Journalism in an Age of Terror: Col. John Boyd ond O-O-D-A Loops

29 June 2009

Col. John Boyd ond O-O-D-A Loops

Col. John Boyd and O-O-D-A Loops

O-O-D-A stands for Observe-Orientate-Decide-Act and was developed by a USAF officer for air-to-air combat training. John Boyd was an instructor pilot who would bet his students that he could “down” them in mock aerial combat within 40 seconds.

His major trick was to go back to real stick-n-rudder flying and employ the barrel roll or Immelmann turn (a 1914 Great War tactic credited to Oberleutnant Max Immelmann of a half-turn combined with a half-loop) to reverse the direction of an aircraft. This use of maneuver came in the Fifties and Sixties when pilots believed “speed was life” and heat-seeking missles were being pushed by aircraft designers and Air Force planners.

Boyd developed and taught the idea of O “see’em” then O “orientate, or get in the best position” D decide quickly and A act decisively. Sounds simple enough for aerial combat or even hunting deer…..but Boyd went on to brief military officers about many other applications, including guerrilla warfare.

Then came the business applications….as in marketing…O spot the need and potential market O orientate or get your firm in position D decide how to get your product to market etc. and A act quickly to capture the market before the competition.

This concept has been applied to medical practices, rugby teams, etc. and countering insurgencies. And is sometimes heard as “getting inside the other guy’s O-O-D-A loop” by beating the opponent to the punch on the four-part idea.

Sometimes this has been presented as S-O-D-A for Sense-Orientate-Decide-Act

There is a short YouTube presentation on Boyd http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivTBv3wnp1Y&feature=related

There is also a four-part Boyd lecture at the Air University but the video and audio quality is very low. Here is Part 4 on no dumb questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbbh9bYOOok&feature=related

In analysis tasks, such as journalism and intelligence, the sense or Observe part is what most of us need to hone as a sharper skill……exactly WHAT are we observing? Or, are things going on and we are not observing or even sensing? Are these people hot, cold, starving, educated, poor, religious fanatics, anti-corruption, smugglers, etc……WHAT are we seeing or WHAT should we be looking for?

The Orientation segment is fixing this observation in time, history, parallel situations or areas of the world, etc. How does all this fit together? There have always been poor people and hungry people, what might make this situation different?

Decide might pertain to devoting resources – even your own time – to work on this situation or develop the concept…and Act would be to report and distribute the information to the public or leadership in time for further action.

How long did the U.S. take to O-O-D-A the idea that inaccurate airstrikes were generating more opposition in Afghanistan and triggering political unrest in Pakistan?

What about the politics of engaging traditional concepts; like the U.S. Army knows when to call in air strikes and the USAF knows how to hit targets? What about the bureaucratic model (as in Allisonian analysis) idea that the White House establishes the Pentagon’s “rules of engagement” and the ground and air units are following them correctly?

At what point do savvy journalists or intelligence analysts observe the counter-productive results of following the approved ROE and dig in and add analytical input to the public and leadership?

I have been talking about increasing battlefield depth for more than 15 years (even used the strategy in a faculty/management conflict on campus) but I until the past month I have seen little in the news media about the success of this strategy with the Chechens striking Russia and today watching the Taliban in Pakistan. These city attacks are having an impact in Pakistan, but with this cause a backlash against the Taliban? Or, will this undermine support for the government (can’t protect the people, more conscripts needed, etc.)

A significant factor in Observing is knowing history….what happened elsewhere and what happened in this particular area? If we are bird watchers, we might spot a red-throated tit where someone else might just see a bird. But if we really study Parus fringillinus then we know this bird belongs on the savannah and not here in River City, so something is up.

The U.S. military has developed a reading list for different ranks in the armed services….some good reading there. The idea is to have more soldiers, sailors and aviators understanding the history and strategic concepts so they will be better observers and thinkers….stuff like how did Napoleon’s campaign fail in Russia? or how did Lawrence of Arabia unite the tribes?

