Talk:OODA loop

Pronounciation
is it OH-DAH (as in "oh" in "uh-oh") or OO-DAH ("oo" as in poodle)? 205.174.22.26 (talk) 03:51, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
 * It is just read as the four letters. O - O - D - A as far as I know. P0M (talk) 00:18, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is pronounced OO-DAH with the OO pronounced as it is in poodle.--Looper5920 (talk) 05:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've heard all of those, and been corrected from each to use each of the others. I try to remember to pronounce "OODA loop" as "Boyd loop", and have never been corrected for doing so. htom (talk) 12:34, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think there are alternatives that came later. Probably Boyd's own way of understanding and explaining things changed as he refined his observations. Boyd was trying to understand the process by which he wiped other pilots out. Implicit in his thinking is the observation that in the time between being scrambled and initial visual contact with an opponent a pilot has the time to think is measured discursive terms, e.g., to review flight characteristics of the airplane types he may be up against. After visual contact occurs, much more "computing power" goes to ongoing assessment of the opposition, building an internal map of the current situation, etc. When combat is engaged, the processing occurs in a mostly non-discursive way. Feedback is monitored at all times, and it is directed toward updating the internal map and projections based on that map, always seeking a way to victory. After the battle, a survivor can go back to discursive mode and prepare to be debriefed. This entire process, as diagrammed by Boyd, involves many feedback loops. One question, regarding any alternatives to the Boyd loop(s), would be whether they uncover new processes that find no place in Boyd's scheme. P0M (talk) 22:44, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

It is pronounced "OOH" as in poodle. If you read the Boyd biography by Coram, they recite a discussion in which Boyd (who stated the individual letters O-O-D-A) was annoyed that everyone in his presentations just called it OODA (like a single word). A friend advised him to let the users own the pronounciation, so Boyd rolled with "OODA," too. Aetius41 (talk)Aetius41. —Preceding undated comment added 14:48, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Needs comparison to alternatives
This article needs to explain what alternatives to the OODA Loop are, and the advantages and disadvantages. In particular, if this is the operative paradigm now, what was it before? --James S. 03:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This is not the operative paradigm now in cognitive science. The idea that one person has one OODA loop is compatible with rationalism and symbolic artificial intelligence, in which the mind is a logic engine with one CPU. Behaviorism, control theory, contemporary cognitive science, and functional neuroscience are incompatible with OODA; they would each at least insist that cognition is a series of thousands, millions, or possibly billions, of OODA loops running in parallel.  Consider as an example Rodney Brooks' subsumption architecture for robot behavior, which is literally a few dozen OODA loops running in parallel.Philgoetz (talk) 15:20, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The big questions are whether observation, orientation, decision-making, and action should all be reified in this way; and if so, whether they have a stereotypical sequence. Consider optical flow algorithms for motion control, or the cognitive wiring diagrams of insects whose brains have been well-mapped, such as drosophila.  Sensors are linked directly to effectors.  If you want to say there are "observation" and "orientation" steps, you'd have to say those are abstractions which are implemented by the wiring between neurons, and controlled by evolution, not cognition.Philgoetz (talk) 15:32, 26 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that you understand the purpose of the OODA loop, which is not a descriptive/explanatory model from the cognitive sciences; it is a prescriptive model akin to those that are designed in the design sciences. It's a heuristic technique that people use to help guide cognition, not an explanation of how cognition works. On the differences between the explanatory sciences and the design sciences, see, e.g.: Biogeographist (talk) 17:21, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

There are a lot of snippy answers ("Ready, Fire, Aim, Blame." is one); mostly, there wasn't one. Boyd's remarkable idea is that there is a process there to be examined. htom (talk) 22:16, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps it was OODA: Observe, Overreact, Destroy, Apologise. --68.51.72.144 (talk) 16:00, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
 * How about, "Think before you act." I don't mean to be flippant but while I can see the advantage of having the approach formalised with a name, I don't believe the OODA loop represents the unique understanding of the problem which its proponents imply. Just my view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.233.172 (talk) 10:52, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The OODA loop is not the only model of its type. See also, e.g., Decision cycle. Biogeographist (talk) 17:45, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Existing text was plagiarized
In trying to track the source of this material, I found extremely similar text at http://tkdtutor.com/07Defense/Strategy/OODA.htm. In fact, it looks like the text in Wikipedia up to 21-oct-2006 was lifted straight off that page, with a lot of re-wording. The re-wording did not help; it was still clearly plagiarized, and in fact made the idea a lot less clear. I contacted the owner/author at that site and he does not object to the use of the material, so I am keeping the general outline and have attempted to clarify it -- rather than rewrite it from scratch. User:keno 06:49, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 * The above link is now dead.
 * It was moved to http://www.tkdtutor.com/07Defense/Strategy/OODA/OODA01.htm.

