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    Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
    Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
    Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
    Audiobook19 hours

    Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

    Written by Robert Coram

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    John Boyd may be the most remarkable unsung hero in all of American military history. Some remember him as the greatest U.S. fighter pilot ever-the man who, in simulated air-to-air combat, defeated every challenger in less than forty seconds. Some recall him as the father of our country's most legendary fighter aircraft-the F-15 and F-16. Still others think of Boyd as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu. They know only half the story.Boyd, more than any other person, saved fighter aviation from the predations of the Strategic Air Command. His manual of fighter tactics changed the way every air force in the world flies and fights. He discovered a physical theory that forever altered the way fighter planes were designed. Later in life, he developed a theory of military strategy that has been adopted throughout the world and even applied to business models for maximizing efficiency. On a personal level, Boyd rarely met a general he couldn't offend. He was loud, abrasive, and profane. A man of daring, ferocious passion and intractable stubbornness, he was that most American of heroes-a rebel who cared not for his reputation or fortune but for his country.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 26, 2016
    ISBN9781515978299
    Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

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    Reviews for Boyd

    4.5/5

    159 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this book immensely. The man and the story are truly remarkable. I highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely amazing book, so good I have just ordered a hard copy so I can add notes to it.
    • 5/5
      Phenomenal book about John Boyd and the legacy he left. Thank you, John
    • 5/5
      Fantastic work. Several Individuals have recommended this work and I finally sat down to read it. I was amazed, I heard of John Boyd but I did not know contribution to military theory...
    • 4/5
      The godfather of all 21st-century military strategy. Boyd remains the single indispensable reference on that subject, & since, rather deliberately, he never published anything in conventional (= frozen) book form, this biography is an excellent & very helpful starting-point - so long as you also dig up his own crucial lecture summary, "Patterns of Conflict", on the internet.
    • 5/5
      A fighter pilot is an assassin, we are are reminded by Robert Coram, and Colonel John Richard Boyd (January 23, 1927 – March 9, 1997) was one of the best. He was a full-of-himself, obscene, tough-talking, braggart who had something to brag about. He could turn a fighter plane faster than any man in the sky. Other pilots admired and respected him. He was by all accounts a real asshole. If you weren't part of his fraternity, you probably wouldn't like him very much. But, again, if you wanted a person who could shoot other airplanes out of the sky, and teach other men to do the same, he was, by all accounts, the go-to guy.

      If his career had ended when his flying did, there wouldn't be much of a story to tell. He might have been just another braggart sitting on a bar stool somewhere telling you how great he had once been. Instead, Boyd reinvented himself, and created a theory of air combat, so that he could articulate and transmit his knowledge to others. That achievement, taking the intuitions and the art of aerial killing and representing them for the first time in theory and mathematical equations, was probably his greatest intellectual achievement.

      In telling that post-flying career story this book takes off, describing how Boyd not only revolutionized aerial combat, but ultimately came to have a significant impact upon aircraft design and overall US strategic war fighting doctrine. How significant that influence really was is difficult to know, since the author is clearly writing hagiography - he believes in the greatness of Boyd and in the extent of his influence and he is determined to persuade us of it. One would have to know a great deal more about the realities of Pentagon politics in the 1970s and 1980s, and the evolution of military theory, to independently evaluate these claims. But it is easy enough to believe that he was widely disliked by conventional thinkers for all the right reasons, and enjoyed sticking his cigar in the generals' eyes.

      For my part, I can evaluate this book from a position of personal knowledge. For reasons of prolonged adolescence, I have followed military air-weapons programs, as an interested observer, for most of my adult life. I know the stories of the F-100, the F-4, the F-111, the B-1, the A-10 the F-15, the F-16 and YF-17 and the F-18, like the back of my hand. I remember them the way you might remember some famous World Series game or your favorite sitcom from the eighties. I cared deeply about these airplanes and the reasons for their development and their capabilities, the way some people cared about baseball. And so I know, regardless of how influential he REALLY was, that the framework of his career as an opponent of aeronautical boondoggles (like the B-1) and a supporter of successes (like the A-10 and F-16) rings absolutely true, and lends credence to the claims of his influence. This book gives us the inside story on how and by whom the F-16 and A-10 were foisted upon an unwilling Pentagon. Hint: John Boyd and his allies were there.

