Reddit Reddit reviews Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

We found 20 Reddit comments about Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Biographies
Books
Leaders & Notable People Biographies
Military Leader Biographies
WWII Biographies
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
Boyd The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
Check price on Amazon

20 Reddit comments about Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War:

u/AtomicGlock · 5 pointsr/CCW

That's an excellent point about the OODA loop. Here's a relevant quote from Robert Coram's invaluable Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War:

> Thinking about operating at a quicker tempo—not just moving faster—than the adversary was a new concept in waging war. Generating a rapidly changing environment—that is, engaging in activity that is so quick it is disorienting and appears uncertain or ambiguous to the enemy—inhibits the adversary’s ability to adapt and causes confusion and disorder that, in turn, causes an adversary to overreact or underreact. Boyd closed the briefing by saying the message is that whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives.

Being pelted by hockey pucks would certainly throw a shooter off, and that could easily be all it takes to create an opportunity to take him down.

Now they just need someone on staff to occasionally walk into classrooms in a padded assailant suit and take one for the team.

You know, I really like that idea. It would easily become a part of the campus culture. "Hey, guess what? We pucked the Michelin Man in Cultural Anthropology today!"

u/GorgeWashington · 5 pointsr/starcitizen
u/meathooks · 4 pointsr/aviation

Here's some interesting trivia. The prototypes of F-16 and F-18 flew in a fly off where the winning design would be awarded the contract for the Air Force's Light Weight Fighter initiative. The Air Force wanted another two engine platform like the F-15 but [John Boyd](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist), the greatest fighter pilot of all time, preferred a single engine design. The prototype YF-16 was unanimously picked over the YF-18 by test pilot group. A group of all fighter pilots. Unfortunately the generals and contractors bastardized the design by adding weight costing features without increasing the surface area of the F-16's wing. The Navy, for unknown political reasons, picked up the F-18 design.

For any military strategy/aviation enthusiast, I highly recommend reading Boyd.




u/nvgeologist · 3 pointsr/askscience

This doesn't and won't answer your question, but is related. https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316796883 Great read/listen/whatever.

Boyd was father of modern air combat, and in many ways, ground combat. He came up with the OODA Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

u/Production_super999 · 3 pointsr/AirForce

Read this and this

I'm not an officer, but I have a good idea of what you guys go through, and as a SNCO I get to see and try to positively mentor a lot of new 2Lts. You're going to see lots of literature regarding how to lead and how to "Air Force", but the best things you can internalize to be a good leader are 1) Take care of your people. Airmen aren't your buddies, and you don't need to coddle, but have understanding and common sense and know that things that happen in their lives are sometimes more important than things that happen at work 2) Use common sense. When you have to make a judgement on a situation, you should use the AFIs and go by them to the maximum extent possible. However, remember that AFIs are not people, and can't make judgements so you ultimately have to determine the right thing to do, which is often not black and white.

Good luck in COT!

u/1369311007 · 3 pointsr/aviation

In the book about him, the author describes Boyd's fight to cancel it. It says that originally, the B-1 couldn't make it over a some mountain ranges in the world. How useful would that be? It also explains that someone in the Air Force fought for it to have a ladder attached to the plane for ground crews to use.

In my opinion, a ladder is absolutely unnecessary weight on this plane. I don't see how one can't find something to climb on if necessary.

I highly suggest reading it if you're an aviation fan. Boyd did amazing things in his career and the Air Force screwed him. Amazon.com

u/TanyIshsar · 2 pointsr/CredibleDefense

While this is somewhat outside of your scope, I would recommend reading Boyd. I recommend this because it follows the life of a deeply influential military man during the cold war. It will provide you with general knowledge as well as a peak into the social, economic & political fabric of the USA DoD during his tenure.

