From fighter Tactics to the Art of War
Sama artikkeli
suomeksi
This
article has its origins in the 2003 war against Iraq. Fred
Kaplan wrote on 10 April 2003 on the MSNBC web site: ”The
Marines, meanwhile, were going through a similar transformation.
Col. Mike Wiley, vice president of the Marine Corps University at
Quantico, revised his branch's war doctrine on the basis of a 1979
briefing called "Patterns of Conflict" by a retired Air
Force colonel named John Boyd.”
A fast Google search brought out information
that U.S. defence secretary Dick Cheney called Boyd out of
retirement in 1991 to advise him on the first Gulf War. The
second Iraq campaign is considered by many experts to be the
ultimate expression of Boyd's tactics, including feints and
disinformation campaigns designed to befuddle the enemy (and more
than a few journalists, as it turns out).
Who is this USAF colonel who made the U.S. Marine Corps change its war
fighting doctrine and whose ideas have directed the way two wars
against Iraq have been fought?
John
Boyd is one of the least known strategists of our time. Luckily it
is now possible to study his ideas and life thanks to two recent
biographies: Boyd, The Fighter Pilot
Who Changed the Art of War
and The Mind of War, John
Boyd and American Security
and also two websites: Defense and
the National Interest and War,
Chaos and Business. In this article we will look
at Col John Boyd’s actions while serving in the U.S. Air Force and
the Pentagon.
Fighter Tactician
The
Korean War
The
U.S. Air Force (USAF) needed fighter pilots during the Korean War
because the Strategic Air Command (SAC) was suffering heavy B-29 and
B-50 bomber losses during the daytime bombing missions. Korea was a
fighter war, not a bomber war.
John
Boyd arrived late for the Korean War. He was transferred to Suwon
Air Base in South Korea in March 1953.
U.S. Air
Force fighter tactics called for the use of the flight of four as
the fighting element. The flight consisted of flight leader and his
wingman, accompanied by an element leader and his wingman. The
flight leader and the element leader were the shooters while the
duty of the wingman was to cover his leader’s six o’clock
position. A new pilot had to fly about thirty missions as a wingman
before he could be an element leader and shooter.
U.S.
pilots could not cross the Yalu river under no circumstances.
American pilots most often encountered enemy aircraft in “MiG
Alley”, the thirty-mile wide stretch south of the Yalu river.
Despite this very restrictive Rules of Engagement (ROE) some
American pilots strayed into Manchuria and got their first aerial
victories over there. Tactics used by experienced F-86 pilots were
essentially the same used by P-51 Mustang pilots during World War II
but at higher altitudes and greater speeds.
 John
Boyd was credited with damaging a MiG-15 on 30 June 1953. There are
no official details, but the story goes that Boyd and RAF exchange
officer Jock Maitland flew north of Yalu river and encountered a
formation of MiGs. By June 1953 Soviet pilots were no longer flying
in North Korea, which is the reason the exchange ratios developed
dramatically in favour of the Americans. Hostilities ceased before
Boyd was promoted to element leader, so he never was a shooter. Boyd
was the best F-86 Sabre pilot in his squadron for which he was made
the assistant operations officer on 20 October 1953. On 25 November
he was made a flight commander and tactics instructor for the
squadron.
American
fighter pilots dominated the skies over Korea. The kill ratio during
the last months of the war as good as 14:1 and the average for the
whole war was 10:1. The official numbers were 792 MiGs shot down and
78 F-86 Sabres shot down. American fighter tactics in the Korean war
were still based on World War II P-38 Lighting tactics where the
fighters blew through the enemy formation and avoided turning fight
with a MiG.
North American F-86F Sabre
In later years John Boyd
went back to the Sabre vs MiG-15 ratios, because he was puzzled by
the fact that on paper the MiG-15 was a better plane so why were the
Sabres then so successful? Boyd learned that the bubble canopy of
the Sabre gave the U.S. pilots better visibility and therefore
better situational awareness. The full hydraulic flight controls
allowed the Sabre pilots to transition from offensive to defensive
maneuvers faster than his Soviet counterpart. Better observation and
greater agility were the keys to the success of the Sabre pilots.
Aerial
Attack Study
During
the mid-1950s the Second World War bomber pilots were running the
USAF and the service was no place for a fighter pilot. The service
achieved independent status in 1947 and that was based on the
concept of strategic bombing. America’s national defence was based
on the Eisenhower Doctrine of “massive retaliation”, of having
enough aircraft and nuclear bombs. U.S. Air Force received the
largest portion of the Pentagon budget through 1961 and within the
Air Force the SAC run by general Curtis LeMay got the largest amount
of the USAF procurement money. The primary mission of fighter
aviation became intercepting enemy bombers and delivering tactical
nuclear weapons. Everybody in the U.S. government believed the next
war would be a nuclear war.
From
Korea John Boyd was transferred to Nellis AFB, which was at that
time the busiest fighter base in the world, but very low on the USAF
pecking order because of the emphasis on strategic bombing. The
air-to-air portion of the 3597th Flying Training Squadron
curriculum had dwindled to almost nothing. There was not even a
manual for tactics and the training was focused in live air-to-air
gunnery against a banner towed by another aircraft. Boyd was
accepted as a student at the Fighter Weapons School for the three
month FWS course. The FWS was formed at Nellis in 1949 and was a
predecessor for the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known
as “Top Gun” because of the 1986 hit movie. Navy Top Gun was
formed twenty years later as a result of the Vietnam air war
experiences.
In
the February 1956 issue of the Fighter Weapons Newsletter Boyd
published on of his rare writings. The title was “A Proposed Plan
for Ftr. Vs. Ftr. Training”. Boyd wrote about different tactical
maneuvers and how to lead with the rudder in turning fight. The most
important point Boyd was trying to make was a new way of thinking;
the pilots should not just concentrate on the move they are
performing, but also the affects on speed and what countermoves the
enemy could make after the maneuver was complete.
In
the mid-1950s the Fighter Weapons School was divided into three
divisions: the most prestigious Operations and Training, Research
and Development and the least desired Academics division. The head
of FWS Vernon “Sprad” Spradling made Boyd the head of the
Academics division, but only after Boyd had made sure that he could
“tweak” the tactics portion of the curriculum.
Boyd
achieved fame flying one of the most quirky fighter aircraft in the
history of U.S. Air Force. The F-100 Super Sabre was the first
operational aircraft to reach the speed of sound in level flight.
The aircraft was designed as a day air-superiority fighter , but the
USAF bomber generals turned it into an air-to-ground platform. The
F-100 was the first aircraft in the Century Series of fighters. All
the aircraft from F-101 to F-106 had their peculiarities, but in
fact they all were sequels to the original F-100. The F-100 was not
an easy aircraft to fly. Especially the F-100 got reputation as a
“lieutenant-killer”, because a quarter of all F-100s were lost
in accidents. The most dangerous trait of the F-100 was adverse yaw.
Boyd
liked the F-100 and became one of the best – or even the best –
USAF Super Sabre pilot. Boyd’s specialty was a maneuver called
“flat-plating the bird” where you stop the aircraft in the air
by pulling the stick all the way back with both hands and hold it
there. Once the airspeed is down you stomp full rudder and perform a
corkscrew maneuver which forces the opponent in front of you and you
can shoot him with your gun camera. Boyd’s message to young F-100
pilots was the essence of using
the rudder at high angle of attack. Boyd’s maneuver lead to the
birth of the “40-second Boyd” legend. Boyd had a 40 dollar
standing bet that he could get to the tail of any opponent within 40
seconds from a starting position where the opponent started from
Boyd’s tail. Boyd never lost his bet while he was flying fighters
at Nellis.
North American F-100 Super Sabre
In
the late 1950s Boyd chose to apply to the Air Force Institute of
Technology (AFIT), which is an Air Force scholarship program. He
picked the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and
engineering as his next assignment. Boyd decided to write a tactics
manual before he left the Fighter Weapons School. Unfortunately the
commandant of the school said that Boyd couldn’t be relieved from
his daily duties and he therefore would have to write the manual on
his own time. In early 1960 Boyd finished dictating the 150-page
Aerial Attack Study, which became the official USAF tactics manual
during the same year. Boyd had forever changed the basics of fighter
combat by compiling all the maneuvers and counter-maneuvers into a
single manual. In addition to the technical description of the
maneuver Boyd was able to explain the tactical meaning of the
maneuver for all the new fighter pilots. This all happened at a time
when fighter aviation in the USAF was supposed to be a sort of a
baby-SAC and when the SAC bomber generals though that dogfighting
was history. Within a decade Boyd’s Aerial Attack Study had became
the tactics manual for air forces around the world. It forever
changed the way they fought.
