“The way to win in a battle according to military science is to know the rhythms
of the specific opponents, and use rhythms that your opponents do not expect.”
—Miyamoto Musashi [1]

What does it mean to get inside an opponent’s OODA (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) loop?

The answer for a whole generation of Western military officers is to cycle through a decision-action framework quicker than the adversary, orienting to situations and acting faster than they can adapt.[2] It’s a compelling theory, but if the fastest combatant always prevailed the the history of combat from duels to state-on-state conflict would likely have many different outcomes. Speed, the decisive component in the Schlieffen Plan, could not compensate for the plan’s lack of flexibility.[3] Likewise, General Douglas MacArthur’s haste to drive X Corps and Eighth Army into North Korea ended up drawing China into the Korean War and led to a number of disastrous defeats in November and December of 1950.[4]

The reality is that speed is only one component of a fight. What is lost in a focus on faster decision-making is another equally important component, timing. Indeed, by definition, speed is derived from time, yet poor timing has prevented success in battles from Napoleon at Borodino to General Lee’s offensive at Gettysburg.[5] While speed is undoubtedly important, the key to interrupting an opponent’s OODA loop lies not in acting faster, but in acting at the right time.

The OODA Loop

Colonel John Boyd, U.S. Air Force, developed an iterative feedback model, what is now known as the OODA loop, after his experiences dogfighting in the Korean War.[6] Since then, it has become one of the most popular decision-making frameworks in the world, both in professional Western militaries and beyond. Businesses such as Dell and Scotts Miracle-Gro have implemented OODA-like processes, and in various sports Boyd’s OODA loop has been studied as a means to improve athlete gamespeed.[7]

Boyd’s OODA Loop is often depicted as a simple four-stage linear cycle.[8] The cycle begins with an observation, which leads a participant to orient on possible options, then decide on an appropriate course of action, and finally act on that decision. At that point, the results are observed, and the cycle begins again. In this version, success is a function of cycling through the OODA Loop faster than one’s opponent.

Boyd’s actual OODA loop, as introduced in a short slide deck presentation, “The Essence of Winning and Losing,” was much more detailed.[9] In this model, the loop is portrayed less as a linear cycle and more as an ongoing, interactive analytical process, a cybernetic process with multiple built-in feedback mechanisms.[10] Observation isn’t a single step; it’s a developing awareness based on constantly changing circumstances and imperfect information. Likewise, orientation never ceases, but rather constantly evolves as it takes in new data. Even the decide and act parts of the cycle are not isolated steps; rather, they are connected within the overall feedback loop. Actions can take place both simultaneously or in sequence.

Detailed OODA Loop

A key way to apply this full model of the OODA Loop is to look at it through the lens of the scientific method. In this perspective, decisions are hypotheses, and actions are essentially the process of testing a selected hypothesis, which in turn creates further information to be observed and analyzed. If that information is imperfect, or if one’s orientation to the resultant knowledge is flawed, then speed may not be useful; it will only hasten an inappropriate decision or action.

In other words, faster might not be better. Like a dancer who loses their balance, the solution is not to go quicker, but rather to stop, recover, and get back in tempo. The same applies to the OODA Loop. To employ it effectively, a participant must understand timing as well as the broader concept of rhythm.

Tempo, Speed, and Timing

NATO’s joint publication on operational planning defines tempo as “the rate or rhythm of activity relative to the adversary’s.”[11] In this definition, tempo is a function of two elements: the rate of activity, or speed, and the rhythm of activity, or timing.

In fact, there is another, more useful definition which implicitly blends both speed and timing, and that is Bruce Lee’s definition of tempo as “that little fragment of time which is the most suitable to accomplish effective actions.”[12] In this definition, successful combatants regulate their speed so their actions coincide with those of their opponent’s, with the goal being to be able to act at “the exact psychological and physical moment of weakness in an opponent.”[13] This specific rhythm in which movements are executed could be called cadence, and to apply this concept, it helps to look at combat through the idea of beats.

 Beats are commonly found in the arts, such as meter in poetry or the time signature of music. More broadly, a beat could be considered as any action or moment of change. They are present in fights as well. Consider the one-two combo in boxing, a simple count that integrates rhythm into a punching drill. In such a combo, the one count is a jab with the lead hand, while the two count is a back hand cross. The drill can be made more complicated, with threes, fours, fives, and sixes added in to represent hooks and uppercuts on both sides, but, whatever their number, the punches are the beats.

What makes this concept useful from a rhythm standpoint is the time between the beats. These are called half-beats, and if they were counted out, they’d sound like, “one-and-two-and-three-and-four.” In the one-two combo, the half beat is the moment after the lead jab has landed, but before the fighter has thrown the back-hand cross. This little fragment of time, this half-beat, is when a fighter is most vulnerable to being caught off-balance and having their rhythm broken. Put differently, these moments are when a fighter is most vulnerable to having their decision-action cycle interrupted.

Hitting the Opponent on the Half-Beat

Ultimately, the aim of getting inside an opponent’s OODA Loop, is to break their rhythm and cause them to miss a beat. Speed undeniably has a role here, because a combatant must have the perception speed, or coup d’oeil, to observe an opportunity, the mental speed to process the evolving situation and available options, and the performance speed to exploit an opening. But, as Bruce Lee wrote, “speed in delivering a stroke will lose most of its effectiveness unless the stroke is properly timed.”[14]

In practice, it is not enough to make decisions as fast as one can, because at a certain point this approach becomes divorced from one’s opponent and their actions. Instead, decisions and actions should ideally happen in a way that sets up an opponent and makes them vulnerable to having their rhythm broken.

Bruce Lee identified two traditional methods by which a fighter could use their cadence to accomplish this setup, the first being to adopt slower than normal actions in the lead up to a decisive attack. In this application, after an opponent has adapted to our cadence, they are vulnerable to sudden accelerations in our actions. Alternatively, the lead up could be at a normal or quicker than normal speed, setting up a final attack at a slower cadence. This strategy effectively forces the adversary to commit to an action, allowing a combatant to watch the reaction and strike once the adversary is out of position. Bruce Lee labeled these methods as “striking on the half-beat.”[15]

Applying these approaches to the OODA Loop in a contest with military opponents is clearly more complex than for a mixed martial arts fighter in the octagon, however, the principles remain the same. To generate advantage through use of the OODA loop, the goal is not to cycle through the process as rapidly as possible as this approach supports dissociation of one’s own decision-making process from that of one’s opponent. Instead, the OODA Loop should be used to identify those little moments in time when the opponent is most vulnerable to having their rhythm broken, and then enabling the action that will cause the most disruption. In other words, the potential  of the OODA loop is maximized when it is used to identify and exploit the opponent’s half-beat. Of note, this is consistent with Boyd’s own emphasis on the importance of the orientation stage of the OODA loop.[16]

A recent practical example of this strategy was the September 2019 drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which briefly wiped out half of Saudi Aramco’s production capacity.[17] In this case, the timing of the attacks may have been more important than the physical effects, since they occurred in the lead-up to Aramco’s initial public offering.[18] What’s more, the longer term impact of the attacks may have contributed to reduced investor interest and an Aramco valuation that did not meet its initially intended target.[19] At the very least, the attacks succeeded in compelling Saudi Arabia to focus on restoring its production capacity, in effect breaking their rhythm and forcing them to stop, recover, and get back on time. For the Iranian-backed Houthis, who claimed credit for the attacks, this Saudi pause took shape in the form of ceasefire negotiations, during which the Saudis ceased their bombing campaign.[20] In addition, Iran, widely believed to be responsible for the drone strikes, found increased influence with the Houthis in the aftermath of the attack, which was precisely what the Saudis had been hoping to prevent by entering the Yemen War. The timing of the attack, then, could be argued to have benefitted both the Houthis and Iran by catching the Saudis on a half-beat.