Journalists who intend to cover or are thrown into covering insurgencies need to also become savvy very quickly….and much more than military operations, but the whole ball of wax which creates, maintains and leads an insurgency.

The next readings, from Brave New War and the Starfish and the Spider enter the middle ground between intelligence and journalism

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Media technology

Techno-advances in Communications

I was fortunate in getting my start in journalism because I worked on equipment so crude by modern standards. Some of the work done was reminiscent of the turn of the last century….and I mean 1900.

So I have seen – and therefore appreciated – the technological advancement in news media communications which have altered reporting so significantly……because these techno-advances came along with social changes and political changes.

But let’s start with Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg who was born a century before Columbus “discovered” America. Gutenberg was a Jewish goldsmith with a few money-making ideas. Some failed, but his basic idea of crafting molds for movable type took off. He borrowed money from his brother-in-law (who later caused him to go bankrupt) and started printing a 42-line Bible and thousands of “indulgence” cards (sort of get-out-of- Hell passes). Bibles sold for roughly three years' wages for an average clerk, but the market was the wealthy who could not afford handwritten Bibles.

So the start of printed mass media is not about news or religion, but rather about a 1450 technology and how one can make a buck with the idea. The cost of the printed product was high, plus there was the added factor that most people could not read.

But the idea of printing presses and movable type took off with the upper-class educated. Churches bought Bibles and parishioners who could read could see “the word of God” in the passages. Then there was the additional idea of market expansion by actually taking these words from Latin and putting them into local languages….that should expand the market, and possibly more production lowered costs.

But something else happened – a social change! Some people started interpreting that the Bible passages described a concept different from what they saw in the power of the Church. This goes on for a while, and the Reformation begins as a reform movement within the Church and eventually results in a break away from the Roman Church and the establishment of various Protestant sects.

People blame the damn printing press. Those at the top lose power if any local yokel can read this stuff and have their own interpretation.

England was especially cruel in cracking down on the source – the printers. If the people with the printing presses could be frightened for printing anything which might cause the authorities a hard time. Google John Twyn for a real gut-wrenching execution. He was sentenced to be "drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn, and there hanged by the neck;" and, being alive, that he should be cut down, and his body mutilated in a way which decency forbids the mention of; that his entrails should afterwards be taken out, "and, you still living, the same to be burnt before your eyes; your head to be cut off, and your head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King's Majesty."

In the days before mass media visuals, the best way for the authorities to explain to the public there are different degrees of the king being pissed off was through graphic example for word of mouth to spread the message.

Must have been a rough day for John Twyn….hanging or beheading seems bad enough, but as a printer he was used as an example. Bet his heart was pounding when his genitals were cut off and cooked in front of him. Then his abdomen opened up and his intestines placed on the griddle. But I am certain the word spread through England that the king was not going to tolerate printers publishing anti-king pamphlets. If you read about his trial, he claimed he did not write, edit or even proofread the pamphlet, he just printed it.

So going after the technological source (the printing press) was an early tactic of authority and one often repeated as media developed.

In later years, the control of telegraph, radio, television were all assumed by the government. Only in America did the concept of “free press” prevail, and those cases were part of the U.S. battle for independence from London.

Two other things pop out of these early Gutenberg/Twyn stories, the idea of market (readers, listeners, viewers, etc.) and social change as the political powers are challenged by the spreading of information.

Afghanistan might be an example…..few radios and even fewer newspaper readers….so the word (like with the U.S. civil rights movement) comes from the church, or the mosque in the case of Muslim communities. When Southern blacks had little access to the pages of Southern newspapers – yeah many could read them, but few of the articles pertained to them – African-Americans turned to the black churches as their network for communications.

Market has always been an interesting factor in mass media. So has pornography – which in mass media studies is termed “utility” for how people use media. And market and porno are linked……one of the most popular one-reelers in hand-cranked movie machines was an up-skirt film, “What the Bootblack Saw!”

Developing market has always been at the forefront of technological development. One of the early concepts for radio was to build a station and rent it out by the hour to anyone who wanted to blabber about something. Took a long time to figure out that money could be made by sponsored programs, and then later commercials placed into programming.

And each new form of media adapted the format of existing media. One of my favorite shots is of Arthur Godfrey on 1950s television wearing his headphones and using a big radio microphone……the network idea that television was radio with moving pictures.

Not too long after this age, I got out of high school and ended up in the 101st Airborne Division. In 1963, Walter Cronkite finally argued CBS-News to expand the nightly news to a half-hour. Network executives had sunk the idea for the previous seasons, saying the attention span of the public for television news did not go beyond 15 minutes a night, and besides, it would cost a lot of money to fill the other 15 minutes.
When the new season kicked off in September, Cronkite was there and the first extra 15 minutes was filled by President John F. Kennedy talking about U.S. commitments, including possibly getting out of Vietnam.

When Kennedy was assassinated 11 weeks later, the nation was glued to television sets for three days of coverage, including seeing Lee Harvey Oswald shot live in Dallas by Jack “Ruby” Rubenstein.

This was the major start to network television news….money poured in for staff and equipment. Television cameras got smaller and cinematographers moved from 16mm film to video. Satellites went up which allowed international transmissions of video so the film no longer had to be flown from Saigon to Los Angeles or New York.

When I started in the Saigon bureau of UPI in 1966, we worked on manual typewriters and with 35mm Nikons. Our articles and photos were sent by telex at 66-words-per minute. (Wirephotos were put on a revolving cylinder and sent as dots to a similar cylinder at newspapers.) These methods of transmission were so limited that an around the clock operation like UPI could only send out about 12 photos and 40 articles a day.

The slow telex speed – for example, a two-page single spaced article of 500 words -- would take eight minutes to transmit to our New York headquarters. A photograph might take 12 minutes. Reporting had to be succinct and efficient, photos were selected with care. The Vietnam War might have been the biggest story in the world, but our daily output was so limited.

Newspapers were also limited in what they could take from Vietnam. The average U.S. daily newspaper would only carry three Vietnam-related articles a day and one or two photos. Compare this to the content-hungry networks like CNN which have to feed the beast around the clock.

The U.S. put a communications satellite in orbit above Southeast Asia in October or November 1967 – mostly for government use, but also available to news organizations.
Two months later, the Tet Offensive opened and became a major media event around the world. There was the psychological impact (General Westmoreland had been in Washington in November saying the war was going well and he wanted 204,000 more troops) and the technological impact of satellite communications between Saigon and news media headquarters in the States.

AP’s Peter Arnett lived near the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and heard the explosions and gunfire. He went to the scene and then rushed to the AP bureau and filed a “flash” message that the embassy was under attack by the Viet Cong.

The White House and Pentagon learned of the attack from the Associated Press teletype and not from CIA, MACV or the State Dept. And this was a real communications first, that a journalist could be telling both the public and the national leaders of a significant incident.

The Tet Offensive changed news reporting forever. People around the world got to see and listen to leaders in Washington and Saigon saying one thing and view live images and hear reporters at the scene saying something completely different. The “credibility gap” yawned even wider…..President Johnson said he would not seek reelection….General Westmoreland was fired (brought back to Washington)…and there were peace negotiations with Hanoi. Richard Nixon ran for president as a “peace” candidate saying the LBJ Administration had to go.

Don Oberdorfer wrote Tet, the classic book on the offensive, and details many of the command and management errors the military made in dealing with the Saigon press corps during the spring of 1968. The military machine did not have the expertise or savvy staff to deal with the new technologies available to journalists and made many errors.

One classic error was to assign only one C-130 aircraft for press use….so each day, this aircraft would depart Tan Son Nhut Airfield and fly to a different devastated city…and this stretched out rubble and civilian survivor stories for three weeks….something which should have not lasted more than three days.

Westmoreland also made great errors in saying Hue was nearly secure and would be over in a couple days of “mopping up” and American readers and viewers got to see the month- long grind that cost the U.S. Marines dearly.