Energy
Maneuvering Study
Boyd
was 34 years old when he started his studies at the Georgia Tech in
the autumn of 1960. Next year president John F. Kennedy took office,
secretary of defense Robert McNamara activated plans to build a new
tactical aircraft for the Navy and the Air Force and general Curtis
LeMay became the Air Force Chief of Staff. SAC took over the Air
Force hurting fighter aviation, but this also was the foundation for
some of John Boyd’s greatest achievements.
Boyd
studied mechanical engineering, which included thermodynamics –
the study of energy. The second law of thermodynamics (the law of
entropy) is especially interesting since it postulates that in a
closed system disorder increases. In winter 1962 Boyd realized during a conversation with classmate Charles E. Cooper that the
thermo laws about the conservation and dissipation of energy could
be applied to fighter tactics. It wasn’t airspeed or power that
enabled a fighter pilot to outmaneuver his adversary. It was his
energy level! If Boyd could analyze dogfight in terms of energy, he
could develop equations for the performance of aircraft.
 When
Boyd graduated from Georgia Tech he was transferred to Eglin AFB on
the Gulf coast. Eglin was the place where Air Force tested its
latest weapons. At the time of Boyd’s transfer fighter aviation in
the U.S. was in serious trouble. The bomber generals were at the
peak of their power since their number one guy general LeMay was the
USAF Chief of Staff. In spite of this things were about to change.
President John F. Kennedy had come to the conclusion that the
doctrine of massive retaliation in fact increased the possibility of
conventional war. Therefore
Kennedy decided that America needed a more balanced approach to
warfare. Conventional warfare should be a credible option. Replacing
the doctrine of Massive Retaliation with Flexible Response put the
Kennedy administration and the bomber generals on a collision
course. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had already cancelled
the F-105 program and ordered the Air Force to procure the F-4
Phantom which was developed by the U.S. Navy. The Air Force found
this so humiliating that it activated a new fighter program called
the F-X.
Boyd
had been promoted to major and during his free time he was
developing his energy theory, which he now called “theory of
excess power”. People started calling Boyd “Mad Major” and
thought that he probably didn’t have both oars in the water. In
Eglin Boyd met Tom Christie, whose job was to enable the Air Force
to make its final break from the Army. The Air Force still used Army
Air Corps bombing tables and it was Christie’s job to develop
bombing tables for the Air Force. Christie understood Boyd’s ideas
regarding the trade-off in kinetic and potential energy. Boyd’s
goal was to reduce the entire jet fighter performance envelope to a
set of graphics. What impressed Christie was that Boyd seem to have
a larger than life idea and he had a mission to make it happen.
Boyd
changed the name of his theory into Energy-Maneuverability Theory.
They started the study with pursuit curves: how many Gs would be
needed to get a correct angle to shoot the adversary wit the gun and
how much would the performance of the aircraft be degraded by doing
that? Boyd needed a lot of computer time to prove his thesis, but he
was only a major and he wouldn’t get the needed time from the
computers at Eglin. This is where Christie came to help Boyd. They
developed Boyd’s equations first using Christie’s small Wang
computer and later utilized the biggest IBM 704 computer at Eglin
using Christie’s project codes to get the valuable computer time.
In fact, they stole computer time from the U.S. Air Force since
Boyd’s E-M Theory project didn’t have an official authorization
code.