His work, primarily the OODA loop & Maneuver Warfare, are also discussed and will provide you with the jumping off points to further explore your interests in more appropriate detail.

u/Johnny10toes · 1 pointr/TheRedPill

It's interesting that you point this out at this time. I'm currently going through some lessons at https://www.khanacademy.org/ and some apps brushing up on Algebra because I want to learn Calculus and Calculus because I want to learn Physics. Now... I wasn't good in math. I'm still not but Algebra I was decent at and have forgotten tons of stuff. But the reason for learning is maps, models, realities, ideas, etc.

> When you're a hammer everything is a nail.

We are in a bit of a Hammer/Nail situation here on /r/TheRedPill and this place was where my first version of reality dropped. You see TRP is our hammer and sluts/feminism/beta is our nails. We see the confirmation of our theories everywhere, but we're looking for them. If you're a feminist that's your hammer and the patriarchy is your nail, the evidence is everywhere. If you think you're beautiful then you'll find evidence of that.

My second drop in reality was from reading The Gervais Principle.

Then we have a conglomerate of things that started making me change how I view things in quick succession. Prometheus Rising, Be Slightly Evil, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art Of War and I'm sure there were a few more in there. Texts from John Boyd prove useful and tie into the other books and brings us back to models of our reality.

OODA Loop and at Art of Manliness -- At it's basic you may already be doing this. But at it's most complex you're probably not. It's not just about building a snowmobile either but that's a good way to explain it. And while we're on the subject of snowmobile this is the reason I want to learn Calculus and Physics and Transactional Analysis and Psychology and ... you get the point. I may find pieces of my snowmobile in one that I can use in another. Ideas that I can rip apart from Physics and use in Psychology or whatever.

This can be useful in that maybe a hammer is not the best tool for the job. Maybe you need a ruler. Which brings me to my point.

Intelligence

> Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving. It can also be more generally described as the ability to perceive and/or retain knowledge or information and apply it to itself or other instances of knowledge or information creating referable understanding models of any size, density, or complexity, due to any conscious or subconscious imposed will or instruction to do so.

It's not so much that you know more about what is being debated it's that you can use information about things you do know to refute the debater. For this you're going to use all of your intelligence. Emotional, Academic, Social and whatever else. Sometimes having Social Intelligence means just shutting up and not debating.

u/networkedpilot · 1 pointr/aviation

The F-16 was built to compete with the F-15 believe it or not. Boyd's group actually came up with the A-10 as well, or at least some of the guys. This is a fascinating book on it: https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316796883

There's a lot of other stuff though. The F-16s can't go as high or as fast as the F-15s. The F-16's radar is the size of a couple large pizzas, the F-15's is the size of a small dinner table. We went to Red Flag a long time ago when I worked F-16s, and our pilot came back pissed because they couldn't keep up with the F-15s.

A-10 is slow though, and has no air to air radar. They carry Aim 9s and that's about it. I'd be more scared of being shot down from ground to air in an A-10 than a Blackhawk.

u/TWK128 · 1 pointr/funny

Air Force Colonel John Boyd was instrumental in the USMC adopting the tenets of Maneuver Warfare.

The Marines executed the shit out of it, but the application of it in our armed forces was the brainchild of Boyd and his acolytes.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316796883

u/FlorbFnarb · 1 pointr/army

Yeah, it seems pretty damn good. Obviously it's a sector of the military I have zero contact with, but it all rings true and doesn't really have any serious errors in it.

The sad thing is that it does ring so true.

