that observation affects the outcome, which as far as I can tell has nothing to do with Boyd. Chaos says that small pertubations in a complex system can cause large changes in outcome, especially if the system involves feedback loops. Air combat is certainly a feedback loop between the combatants, and so at least Chaos Theory may be relevant to this topic.

I don't know enough Boyd history to know whether Boyd was confused about Heisenberg and Chaos, or if it is just the writers of this article who are confused. In either case it should be fixed, either by deleting the Heisenberg reference entirely, or by explaining some confusion in Boyd's writings about Heisenberg. Crispincowan 21:19, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I've removed the confusion of chaos with Heisenberg and entropy. Chaos theory became widely known much more recently than the other stuff, so it looks like anachronistic additions to Boyd's pseudoscience. Leibniz 22:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

In my book Science Stragtegy and War, the strategic Theory of John Boyd, I have carefully tried to trace Boyd's study of scientific literature. He read quite a number of primary and secondary studies of a wide variety of subjects. This included Godel, Heisenberg, Wiener, Popper, Kuhn, Chaitin, and later authors on chaos and complexity theory, but also studies on evolution, organizational learning and neurophysiology. He fully grasped the essence of the concepts he found in such works and was convinced of the wider implications, and that those ideas also had relevance for the study of strategy. He may have simplified and perhaps not always appropriately employed those concept in his communication with a largely non-scientifically oriented audience, but I believe that Hawkins, Greene or Dawkins were guilty of that too sometimes. (Frans Osinga) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.75.62.178 (talk • contribs) Revision as of 19:39, 4 May 2007

Read and Study more, assume less

To all who made comments about Boyd's lack of knowledge about Heisenburg and Goedel's theory, read his essay entitled Destruction & Creation first, and then disagree with his use of these theories if you still think it wrong.Stanleywinthrop 19:46, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Seconded. Read any of his material and understand it, and then try again. Boyd was a genius on the order of Sun Tzu, both as an engineer and a military strategist. Not to mention the best damn fighter pilot that ever lived. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.231.144.226 (talk • contribs) 07:47, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Boyd may have been all that but he was proven wrong in one thing; that F-4's cannot compete, much less survive against MiG-17's, 19's and 21's in dogfights! His re-education was courtesy of instructors from TOPGUN. Read the book "A Scream Of Eagles". WikiphyteMk1 (talk) 15:35, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry pal, Boyd never claimed that the F-4 was superior to the Migs (although the F-4 did acheive a positive kill ratio against those aircraft by the end of the vietnam war.) In face the E-M theory that Boyd invented proved that the MIGs were superior aircraft in terms of manuverability.Stanleywinthrop (talk) 17:48, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Just to second on that - the F4 comment doesn't make sense. But to clarify - The F4 was well known to all as unable to turn in a dog fight, and initially lacked guns - having a distinct disadvantage given 1960's era AAM's. Boyd's F4 and MIG EM profiles for the Air Force show that. The F4 can compete against MIGs using decades old Dick Bong P38 tactics - use superior speed and altitude and stay out of a turning fight you can't win. Given appropriate tactics Navy, Marine, and Air Force crews were all successful engaging F4's against a variety of Vietnam era MIGs, even ones flown by Soviet Pilots.

Problems with Notes

There are a couple citations that are problematic. Specifically, one that states, "Conversation with Franklin C. Spinney, 1998", and another which says, "the writer witnessed one such incident in 1983." Neither of these seem to meet the intent of WP:RS and WP:VERIFY. I have not removed those parts of the article as I am not familiar with the source material for the subject of the article. I'm hoping by commenting here, that someone knowledgeable about the subject matter and actively participating in editing this article will address the issue appropriately. --Born2flie (talk) 04:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I recognize those references - They are the primary Reference's used in Coram's Biography or possibly Hammond's Book. And should be re refrenced as such should anybody have the time to look up the refrences and get page numbers. Also Frans Osinga's book should be referenced in the sections on Boyd's technical work ; Corman wrote the biography and Hammond's work is much less rigorous in technical detail.

Honestly the whole article is incomplete, and covers a very esoteric and hard to explain subject - so expect lots of confusion and debate on the details. The only guy's I've seen that get it are ranking officer instructors at war colleges, aka "Professional Practitioners of Violence." (Their words, not mine). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.82.126.100 (talk) 22:15, 6 October 2009 (UTC)