The
core of Boyd’s E-M theory was thrust and drag ratio. Boyd wanted
to know how fast a pilot could gain energy when he pushed the
throttle to full power. Boyd wanted to normalize the information so
that every aircraft could be compared no matter how much the
aircraft weight was. This is why Boyd didn’t want to compare total
energy, he wanted to compare specific energy which is total energy
divided by weight. Now the change in energy level could be studied
on the basis of the difference between the engine’s available
thrust and the airplane’s drag. Boyd’s simple equation for
specific excess power (Ps) is thrust minus drag over weight,
multiplied by velocity. This is the core of his E-M theory and it
changed fighter design and tactics forever.
President
Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense McNamara had decided to procure the
F-111 fighter to both U.S. Air Force and Navy. The aircraft was
85.000-pound behemoth and used variable-geometry technology in its
wing meaning it could swing the wing back and forth. In late 1962
Boyd met the General Dynamics project engineer for the F-111, Harry
Hillaker, at the Eglin O’Club. Boyd complained to Hillaker that
the F-111 was underpowered and the swing-wing mechanism was too
complicated to be used fast enough to sweep the wings during flight
and would get fatigue and stress cracks. Boyd had already done some
E-M calculations on the F-111 and knew that the Air Force was about
to make a mistake if it procured the F-111. Swing-wing technology
would ultimately ruin two generations of airplanes: the Navy’s
underpowered F-14 and the Air Force’s B-1 bomber. Boyd and
Hillaker agreed that they would like to develop a small maneuverable
fighter.
First F-111A prototype
Boyd’s
next goal was to compare American fighters to their Soviet
counterparts. For this he flew to Wright-Patterson AFB and got the
Soviet data from the Foreign Intelligence Division at Wright-Pat.
Boyd and Christie started to feed Soviet fighter performance data
into Christie’s IBM computer. Boyd planned to show graphs of the
differences between the energy rates of American and Soviet
fighters. By the summer of 1963 the charts were beginning to come
together. To Boyd’s astonishment they showed that in a large
portion of the performance envelope, Soviet aircraft were superior
to U.S. aircraft. The F-4 Phantom was too heavy and did not have a
large enough wing area for a turning fight with a MiG-21 at high
altitude. The only place for an F-4 to successfully fight the MiG-21
was at low altitude and high speed. The worst news was that the new
F-111 was worse than any Soviet aircraft at any speed and at any
altitude. When Boyd finished the graphs he started to brief the
information to other pilots at Eglin and even went back to Nellis to
brief the officers over there. In early 1965 Boyd went to Vietnam
and briefed the F-015 pilots over there about fighter tactics. After
that Boyd toured the European bases giving his E-M brief to a group
of wing commanders. Finally he briefed the head of Tactical Air
Command, General Walter Campbell Sweeney Jr and General Bernard
Schriever, head of the Air Force Systems Command so now the four
star generals were aware of the poor performance of the F-111
compared to the Soviet aircraft.
F-86F Sabre and MiG-15
performance comparison
In
Vietnam the F-105 and the F-4 Phantom were the wrong aircraft for
the jobs they were doing. The F-105 was being used as an
air-to-ground aircraft while the big and heavy F-4C was being used
as a fighter and was no match for a MiG. Boyd also showed that
American air-to-air missiles, Sparrow and Sidewinder, had poor
performance and could easily be defeated by avoidance maneuvers.
F-15
Eagle
In
the spring of 1966 Boyd got orders for transfer to Thailand as an
F-4 Phantom pilot, which was exactly what Boyd wanted. Air war over
Vietnam was hot, but the U.S. forces weren’t doing that well. In
1965 the Americans lost 171 aircraft. To cut the losses, F-4C
Phantoms were ordered to fly top cover for the F-105s, but the F-4C
was too big and heavy for dogfights against the more maneuverable
small MiGs. There was no gun in the Phantom and the launch envelope
for the early Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles was so small that a
pilot had to be extremely proficient to get into a firing position.
Boyd’s orders to Thailand were suddenly cancelled and instead he
was ordered to Pentagon in the summer of 1966. The Air Force’s F-X
fighter program was in trouble.
The
troubled F-X programme was a statement to the
“Bigger-Higher-Faster-Farther” thinking in the U.S. Air Force.