Maybe this is an even better source since the previous one is based on it: http://www.belisarius.com/modern_business_strategy/hammond/essential_boyd.htmPrezen 16:37, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above is a dead link.P0M (talk) 19:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

As to the "clearly plagiarized," be very careful when you make such accusations. Check out the history of changes and go back to the document you thought was written in 1995. The man got his B.S. in 1995 and was going for a higher degree in 2007. P0M (talk) 00:15, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected. Looking at the building history of this article, especially around 2005-06-03, it's clear how it was built up over time, so it looks like the TKDtutor article was more likely lifted from here than the other way around...his language is tighter and better, though. (When I wrote to him about the suspected plagiarism, he didn't enlighten me as to the source of the wording, so I assumed it was original. That's what happens when I assume, I guess.) Keno (talk)

01:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The TKD article preserves language that was present in almost the earliest version of the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OODA_Loop&direction=next&oldid=3247549

It's ironic that the TKD article is copyrighted. P0M (talk) 09:01, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * When I wrote it was a first draft. It's part of the Wikipedia process for other people to spot problems in writing and edit to improve. One of the things that the people in the series of articles and edits did, however, was to change a vital point. I haven't had time to re-read all of the Boyd materials to find the point where he talks most clearly about it, and I wanted to make a clear citation before I put up something that might get knocked down again by somebody with opinions. The business about "getting inside somebody else's OODA Loop" has been misunderstood, misinterpreted to others, and it looks to me like some of our problems in Iraq have arisen because people in power with opinions have the "little knowledge" that is a "dangerous thing."


 * First, one should understand that for Boyd, consciously or unconsciously, there is an analogy between being in a dogfight and being about to out-turn one's opponent so that one can get behind the guy who was the pursuer and light his tail with cannon fire. That is faster action based on greater maneuverability, and yet it is not at all random. The more generalized form of the idea has to do with maneuverability in a more abstract sense. Every action requires a certain amount of time. A reaction to it requires another amount of time. Both actions expend resources (lives and wealth). The price of victory has to be within the limits of one's resources, so it is advantageous that the battle not go on too long. But the point of being "inside" the opponent's OODA loop is to be through one or more meaningful step(s) while one's opponent is tied up in reacting to one's initial step.


 * When the U.S. invaded Iraq, our forces moved in blitzkrieg mode to the capital. Either we acted so fast that they could not react, or they chose not to react. While we were on the way in to Baghdad the "first O," observe, had a clear object. Our forces were looking for military opposition, and they had a clear advantage over their opposition. Once we were in Baghdad what we had to observe changed. But we were generally blind until the moment a roadside bomb exploded. We were generally blind to the passage of guerrilla forces moving about Bagdad and other heavily populated areas. We frequently mis-observed wedding parties and other non-military activities as being military activities, destroyed them by air or other attacks, and then created and reinforced the very factors that lead to insurgency. We can't even reliably observe movements of insurgent troops from bases over the border in Pakistan.


 * Being inside somebody's OODA loop means going from "observe" mode to "act" mode, back to "observe" and through to "act" again before one's opponent can deal with the consequences of one's first action. A commonplace example is one of the tricks used by terrorists. One bomb is exploded. It results in some casualties and lots of confusion. The local authorities react by rushing in emergency vehicles to care for the injured and search for the perpetrators. At that point a second, larger, bomb goes off.


