At one level, "Boyd" is a splendid yarn. So much so that one could make perhaps six movies from its stories. Call them, based on real-life characters in the book, "The Ron Catton Story", "The Jim Burton Story", "Hiding the Plane", and so on.
It's also a fascinating study of man versus organization. Boyd often dealt with a military version of "Dilbert" cartoons - petty and self-destructive activities carried on stodgy bureaucracies. Against this, he was masterful. He could make water run uphill, and it is a delight to read how he did it. Sometimes he worked with sympathizers in high places (including at least two Secretaries of Defense) and sometimes he just focused a group of like-minded people deep in the bureaucracy on a goal. Boyd used bluster and reason, idealism and guile, courage and fear. He persuaded fighter pilots around the world to change their tactics. He forced the Air Force to build planes that pilots and soldiers needed rather than those that contractors and Congressmen wanted. He quite literally rewrote the book on how the Marine Corps fights. He transformed the Gulf War strategy. And he did it all with a selfless and often hilarious personal style, mostly as an obscure, retired Air Force colonel, working a few days a week as a civilian at the Pentagon. He sought neither riches nor recognition.
He was, in sum, a consummate partiot -- and an effective one.
I think the book has two messages, one that Coram intends and one that he may not be aware of. He shows us, through Boyd, how to make bureaucracies perform unnatural acts. Like taking care of the people at the bottom of the organization charts, defeating truly bad ideas even when they are backed by the strong-arm tactics of the well-connected, operating at a rapid tempo, and successfully innovating. The book's other message comes from the last twenty years of Boyd's life, and from his study of "winning and losing". Although it may seem far-fetched at first, this study has much to offer to skeptics of war, even pacifists. Boyd believed, with Sun Tzu, that the greatest military commander was the one who could get the other side to lay down its arms without a fight. In his day-long briefings that spanned thousands of years of military history, Boyd rubbed his audiences' noses in the stupidity and waste of military engagements like the World War I "Battles of the Somme" that sent thousands to needless deaths. He hammered home example after example of smart military commanders who succeeded while minimizing or even eliminating casualties. If he wanted to disparage a strategy, Boyd often referred to it sarcastically as "bombing Schweinfurt" - a reference to the World War II "carpet bombing" campaigns that he despised. Boyd was no Gandhi, to be sure. He was one of the toughest warriors the Air Force ever produced, as the book makes plain. But his relentless focus on prevailing in a world of uncertainty, "attracting the uncommited" and especially, "isolating adversaries" led him more and more toward rapidity, precision and nuturing deeply shared values.
Mental agility outwits brute force every time, Boyd emphasized. More than that: operating at the "moral" level of belief and principled persuasion can be the key to ultimate success. Boyd argued not for the "ridge lines" of the traditional field commander, but for the "high moral ground" of the genuine leader. He argued for the power of integrity and honor -- the MILITARY power.
If a shooting war did come, Boyd wanted to win, but he wanted to do so swiftly, with minimal casualties and damage. There are probably thousands of American (and British and Kuwati and, yes, Iraqi) soldiers alive today who would have been killed in the Gulf War, had Boyd not decisively influenced its strategy.
Perhaps some may feel that an approach like Boyd's makes war more possible because it strives for fewer deaths and less destruction. But Boyd anticipated this. He allowed his studies to be freely and widely disseminated. So anyone contemplating a war using Boyd's principles must calculate that these very same ideas could be in the hands of the adversary.
Coram's book offers us a lot to think about these days.
Reading this book gave me alot of perspective as to what it means to be a true american, and a patriot at that. The beurocratic games that go on throughout the USAF, the mini wars that go on between the branches of the military and how true leaders, not the company men are often looked upon badly because they wont "tow the company line".
The undying confidence and ferocity that John Boyd took towards everything he did was a stunning example of what a strong heart and mind will make you achieve. His ethics are top notch and I see no one as a better role model for todays youth.
Coram writes with such detail showing not only the good sides but also the bad sides of the col., to give a well rounded picture of the man who literally wrote the book on fighter and ground attack tactics.
I suggest this book for anyone looking for a true story about a real american who had overcome many obstacles on the road to serving his country with his best abilities.
