Taking a jab at Col Boyd...

I am pretty sure most of the members here tend to despise POGO and alittle bit of the "Fighter Pilot Mafia" from which it grew from. SgtMac (where ever he is, hope is is well) did a good job dismantling most if not all their arguments over at his blogsite. This youtuber takes a very stiff jab at the late Col. Boyd...

Starts off with an analogy to an fictional/non-fictional player on some online game. He really starts to throw his punches at time index 9:15.


I would like to hear your guy's thoughts on this...

Personally in my time in the military I have never heard the term OODA Loop until I went on line and saw it. Later on in my life when I did hear people refer to it, it was almost always in a bit of a dismissing manner.

Here you go - suggest you read this:

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=8478&hilit=Boyd+love


Must be loads more because OODA loop has been discussed many times on here - there is even an F-35 and the OODA loop thread.


Thought the video was really poor - could not listen past half way and the author may as well be making it up of the top of his head - clueless.


The book Boyd goes against Boyd because it is a tad over the top in places (called a Hagiography by some) - Not all of it is fiction.

His work on EM with Christie was real that was applied to various fighter designs including the F-15/16. Documentation shows he was part of the USAF LWF team in the early stages but he was only part of a team he had limited influence. Harry Hillaker has written how he worked with Boyd on the LWF in various interviews in the past.

They had the right contacts in the Pentagon to get the LWF program up and running. Obviously there were a lot in the USAF vehemently against it because it threatened funding to the USAFs baby which was the mega expensive F-15. They probably still hate it to this day


A lot wont understand the combat environment of the late 1960s and early 1970s that some of their ideas were driven by (Boyd retired in 75) - cant really blame him for not seeing the massive tech jump in capability and reliability in the late 70s.

Have spoken to someone who worked with him in the 60s and he got a pretty good review.

Outside of his presentations get the impression he did some good - also see:

Boyd

Salute!

Well, Basher, talk to some early Viper drivers besides me. The ones that were in the "requirements" shop at TAC and the Pentagon during mid to late 70's. The "doctrine" folks and tactic folks were not all that against the LWF concept, but the real conspiracy theory most of us subscribed to had to do with the missiles.

If the Viper had Sparrows, then why have Eagles? At the time, the radar folks and GD saw no problem integrating the Sparrow, and then we would have the face shot and engage in weather. The Lima changed all that early in the game, and we practiced with it when I was checking out in the fall of '79. But a radar missile on the Vipers would make it hard to keep buying Eagles, especially when the Eagle folks were crowing "not a pound for air to ground".

By the time the Slammer went operational, it went to Vipers first, and not just to provide the face shot. We had the 1553 mux bus and a better integrated fire control and stores management system.

And that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Gums sends...

It's funny to me that the Eagle community with their massive radar was afraid of giving up Sparrow shots to Vipers. I would have thought the "I'm nearly an AWACS" radar would have been justification enough to keep them around.

F-15 could also carry significantly more of those Sparrows, so there is also that justification. But didn't Viper get the Sparrow capability fairly early with Block 25 or am I mistaken?

F-15 could also carry significantly more of those Sparrows, so there is also that justification. But didn't Viper get the Sparrow capability fairly early with Block 25 or am I mistaken?

Some sources say that but it seems to have been the block 40-50 and only a few customers ordered it as well as the special build ADF Block 15.

Salute!

The Sparrow needed an addition to our basic radar to "illuminate" a target and maybe a gizmo in the station RIU to "tune" the thing before launch. So was not real hard, but the Slammer was well on the way, and no big hardware mods. So we still couldn't shoot in weather, and were waiting for the cosmic AMRAAM. In fairly decent weather, the Lima was deadly, and we saw it in the Falklands soon enough.

The Eagle had a great radar, so it could sort and assign and target multiple bandits from much further out than we could. But our really great A2G capability made a difference to Congress, as we had damned good A2A demonstrations at Red Flag and by the Israelis. So some thot it would be cheaper to add the Sparrow for us and buy fewer Eagles.

Gums sends...

Cheers Gums - I suppose if the politicians saw something that can fire a Sparrow at significantly less cost then can see why that would be a threat - F-15 capability could mean for nothing.

Alton Slay mentioned in 1976 they needed to make the unique pylons at that point as well.

I dont think the man should be torn down but the one thing I do think is that he isn't the cream of the crop that I have read and heard so much about him. I always used to hear that he was a some kind of ace fighter pilot but when I did some digging of my own I couldnt find a single combat record in Korea or Vietnam. No doubt the man has made an impact on US fighter aircraft design and how we think about them but the one thing is that there are so many more that have done to truly make things to where we are but for some reason he gets all the credit.
My main contention is that him and his group created "reformers" and the infamous POGO. I wonder what the man would think of fighter aircraft of today. Would he hate the F-35 and F-22? I believe he would hate the program and how it was run but would love the aircraft.

There is certainly a lot to read about Boyd - good and bad.

The reformers arguments just got more ridiculous over time and their credibility and influence waned.

This kind of touches on some of Spreys antics https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0188reformers/ - but that was amplified later with POGO etc.


