Defense and the National Interest

Perhaps Boyd’s greatest contribution wasn’t EM Theory or Patterns of Conflict.  It might have been that he exemplified what it means to be a professional in this day and time.
Retired USMC Colonel Mike Wyly, a guiding force behind the Marines’ efforts to instill maneuver warfare, was also a close associate of Boyd’s.  He writes about [...]

By William S. Lind
July 2, 2008
Pat Buchanan’s new book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, is causing a stir, which is a good thing. Buchanan argues that both World War I and World War II were unnecessary wars; that Britain bears at least [...]

The Baltic Defence College in Tartu, Estonia, is hosting a conference on Boyd’s influence on contemporary strategic thought, 26 August 2008. Bill Lind, Grant Hammond, and Frans Osinga are scheduled to participate.
For more information, please download the attached announcement (158 KB PDF).
For advice on transportation and lodging, please contact the POC at the BDC:
Eric [...]

What it is, why it’s important, and what OODA loops have to do with it.
Framework for Strategic Cultural Analysis, by John Stanton.  To be presented at Cranfield,  the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, in June (1.2 MB PDF).

By William S. Lind
I spent last week with the Royal Marines in Plymouth, England, at a conference where they were trying to prepare intellectually for deployment to Afghanistan’s Helmand province. Inspired perhaps by the atmosphere of historic Stonehouse Barracks, where Marines who served at Trafalgar once drilled, I came up with an approach to [...]

In the “how did I miss this?” category:
“Learning the Right Lessons from Iraq,” by Benjamin H. Friedman, Harvey Sapolsky and Christopher Preble, The Cato Institute, Policy Analysis no. 610, February 13, 2008.

By Michele Pileri
Translated from the Italian — Special to DNI
13 May 2008
[Author’s note: What follows was to be a shortened version of a work written to be published by the Rivista Italiana Difesa (Italian Defence Review). The original one was written for a public that has hardly ever heard of John Boyd, so [...]

Spencer Ackerman posted an analysis yesterday of what might be called the strategic dynamics of the Iraqi conflict:
At the risk of saying something disputable, from 2003 to mid-2007, the insurgencies in Iraq had faster OODA Loops than the U.S. did. That’s not to say that there weren’t discrete tactical successes: there were, and lots of [...]

The Art of War - Spirituality for Conflict
Sun Tzu’s Art of War,
Translated by Thomas Huynh and the Editors at Sonshi.com
Annotations by Thomas Huynh
Foreword by Marc Benioff
Preface by Thomas Cleary
(Woodstock, VT: Skylight Illuminations) 210 pp.
DNI Review by Chet Richards, editor
April 30, 2008

Request for interest, that is.
There is an opportunity to hold a short, intense seminar on the applicability of Boyd’s ideas, particularly operating inside the OODA loop and grand strategy (sustaining our own morale and attracting the uncommitted), on the weekend of September 20 and 21 at the University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, PEI. [...]