      Boyd was an advocate for the gun over the missile, the fixed wing over the swing-wing, and for maneuverability in air warfare above all. He created an entire theory of Energy-Maneuverability to capture what he grasped about aerial combat, and this theoretical and mathematical structure has shaped the design of combat aircraft ever since. In his later years he influenced US war fighting doctrine at a strategic level, with his concept of the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) loop and the idea of getting "inside" the enemy's decision process. It is said that he extended his influence over air, land and sea doctrine, and become an influential military theorist. Perhaps, as the book's author maintains, he really was one of the most influential in US history.

      I just know that it is fascinating to experience the bureaucratic wars of the Pentagon, as Boyd battles for the light maneuverable fighter (what ultimately became the F-16). Just to understand and hear once again the inside scoop on that airplane (and the A-10) makes this book well worth a read.

      To reiterate, John Boyd was an awful person. He treated his wife badly, he treated his children badly, and it is hard to imagine a more insufferable, cigar chomping, opinionated Pentagon Colonel. But he wasn't just that. You can't read this book without appreciating the fact that he fought the good fight, inside the Pentagon, against its wasteful, sclerotic ways, and tried to shake the defense establishment out of its post-Vietnam lethargies and its proclivities to accept whatever a defense contractor said was true as true. He apparently told no small number of Generals to stuff it as he practiced his own art of maneuver warfare in the belly of the beast, and between Congress and the Pentagon. One senses that he loved the fight. He gathered a group of "acolytes" who thought he was brilliant, and who protected him and implemented his ideas and philosophies against long odds.

      Boyd often posed a simple question to his potential acolytes. "Do you want to be someone, or do you want to do something?" Those who wanted to "be someone", that is, make higher rank and have a safe career he had little time and no use for. Those who wanted to "do something", shake things up, make a difference, and were willing to take professional risks, he gathered around himself, and they remained fiercely loyal to him.

      To read of John Boyd's battles within the Pentagon is to swim in the corrupt grumbling belly of the Military-Industrial beast and to imagine what it might mean to be a very particular kind of military-bureaucratic hero.
    • 5/5
      This is an extraordinarily researched and well-written biography of how amazing intellect and dedication can overcome massive personal and personality flaws to yield real change in the world. Nobody should want to be like Boyd, who put his family through hell and alienated many people who should have been his allies, but there are aspects of his thought-processes and professional priorities that should be admired. Coram covers Boyd's life, from his service in Korea to his paradigm shifting-insights into the nature of both air combat specifically and competitive situations generally.
    • 5/5
      My name is David Marquet, from Practicum, Inc and we help our customers structure their organizations for innovation. Although John Boyd is perhaps best known as the creator of the OODA loop concept, he was also responsible for the Energy-Maneuverability Theory, the iconic paper Destruction and Creation, and all the while, defeating anyone who challenged him in the air.John Boyd was a remarkably gifted fighter pilot who worked tirelessly to understand how fighters worked and won dogfights. During a period when computer work was run through centralized administrators, he managed to surreptitiously use over $1 million worth of Air Force computer time to test and hone his theory – that the one key quality of a fighter to win could be measured by a relationship of thrust, drag and weight. As simple as this seems, it was the first time a unifying theory of jet fighter performance could explain the performance of real fighters at was in Korea and Vietnam.Coram does a nice job portraying the complicated Boyd: unforgiving, driven, ignoring his family, working out and maintaining a healthy diet but ignoring signs of cancer. Boyd naturally draws our sympathy as he battles the entrenched bureaucracy of the Air Force, but ultimately he is a tragic character. The Air Force spent billions on aircraft he demonstrated would be less effective, and his influence on warfare is still not fully realized.What interests us is the innovator’s challenge – how does one get his ideas adopted? Boyd’s life cautions us that just being right is not enough. A complex and multi-faceted story expertly told, Boyd is necessary reading for all innovators out there.
    • 5/5
      One of those great biographies of someone you didn't know mattered. Divided roughly into three parts: 1. Boyd the gifted pilot, 2. Boyd the visionary aeronautical engineer, 3. Boyd the influential military strategist. Most of us would consider 1/3 of his life a full life, Coram treats us to an examination of the man in full. A man with personal weakness and with many flaws, but with what it takes to be great.
    • 4/5
      A good biography that misses hagiography by only a hair's-breadth. Extremely informative for all that, and a good wake-up call to the hog trough of American defense spending.Calling the Pentagon "Versailles on the Potomac" makes marvelous sense, and I first read that phrase here.