Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

by Robert Coram

The briefing has a number of problems. It is repetitive in the extreme. Boyd often threw in a slide that said ?—RAISES NAGGINGQUESTION—? when, in fact, the question had not been raised except rhetorically by Boyd. Periodically he had a slide titled INSIGHT, which is little more than a platform for him to launch into a tangential cadenza. The cluttered slides were jammed with ponderous and virtually impenetrable sentences. None of the discipline of the academic existed. Boyd was force-feeding his audience, another hallmark of the autodidact and a characteristic manifest in his insistence of “full brief or no brief.” Considering the impact of the briefing, these are niggling faults. And they speak more to Boyd’s personality than to the content of the briefing. The purpose of the briefing was not to reveal the “Answer” but to jar listeners out of complacency and into thinking on their own. Boyd abhorred the idea that his briefing might be considered dogma. In fact, he often said listeners should take the briefing out and burn it before they considered it dogma.

Force Feeding