The Speed of Thought: OODA Loops and the Next Military Revolution
The Day Warfare Changed
The principles of the OODA Loop came to me to them through reading about Fighter pilots during the Cold War. It seemed like it was a simple plan, at first: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Four words. Four steps. The more I dug into that concept, though, the more I came to understand that the idea is not just a military tactic, but it is the product of the thinking of John Boyd, a U.S. Air Force colonel. The psychology of conflict was what he was talking about. The most interesting thing I had read of Boyd’s was about winning not always being the stronger side. Rather it tends to be more of the actor who can think, adapt and react quicker than an opponent. The ability to think, was more of a contest than the power to shoot. Now, many decades after Boyd coined the OODA Loop, I feel we are on a new military revolution that is as much about getting it done faster than the missile as it is about the missile and tank or even the aircraft carrier. Decision making cycles are being shortened to a new low as AI, autonomous drone systems, cyber warfare and algorithmic targeting shrink decision-making periods to new lows. The nature of modern warfare is changing from “industrial warfare” to “cognitive warfare.And that change poses deep strategic and moral issues.
In theory, the OODA Loop is simple. For an actor to play a military role, he or she needs to observe what’s going on, then orient himself or herself by making sense of information based on experience and culture, and then to make a decision and then to act. Boyd claimed that if one side is able to go through this cycle quicker than the other, it can be able to do what he called “get inside” the other side’s decision-making process, and cause “confusion and paralysis.”[1] Many people, however, don’t understand that Boyd didn’t consider the OODA Loop to be just a race for speed. Indeed, Boyd believed that the ‘orientation’ phase (correct interpretation of reality) was the most crucial one. Orientation is a determinant of information interpretation and decision making. It is a line of thinking that is particularly apt for today.[2]
Why Speed Beats Size in Modern Conflict
With regard to modern wars, whether it’s in Ukraine, the Red Sea, cyberattacks, or drone warfare, I don’t think that the definition of warfare should just be about territory anymore. Rather, I envision a conflict regarding information, perception and reaction time. The cost of the drones has risen as high as $20,000 and they are destroying assets worth millions. In one of the most publicized incidents, Ukrainian UAS reportedly sunk a Russian warship worth some $70 million.[3]
That trend shows that something is fundamentally wrong – that today’s conflicts are being won by agility rather than size. The field of battle also is increasingly populated with sensors, satellites, machine learning systems and real-time surveillance. Information that moves at a faster rate than our brains can handle. Artificial Intelligence is thus becoming a force for the military to hasten its OODA cycle. battlefield data can now be processed and analyzed using AI to determine threats and provide targeting recommendations in seconds. It’s here that the next military revolution actually starts.[4] When military revolution has occurred over the last few centuries, it has been associated with physical technologies, such as the gunpowder revolution, mechanized warfare, nuclear weapons and precision-guided munitions. Today’s transformation is unique in that it’s aimed at cognition itself. AI is not only reshaping the nature of weapons; it’s transforming the nature of military thinking, with AI driving faster and more structured military thinking. I cannot imagine that that’s a reality that’s scary.
In the past, there were times for reflection in warfare that were still there for centuries. Commanders had time to reflect, consider, discuss and change course. However, as the time to make a decision is now reduced to seconds, or perhaps even milliseconds, with the help of AI, the importance of human judgment diminishes. When it comes to high speed conflicts, particularly with the use of hypersonic weapons or swarms of remotely controlled drones, commanders can feel forced to task algorithms to make decisions because humans can’t act quickly enough. The quicker the war goes, that is, the less time the wisdom has.[5]
This is a risky Catch-22. Technologies developed to increase the effectiveness of military operations could also decrease the control of human actors over violence. Technologies developed to increase the effectiveness of military operations could also decrease the control of human actors over violence. This dichotomy is very much evident in the ongoing discussion about autonomous weapons systems today. The military is becoming more interested in “cognitive overmatch,” or the ability to outsmart and outthink an opponent, and that is something that the CPD is working on.The military is looking for “cognitive overmatch,” the capacity to outsmart and outthink an enemy, and the CPD is focused on that. For instance the U.S. military’s Hyper-Enabled Operator program would seek to combine AI, sensors and augmented reality systems to make the soldier more aware of what’s happening around them and to speed up decisions on the battlefield. This is a logical strategy, to a certain extent. Military units which process information more quickly have the advantage. The moral issues are disturbing, however. Who is responsible for an algorithm that would recommend killing civilians? The programmer? The commander? The machine itself? No more abstract questions, these are real questions.
In an age of more and more automation in warfare, accountability becomes more and more murky. Then, when there is no accountability, the moral underpinnings of war start to unravel. My biggest concern is that the new competition among armies is more and more becoming cognitive arms race. States don’t only battle for territory, the stockpile, and weapons; they battle for how quickly they decide. The person who handles information first, gets the initiative. The one who is slow, will lose. This thinking is changing the way of fighting battle worldwide.
For example, the “intelligentized warfare” that China is seeking implies the use of AI-based command structures and autonomous platforms. The U.S. is placing major resources in the development of Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) as it seeks to bring together the data of all services in a single network for decision making. Russia, on the other hand, has resorted to tactics more and more of ‘information warfare and electronic warfare’ that aim to confuse enemy orientation, rather than just to destroy enemy forces. The common denominator of all these trends is that future wars may be more about destroying armies than overwhelm their ability to think. This was foretold by Boyd decades ago in many respects. He knew that confusion, uncertainty and disorientation can be more effective than brute force. An enemy OODA Loop is broken when the military are attacked, but also the psychological. That’s why cognitive operations, misinformation and cyber warfare have become integral parts of contemporary warfare. Yet in all this technological rush, I think Boyd’s message that goes far deeper is still very human.
The true benefit isn’t just due to a faster machine. It’s a result of adaptability, creativity and strategic thinking. A blindfolded army that follows algorithms can go fast but it can go blind. Haste can turn out to be disastrous. That’s why I am skeptical about weapons of war that are all about machines. While technology can do a lot to process data, it will not be able to understand the context, the morality and the emotions. It doesn’t understand fear, honor, humiliation or political symbolism – things that can often make the difference in conflict more so than bullets can. Boyd himself cautioned against “systems.” He felt that flexibility, a decentralized team and continuous learning were essential to success in a strategy. As militaries increasingly rely on centralized AI systems, the danger arises that wars become brittle instead of adaptive. As militaries increasingly rely on a centralized AI system, the danger is that warfare become brittle instead of adaptive.
Beyond the OODA Loop: The Future of Military Power
I think that the next revolution in military affairs is going to be a philosophical revolution, not just a technological revolution, as I look forward to what lies ahead. The question of whether humans can create faster decision making systems is no longer a possibility. We clearly can. The point is: in a world where war can outpace human thought, can humanity retain its sense of ethics? For as soon as machines are able to make decisions at a much quicker pace than humans, the war might turn from a game of strategy to a game of automation, which is far more perilous. Maybe the highest irony of the OODA Loop is that. Strategies for enhancing human adaptability could lead to real challenges of humans being removed from the decision-making process altogether.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Opinion Desk.
[1] John Boyd and development of the OODA Loop
[2] Importance of “orientation” within the OODA framework
[3] Drone warfare and low-cost systems disrupting expensive military assets
[4] AI acceleration of military decision-making and “kill chains”
[5] U.S. military Hyper-Enabled Operator concept and cognitive overmatch