ooda loop: a drive toward understanding

O DA “Loop”A Drive Toward Understanding

by Chad Cote T-1

Popularized Interpretation of the OODA Loop

Observe

OrientDecide

Act

In the popularized interpretation, the OODA loop suggests that success in war depends on the ability to out-pace and out-think the opponent, or put differently, on the ability to go through the OODA cycle more rapidly than the opponent. (Osinga 2005)


!Misleading

to

Wrong


Observe

OrientDecide

Act

Not Sequential

“A common misunderstanding and over-simplification of Boyd’s ideas had crept in over time, leading to an increasing emphasis on absolute speed and efficiency over relative speed and effectiveness” - Major Paul Tremblay USMC, Shaping and Adapting


The Real OODA “Loop”

Developed by USAF Colonel John Boyd

• The real OODA “Loop” is much more complex and dynamic than a simple step-by-step decision making model

• Boyd viewed the entire “loop” as an ongoing, multi-faceted cross-referencing process

An example may help make this clear

An ongoing, multi-faceted cross-referencing process???

Assume you are driving down a long stretch of highway in an attempt to reach your destination at a particular time.

Goal: To reach your destination on time while driving at a safe speed.

<—This symbol indicates the continuity of the driving example

(see top right of each slide)

Begin With OrientationWhile driving you are constantly viewing, assessing, analyzing, and interacting with the external environment. At the same time an unfolding interaction between the environment and your actions within that environment is occurring.

This interaction with the environment then shapes new observations and actions within the environment. (i.e. the vehicles in your vicinity will react to your presence and make decisions based on their awareness of you relative to their position.)

As you are moving through your environment it is constantly changing due to a variety of factors such as the shape of the road, levels of traffic, weather, and a multitude of other factors that you must observe and react to.

Orientation

“He (Boyd) was particularly detailed about the components of orientation as a complex

set of filters and shaping mechanisms of genetic heritage, cultural predispositions,

personal experience, and knowledge”

Major Paul Tremblay USMC, Shaping and Adapting, 2015

Unique Orientations Developed Through Our Mental Models

“Mental models” are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.” - Senge, Peter M.. The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

All mental models are a personal interpretation and thus a biased simplification of what actually exists

Our Orientation is Shaped By Our Experiences

How do you react when passing by an 18-wheel truck?

I drive at a constant speed while maintaining awareness of the truck’s position in relation to myself. I am aware of his potential blind spots and my relative weak position adjacent to the truck. Nonetheless, I drive in a similar manner in any other situation.

My wife becomes incredibly nervous when passing by an 18-wheeler. She speeds up substantially and swerves to the far left side of the lane and begins to drive somewhat erratically. When she is a passenger she can’t even look in the direction of the adjacent vehicle. Why? When she was in her early 20s she was run off the road by a truck and her car flipped multiple times before coming to rest. She is lucky to be alive.

Our Orientation is Shaped By Our Experiences

How do you react when approaching a 4-way stop sign and the other car hasn’t fully arrived at the stop sign?

I make the assumption the car is going to stop. I never wait for the other car(s) to come to a complete stop before continuing. Unless the car’s velocity causes me to hesitate and gather more information about its intentions, I stop then proceed under the impression the car will obey the laws of the road ahead.

My wife waits until the other car(s) come to a complete stop. This frustrates me as a passenger but again, given her past experiences she believes people won’t stop and waits for near certainty that they will before proceeding.

Why Does this Matter?

“Orientation is a representation of abstract reality; mental images one constructs are not only shaped by personal

experience, genetic heritage, cultural traditions and memory, they are also compared and contrasted to new information to

validate or invalidate existing schemata.”


Implicit Guidance & Control (IG&C)Have you ever had the experience of driving 20 minutes or 20 miles and then all of a sudden you are asking yourself, “How in the hell did I wind up here?”

You are exactly where you want to be but you were lost in thought and you can’t remember the last 20 minutes. Somehow you drove safely, you made decisions, you observed and reacted to your environment all without realizing this action. You didn’t make explicit decisions or think about driving you just performed it and it flowed naturally, smoothly.

In other words you were operating under the IG&C portion of the OODA “loop.”

Implicit Guidance & Control (IG&C)Through driving experience we become more comfortable and driving becomes a very implicit action.

But a new 16-year old driver doesn’t have this same experience. Her entire experience is made up of intense assessing, thinking, and decisions any time on the road. Her entire “loop” from observation to next action is much slower b/c she isn’t operating under the IG&C.

She doesn’t have an intuitive feel of the environment.

Observe-Orient-Hypothesis-Test (OOHyT)Even for experienced drivers the entire trip isn’t completed under the IG&C portion.

If a wreck was to occur and the highway was to come to a standstill then the experience will move to a more explicit decision/action cycle.

Should I switch lanes b/c that lane appears to be moving faster? Once I switch lanes should I move again, why is the other lane moving faster? (probing and assessing) (unfolding interaction with the environment)

Should I get off this exit and take back roads?

What is the Waze app (outside information) suggesting as an alternative route? Does it realize the wreck ahead is about to clear?

Always OrientingEven under IG&C or the OOHyT “loop” you are constantly observing and reorienting to your environment.

Under IG&C your observations can snap you back to a more explicit decision cycle at a moments notice depending on the unfolding circumstances.

Orientation

“Boyd posits, we must effectively and efficiently orient ourselves; that is, we must quickly and accurately develop mental images, or schema, to help comprehend and cope with the vast array of threatening and non-threatening events we face.”

Osinga, Frans P “Science, Strategy, and War: The strategic theory of John Boyd.”

OrientationVisualize driving down the highway at 70 mph and receiving a text message. You make the poor decision to read and respond to the message.

As your eyes are focused on the phone you are being disconnected from the environment.

As you are looking down at your phone your eyes will dart back and forth from the phone to the external environment.

This darting back and forth to the environment is your attempt to reorient to reality.

Hey John. What time is the

meeting?

Misaligned Orientation

When you are looking down at your phone (eyes are not darting back and forth to the external environment) you have a belief of how your actions will unfold in the external environment.

In this situation, you are operating under the Implicit Guidance & Control (IG&C) loop from orientation to observation. Your orientation is consisting of the interaction between your eyes (and other sensing organs) to your phone as well as the fact that your vehicle is continuing to move.

If the external environment doesn’t change and your actions are consistent with your mental model of the unfolding driving conditions (i.e. you don’t unexpectedly swerve off the road) then there is little risk or concern related to responding to the message. Understand your driving experience is now being determined by your internal mental models and assumptions of the environment and not with what is actually occurring in the environment.

Orientation Mismatch

What is concerning in this situation is any change in the environment that is inconsistent with your internal orientation will lead to a mismatch between your orientation and reality.

If this loop from orientation to observation without external information continues unimpeded we will begin to “see” what we want to “see,” rather than what is.

Incestuous Amplification

The mismatch between your orientation and the environment is not a huge concern initially but the longer the mismatch continues, the

more the loop begins to feedback and amplify itself.

Your orientation can begin to distort reality pulling you further and further way from the environment.

Incestuous AmplificationExample: As you last observed, the road ahead is straight and you notice a

single car in front of you some 500 yards. The car has continued at a constant speed for the last 10 minutes and the distance between you and the car hasn’t

changed.

You have no reason to believe this will change. You begin to answer the text message. While answering the text you do not look up and reorient to the road

ahead. You believe you are safe.

Now the car begins to slow down. You have no idea this is occurring. In isolation this isn’t much cause of concern. But as your internal orientation is feeding back to new observations (seeing your phone, feeling the car continue to drive ahead, hearing the same sounds) you believe the external environment is the same. Your

orientation is locked. You are wrong, it is changing and changing rapidly.

The longer you continue without reorienting to reality the more danger you are in, the more false information you are feeding yourself. The amplification is taking

place. As this continues, the inevitable will take place, the car is slowing down to turn and you aren’t aware. A wreck is imminent


“If an individual does not have a well-developed orientation and therefore cannot perceive the relevant cues, patterns and leverage points of a particular situation, that individual may feel pressured by the situation to enact preconceived notions and actions; regardless

if they are relevant or not.”



Chuck Spinney, A personal view of John Boyd’s “Destruction and Creation” and its centrality to the OODA Loop. V2.4, December 2014, 2.1MB PDF.


Chuck Spinney, “Incestuous Amplification and the Madness of King George,” Counterpunch, March 21, 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/21/the-madness-of-king-george-revisited/

Without a correction, there can be but one outcome: the environment eventually intrudes to make the irrevocable decision. Put another way, all living organisms from the individual to a society can be viewed as

open (thermodynamic) systems that must process a flux of matter, energy, and information to maintain their coherence. To do this, they

must communicate effectively with their environments.

Incestuous amplification has the effect of closing off the system from its environment, and any activity in a closed system always generates

entropy, thereby making it impossible to maintain that system’s coherence. So, without a correction or a change that opens the

decider’s OODA loop to an effective communication with the real world, the only uncertainty in the outcome is how long an OODA loop driven mad by incestuous amplification can last before it degenerates

into chaos and is selected out.

Degenerates into chaos and is selected out

Your vehicle crashes.

You fail to meet your goal.