The Takeaway

Boyd’s OODA Loop has long been held up as a means to reduce reaction time and enable quicker and more streamlined decision-making. While greater speed is clearly an advantage in combat, viewing the OODA Loop through the lens of faster is better over-simplifies the model, and prevents combatants from realizing the full potential of this decision-making framework. By understanding that speed and timing are complementary, the potential of the OODA Loop can be maximized by focusing it to identify those moments when an opponent is most vulnerable, and providing options to exploit those openings at the most opportune time.

Alastair Luft is an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces and serves in the Canadian Joint Warfare Centre where he is the Branch Head for Joint Research and Analysis. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect the views of the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence, or the Canadian Government.

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Header Image: A US Fighter Pilot (Wikia)

Notes:

[1] Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, trans. Thomas Cleary (Boston: Shambala Publications, 1993), 15.

[2] Major Paul D. Tremblay, Jr., “Shaping and Adapting: Unlocking the power of Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop.” April 22, 2015. Accessed December 17, 2019. http://www.lesc.net/system/files/Shaping-and-Adapting-Unlocking-the-Power-of-Colonel-John-Boyds-OODA-Loop.pdf.

[3] Bill Fawcet, “The Schlieffen Plan: Belgium and France, 1914,” in How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders, ed. Bill Fawcet (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), 228.

[4] Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, (New York: Free Press, 1990), 166-169.

[5] Phillip S. Meilinger, “Time in War,” Joint Forces Quarterly, 87, no. 4 (2017): 93-94.

[6] Thomas Hughes, “The Cult of the Quick,” Aerospace Power Journal 15, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 57-68.

[7] Mark Bonchek and Chris Fussell, “Decision Making, Top Gun Style,” Harvard Business Review, 12 Dec 2013. Accessed February 28, 2020; Ian Jeffreys, “Agility training for team sports - running the OODA loop,” Professional Strength & Conditioning, 42 (September 2016): 21.

[8] Tremblay, Jr., “Shaping and Adapting: Unlocking the power of Colonel John Boyd’s OODA Loop.”

[9] John Boyd, “The Essence of Winning and Losing.” Accessed February 28, 2020; Patrick Edwin Moran, “Diagram of the OODA Loop.” Accessed February 28, 2020.

[10] MCDP-6, Command and Control, (Washington, D.C.: United States Marine Corps, 1996), 140-142.

[11] AJP-5, Allied Joint Doctrine for the Planning of Operations, ed. A, ver. 2 with UK national elements. (Brussels: NATO Standardization Office, 2019). Accessed December 17, 2019.

[12] Bruce Lee, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, (Santa Clarita: Ohara Publications Inc., 1975), 64.

[13] Ibid., 64.

[14] Ibid., 59.

[15] Ibid., 63-64.

[16] John Boyd, “The Essence of Winning and Losing.” Specifically, Boyd’s insight is to, “Note how orientation shapes observation, shapes decision, shapes action, and in turn is shaped by the feedback and other phenomena coming into our sensing or observing window.” Accessed February 24, 2020.

[17] Matthew Martin, “Why Saudi Aramco’s IPO is No Ordinary Share Shale,” The Washington Post, Dec 2, 2019. Accessed December 12, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-saudi-aramcosipo-is-no-ordinary-share-sale/2019/11/25/b38598d4-0f77-11ea-924c-b34d09bbc948_story.html.

[18] Shaji Mathew, Filipe Pacheco, Sarah Algethami, and Bloomberg, “What the Attacks on Saudi Aramco’s Main Oil Plant Mean for Its Massive IPO,” Fortune, Sep 16, 2019. Accessed February 24, 2020. https://fortune.com/2019/09/16/saudi-arabia-aramco-drone-attack-oil-ipo/

[19] Kate Kelly and Stanley Reed, “How Aramco’s Huge I.P.O. Fell Short of Saudi Prince’s Wish,” The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2019. Accessed February 24, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/business/energy-environment/saudi-aramco-ipo.html

[20] Bruce Riedel, “Yemen's war is escalating again,” Brookings, Feb 26, 2020. Accessed February 28, 2020.