U.S. Navy played its role when the admirals succeeded in fooling
Secretary of Defense McNamara by promising that the Navy would
accept the Air Force F-111 if the Navy continue the development of
their new TF30 jet engine and the Phoenix missile. The Navy plan was
to play another year while waiting for the carrier compatibility of
the F-111 and then turn down the aircraft and go to Congress and
tell that the service already has a jet engine and a missile and now
with the money allocated to the F-111 they could develop a new Navy
fighter. This fighter would be the F-14 Tomcat and the Air Force was
in danger in getting one more Navy-designed fighter into its
inventory. Boyd was brought to Pentagon to save the Air Force F-X
fighter from the Navy ploys.
U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat at NASA
Dryden Flight Research Center
The
F-X had been trimmed down to 62.500 pounds, but it was still
overweight, too complex, too expensive and had a too small wing. The
aircraft was planned to be a multirole fighter. Boyd wanted a
smaller single-engine maneuverable air-to-air fighter, which had
better thrust-to-weight ratio than any other aircraft in the world.
The fighter could dump and regain energy faster than other fighters.
Boyd wanted an aircraft that would rule the skies for decades to
come.
The
F-X was the first U.S. fighter ever designed with maneuvering and
E-M specifications with dogfighting in mind. Some might say that the
WWII P-51 Mustang and F-86 Sabre were pure fighters, but that is not
the case since they were not designed with dogfighting in mind. The
Mustang was designed for range and speed and it became the premier
WWII fighter because the Brits changed the power plant into a bigger
Rolls-Royce engine. The F-86 was designed as a high-altitude
interceptor with big wings and because of the large wing area became
an excellent maneuvering fighter, which was not a design criteria.
Boyd
wanted the F-X to outmaneuver all enemy fighters. He didn’t set
any single performance numbers for the fighter regarding top speed
or turning capability. Instead Boyd wanted the aircraft to have a
high thrust-to-weight ratio to achieve excellent acceleration. He
wanted a large wing for maneuvering performance and enough energy
for disengagement and separation in order to return to the fight
with an advantage. There should be enough fuel to carry the fight
deep into enemy airspace and for sustained dogfight. Boyd was happy
with a small radar, but electronics people wanted one which could
spot a MiG at 40 nautical miles, which resulted in a large radar
dish and therefore high aerodynamic drag from the fuselage. Boyd
insisted in having an internal gun. Boyd’s calculations showed
that the aerodynamic performance benefit gained from the swing-wing
would be negated by the extra weight and drag that the system
brought with it. Still USAF wanted a swing-wing fighter. Boyd’s
E-M theory made it possible for the first time in fighter design
history to analyze the whole maneuvering envelope of a fighter still
in design and even prior to the first flight of the prototype.
Year
1967 was the worst one for the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam. It was now
clear that the Air Force had no air superiority fighter. The 10:1
exchange ratio of the Korean War had dropped to near parity or was
even advantageous to the North Vietnamese. After the war only one
USAF pilot had the five kills needed for ace status. North Vietnam
had 16 aces that were combat veterans and had fought in the air for
years. USAF continued the Korean War tradition and rotated pilots to
non-combat duties after 100 combat missions. Even worse was to train
transport and SAC pilots fast to fighters and rotate them through
Vietnam to get a combat tour under their belt.
In
the 1967 Domodevo Air Show the Soviet Union introduced two new
fighters: the swing-wing MiG-23 and the fast MiG-25. Americans
laughed at the MiG-24, but USAF inflated the MiG-25 into a serious
threat. The fighter was said to have a top speed of Mach 2.8, but
the Air Force didn’t mention that the MiG-25 had to land
immediately after the Mach 2.8 dash because of fuel shortage and the
engines had to be replaced because of overheating. Also the Soviet
pilot Viktor Belenko who flew the MiG-25 to Hakodate, Japan
confirmed this information in his biography. Anyway the MiG-25
“threat” resulted in much higher priority for the F-X program.
After
WWII and Korea U.S. Air Force said that dogfights were history and
Vietnam would be a war of missiles and pushbuttons. This was not to
be. Vietnam proved that John Boyd had been right about the
ineffencies in the new Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles and the USAF
still needed fighters with guns. In fact the introduction of
missiles required the fighters to have more maneuverability than
previously in order to be able to defeat the missiles by
maneuvering.