This book has a fair bit of research on the reformers. I tended to ignore some of the book especially the bits about the cult of the fighter pilot and some crap about Boyd wanting to recreate WW1 dogfights.

Hankins, Michael W.. Flying Camelot (Battlegrounds: Cornell Studies in Military History) (p. 281). Cornell University Press. Kindle Edition.

Boyd not wanting a radar may have been true but he apparently had reluctantly agreed it should be on the F-16 by the mid 70s though. You would think he might have liked the F-35 to some extent - it does kinda do his OODA loop but through information superiority / agility instead.

Salute!

Forgive me, but if some here can't find OODA, I can't find POGO.

I personally heard Boyd brief OODA and a tiny bit of EM air combat when at Air University. Was 1976 or 77. We brought in many high profile strategy and doctrine folks to address the students. Ditto for Lind and I finally got to actually meet Riccione at Hill as he was cruising about USAF trying to sell the F-5G ( turned into F-20 which I got much more familiar with in 1984).

I gotta read the bio, as I thot main reason Boyd missed Korea was being too young when truce negotiated and then maybe a medical problem for 'nam or he would have flown there like Olds and my friends that came from the Weapon School for their second tour - Ritchie and Lodge. Gotta tellya, in 1965 the macho fighter guys volunteered like crazy. Only guys I trained with '64-'65 that got there in early '66 were in stateside units or in Japan that deployed with their unit. Nobody went right from Thud or Hun or Phantom checkout to 'nam. By mid '66 they needed new bodies and folks that had not volunteered or in a deployed squadron were getting orders. I only volunteered because by late 1966 the handwriting was on the wall, and if you volunteered you got your airplane of choice most ot the time. I didn't wanna fly the recce VooDoo like most of the orders we were getting. I wanted to shoot back.

Was very surprised the VietNam assignment in Boyd's bio was TFA, better known as McNamara's Fence, the sensor system to track enemy movements down the Trail. Look at Igloo White, Task Force Alfa, etc. I only know one fighter pilot that was in TFA up in Thailand late 60's or 1970, but his was a long TDY and he came to A-7's at the Beach in late 1971.

Many of us liked the idea of a hi-lo mix for A2A, and even the mudbeater mission. My writings then were for a mix of A-10's and A-7D's. I also liked the LWF idea to provide numbers when Congress was gonna cut off the $$$ for the Eagle. The F-16 with only old Sidewinders would have been unreal in 1966 - 1972, and very good for CAS.

Interesting times, those were.

Gums sends...

This is from the Bio - may be more as from a paperback book.

27 Mar 53 arrived in Korea

June 30 1953 Officially credited with damaging a MiG. Hostilities ceased before he flew enough missions to became element lead (the shooter).

Spring 66 ordered to Thailand on F-4 - these were cancelled and he was ordered to the Pentagon to work on the F-X.

April 1972 went to Nakhon Phanom RTAFB - vice commander of TFA.

Salute!

Well, Basher, talk to some early Viper drivers besides me. The ones that were in the "requirements" shop at TAC and the Pentagon during mid to late 70's. The "doctrine" folks and tactic folks were not all that against the LWF concept, but the real conspiracy theory most of us subscribed to had to do with the missiles.

If the Viper had Sparrows, then why have Eagles? At the time, the radar folks and GD saw no problem integrating the Sparrow, and then we would have the face shot and engage in weather. The Lima changed all that early in the game, and we practiced with it when I was checking out in the fall of '79. But a radar missile on the Vipers would make it hard to keep buying Eagles, especially when the Eagle folks were crowing "not a pound for air to ground".

By the time the Slammer went operational, it went to Vipers first, and not just to provide the face shot. We had the 1553 mux bus and a better integrated fire control and stores management system.

And that's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Gums sends...

Weren't the Eagles the first to deploy with AMRAAMs at the end of Desert Storm? I read somewhere the idea of shooting the slammer at SCUDs after launch was tossed around...

Weren't the Eagles the first to deploy with AMRAAMs at the end of Desert Storm? I read somewhere the idea of shooting the slammer at SCUDs after launch was tossed around...

Well, the first AMRAAM kill was in 1992 when the missile was fired by a F-16 against an Iraqi Mig-25.
So it seems to me that F-16 may have used the AMRAAM first compared to F-15 which makes all sense because of what Gums said: The AMRAAM gave a BVR and all weather capability to the F-16, a capability which most F-16s didn't have as opposed to the F-15 which always had such capabilities.

Salute!

I don't tink we had any Slammers in 'raqi I, but maybe. But from various sources:

"The AMRAAM was used for the first time on December 27, 1992, when a USAF General Dynamics F-16D Fighting Falcon shot down an Iraqi MiG-25 that violated the southern no-fly-zone.[7] This missile had been returned from the flight line as defective a day earlier. The AMRAAM gained a second victory in January 1993 when an Iraqi MiG-23 was shot down by a USAF F-16C. "

Gums sends...

P.S. Thanks, Basher. As with Boyd, I had orders to an important Air University charm school when selected for major. And then they cancelled my orders and sent me to Korat, where I witnessed the real end of the war in 1975, heh heh. Then the honor to lead the last flight out, so cannot complain.