If you haven't already, read Boyd by Robert Coram:

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316796883/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456971497&sr=8-1&keywords=boyd

Excellent book. I already knew the basics of the Bradley program's problems from that book. Didn't know the program stretched so far back and represented that degree of feature creep, though.

u/blindtranche · 1 pointr/guns

Hey, that "OODA wibbly" has more to it that you may guess. [John Boyd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist) was a genius and an incredible fighter pilot who was a founder of the Top Gun fighter school with a record never equaled. He was called 40 second Boyd because he would let any pilot start on his 6 and he would be on theirs in 40 seconds. He, through math and his E-M theory (Energy Maneuverability), proved that USA jets were inferior to Soviet fighters. Major Boyd and the "fighter mafia" upset the Air Force command at the Pentagon, and was the primary force behind the F16 and F/A 18. He was a warrior who originated doctrine as profound as Sun Tzu. He was insolent to his superior officers and loyal to his men. He was called the Mad Major, but everyone knew he was brilliant. Gen. Schwarzkopf got his attack plan for the first Gulf War from Boyd. If you can find time to read a good book, may I suggest Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War. He was was one of the most incredible little known men of the last century. There are ideas and concepts in the book powerful enough to change your life.

u/RexMundi000 · 1 pointr/AskReddit

It is also about setting up a revolving door between the Pentagon and the private sector. Also the process it is highly intertwined and resilient to change because of how the promotion process works for officers in the military. For every dogshit military program that ends of being a waste of money, there is some office in the program keeping his mouth shut to get promoted. IE, F-111, F14, Bradley Fighting Vehicle, ect.


For example is design and production of the Bradley, they figured out that the gun is too small to penetrate the armor of any modern tank. Also the armor is so thin, that a RPG-7 will penetrate.... The army went ahead and bought them anyways. Below is a good starting place on the topic.


http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316796883/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324567910&sr=8-1

u/DudeManFoo · 1 pointr/The_Donald

Pretty familiar with most ... just shitpostin'...

BTW... you sound like a plane guy... one of the best books you will ever read (if you are into planes)...

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

I have 4-5 copies... have read it 3 times... brother has read it three times... favorite copy is held together with duct tape cuz it went around Afghanistan about 3 times...

u/le_mous · 1 pointr/Military

Not having to do with the time period of WWII or books that would have been read then, but two excellent references that I was turned onto were;

The Maneuver Warfare Handbook

And with a more modern twist, Col. John Boyd's OODA loop. I hear that Boyd is making a comeback. Here's a link to a book about him.

u/[deleted] · 0 pointsr/worldnews

It's all well and good to say this and then not back it up. My source is the real-life book Boyd. Yours is the History Channel?

The F-16 was designed after the F-15, and was designed to beat the F-15 in a one-on-one battle.

u/chain-of-events · -4 pointsr/news

Pierre Sprey disagrees with you on the F35. I know this is argument by authority, but just eyeball the bird. Even considering the lifting body, it doesn't have enough wing to be a fighter. Nor can if fly low and slow, loitering in close ground support absorbing ground fire, like the A10 which is one of the cheaper planes it is supposed to supplant.

I know the F35 is supposed to have a beyond visual range 10 to 1 kill ratio, but I would put my money on 10 F16s anytime. Moreover, 10 F16 means 10 pilots. The F35 is so expensive, we can't have enough and it is too expensive to fly to keep a lot of pilots well trained. The Japanese and Germans ran out of great pilots in WWII before they ran out of planes.

BTW Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War this is a great book on many levels.

I don't find it laughable that ISIS zealots are using US taxpayer purchased equipment. If the amount of money seems comical it is only in relation to the enormous sums spent in total. My personal car is a lot less expensive than a humvee and it still seems expensive to me. And those bastards are driving around in humvees and carrying M4s and M16s that the US taxpayer purchased. It is not funny; it is emblematic.

As for other countries military spending being at their "comfort level" I disagree. The USA is their "boogieman" used to justify their defensive spending just as we use them to justify ours. It is a pernicious cycle.

You mentioned Willies Jeeps in Vietnam. That was another unnecessary war that did not benefit the US. The Gulf of Tonkin incident and the "domino theory" were both bullshit. In those times we worried if there would be enough money for "guns and butter". Well there wasn't and isn't. Nixon had to take us off the gold and silver standard in 1971 because we were printing more money than we could back up. 3 silver dimes still buys a gallon of gasoline, but look at what has happened to the paper dollar since then.