 * At an even faster tempo there is an example in one of the Japan Karate Association videos. It shows a series of matches between the best black belts in that organization. In one match an attacker moves in on his opponent and in quick sequence aims two punches at his head. Each attack is picked off by blocking, so both the hands of the defender are above his head and his attention is drawn upward. Attack three come in the form of a kick at the solar plexus level (or maybe a little lower than that. The defender cannot defend against that attack because he is still dealing with attacks 1 and 2.


 * On a much slower tempo, an attack might begin with the assassination of a national leader with planted evidence to convince one ethnic or religious group that the attack came from its counterpart. One result might be that populations would draw together in preparation for a feared civil war. The second step in the attack would involve release of two plagues, one kind for concentrations of one group. The third step might be the destruction of the communications infrastructure by missiles or guided bombs. A fourth step might be the arrival of "pacification" forces from a "friendly" nearby nation. While the population was absorbed in the recent death of their president or prime minister and preparing for a civil war, they would discover that many of them were dying of some plague, and they would attribute this event as fitting into the narrative of the leader being assassinated by one group or the other. Destroying the communications infrastructure would severely affect any attempts to draw the country back together again by anybody who might have figured out that the killer of the leader was not a local group, and that both sides were really being affected by different plagues. The attackers might even succeed in splitting the armed forces into opposed forces grouped along religious or ethnic lines. The hope of the attackers would be that their main work would be to bring the plagues under control with stockpiled inoculations, dispose of the dead, and install a puppet regime.  If the sequence were to be properly timed, then there would not be time enough to work out the identity of the real assassins before the country started to split along religious/ethnic lines. While that misapprehension still persisted, the two groups would experience themselves as being targeted by biological attack from the other side, and before any clear thinkers could succeed in communicating with a meaningful fraction of the population, the means of mass communication would all disappear.


 * The idea that "getting inside the opponent's OODA loop" can be done merely by a sequence of seemingly random actions, or randomized actions, is not anything that Boyd ever advocated. Furthermore, such a plan could not be justified on Boyd's principles because that course of action wastes both time and energy/resources to no gain. P0M (talk) 07:16, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

---

More uncited text:


 * "the enemy aircraft comes into radar contact, more direct information about the

speed, size, and maneuverability of the enemy plane becomes available, unfolding circumstances take priority over radio chatter. A first decision is made based on the available information so far: the pilot decides to "get into the sun" above his opponent, and applies control inputs to climb. The pilot then observes whether the attacker begins reacting to the change of altitude?..."

and probably more, from ARMY BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION: THE UTILITY OF USING CORPORATE BUSINESS MODELS WITHIN THE INSTITUTIONAL ARMY by John J. Bailer Jr., 1995
 * Wrong 1995 was when he got his B.S.  P0M (talk) 04:23, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

69.203.83.137 (talk) 16:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

This is really weird. I remember writing the following text. I always write first draft out of my head, and I never read Bailer's article. Are you sure that it was from 1995?

I suppose it is possible that somebody read the above, cut out some of the good spots, edited the rest, published it... Who knows what the exact sequence was without doing a lot of double-checking.P0M (talk) 19:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Either I have esp or the above text could be used to replace whatever was written by the other author. Note how the text (actually from on or before 15 June 2007) text shortens the text I wrote in 2005, e.g. "Unfolding circumstances become very much more the center of attention than chatter from home base,Unfolding circumstances become very much more the center of attention than chatter from home base," becomes "unfolding circumstances take priority over radio chatter." A further point of evidence is that I made an improved chart (I think the original one just had four "balls", O, O, D, and A, and I bolded the points in my text that echo labels on the diagram. I seem to remember changing the original GIF or PNG into an SVG and putting it on Commons at some point. P0M (talk) 20:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Before you accuse people of plagiarism you should check out the dates carefully. P0M (talk) 20:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Check out this diff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OODA_Loop&diff=82777944&oldid=82413583 by Keno.
 * Then look at the previous version by KAM:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OODA_Loop&oldid=82413583
 * The stuff that was copied from the 2007 dissertation was inserted by Keno.

