A Swift, Elusive Sword - What If Sun Tzu and John Boyd Did A National Defense Review? First edition

by Chet Richards

A study of national security and military strategy by Col. Chester Richards (USAF Ret.), suggests that ancient strategic wisdom may help solve the dilemma confronting the U.S. spending on defense exceeds that of any combination of potential adversaries, but the services still face cancellation of weapon systems and lack of funds for training, spares, and care and feeding of the troops. Richards suggests U.S. military leaders can break out of the "dollars equals defense" mindset, and create more effective forces. The second edition contains a new forward written in response to the effects that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States have engendered in the U.S. military.

84 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

About the author

Chet Richards was a close associate of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd from the mid-1970s until Boyd s death in 1997. Boyd had asked him to review the mathematical portions of his first civilian paper, Destruction and Creation, and this led to a collaboration that eventually included applications to the business world.

Chet Richards career began at the Pentagon in 1971, and has included employment with Northrop, the professional services company CACI in Washington DC, and Lockheed. A consultant since 1999, he maintains his practice in strategy for business, marketing, and communications through Tarkenton & Addams, Inc., a public relations firm in Atlanta, GA.

Chet is the author of several publications all involving applications of Boyd s strategies. His most recent, A Swift, Elusive Sword, addresses how we can re-fashion the US Defense Department to defend ourselves against the types of non-traditional enemies we will likely face in the 21st Century. It was published by the Centers for Defense Information shortly before 9/11, has been translated into Russian, and is now in its second printing. He has lectured on this subject to commercial organizations in the US and abroad, including the US Army Command and Staff College and the Air War College, and is the only person to have delivered Boyd s Patterns of Conflict since Boyd s death.

Chet is also a retired colonel in the US Air Force Reserve, where he served for many years as the Reserve Air Attaché to Saudi Arabia. Prior to that, he was a reservist on the Air Staff in Washington, where he built computer models of fighter aircraft effectiveness. He was commissioned in 1969 through the Army ROTC program at the University of Mississippi.

Chet and his wife, Ginger, live in Atlanta, where, in addition to their work with Tarkenton & Addams, they build custom web sites to support the marketing communications needs of their clients. They also own and operate two sites devoted to John Boyd s strategic legacy, Defense and the National Interest (http://www.d-n-i.net) and Belisarius.com (http://www.belisarius.com.) They have two daughters who, as this is written, are both in graduate school in Georgia, and one very overweight cat.

(Barnes and Noble)

Reviews

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent - sound, well-organized, well-reasoned. This was written in early 2003; some of the author's thoughts have been confirmed, others disproven by events since then in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Georgia, as well as by some aspects of the development of the Chinese military. Nevertheless, as the author says at the end, the parts focused on people and ideas relative to 3rd generation/maneuver and 4th generation warfare are closely grounded in the work of Sun Tzu and John Boyd, and are dead on and vital to our national security, including our economy and non-military well-being. Every member of the executive and legislative branches and their staffs should make this short volume (76 pages) required reading.

[ADD · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this very engaging. However, it was printed a few months before the attacks on NYC and the Pentagon. Therefore, some of his assumptions were voided a few months after. Still the author gave some interesting perspective on the over-emphasis on technological solutions at the expense of the controlling technology - the people involved. The edition I read was actually published by Center for Defense Information in May 2001.