Although Tet was a terrible defeat for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese, the mishandling of the news media and over-optimistic (perhaps deceitful) statements by military and political leaders had a major impact on the U.S. and the world.
Simple lessons, like tell the truth and get the bad news out right away, were slow to be learned by the Pentagon.

Jumping ahead to today, we see an interconnected world via the Internet, the use of Facebook and Twitter, mobile camera phones carried worldwide, and a tremendous media explosion in the rest of the world.

All of these devices and technological innovations affect journalism and the ability of government to deal with constituents.

Let me give you two examples……one is a Special Ops strike into Syria by Blackhawk helicopters. These operations had been done before against “high value” targets but done without any public statements by the U.S. or Syrian governments…..until one afternoon in October 2008 some Syrian pointed his camera phone at the sky and videoed the U.S. Blackhawks coming in….and the video ended up on YouTube…and on the news networks. The Syrians were embarrassed and the U.S. tried the same foolish cover-up about the border not being well marked etc. My main point is that anyone with a camera phone can now have international media access to the world.

The second example is known as the Hainan Island Incident on April Fool’s Day

On April 1, 2001, a mid-air collision between a U.S. Navy Lockheed EP-3 surveillance aircraft and a People's Liberation Navy J-8II interceptor fighter resulted in an international dispute between the United States and the People's Republic of China called the Hainan Island Incident.”

The 24 U.S. crew members were detained and interrogated by the Chinese authorities until a letter of apology was issued by the U.S. government. The Hainan Incident was the first foreign policy crisis in the presidency of George W. Bush.
The EP-3 was operating about 70 miles away from the Chinese island of Hainan when it was intercepted by two J-8 fighters. One of the J-8s , piloted by Lt. Cdr. Wang Wei, made two close passes to the EP-3. On the third pass, it collided with the surveillance aircraft.

Wang Wei’s J-8 broke into two pieces, while the EP-3's radar dome detached completely and its outer left propeller was severely damaged. The collision caused the death of Chinese pilot Wang Wei. The American EP-3 was forced to make an emergency landing on Hainan.

The Pentagon released video of the pilot Wang Wei on June 17, 2001, hours before a meeting in Beijing between American and Chinese officials over the spy plane stand-off.

In the video, filmed by an earlier U.S. EP-3 surveillance plane crew in January, Lt Cdr Wang Wei is seen holding up a piece of paper bearing his email address. Wang's features can be clearly discerned as he points at the paper and beckons the American plane to come closer....but my theory is that Wang Wei was using his hand to signal the Yanks to "call me" or "contact me."

So back in 2001, in the Pre-9/11 Age, we have a young Chinese pilot trying to make personal contact with American aviators. He wants to have a connection with them, to have an email relationship.

The U.S. released the earlier video of Wang Wei to show that he was some sort of “cowboy” in his fast jet fighter flying close to the slower U.S. spy plane. But the U.S. quickly set aside the idea that Wang Wei wanted to chat with U.S. pilots who probably went through training much like his, shared a love of flying, and perhaps as boys built model airplanes and all those aspects of commonality.

This entire concept of the average soldier being able to communicate with the average soldier in the enemy force is wildly challenging to authorities…..difficult to demonize the enemy when you can meet them on Windows Live Messenger or Facebook and even Twitter to them.

We are seeing more of this as reports come in of Hezbollah and Taliban (or their supporters elsewhere in the world) trying to make friendly contact with people on Facebook or other social networking programs.

And we see YouTube and other video outlets showing insurgent videos of IED ambushes and Humvees flying into the air. There is also a violent kill-the- crusader video game popular in Muslim nations which is supposedly much like “Grand Theft Auto.”

29 June 2009

Col. John Boyd ond O-O-D-A Loops

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Followers

Media technology

Search This Blog

Blog Archive

29 June 2009

Col. John Boyd ond O-O-D-A Loops

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Followers

Media technology

Subscribe To Journalism in an Age of Terror

Search This Blog

Blog Archive