The OODA Loop and the Half-Beat

November 16, 2023 - Defence Stories

“The way to win in a battle according to military science is to know the rhythms of the specific opponents, and use rhythms that your opponents do not expect.”

—Miyamoto Musashi

What does it mean to get inside an opponent’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop?

By: Lieutenant-Colonel Alastair Luft of the Joint Research and Analysis Branch of the Canadian Joint Warfare Centre

The answer for a generation of Western officers is to cycle through a decision-action framework quicker than an adversary, orienting to situations and acting faster than opponents can adapt. It’s a compelling theory, but if the fastest combatant always prevailed then the history of combat would likely have many different outcomes. Speed, the decisive component in the Schlieffen Plan, couldn’t overcome the plan’s lack of flexibility. Likewise, General MacArthur’s haste to drive X Corps and Eighth Army into North Korea drew China into the Korean War and led to several defeats in November and December of 1950.

The reality is that speed is only one component of a fight. What’s overlooked by focusing on faster decision-making is another equally important component: timing. Speed, in fact, is derived from time, and poor timing has prevented success in battles from Napoleon at Borodino to General Lee at Gettysburg. While speed is undoubtedly important, interrupting an opponent’s OODA loop involves acting at the right time as much as it includes acting faster.

What is the OODA loop?

U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd drew on his Korean War experiences to develop an iterative feedback model now known as the OODA loop. Since then, it has become one of the most popular decision-making frameworks in professional Western militaries and beyond. Businesses like Dell and Scotts Miracle-Gro have implemented OODA-like processes, and Boyd’s OODA loop has been studied in various sports to improve athlete game speed.

Boyd’s OODA Loop is often depicted as a simple four-stage cycle. The cycle begins with an observation, which leads a participant to orient on possible options, then decide on a course of action, and finally act on that decision. Results are then observed, and the cycle repeats. In this version, success is all about cycling through the OODA Loop faster than an opponent.

Boyd’s actual OODA loop, introduced in a presentation entitled, “The Essence of Winning and Losing,” was more detailed. In this model, the loop is less linear cycle and more ongoing, cybernetic process with multiple built-in feedback mechanisms. Observation isn’t a single step; it’s a developing awareness based on constantly changing circumstances and imperfect information. Likewise, orientation never stops and instead constantly evolves as it takes in new data. Even the decide and act parts of the cycle are not isolated, but rather connected within the overall feedback loop. Actions can take place either simultaneously or in sequence.

Detailed OODA Loop

A key to applying Boyd’s detailed OODA Loop is to look at it through the lens of the scientific method. In this perspective, decisions are hypotheses, and actions are how a selected hypothesis is tested. Actions, in turn, create information for further observation and analysis. If that information is imperfect, or if orientation to the resultant knowledge is flawed, then more rapid processing may simply hasten an inappropriate decision or action.

In other words, faster might not be better. Like a dancer who loses their balance, the solution may not be to go quicker, but rather to stop, recover, and get back in tempo. The same applies to the OODA Loop. To employ it effectively, a participant must understand timing as well as the broader concept of rhythm.

Tempo, Speed, and Timing

NATO currently defines tempo as “the rate of military action relative to the enemy.” Tempo is thus a function of two elements: the rate of activity, or speed, and the rhythm of that activity relative to an enemy, or timing.

A broader, more insightful description might be Bruce Lee’s definition of tempo as “that little fragment of time which is the most suitable to accomplish effective actions.” In this definition, successful combatants regulate their speed so their actions coincide with those of their opponent’s, the goal being to act at “…the exact psychological and physical moment of weakness in an opponent.” The ensuing rhythm, or patterns in time in which actions are executed, enables combat to be examined through the idea of beats.

Beats are common in the arts, such as in poetic meter or musical time signature. By this perspective, a beat represents any action or moment of change. Beats are similarly present in fights, like a one-two combo in boxing where the one-count is a jab with the lead hand, while the two-count is a back hand cross. This punching drill can be made more complicated by adding threes, fours, fives, and sixes to represent hooks and uppercuts on both sides, but, whatever their number, the punches are the beats executed relative to, or in rhythm with, an opponent.

What makes this concept useful is the time between the beats. These are called half-beats which, if counted out, would sound like, “one-and-two-and-three-and-four.” In the one-two combo, the half beat is the moment after the lead jab has landed, but before the back-hand cross is thrown. This little fragment of time, this half-beat, is when a fighter is vulnerable to having their rhythm disrupted because they are in between actions. Put differently, these are the moments when a fighter is most vulnerable to having their decision-action cycle interrupted.

In the next edition, drop by and learn about the Conclusion of the OODA LOOP and Half-Beat!