It was my text, written in 2005 that was replaced by text written on or around 15 June 2007. The author of that text got his B.S. in 1995.
 * See the archived version of 3 June 2005:
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OODA_Loop&direction=next&oldid=14627172


 * I wonder who the author of the articles cited above might have been. Both URLs are dead now, no? P0M (talk) 00:46, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

See the archived version of 3 June 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=OODA_Loop&direction=next&oldid=14627172 All the other versions showed up in 2006, no?P0M (talk) 04:53, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Ties to philosophy
The Orient stage is equivalent in philosophy to ontology. People believe certain things exist and certain things don't, and they also believe they function and interact in certain ways. That determines what they believe is possible and impossible, likely and unlikely, and so on. Thus, the guerilla warfare of the American Revolution was difficult for the British to overcome because that's just not how armies are supposed to act. On September 11, 2001, the world realized that boxcutter knives and jetliners were lethal weapons when combined; until that point, the ontological implications were not considered a security threat.

Philosophical postmodernism thrives on redefinition or reconceptualization, and as such, operates in the Orient stage by changing the operational ontology. In The Matrix, for example, it took knowledge from outside the system to deny the apparent reality of the artificial sensory data and step outside the rules of the arbitrary physics simulation. --97.119.133.94 (talk) 02:32, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The postmodernist stuff comes out of Heidegger, and before him (but probably unacknowledged, from Edmund Husserl and his phenomenology. Those 20th century developments arose out of Kant's attack on naive realism. The ancient Chinese philosophers were ahead of the lot of them about 2000 years ago. John Boyd was explicitly indebted to the work of Sun Zi and Sun Zi was close to Lao Zi (i.e., the philosophy of the Dao De Jing.


 * Part of the modern art of war has to do with creating "realities" for the enemy to see. In the lead up to the invasion of Nazi dominated Europe from Great Britain, there were enormous efforts made to create by prestidigitation (well, slow motion prestidigitation) the appearance of troop movements that would indicate a target for beach landings that was not actually the one chosen.


 * Creation of a "reality" for the enemy to see and react to is one part of the art of war. Deconstructing the "reality" that one's enemy has made, tearing away the disinformation, is another part of the art of war.


 * Recently, scientists interested in perception have been asking magicians how they perform their illusions. It turns out that the more one attends to one thing the less one is able to attend to something else, so one of the prime techniques of the illusionist is to get the audience to devote lots of CPU time to something that is not relevant. One of the things that Boyd talks about is total situational awareness. Another of the ideas that come up, at least in the discussions of people who have their own take-offs on Boyd's work, is that one will intensely concentrate on one's opponent in a dogfight. The first thing wrong with the idea of total concentration on the adversary at hand is that his friend may be drawing a bead on you from a distance. The second thing wrong with this total concentration on what reason or lore says is important may be that the enemy is doing something crucial out of your awareness.


 * Back to the original topic -- the tradition that Sun Zi was close to teaches a mental discipline that Americans frequently have only seen in Michael Jordan's "getting into the zone." P0M (talk) 21:59, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

opening sentence
The italicized words in the opening sentence are not all formatted the same - please look at that and fix it, I don't know how. 216.153.214.89 (talk) 07:48, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The initial letters of four words are put in bold text because they form the acronym OODA. Is that what you are talking about? It's intentional.P0M (talk) 09:11, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Linked website closed
The d-n-i dot net website that the links go to seems to have closed down, although it was online two weeks ago. But much of the stuff from the website can be recovered through the Wayback machine. Perhaps someone more interested in the material than me could put them on another website somewhere? May be a good idea to bundle the documents yup in an archive file for easy downloading. 89.243.151.121 (talk) 21:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * They have been replicated on a number of websites. Is this still an issue? Eschatologicalguy (talk) 18:58, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It would be nice if the files could be loaded into Wikipedia Commons. Some things probably are U.S. government properly, just as are the NASA photos. I think that would be the case if Boyd was working on the clock when he published them. On the other hand, he did not stop writing after he retired, so his estate would have the copyrights to those documents.
 * One of the good things about the printed word is that even if what someone has written has only been published in journal articles it can still be found is libraries here and there. Technology really matter to the preservation of information. Books printed around 1200 are still is almost like new state in China because the paper that they were printed on has not deteriorated with age. Books published in the first half of the 20th century often crumble in the reader's fingers because the paper was made with an acid process that decomposes the paper over the course of a few decades. Electronically published stuff could theoretically disappear as the result of one flash of lightning. And of course there are those of us with data stored on 8" floppy disks...  P0M (talk) 00:19, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

