It’s finally here!  I said I’d make it and I’ve officially started.  This will probably start as bullets as thoughts pop into my head and perhaps gain elaboration in the future.  Perhaps not.  Pretty standard for this weblargh.

Here we go…

I was first introduced to the concept of the OODA, “loop,” back around 2003-2004, in my freshman year of college.  The assignment in my ROTC class at the time was to pick one officer, past or present, and do a briefing on him/her, max length of five minutes.  I didn’t want to do any of the most commonly known, (Billy Mitchell, Hap Arnold, Jimmy Doolittle, etc.) but I knew I wanted to report on a fighter pilot.  I found a biography by Robert Coram on the late Col. John Boyd, and was stunned I had never heard of his accomplishments in my short time in the AFROTC.  But I made one horrible mistake: I only read the first two sections in the book. It wasn’t until the second time I read Boyd that I finished it and was intoduced to his development and implementation of the OODA, “loop.”

Long story short, I don’t by any means consider myself an expert on the subject, I’ve only been learning about the subject offhand for roughly 5 years.  The real experts do this stuff for a living.

So it came time for me to go to ASBC (Air and Space Basic Course) this past November, and it was there that I got a better understanding of what the Air Force thinks OODA is.  I say, “thinks,” because it was apparent to me that they didn’t, “know.”  We were given a briefing on AFSO21 in one of our last days, and the briefer introduced to us a new “8-step Problem Solving Process.”  On the next slide, in a seemingly obligatory reference to John Boyd, he somehow, “grafted,” OODA onto this new process.  The first few steps he considered to be Observation, the next few Orientation, one or two steps were the Decision, and the final steps were the Action.  He then said something to the effect of, “and since the OODA loop is the fastest decision making process we know of, this new program will work really well.”  Finished, he looked out at the audience with an expression of self-satisfaction.

Such is the Air Force’s severe misunderstanding of OODA.  It is not a circular step-by-step process, where upon reaching the final step, we simply repeat, much like cheap shampoo.  What the briefer did reminds me of skin grafting, where although you can use, say, skin from your back to put on your face, it’s not really meant for your face.

Stay with me here.

OODA can technically be used as a problem solving, “process,” but that’s not what it was designed for.  The Air Force’s model of the 6-step problem solving process (or 8-step, you pick) is rigid, sequential, and predictable.  Try using those words with anyone familiar with OODA, and you’re likely to get slapped.

There are three (possibly more as I think of them) reasons off the top of my head why OODA cannot be lumped in as just another problem solving process.  First, PSP’s must be completed from step one to step X, and then repeated.  By their nature, they are checklists, and as such are rigid and sequential (I already said that.)  OODA on the other hand, is the essence of flexibility.  There are paths and correlations that feed into each other, providing options, actions, and feedback all at the same time. If one or more elements need to be skipped, or done more than once (implicitly we wouldn’t even notice this anyways) OODA allows for it, and then feeds back into future iterations.  This leads into the next point:

Second, OODA is a learning machine.  PSP’s assume nothing, and take no previous experience into account until the, “List Possible Solutions,” stage.  In the Air Force’s 6-step PSP, that’s #3.  So, in a reference I made to a room of 2LT’s, if you were to encounter a problem today and solve it using the 6 Step PSP, and if tomorrow you encountered the same problem, you would still have to go through all 6 Steps to come to the same solution again.  There is no place for learning in PSP’s, each step must be completed whenever a problem is presented.  OODA learns the entire time it is being operated (I’m making it sound like a process, but it’s a simplification for comparison, apologies).  There are constant feedback loops from each, “step,” allowing for implicit guidance and action based on previous experience.  So in the example used previously, when that same problem is addressed the next day, we already know what to do based on our previous experience, which is part of the Orientation component.

Finally, PSP’s are strictly for Problem/Solution relationships.  Meanwhile, the entire existence of OODA stemmed from the desire to understand competition.  It takes into account that competition is comprised of, at the most basic level, two or more intelligent, learning, and ever-changing entities competing for similar yet opposite goals.

There’s not much in the way of elaboration there, and my brain’s starting to hurt, so we’ll pause here for now.