A Way Out of Incestuous Amplification: Outside Information

You could easily avoid the incestuous amplification if you would have just glanced up and reoriented yourself to the changing environment.

The new observation (new information and unfolding circumstances) provides you with a chance to reorient yourself and make a suitable decision to obtain your goal. (i.e. reaching your destination on time)

By experiencing the external world, and not the internal world contained in your mind, you can avoid the compounding affect of the closed loop

between orientation and observation.

Interestingly, you only had to reorient yourself soon enough to avoid careening into the back of the car ahead of you. In this respect, you

needed to reorient quicker than you did, but not necessarily faster than was minimally necessary to achieve your goal.

Absolute vs Relative SpeedNow we are getting to the heart of the error in assuming speed through the “loop” is what determines competitive advantage.

Situation #1 Situation #2Very straight two lane highway with no traffic

A curvy two lane highway full of traffic

Absolute vs Relative SpeedUnder Situation #1 you can afford to be disoriented from your environment (i.e. looking at your phone) for a much

longer time than under Situation #2. Quickly reorienting in Situation #1 provides little net benefit.

Under Situation #2 you must reorient continually and any orientation mismatch can prove fatal and prevent you from

reaching your ultimate goal. Maintaining an accurate orientation is vital in this situation.

In one example, speed is important and yet in another it is irrelevant and almost wasteful.

Almost Wasteful?

Under Situation #1 the speed of reorienting didn’t appear to matter b/c the external environment was more predictable, less chaotic then the

Situation #2.

But if you assume the environment is always going to look like it currently does then your assumption (orientation) can quickly

degenerate into incestuous amplification.

The environment can always change underneath you and an accurate orientation is much preferred to an inaccurate orientation.

Absolute speed is irrelevant until crossing the “threshold” of misalignment occurs. Then speed to accurate orientation is vital.

Relative Speed

Under Situation #2 the environment is quickly changing and dynamic with multiple vehicles shifting lanes, hitting their

breaks, accelerating, and making moves which is shaping the environment in relation to you.

If you look away for a moment, the environment can change quickly and if you don’t reorient quickly in response to this

change you will be doomed.

Mismatch Asymmetry is RelativeSituation #1

Slight Mismatch - No Worries OrientationReality

Threshold #1

OrientationReality

Threshold #1

Breaking of Threshold - Speed to reorientation

is vital for survival

Under Situation #1

your margin of error is

larger than Situation

#2 (next slide)

Mismatch Asymmetries are RelativeSituation #2

Severe Distortion - Speed to reorientation is vital

for survival

OrientationReality

Threshold #1

OrientationReality

Threshold #1

Breaking of Threshold - Speed to reorientation

is vital for survival

Threshold #2

Threshold #2

Under Situation #2

your margin of error is

significantly smaller.

In adversarial competitive environments if your opponent is operating at threshold #1 and you are operating at threshold #2 you are operating inside his “OODA loop” and have a substantial advantage to

shape the competitive landscape.

Not Absolute Speed“Absolute speed is not very useful if one cannot adequately react on

incoming information or one’s interpretation of events is flawed.

While one aspect and application of it is certainly reaction time; specifically how quickly one can make sense of the observations

presented, if one’s adversary never observes what one is doing, then one may be expending a tremendous amount of energy for no strategic

or tactical purpose

Furthermore, if one’s actions are exactly what ones adversary thinks or wants one to do, then if absolute speed is one’s only driving force, then

one is simply falling into the trap at high speed”


Asymmetric Orientation

“He who as the ability to keep their orientation closely matched to reality while attempting to disrupt or detach their opponent’s with multiple

actions has the advantage.”


Uncertainty, Fear, AmbiguityPicture closing your eyes while driving down an empty highway at 70mph. **Do not try this in real life**

How do you feel?

What is going through your head?

Most likely a few things will be occurring. You will begin to feel nervous and scared. Your heart may even begin to race.

The uncertainty associated with shutting off your main sensory organ starts to mess with your mind. You will begin to doubt yourself.

• Have I started to switch lanes?

• I feel like I am drifting?

• Has anyone pulled onto the road?

You can probably only last a matter of seconds. This is an example of how to explicitly turn off a main sensing organ from your environment and feel the effects of disorientation and the mind games associated with operating in an uncertain, ever-changing environment.

Maintain Accurate Orientations

to repeat: “Boyd posits, we must effectively and efficiently orient ourselves; that is, we must quickly and accurately develop mental images, or schema, to help comprehend and cope with the vast array of threatening and non-threatening events we face.”

Osinga, Frans P “Science, Strategy, and War: The strategic theory of John Boyd.”

Questions

?

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