-- None of the links work now.. Emsed1 (talk) 19:59, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

fig: feedbacks identical here, pls chk func.
i saw another ooda fig. from smt? net where one feedback line is from decision to second o. will someone doublecheck?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.115.17.83 (talk) 10:40, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It would help if you could give us the URL of the diagram you saw. To me it seems unlikely to be accurate, but perhaps I am guessing wrong about how the line was drawn.P0M (talk) 03:15, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The OODA loop diagram is missing links, has one arrow in the wrong direction. Please see page 344 of Robert Coram's 2002 book BOYD: THE FIGHTER PILOT WHO CHANGED THE ART OF WAR. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.79.197.165 (talk) 07:43, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Fixed.P0M (talk) 22:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

needs a criticism section
While there has been a lot of positive spin on this, its application to land battles has been criticised

http://dodccrp.org/events/10th_ICCRTS/CD/papers/365.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA374770 www.theamericanconservative.com%2Farticles%2Fjohn-boyds-art-of-war%2F&ei=MpL6U72wGdGfyASYo4DIBQ&usg=AFQjCNHJFkUst2OG7zgEewKmAqJ_C9LFsQ&sig2=habsawIfjgfBrkAT381ebA

cheers Greglocock (talk) 01:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I wonder how this is a thing? To me it seems like a rather theoretical bunch of obvious things and ancient wisdoms packed into a approach\doctrine\scheme. It becomes interesting when concrete, applicable, non-obvious\trivial consequences are derived. The article must hint at these. --Moritzgedig (talk) 14:37, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Frans Osinga reference
Frans Osinga argues that Boyd's own views on the OODA loop are much deeper, richer, and more comprehensive than the common interpretation of the 'rapid OODA loop' idea

And? In what way? Who is this person and why do we care? It's nice that a reference for (Dr.?) Osinga's book is provided, but is the entire section that follows based on his book? It could use some inline page citations if that's the case, and better language to distinguish between the "common" interpretation and this supposedly richer, more comprehensive one. 72.200.151.13 (talk) 06:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

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Most of the article deleted without any discussion?
Hi, this comment to express my surprise, coming back to this article after a couple of months. Pbritti, you seem to have deleted about two thirds of the article last december? I'm surprised, I would have expected discussion in this page first.

Was there discussion elsewhere? What's the justification?

I'm not saying that the "development" and "applicability" sections were extraordinarily well written, relevant, sourced etc, but I guess it did represent some effort on the part of previous contributors. (I'm not one of them, so it's a not a personal matter) Or was it linked to the copyright discussion above?

To be fair, I came here to gather some description of the phases of the loop (what are the boundaries between Orient and Decide?), and it's not there, and it actually wasn't there before. Maybe I'll try to write it up some time, not in military context because I don't know anything about it, but the OODA loop has been generalized to many different domains. Jrob kiwi (talk) 10:35, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The portions removed were promotional and referenced to either a self-published promotional pamphlet (as was the case for the very extended block-quote) or not referenced at all. If you do have the time and ability, adding a section on the phases would be outstanding. ~ Pbritti (talk) 13:50, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * thanks. Maybe I will, but no guarantee. Actually in French there's an interesting detailed section about the phases... maybe just translate that. Fun fact: the french authors say they translated the english version. :-) Jrob kiwi (talk) 14:41, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Article needs an explanation on how the model is used
The article currently does not explain how the OODA loop model is applied, nor is there an explanation of what the four stages (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) mean. With the Brexit example in the last paragraph, it is not made clear how the OODA loops of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign were disrupted by the Vote Leave campaign, nor is it made clear what it means for the OODA loop to be disrupted. --MtPenguinMonster (talk) 09:20, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Historical facts missing
When was this model first developed? Applied? Where and by whom? With what successes and failures? Which models did it displace or supersede? Which models have been developed from it or influenced by it or in opposition to it? Is the model relevant today, and if so, where and to whom?

There are so many factual questions that need answers before the reader can successfully place this model in context. yoyo (talk) 01:51, 12 May 2024 (UTC)