2008-01-01 40-Second Boyd and the Big Picture Part 1

2008-01-01 \military tactics\US military\John Boyd http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000172.html Forty Second Boyd and the Big Picture (Part 1) &ldquo;Taking a few moments to understand what this odd man learned about airplanes and aerial combat will pay rich dividends later. Because John Boyd â€“ Pope John, The High Priest of the Fighter Mafia, the Mad Major, the Ghetto Colonel â€“ Forty Second Boyd not only wrote the revolutionary tactics manuals that gave American pilots the keys to air-to-air victory... and with it the essential and undisputed control of the battlespace. Nor was his achievement limited to the design of the phenomenally successful F-15 and F-16 fighters. Nor was it merely the codifying of physics and thermodynamics to make a science out of an art form. That John Boyd saw all of these things for the first time would have made him a legend. But this was quite the lesser of his two great achievements. For Boyd not only saw how to perfect the sword. He saw too how to perfect the swordsman.&rdquo;   
 * see also Part 2