Boyd in the Age of Loyal Wingmen

Brash, direct, and aggressive, Air Force Colonel John Boyd was an unusual man. In his biography of the late colonel, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, Robert Coram sings Boyd’s praises, calling him “one of the most important unknown men of his time” and “arguably the greatest fighter pilot in American history.” For those unfamiliar with him, John Boyd was more than an exceptional fighter pilot, mythically capable of defeating any challenger within 40 seconds. He was an outstanding thinker.

John Boyd gave the U.S. armed forces—and, really, the world—several groundbreaking theories and offered his intelligence in key ways. Any one of these would make him a significant contributor, but collectively they make him a legend. Early in his flying career, Boyd introduced the Energy-Maneuverability Theory, whereby pilots could optimize combat performance by reaching superior energy states against their opponents. His fanatical focus on aerial combat tactics led him to codify many maneuvers, and he later played a key role in the early development of what would become the F-16. Boyd is even credited with some of the maneuver tactics used by U.S. forces during the Gulf War.

But what Boyd is best known for, especially outside the military, is his time-based theory of conflict, which gave rise to his most famous idea: the OODA loop—observe, orient, decide, act. Boyd recognized that the natural behavior of institutions is to add levels of complexity and bureaucracy until the decision-making process is so obfuscated that operations break down. He saw this unnecessary complexity time and again in all branches of the military and perceived that the most effective fighting units simplify the decision-making process.

Today, with the rise of autonomous aerial platforms, naval aviation stands at the precipice of a new era in decision-making for aerial combat. At this pivotal time, naval aviation must not forget Boyd’s lessons, in particular the OODA loop.

Turning Inside The Loop

The OODA loop is a decision-making process in which an actor takes four steps in succession to carry out the most logical course of action in the shortest amount of time.

Observe. For Boyd, it was not enough merely to take in information as bullet points—a combatant must create a picture of the battlespace in his or her head. In naval aviation, there is a significant emphasis on building situational awareness, which falls under “observe” in Boyd’s conception. Over time, actors can develop what Boyd called “fingerspitzengefühl,” which, roughly translated from German, means a “fingertip feel” for the events unfolding—instinct.

Orient. Perhaps the most misunderstood element of the loop, orientation might be called “mindfulness” in contemporary parlance. Boyd stressed that biases—listed in his diagram as genetic heritage, cultural traditions, and previous experiences—cloud perceptions. The combatant most likely to win in a given scenario will be able to cut out these distractions and pull together a comprehensive plan across multiple disciplines. For example, a naval aviator effectively using the OODA loop must be able to orient to a situation by applying knowledge of aerodynamics, ethics, rules of engagement, etc.

Decide. Given some significant level of observation and orientation, an actor must decide on a path forward. Boyd noted that this step must be somewhat fluid and subject to Bayesian updating—altering your beliefs in the face of new information. Or, put differently, do not make the same erroneous decision multiple times. Each iteration of the loop must shine light on the probability of success of the next decision.

Act. While seemingly straightforward, Boyd emphasized that action in combat should be viewed as a test. While the decision is a hypothesis about the best available course of action, the action itself and ensuing reaction form a data point from which future loops will expand. In air combat, actions come in rapid succession, making it crucial naval aviators synthesize the effect of previous actions to improve their decisions in the next iteration.

Ultimately, the most important part of the OODA loop is the “loop” itself—in Boyd’s words: “The ability to operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than an adversary enables one to fold the adversary back inside himself so that he can neither appreciate nor keep up with what is going on. . . . He will become disoriented and confused.” The success of the OODA loop depends on being able to do it quickly, with sustained speed and faster than the enemy.

In a conversation between the author and Navy Captain Joshua “Flipper” Sager, who served as deputy commander and commander, Carrier Air Wing Eight, from 2018 to 2021, Captain Sager noted that today’s Navy pilots make exceptional use of the OODA loop. Training for fourth-and fifth-generation aviation puts the loop squarely in the toolbox of all pilots. But what is going to happen as the Navy and Marine Corps introduce pilot-controlled loyal wingmen platforms?

Loyal Wingmen

New Navy warfighting methods and concepts will turn the OODA loop on its head. The revolutionary Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program looks to usher in the sixth generation of aerial combat with groups of manned and unmanned aircraft working in conjunction.

According to USNI News, the Navy purchased two XQ-58A Valkyrie drones in late 2022 with the goal of using them alongside an “F/A-XX strike fighter component . . . that will be the ‘Quarterback’ of the [manned-unmanned teaming] concept.” The Navy says implementation will likely begin once the F/A-18E/F reaches the end of its service life in the 2030s. Defense News reports that, while the future is not written in stone, militaries around the world are already putting their chips on the table in support of this technology, arguing that unmanned systems accompanying manned systems present a “natural evolution” of air combat.

While there may be uncertainties about the particular role of these systems, one thing is clear: These drones will be controlled by human pilots. Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and now senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, stated that the proliferation of loyal wingmen “does not mean that these autonomous teammates will be ‘killer bots’ without any kind of human control or supervision. . . . [We are not] taking our morals, our ethics, our values out of the system and reducing it to a mathematical algorithm.” After all, this is what humans are good at—the complex moral and ethical considerations that must be made for combat to be lawfully waged. And while machine learning may in many ways mirror the human OODA loop, artificial intelligence technology in its current form cannot make the same ethical distinctions as human pilots.

OODA in the New Era

What this addition of loyal wingmen will do, however, is add to the OODA-loop burden of naval aviators already operating at the margins of maximum performance. While the argument in support of these systems is that they will allow pilots to focus on skills at which humans excel (including moral considerations), the rapid cycling of the OODA loop will require serious adjustments as aircraft enter the sixth generation.

In a 2016 Proceedings article, “The F-35’s New OODA loop,” Marine Corps Colonel Matthew G. Kelly writes about the fifth-generation OODA loop, stating that the capabilities of the F-35 have taken the OODA loop from dogfights to the information age. This has required pilots to become accustomed to a significant change—“observe,” for example, is now done mainly by sensors far superior to the human eye.

A more significant change awaits with the adoption of loyal-wingmen. Instead of just piloting his or her own aircraft, a pilot will be responsible for “quarterbacking” a team of aircraft. Even if they work together toward a common objective, each will have unique considerations and its own OODA loop to complete faster than the enemy. Consider a scenario in which a pilot has sent ahead one loyal wingman to perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. The pilot will be tasked with overseeing the maneuvering and intelligence collection of this drone, along with piloting his or her own aircraft. The “orient” part of the OODA loops has now grown by several factors.

Furthermore, pilots will need to account for a much larger amount of information when making decisions in the cockpit, growing the feedback loop and ultimately slowing each OODA loop iteration. While naval aviators have the capacity to embrace this challenge, the Navy and Marine Corps cannot sacrifice their readiness and warfighting capability while the kinks in this new OODA loop are being worked out—they must be ahead of the curve.

It is the responsibility of naval aviation leaders to anticipate this increased load on aircrew and tailor training to keep the tip of the spear sharp. While Colonel Boyd never lived to see this period of aviation, his devotion to simplicity and quick strategic decision-making must live on with naval aviation.