Tactical Air Command wanted the F-X to have a top
speed of Mach 3.0 which would have seriously hurt the maneuvering
capability of the aircraft.
Boyd insisted on a Mach 2.0 top speed and Boyd was beginning to lose
the design battles. The aircraft had grown back to over 42.000
pounds for which the performance was, if still very good, somewhat
worse than originally planned.
Air
Force’s worst fears that the Navy would not accept the F-111B for
carrier operations came true. The admirals informed that the Navy
had already designed a fighter called the F-14 Tomcat and if
Congress would give the Navy the money already allocated to the
F-111B the Navy would build the F-14 with that money. The Navy said
that the F-X top speed was too slow compared to the MiG-25 for which
the development of the F-X should be cancelled. The admirals told
that the F-14 would do everything better than the F-X and that the
Navy would be glad to “help” the Air Force and sell the fighter
also to their sister service. The USAF countered these accusations
by saying that the F-X had a dash speed of Mach 2.5, which combined
with the AIM-7 Sparrow missile would be sufficient to counter the
MiG-25. Boyd realized in the House Armed Services Committee hearings
that the future of the F-X would hinge on having a swing-wing
design. The Committee would not accept a swing-wing design.
Therefore Boyd told the Committee that the F-X would have a
fixed-wing design and this is how the F-15 Eagle became a fixed-wing
fighter and the Air Force didn’t have to buy another Navy design.
The variable-sweep wing ruined two aircraft generations: the F-14
fighter and the B-1 bomber. Despite the popular 1986 hit movie
“Top Gun” the F-14 Tomcat with the TF30 engines was and
underpowered, poor-performing fighter.
F-15A Eagle prototype
Fighter
Mafia
John Boyd hadn’t
forgotten his vision about the small maneuverable high
thrust-to-weight fighter. He suggested that the Air Force should
have a backup airplane in case the F-15 project failed. Boyd, Col.
Everest Riccioni and Pierre Sprey formed the unofficial
“Lightweight Fighter Mafia” to promote their ideas in the
Pentagon. Boyd wasn’t happy with how the Air Force had changed the
original F-15 design. He wanted a simple, small 20.000-pound day
fighter without a radar and with
less drag, less weight, and with much better performance than the
F-15. Riccioni obtained funds that were split to Northrop for the
initial study for the YF-17 prototype and General Dynamics for the
YF-16.
Northrop YF-17 Cobra that eventually became the
McDonnel Douglas F/A-18 Hornet
In
the mean time the U.S. media had focused in the huge price tag that
went with the F-15 and the poor performance of the F-14 Tomcat. The
Nixon government urged Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird to put the
military procurement system on track. Laird gave the mission to his
assistant David Packard, who approved the lightweight fighter
project. The U.S. Air Force officially activated the prototype
project in December 1970. The Lightweight Fighter Mafia wanted to
have realistic testing procedures for the competing prototypes. Both
fighters would have to fly in realistic war-like scenarios against
MiG fighters that were kept at a secret base in the Nellis range
complex.
Lightweight
fighter studies showed that the aircraft would have better
performance than the F-15 Eagle, but this information had to be kept
secret because the USAF didn’t want even the prototype to be
better than the F-15. The biggest secret was the fact that the
lightweight fighter would have greater range than the F-15. The
key to the range performance was the weight of the fuel relative
to the combat weight of the aircraft, called fuel fraction. Boyd
insisted that the lightweight would have a fuel fraction greater
than 30 percent when the F-15 fuel fraction was 25 percent. The USAF
was looking at the total fuel amount and didn’t notice Boyd’s
trick to secure the range for the lightweight fighter. Only years
later did the USAF and others learn that the lightweight fighter not
only had a greater range than the F-15 – the range was greater
than any other fighter in the Air Force. In April 1972 Secretary of
Defense Laird approved the construction of the competing fighter
prototypes. In late 1971 Boyd had received orders to join the
Vietnam War in a secret air base in Thailand and left in April 1972,
just when the lightweight fighter prototype project was approved.
General
Dynamics YF-16 prototype
Read
also about Col. Richard Lorentz - Finland's John Boyd
|
USAF Col John Boyd