Tools for thought in your OODA loop - by Gordon Brander

Boyd’s OODA loop. This diagram is how John Boyd explained his ability to win any dogfight in under 40 seconds. Observe: sense your environment Orient: make sense of your senses by constructing a world-model Decide: translate your model into a plan Act: do something to effect a change …Your actions cause direct changes to your environment, and ripple effects too. This feeds back into observation. A loop. There are other loops in this diagram, too. Your mental model—how you orient—effects what you observe, and how you act. Through Boyd’s lens, we begin to see a dogfight as a cybernetic system. Boyd developed the OODA loop framework to explain how fighter pilots win in a conflict. He drew from many unexpected sources—cybernetics, eastern philosophy, cognitive science, game theory, physics. The resulting framework turns out to have broad applicability beyond conflict. It’s no accident, for example, that the OODA loop is almost identical to the sense-plan-act loop of the robotic paradigm. W

Boyd’s OODA loop. This diagram is how John Boyd explained his ability to win any dogfight in under 40 seconds. Observe: sense your environment Orient: make sense of your senses by constructing a world-model Decide: translate your model into a plan Act: do something to effect a change …Your actions cause direct changes to your environment, and ripple effects too. This feeds back into observation. A loop. There are other loops in this diagram, too. Your mental model—how you orient—effects what you observe, and how you act. Through Boyd’s lens, we begin to see a dogfight as a cybernetic system. B