Robert Coram > Quotes

“If our mental processes become focused on our internal dogmas and isolated from the unfolding, constantly dynamic outside world, we experience mismatches between our mental images and reality. Then confusion and disorder and uncertainty not only result but continue to increase. Ultimately, as disorder increases, chaos can result. Boyd showed why this is a natural process and why the only alternative is to do a destructive deduction and rebuild one’s mental image to correspond to the new reality.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd : The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“If a man can reduce his needs to zero, he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Boyd dove deeper and deeper into the study of war. He realized that while wars take place between nations, every person experiences some form of war; conflict is a fundamental part of human nature. To prevail in personal and business relations, and especially war, we must understand what takes place in a person’s mind.”
― Robert Coram, 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 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.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“And you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.

He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.”

Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed another direction.

"Or you can go that way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“judge people by what they do and not what they say they will do.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Boyd, borrowing from Sun Tzu, said the best commander is the one who wins while avoiding battle. The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos. Boyd said war is organic and compared his technique to clipping the nerves, muscles, and tendons of an enemy, thus reducing him to jelly. As Boyd”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“So you got your reward; you got kicked in the teeth. That means you were doing good work. Getting kicked in the teeth is the reward for good work.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“The OODA Loop is often seen as a simple one-dimensional cycle, where one observes what the enemy is doing, becomes oriented to the enemy action, makes a decision, and then takes an action. This “dumbing down” of a highly complex concept is especially prevalent in the military, where only the explicit part of the Loop is understood. The military believes speed is the most important element of the cycle, that whoever can go through the cycle the fastest will prevail. It is true that speed is crucial, but not the speed of simply cycling through the Loop. By simplifying the cycle in this way, the military can make computer models. But computer models do not take into account the single most important part of the cycle—the orientation phase, especially the implicit part of the orientation phase.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“This means that they understand their commander’s overall intent and they know their job is to do whatever is necessary to fulfill that intent.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“A pilot can be too cautious. He can be too methodical. He reads and memorizes the specifications, knows the boundaries of the performance envelope, and is careful never to nudge up against the performance limits. But Boyd did not believe the performance specs and had no fear of the aircraft.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“He told Burton to always keep the initiative. “And you must never panic. When they surprise you, even if the surprise seems fatal, there is always a countermove.” Boyd gave Burton three guiding principles. The first was the most difficult and most familiar to anyone who had worked with Boyd. “Jim, you can never be wrong. You have to do your homework. If you make a technical statement, you better be right. If you are not, they will hose you . And if they hose you, you’ve had it. Because once you loose credibility and you are no longer a threat, no one will pay attention to what you say. They won’t respect you and they won’t pay attention to you”
― Robert Coram, Boyd : The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Understanding the OODA loop enables a commander to compress time - that is, the time between observing a situation and taking an action. A commander can use the temporal discrepancy (a form of fast transient) to select the least-expected action rather than what is predicted to be the most effective action. The enemy can also figure out what might be the most effective. To take the least-expected action disorients the enemy. It causes him to pause, wonder, to question.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Often, when a man is young and idealistic, he believes that if he works hard and does the right thing, success will follow.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“They usually did not fight what is known as a “war of attrition.” Rather, they used deception, speed, fluidity of action, and strength against weakness. They used tactics that disoriented and confused—tactics that, in Boyd’s words, caused the enemy “to unravel before the fight.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Here Boyd says that to shape the environment, one must manifest four qualities: variety, rapidity, harmony, and initiative. A commander must have a series of responses that can be applied rapidly; he must harmonize his efforts and never be passive. To understand the briefing, one must keep these four qualities in mind.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“If you want to understand something, take it to the extremes or examine its opposites,” Boyd said.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“On the wall over his head as he worked was a framed quote from President Calvin Coolidge: “Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Generating a rapidly changing environment--that is, engaging in actively 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.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd : The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“The briefing begins with what was to become Boyd’s most famous—and least understood—legacy: the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act cycle, or O-O-D-A Loop. Today, anyone can hook up to an Internet browser, type “OODA Loop,” and find more than one thousand references. The phrase has become a buzz word in the military and among business consultants who preach a time-based strategy. But few of those who speak so glibly about the OODA Loop have a true understanding of what it means and what it can do. (Boyd preferred “O-O-D-A Loop” but soon gave up and accepted “OODA” because most people wrote it that way.)”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“Another important slide shows how the Blitzkrieg—or maneuver conflict—is the perfect tactical application of the OODA Loop. Boyd asks: How does a commander harmonize the numerous individual thrusts of a Blitzkrieg attack and maintain the cohesion of his larger effort? The answer is that the Blitzkrieg is far more than the lightning thrusts that most people think of when they hear the term; rather it was all about high operational tempo and the rapid exploitation of opportunity. In a Blitzkrieg situation, the commander is able to maintain a high operational tempo and rapidly exploit opportunity because he makes sure his subordinates know his intent, his Schwerpunkt. They are not micromanaged, that is, they are not told to seize and hold a certain hill; instead they are given “mission orders.” This means that they understand their commander’s overall intent and they know their job is to do whatever is necessary to fulfill that intent. The subordinate and the commander share a common outlook. They trust each other, and this trust is the glue that holds the apparently formless effort together. Trust emphasizes implicit over explicit communications. Trust is the unifying concept. This gives the subordinate great freedom of action. Trust is an example of a moral force that helps bind groups together in what Boyd called an “organic whole.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“But they were still warriors. Their hearts beat as resolutely as when they stormed the beaches on Pacific islands, as when they fought across Europe, and as when they tried to stay warm in the snows of Korea. They were ready to march.”
― Robert Coram, American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day

“It was also he who said of Day, “He is, by nature, incapable of allowing injustice to go unchallenged.”
― Robert Coram, American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day

“Every leader who wants to make significant change needs a “resident son of a bitch” who can make hard decisions without regard to rank or personality.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Barely six months after Ribbon Creek, Krulak had lost eleven Marines in another training accident. How he handled the incident is an example of the public relations axiom, “Tell the truth. Tell it all. And tell it quickly.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Krulak knew he would pay a price, and he still did the right thing. At a time when he had everything to lose, he was the only general in the American military whose sense of duty and love of country were greater than his careerism.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“President Calvin Coolidge: “Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Sun Tzu, said the best commander is the one who wins while avoiding battle. The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos. Boyd said war is organic and compared his technique to clipping the nerves, muscles, and tendons of an enemy, thus reducing him to jelly.”
― Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

“The great gulf between the story told by the young reporters and the story that military people knew as their truth may be the reason that, almost a half century later, the Vietnam War remains the source of a cultural rift in America. Today a small but growing group of writers is looking back and finding a different story than the one told by many reporters of the day.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine