School of War - Ep 115: Stephen Robinson on the Case against John Boyd

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Stephen Robinson, author of The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War, joins the show to talk about Boyd, the man who developed the concept of “maneuver warfare,” and what Boyd may have gotten wrong. ▪️  Times      •      01:21 Introduction      •      02:24 “A genuine polymath”     •      04:20 The OODA Loop     •      07:39 J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart       •      13:28 The conventional blitzkrieg       •      19:26 Maneuver warfare      •      25:01 Cannae      •      29:07 Tactical success to operational failure       •      34:07 Post-Vietnam U.S. military woes     •      37:24 Active defense        •      43:31 Skeptical of technology     •      48:07 The Defense Reform Movement        •      53:50 Iraqi Freedom Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack Buy the book here - The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War

John Boyd and maneuver warfare are subjects that have come up before on School of War. And today we're going to hear the case against John Boyd, as it were, the ways in which advocates of maneuver warfare, including Boyd himself, arguably went too far or oversimplified or allowed their reformist spiritedness to overwhelm cool-headed analysis. Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale.

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I'm Aaron McLean. Thank you for joining School of War. I'm very excited to welcome to the show today. Stephen Robinson. He's the author of several books on military history and strategy. Most recently, the blind strategist, John Boyding, the American Art of War. Stephen, thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you. It's fantastic to be here. So your book, I found to be a fascinating read. It has, among other qualities, the quality of regular listeners to the show will know I'm a sucker for this, that the notes sort of provide a curriculum. in and of themselves and are liable to induce unhelpful rounds of book buying, book buying, unhelpful in the sense of one's pocketbook. But as the title suggests, you take a very critical attitude towards a man named John Boyd, which many listening to the show may be familiar with who Boyd is. Some won't. So we should start with sort of a Boyd 101.

But what I want to do is sort of establish up front for anyone new to the conversation quickly who John Boyd was and what he's generally remembered for. And then we're going to go back in time and kind of work through your criticism. the story of how his conception of maneuver warfare came to be and what you see as the flawed foundations. And full disclosure up front, of course, as a Marine who went through Quantico in 2007, 2008, I'm very much somebody who was raised in the church of Boyd. And so your book was a jarring experience for me, but I'm eager to get into it. So thank you for joining.

Thank you. So John Boyd was a genuine polymath across multiple fields. So initially he was a fighter pilot that flew 29. combat missions in Korea. He then became an air tactics thinker and wrote a manual aerial attack study. He's most famous for the Udoloup, which started off as a decision cycle model, and that evolved into a sort of grander, cognitive model of how the mind works. He devised a system of dialectic logic in destruction and creation, and he's the founder of the maneuverworse there. theory school of thought, which is very, very influential. He also contributed to the development

of the F-15 and the F-16 through energy maneuverability theory. But to sum him up quickly, he's a conflict theorist focused on survival, adaptation, and learning. Right. And I always found the easiest way to explain to maybe folks who weren't in the military, the Udalaup, observe, orient, decide, and act, which he, extrapolates from his experience as a fighter pilot. But for anyone who plays racket sports, and there's that experience of being the losing, on the losing side of some sort of exchange, where you find yourself suddenly running forward on the court and then backwards on the court and then forward on the court and eventually unable to return whatever is sent your way,

that that experience of being caught inside somebody else's decision cycle, the other person is making you react to them rather than you making them react to you, that that example always seem to me to kind of go to the core of Void's insight about what originally is sort of one-on-one combat, but then as you as you point out, he kind of extrapolates out from to form grander and grander theories of conflict. I don't know if you concur with that or if you have your own sort of go-to examples or ways of summing up. I think that's pretty much spot on. So the udalute process has two cycles opposing each other in which relative speed is the key. So there are sequences of moves and counter moves and two sides going through loops. And the side that gets the

speed advantage will start to take actions. And those actions will change the environment. And the loser that's kind of a little bit slower, the loser will be making a decision based upon the previous situation unaware that it's changed. So they will act, but their action won't have a consequence they intended. So they get negative feedback. Then they get confused. Then they get disorientated. Then that gets worse and worse and worse. And eventually they're in a position to be taken out. So it's a process.

You've got to go through a cycle of loops. It's more gradual. And I think that tennis example is a pretty good way to explain it to someone that's unfamiliar with the concept. So this conception of maneuver warfare for which the Oudaloupe is central, but obviously not the only element. You know, to go through Boyd's presentations, it's always been a frustration to me. actually, maybe you know one that I'm not aware of.

I mean, I've gone through, I actually think I've gone through all of the sort of slide decks in one version or another, but I've never been able to find a high quality recording of him actually giving, you know, his major presentation, which I think takes away from it, right? The slides themselves don't fully convey what this, you know, a lot of listeners may know the type, the sort of charismatic autodidact polymath, you know, the sort of the force of the argument can't be got from the slides. themselves. But something that's clear in the presentations that he would give is that there's something about maneuver warfare and a warfare that is devoted to a style of warfare that is devoted to getting inside the decision cycle of the other guy of ultimately collapsing their will to fight,

of focusing not on putting strength on strength, but exploiting gaps. You know, I'm conflating sort of different elements of it here. But there's a way in which this is all presented and as sort of seemed to me to be morally superior almost to war of attrition. The sort of the theory that he obviously seems to set maneuver warfare up in contrast to. And the paradigmatic or perhaps stereotypical understanding of a war of attrition would come from the First World War. You have two large forces arrayed against each other, battering against each other's strong points, trying to kill the other guy at a faster rate than he kills you and looking to either gain territory or just collapsed the other guy through lack of resources, ultimately.

And there's something in the presentation or in the whole mindset that's about preventing the tragedy of a World War I again by means of the kind of, you know, faster war of maneuver, more creative, sort of almost more romantic style that's being proposed there. So take us back, feel free, by the way, to quibble with any of those premises or correct them as you see fit. But take us back to World War I and sort of this is where your account and your story begins

and the responses to trench warfare that ultimately Boyd comes upon and form a foundation for his theory. Of course. So obviously World War I was a very horrible war where on the Western Front was dominated by trench warfare for most of the time.

Both sides struggled to adapt to that situation. So there were lots of clumsy frontal attacks that cause huge amounts of casualties, the Somme, Passiondale, that sort of thing. So when Boy looked at World War I, he was horrified by those stories, as well he should be. But out of World War I, two British military theorists emerged,

who very much devoted the rest of their lives trying to prevent war being fought like that again. So the first one was Fuller, who became an interwar armored warfare theorist, that were very much advocated a form of maneuver called Plan 1919. The second one was Basil Adel Hart. Now, he was in the Somme at the beginning, and most of his unit was wiped out. It was utterly traumatized by World War I,

and the rest of his life was devoted to preventing that from happening again, and his solution to that problem was the indirect approach. You know, both of those things had critical influence on, when he started to read military history after he got interested in Bliss Creek. And so just sticking with Fuller and Little Heart for a minute, say more. Say more about their conception of war, in particular armored warfare, penetration attacks, sort of style of fighting that was nascent even in, you know, 1917, that they then theorize is actually the future. It's the way out of this horrible trap we all found ourselves in.

Okay, so Fuller's solution to the problem, he was a very early member of the British tank corps. And so he devised this idea called Plan 1919. And the basic idea he had, he looked at the Germans as a metaphor as a body. So his idea was to, we need to have a lightning attack with tanks against the brain, which he saw as the headquarters, and also the stomach, which was the supply system. We'd call that critical vulnerabilities today. So basically, rather than having a direct attack against the army,

if you take out the headquarters, if you take out the logistics nodes and bypass the main enemy armies, then the soldiers will be paralyzed, they won't have orders, they won't have supplies, and that will prevent the need for costly attritional battles. So I guess the problem with that is it remained hypothetical. He divides this plan that was going to be tried out in 1919, but the war ended in 1980. So it was never actually tested, but he was convinced that this was the future. So Del Hart was slightly differently because he came up with his ideas after World War I, so not during

the war itself. So his idea of the indirect approach also had that shared that same sort of of framework as fuller, which is you don't have direct attacks against the enemy trenches. You need to sort of pursue indirect methods to bring about the enemy collapse through other means. So that could be flanking the enemy from the side or coming in from behind to surprise them. It also could be taking out their logistics nodes, their communication nodes that will cause the system to collapse or just maneuvering yourself into a position where the enemies, they were stupid enough to continue fighting, will be wiped out. So the enemy will then be rational and think, okay, I'm in a no-win situation here.

So, you know, I've been out-flaked. I've been out-maneuvered. So I will now surrender. And in the conventional account of these things, and this is where I think you start really to diverge from the conventional account, 1939, 1940 roll around, Europe goes back to war. and the Wehrmacht and the Germans essentially take, whether they take these ideas or they've independently developed the same ideas or similar ideas. And what becomes known as Blitzkrieg is the successful execution of something like

what Fuller and Liddell Hart were arguing for, you know, with further, you know, aspects derived from radio technology and aviation and so forth that weren't available, at least not to the same level of sophistication at the end of the First World War. And as the, I'm just, I'm stating the conventional view. I'm very curious to know your gloss on it. As the, you know, the fall of Poland and then the fall of France show, it was a very successful way of waging war that did indeed avoid, you know, the attritional fights of the 19-teens.

And ultimately, of course, the Germans fail, but they fail because of strategic failure, of biting off more than they can chew, of uniting, you know, a massively stronger coalition of economies against their own economy, but at the level of, you know, whatever level we want to call it, you know, grand operations, theater, whatever, like they are successful on the battlefield, even if strategically ultimately failures. That I take it is, is the normal story. And it obviously then feeds into this notion of maneuver in this iteration. in the form of Blitzkrieg being a superior and preferable form of warfare, please respond. What does the conventional account start to miss?

Okay, so basically what you described was the conventional account you'll find in standard English language accounts of the German Blitzkrieg in France, for example, and that is not what World War II historians would argue today. So what exactly happened was after World War II, the English-speaking English-speaking. well, you know, was not in a position to really understand exactly what the Germans did, exactly how they operated. So Fuller and Liddell Hart that were both interwar armored warfare theorists that wrote a lot in the 20s and the 30s. You know, the Germans were aware of who they were. You know, Germans were interested in their ideas. But both Fuller and Liddell Hart immediately

started writing World War II histories that indicated that, you know, the Germans took my ideas. they implemented my ideas. So Fuller famously said, you know, the Germans took my plan in 1919 and implemented it in 1939. It became Blitzkrieg. And Laudel Hart, very similarly, devoted the rest of his life to indicating that the Germans took his ideas because they were the innovative thinkers, whereas the British ignored me. And the Germans took the indirect approach.

The Germans took my views, implemented them. And those two accounts dominated the English language accounts of Blitzkrieg. They were more or less universally accepted. People writing histories in general would take that narrative. But that narrative started to fall apart in 1988 with John Merseheimer's book, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History. And it's now been thoroughly debunked. The level of influence Liddell Harden Fuller actually had on the Germans was far less than his actually the case. And so now history is being rewritten to make those corrections.

So many of my questions will take the form of say more. But let's say that, and I actually, I want to read the Mearsheimer book. I've not read it. But let's say Mirschimer is right. And his thesis, as you just characterize it, is simply demonstrated that if asked, the Germans would say, Liddell Hart, never heard of him. Not entirely sure what we're talking about here. But nevertheless, you could still make the case, right, that they come up with a you know, an operating concept that seems like something like what Liddell Hart was arguing for because, you know, they're responding to the same stimuli, they're responding to the same history, you know, they're intelligent people looking at the same problem set and they happen to come up

with similar solutions. I take it you also, the truth is more complicated than that. Please, please explain. Yeah, so definitely the Germans agreed with Liddell Hart and Fuller. Pansers should be concentrated in independent units and independent divisions, not sprinkled out as infantry support vehicles. So they had that same conception. They had a conception that the panzers were the new cavalry that could produce some sort of decisive effect.

And they both wanted to avoid attritional or what the Germans would call positional warfare with a re-emphasis on mobility. So they all share those traits in common. But the big difference between the Germans and Fuller and Liddell Hart is the purpose of those operations. So Liddell Hart and Fuller argued that the armored warfare should just go straight for what we would call critical vulnerabilities or nodes today. So if you take out those critical nodes, then the enemy system collapses. and there's no need for decisive battle or battle is minimized. Now, the Germans didn't think in those terms.

They weren't interested in taking out nodes that would somehow cause the system to collapse. They were focused on the destruction of the enemy army in the field. Now, that doesn't mean to say they were interested in suicidal, frontal, attrition, or attacks on that. But they were obsessed with the Battle of Cannae, which Alfred Schleason elevated into the highest ideal. So the Germans wanted to destroy the enemy army in the field by enveloping it and destroying it, but obviously done in a way that was smart. The perfect way would be a double envelopment with an attack on the rear. So you completely destroy the enemy field army.

The enemy army is taken out of the equation. and then that's how you achieve victory. Then you can secure, you know, nodes like ports and supply dumps and all those sort of things. So the Germans were very much focused on destroying the enemy army in the field, you know, through double envelopments if the conditions allowed for it. Well, so there's a lot to unpack in there because this starts to get pretty nuanced and complicated, right? Because, of course, as anyone who has looked through patterns of conflict knows,

another person who is obsessed with the Battle of Ken A is John Boyd, who, and you talk about this in the book, who holds it up as a sort of proto version or early exemplar of the sort of maneuver warfare he is talking about. And obviously a nuance here that's very important and that you spend a lot of time on is definitionally in your account of Boyd's maneuver warfare, to focus on the destruction of the enemy army is therefore not to be engaged in maneuver warfare. maneuver warfare definitionally is about attacking and collapsing the will to fight of the other side with this sort of metaphor of the body or an opposing organism and so if you are as you just said the Germans were actually focused about on the destruction of an army in the field that is not

maneuver warfare as boyd conceived of it is that is that essentially your argument yeah that's essentially my argument so boyd read as many accounts as blitzkrieg as he could get his hands hands on and tended to sort of take all the different narratives and try to sort of turn it into a big narrative. So he picked up that the Germans were very interested in the Battle of Cane. So he did see that envelopment was part of it, but at the same time he picked up on the idea of attacking critical nodes and causing systematic collapse and avoiding battle. So he defines Bliscrib as mechanized infiltration tactics that is very much what Liddell Hart also said

in which you kind of launch multiple thrusts. You don't concentrate force in a Klauswitzian sense. You seek out what Boyd would call non-cooperative centers of gravity or critical nodes. And then, you know, the French army collapsed because, because, course of that. So he picked up on all those different ideas and kind of drew them all in, but didn't really sort out the contradictions, because if you're following the Battle of Cannae model, with double in Verlman, that's very much focused on destruction of the enemy army. And the Germans, you know, use Klaus Witsi and concentration of force to achieve that. So they couldn't do that

while having a multiple thrust approach seeking out critical nodes to, while while avoiding battle, and trying to avoid engaging the enemy in a decisive battle. So he drew in all these different ideas, but wasn't really able to sort of sort out what was actually accurate from what Ladle Hart and Fuller said. Because there's two different things. Yeah, maybe, and I want to come right back to this, but just can we take 60, 90 seconds and talk about the Battle of Kenay for anyone who also sort of coming to the, what, who fought what happened what is double envelopment just let's take it down to the 101 level for a second

all right so battle of can a was in the second punic war between the carthaginians and the romans and it was a defeat when which the outnumbered carthaginians utterly defeated utterly destroyed annihilated the roman army and what how hannibal won that battle was he lured the germ the romans into attacking his center and then his center withdrew, while his main, well, he had two main efforts on the flanks. So as the Romans advanced in, the Carthaginian center retreated. Then Hannibal launched a double envelopment on the two Roman flanks while his cavalry attacked in the rear.

That caused the Carthaginian army to be surrounded. Sorry, that caused the Roman army to be surrounded. And then there was an absolute. So the Romans weren't simply defeated. They were killed like approximately 90 to 95% death. We're not talking system collapse. We're not talking a psychological collapse. We're talking that there was no death on the European mainland until World War I that

was comparable to the Battle of CNA. It was a massive battle of total annihilation where the Roman Field Army was utterly destroyed. and by destroy, I mean predominantly killed. Yeah. So, and let me, I just, I'm going to ask some questions that take the form of pushback because I'm curious to know how you respond to this. So as I understood it in the account, and I'm pretty sure this is actually in, is this in war fighting, the Marine Corps doctrinal publication?

I think Knai shows up there in tactics or somewhere explained according to sort of boidean principles. And as I understood the maneuverist understanding of Kenei, the annihiless, The annihilation is almost an afterthought. It's like, that's not the interesting thing about the battle. That's obviously the result of the battle. Just like obviously the result of the invasion of France is the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in the French Army.

But what's interesting about it is the way in which is it achieved, which is rather than two armies lining up and slugging it out until, you know, somebody slugs harder or gets slugged out less, there is maneuver. There is a weighting of the line, or waiting maybe is the wrong phrase in this precise example, but a movement of the line, an intentional, no, there is, right? The center is actually weaker. It's weaker in quality and possibly in depth as well, you'll correct me. And the flanks are stronger.

And so as the creation of this pocket, this Carthaginian pocket that surrounds the Romans, is a maneuver designed to achieve advantage on the battlefield and render it impossible for the other guy to win. And yes, indeed, I mean, destruction and detail then follows. But it's like the destruction and detail is like actually not the interesting part to Boyd. The interesting part is that they didn't just line up and slug it out. There was a kind of deception and a maneuver that caused, you know, victory on the one side and defeat in the other. And so this is a kind of proto, pro, there, there almost aren't enough moves for there to be a loop. Like there's one or two loops at most. So tell me why, nevertheless, you take it out.

If we have a column of maneuver warfare and as Boyd understands it and not maneuver warfare, you don't think it belongs in the Boyd column. No, I think Boyd is right about that. And I'm certainly not critical about Boyd on everything. I think Boyd offered a lot of interesting and insightful insights. So I'm not simply, you know, trying to debunk Boyd of absolutely everything. So his take on Cane is absolutely. correct. It was a clever maneuver that created a positional advantage that caused the collapse.

And of course, the destruction was a consequence of that clever maneuver. So Boyd's analysis of Kna is quite spot on. And the Germans Schlisthen also studied Knai and saw that as the epitome of the perfect battle. And so what the Germans did afterwards, but World War I more so in World War I, in World War II. So there was a maneuver side to it about moving through physical space, trying to get the positional advantage, trying to concentrate force on the enemy flank or the enemy rear to create the defeat. So yeah, no, Boyd is spot on and correct about that. And that is, yeah, that is absolutely a correct take on the Battle of Kenney. And yet, I just want to kind of give your case space here. And yet somehow that analysis of Kna and that analysis in particular of the

German army in 39 and 40 misunderstands something. It takes something, it takes something from it that it shouldn't take from it that becomes central to Boyd's vision of warfare, right? Yes. I think the confusion comes in this with different conceptions of center of gravity. So the Germans in Battle of France, for example, were thinking very much in Klaus Witsi in terms of the center of gravity is the enemy army. So we need to concentrate force against that and we need to eliminate the enemy field army. And of course, maneuver in terms of classical maneuver as impositional advantage, was a critical aspect of that. So that aspect of Boyd's analysis was correct because he did not. note there was a cannae element to it. But what the Germans weren't interested in was

non-cooperative centers of gravity, which was the critical nodes. So for example, Rommel in North Africa, you know, when his chief of staff, Melenthen was pointing out where all the British supply dumps were, Romel, not interested, I'm taking out the British Field Army, I'm not interested in these non-cooperative centers of gravity. I'm not worried about, you know, the supply dumps. I I'm just focused on destroying the British army in the field. So there's a difference of priority. And, you know, this notion of the operationally superior or even strategically superior of Ermacht that is ultimately worn down by, you know, grand strategic forces,

by the weight of the world's economy, the economy of the allies, and, you know, cut off at the knees by Hitler's decision-making at critical points. You spend a fair amount of time in this book, and I know you've written about it elsewhere, making what to me, I will say, is a devastating case that there's a lot of nonsense in that set of assertions, largely propagated by post-war German officers, German generals, writing accounts on contract with the U.S. Army. I thought it was really fascinating, actually, and I'd like you to talk about it for a minute. I always, I mean, even growing up, I thought it was odd that World War II movies would always depict

you know, German officers is essentially decent chaps, you know, a funny accent. Every now, there'd be an SS officer who was clearly a batty. But, you know, the German generals are basically decent fellows who are sort of recognizable, recognizable professionals. And you present a very strong case that there's a lot of deception that becomes, I mean, ultimately successful, even in pop culture, as I just observed. Talk us through that and how it ultimately influences or mis-influences void. Okay, so yeah, this will be a long answer, so you'll probably have to prompt me

with some follow-up questions. Sure, sure. Okay, tactically, the Germans fought quite well in the Second World War. They were very, very good at those tactical-level things. Operationally in France, that operational plan by Manstein, the sickle-cutt, you know, at the operational level,

that also worked quite well because he had rendered the French plan irrelevant and dislocated the French main effort. So that was a time when the Germans fought operationally quite well. But when the Germans fought in Russia, the following the Knais principle essentially is a tactical blueprint. The Germans elevated that into an operational concept, expecting envelopment battles to destroy the Russian army, and the Russians will eventually get knocked out of the war. So when the Germans invaded Russia, initially they had surprise.

There were some great Kenei encirclemen. battles, a lot of the Russian frontier armies were destroyed, but the Russians kept on, Russians rebuilt, they had resources. When the Russian army, the Red Army rebuilt, they launched deep battle, which was their operational concept. And eventually the Russians won at the operational level and the strategic level. So that's basically, you know, what happened. So the German generals after World War II, principally Howder, they wanted their conduct of the war to be remembered favorably. So they created this narrative where the Germans fought brilliantly tactically, which has a huge element of truth to it. They were brilliant at the operational

level, which had some truth to it if we look at France, but that paradigm breaks down if you start to look at Russia because the operational level performance in Russia was nowhere near as good as they wanted the well to believe. And they absolutely failed at the strategic level. So the German post-war narrative basically said, yeah, the Germans were operationally and tactically superior to everybody. And we only lost at the strategic level because of Hitler's interference, because of Hitler's conduct of the war. And if it wasn't for Hitler, Hitler's interference that tied our hands. We easily would have won World War II.

It all comes down to, you know, the Austrian corporal sort of take. And so you mentioned Haldah, he worked for the American Army writing manuscripts. He pursues that line. The German memoirs, Manchstein's lost victory, Guderian's Panzerlider, pretty much say the same thing. And this sort of mythology enters the English-speaking world. that, you know, the Germans were brilliantly tactically, they were brilliantly operationally, or wasn't for Hitler's strategic interference and the war crimes he committed, the way that the

Nazis alienated people, the Germans would have won World War II. Not to say that Hitler was a great strategic commander, clearly not. But the German military shared his strategic delusions. The German military did not have a particularly good operational performance. because they were thinking in very narrow, cannae tactical terms. And, you know, this, this dominant, this dominated English history, English language history until the 1990s. And then it started to be pulled apart.

Then we started to realize that those German accounts are inherently unreliable. And if you talk to World War II historians today, you know, they'll laugh because this is, you know, these accounts are just no longer taken. seriously by anybody, which is not to say that there aren't accurate insights, but they are valuable sources, but you just have to be aware of that content and you just have to be extremely critical when you're evaluating anything Vermark veterans have to say. Yeah, let it be written and let it be said that Nazi memoirs need to be read with care. That could be a principle of the School of Word podcast.

So, okay, so let's bring it forward then to Boyd. will kind of flash forward 20 plus years to the end of Vietnam. Boyd is getting out of the Air Force. He is engaged in the 70s in this period of reflection and study that is contemporary with the Army, in particular, formulating a kind of post-Vietnam vision of how it's going to fight the war against the Soviet Union in Europe that culminates in a doctrine called active defense. So people don't like active defense, and Boyd becomes a part of the argument against it. So bring us up in the story and then we'll start to pick apart Boyd's vision.

Okay. So after Vietnam, America experienced its first major defeat. So morale in the armed forces went to absolute zero. Like the amount of despair and disillusionment is so hard to understand today unless you read accounts of people that lived through it. Vietnam, soldiers were fracking officers. There was very ill discipline back in barracks, not just in Vietnam, also in Europe, also back at home. Crime and drug abuse was rampant in the armed forces.

There was an utter, utter loss of faith in the system. Everybody knew something terribly went wrong in Vietnam. Then there was all these kind of different competing series. And there was a time of deep soul searching. And out of that came, you know, some different, reforms. So you mentioned active defense. That was William DePue. We can talk about that in a minute, if you like. But out of that time of despair, the American military discovered the Vermat. They dusted off the German memoirs. They dusted off Haute's manuscripts. All of a sudden, there was this

model of military excellence that seemed to be, yeah, the Germans got it right. The Germans didn't disintegrate. The Germans didn't frag their officers. The Germans fought against massive odds. And then the Varmat started to become absolutely romanticized. And it wasn't just boy, there wasn't just patterns of conflict. That was just one aspect of this wider trend where the Varmat all of a sudden became the epitome of military excellence. Yeah, Hitler was bad. Yeah, the Nazis were bad.

But the Honorable German generals, as they described in their memoirs, as their self-assessments were accepted. critical insight, you know, the Varmat became a kind of role model. And then a role model for both the act of defense, the sort of establishment status quo and the reformers and the critics, or more on the reformer critic side? More on the reformer, more on the reformer critic side, but there was a sense that there was, I mean, this was before historians started to debunk those stories. So there was no counter-narrative out there to warn people away from the mistakes that were being made.

So, yeah, so that was kind of shared across both of those different reform approaches. But what the maneuver warfare school, the Boyd School, the Lyme School, in their critique of active defense, that was very much that it failed to live up to German Eastern Front operations that should have been focused more on maneuver and less on forward defense. So that was the measure in which active defense was critiqued. Yeah. So I want to come back to Lynd in a second because he is a quirky and obviously central figure in this story who we should hear more about, but just sticking with the substance for a minute. So say a bit more, if you would, about what the establishment I call them that because they have the success in the first move here,

what the establishment army comes up with in terms of active defense. And then specifically, why does this fail to live up to romanticized Veramak standards? All right. So basically, the American army up to Vietnam was like, all right, we're done with the jungles, we're done with counterinsurgency. We need to refocus on our true Cold War objective, which is protecting Western Europe from the Soviet invasion. So DePue comes up with this new doctrine called Active Defense.

And the basics of it is they will, at the tactical level, there'll be a lot of movement and, you know, fighting. But basically they will identify the Soviet, you know, the Soviet main thrusts and then send forces to counter that, that thrust. but it's forward defense because the fighting will need to be contained close to the border. So there will be maneuver, but more at the tactical sort of level, but at the operational level, it was forward defense. And at the operational level, it was not, let's pull back and lure the Soviets in deeper, get them vulnerable, get them exposed, and then we can cut them off more effectively. So the critique that came from the maneuver warfare school of thought was active defense is attrition

because it's trying to limit the fighting to the border. That's reminiscent of Hitler's no retreat orders. We need to do what Manstein did on the eastern front, which was pulled back as far as you can. Then you can counterattack and annihilate the Soviets in depth. And that way we avoid this kind of no retreat situation. And that's a more of an effective way to counter the Soviet threat. But then DePue countered that by basically saying, you know, he had two points. Okay, if you compare the Russian steps that Manstein was operating on to the terrain of West Germany, the geography,

there's no room for maneuver. We can't pull back and do those huge, huge, deep sort of operations because West Germany, is a very narrow country and the terrain simply won't allow it. So what works on the steps of Russia is not going to work in West Germany. And second, we are part of an alliance called NATO, and Germany is a key member of that. And whatever plan we come up with has to be ticked off by the West German military. And they are dead set against what the maneuver was suggesting because that would destroy West Germany in the process.

So there were political constraints. there was just absolutely no way that that, you know, that idea of deep, deep maneuver could actually work at the operational level. It wasn't practical for geographic reasons, and it was politically impossible because the West Germans would never sign up to it. And what happened was really interesting in the next step, which was the air land battle. Please. Okay. So the air land battle, so basically there was a revolt in the Meritan military where the maneuver school of thought was the rebels and they were criticizing active defense because

it was attritional because it should have had more flair. It should have more imagination. It's too focused on firepower. And so there wasn't doing it. So people weren't happy. There was disquiet. Then there was a new commander of the doctrine area, which was Don Starry. And he had helped create active defense under DePue. So he had helped to create active defense under DePue. So he He understood the rebels had points. He also understood, you know, the reality of the geography, the reality of the West German political. So he couldn't do the deep battle.

He couldn't withdraw things back. But he wanted to take the core of the criticism that projected the other way. So he wanted to then exploit depth, not by retreating deep into West Germany, but by extending the battlefield deep behind Warsaw Pack lines. So the airland battle solved that problem by still having operational frontal defense, but then they wanted to create long-range weapon systems, long-range bombers, long-range strike, long-range rockets to expend the battlefield to a trip, destroy and disrupt the Soviet echelons, the follow-on echelons before they reached the front line.

So the essence of the maneuverous critique was then transformed into deep battle, which instead of falling back like the Germans did on the steps, you extend the battlefield deep behind enemy lines with deep strike capabilities, and that's how you exploit depth. And that was a really, really good sort of solution to the problem because it ticked off, yep, German geography, it ticked off German political constraints, and it accepted the core criticism that we need to think better,

we need to exploit depth, but we need to push it into the enemy rear, not by us retreating ourselves. And it relies on, I'm going to make up this comment as I go along, so feel free to rewrite it for me. But it relies on a technological superiority, right? I mean, to create that depth in the other direction in the face of numerically superior forces, which is just constantly the case in Cold War Europe, you're going to need a technological edge. And there's something about a technological edge that seems to me to be contrary.

An emphasis on technology seems to me to be somehow contrary to the spirit of maneuver warfare. Now that maneuver warfare is somehow anti-technology or Luddite, but that the reformers and the Boyd-Acolyte saw themselves as opposed to a military that was too entranced with perfect technical solutions to problems. So is there something in Airland that is like contradictory to the maneuverists in that regard? or am I overthinking it? No, no, you'll spot on because Boyd at the same time was the leader of the defense reform movement and the defense reform movement was very skeptical of advanced technology. It was skeptical of big projects and wanted technology to be simpler and more reliable. That was their underlying philosophy.

They were very skeptical of long range missiles and precision ammunition. what we would call smart bombs today. So the airland battle concept to be implemented required a new suite of technology that was being created. So you needed planes like the F11 strike aircraft, you needed long-range artillery, you needed precision weapons, you needed all this additional firepower.

So you needed the very projects the defense reform movement was deeply opposed to. And you needed the, F-15 and the F-16 to be what they are today, which is a modified version of what Boyd intended to be the light as of the lightweight fighter concept. So the maneuver warfare school of thought and the reformers were very skeptical of air-land battle because they didn't think the technology, they didn't trust that the technology would work as advertised when it came to the moment of the actual battle. So they did not have.

have any faith or confidence in the weapon systems required to extend the battlefield, hence why they were never very comfortable with the airland battle as a concept and were still preferring this more sort of, you know, withdraw, withdraw the enemy in more of this mobile defense. So you're right. The airline battle had a technology element to it and was dependent upon the technology you working. Yeah. So they've always seemed to me to be sort of two problems or two, at least two areas worth reflecting on when it comes to Boyd and maneuver warfare. And I don't come, you know,

from a place of deep skepticism regarding Boyd. You know, my education, if anything, very much took the contrary attack. But it is two things, the second of which is directly relevant to what we're talking about right in this moment. The first thing is there's something about Boyd, especially as he gets on that becomes sort of semi-my mystical. And he is sort of proposing a theory of the all, you know, reflections that began about air-to-air combat and sort of really interesting insights about how one-on-one competition actually functions that I personally find, I think you do too, to some extent, persuasive, like suddenly becomes a theory of, you know, destruction and creation in the universe. And that struck me as something to be cautious with and that maybe it was okay to just be a really, really thoughtful analyst of tactics, like a grand tactician. and that might be enough as a legacy and a contribution.

I don't need to take the philosophy as well as a life orientation. And then the second thing is a very practical objection, which you just sort of pointed us straight to, which is there's no way to look at the Gulf War, and the precision strike complex that evolves at the end of the Cold War and then becomes central to the American way of war and just the capabilities that we have, you know, the way in which air-to-air combat becomes,

you know, essentially over the horizon downings where the side with the technology wins. Well, I mean, that's just the case, right? You can't get away from the centrality of the technology and technological superiority and of fires, of the fire sensor association. And there's nothing very, I think, maneuverist about that, but it's still central.

It's still important. So those two things always give me pause, or at least give me pause in recent years as I think about this stuff. But, you know, as I was going through Quantico, and this will take us back into the sort of the narrative, you know, it seemed very much as though sometime beginning in the 70s and then completing, you know, its victorious progress ravaging through the enemy interior in the 80s. The reformers, the maneuverists sort of seized the Marine Corps as an institution and had real influence beyond that, but especially in the Marine Corps. And that, you know, again, kind of in the popular account of things, maneuverous thinking was critical to American success in the Gulf War and then to the success of the initial 03 campaign in Iraq, the actual the march on Baghdad.

And you obviously have a gloss on this as well. So take us through up to closer to the present day. Okay. I think I pretty much agree entirely with what you just said, but I'll just put it in my own words. So I think the defense reform movement was a good thing. I think the Pentagon under McNamara was too technology focused, two engineering focused and had too much faith in technology. And I think the reform movement was a very good correction to that mentality following Vietnam.

So I completely agree with Boyd on the human element being the key element that wins and decides war. I 100% agree with that. But what I think the reformers did was they did an overcorrection. They pushed the pendulum too far and were too skeptical of technology. So they then opposed a lot of defense projects that now with the benefit of hindsight, we know it was wrong to oppose those. So Boyd wanted a lightweight fighter that didn't have any air to ground capability,

that didn't have advanced radar, that didn't have long range, and would just be a nimble dogfighter. But what the Air Force got was, you know, the long range F-15 with advanced air-to-air, long-range missiles, advanced radar, the Boyd opposed. The E-strike element could do air to ground. Boyd heavily opposed that. You know, Boyd and the fighter mafia came up with the YF-16 prototype. That was the nimble dogfighter that then the Air Force. turned into a multi-role fighter that could do air to ground that did have long-range missiles

and radars that Boyd never forgave the Air Force for. The reformers opposed the F-11 and laser-guided bombs and all these weapon systems that were critical to success in the Gulf War and the technology worked as sabotage. And that took everybody by surprise. Like nobody was expecting it to be, no one was expecting the technology to be that effective because, you know, we were conditioned by the reform movement that was highly skeptical. So, so in a sense, so the reform movement did do a lot of good. They got us thinking about the human factor.

They, you know, they were demanding prototyping, testing and evaluation. They set up a lot of good legislative reform to enable prototyping and things of that nature. But I just think they went a little bit too far and the technology worked at the end of the day. And so, you know, that line of arguments now debt. because you'd be crazy to be arguing against the technology after it was demonstrated to work. So in the Gulf War, for example, the technology caused a massive amount of firepower, 40 days and nights of relentless bombardment of Iraqi positions. So yes, at the strategic level like nodes, communications, command, weapons of mass destruction,

but also the field army in Kuwait, just relentless, relentless, destruction, bombardment, attrition through it. air. So when the ground, when the ground campaign started, of course, there were elements of medieval warfare. The Marines infiltrated through Kuwait, had a lot of success there, but it was a balance. It was, you know, the Iraqis were pulverized by firepower, mass firepower. You and I can't imagine what being on the receiving end of that for 40 days and 40 nights would have been like. They were, they were ready to surrender. And the high level concept of having the faint into Kuwait to lure the Iraqis in while the Hail Mary would be the main effort to attack the Republican Guard north of Kuwait that didn't quite work because the Republican Guard got away.

There's an element of maneuver thinking to that, and that's good. But the big complaint from the maneuverists was the army was highly centralizing the operations, they weren't allowed to do mission command, and the maneuverist aspects of it weren't fully implemented, soldiers weren't allowed to have the initiative. It was very, very centralized, very orchestrated. So there are elements of maneuveral warfare there, but there's also elements that weren't. And of course, as you would have read in my conclusion to my book, I'm not against any of those maneuverist ideas. I argue that they work in certain conditions. They need to be supplemented by other things like retrition and firepower. We need to be flexible.

We don't want one theory dominating. We need other theories and other ideas. We just need to avoid looking at maneuver warfare in a dogmatic way that doesn't bring other traditions, other ideas onto the table. And we just need to be pragmatic and flexible at the end of the day. Stephen, that's a great place to end. But unfortunately, if you have a few minutes, I have one more. I want to talk about 03 with you as well.

Sure. But we can take that as the conclusion, even though we're going to do an appendix now. because I want to get your thinking here on the recording about Operation Iraqi Freedom, where, again, I mean, I'm going to play my role here of sort of stating the conventional maneuverous take, and then you give us your take. The conventional maneuverous take of 03 is it's Blitz Creek. It's Blitz Creek. It's fast-moving, armored columns, not hanging around to conduct destruction and detail of the enemy,

but driving straight at a political center of gravity. in the form of Baghdad and looking to, you know, collapse, collapse the enemy's fighting system as they go and setting aside failure to prepare for the insurgency and political failure and everything else that follows in years and years of counterinsurgency warfare. The invasion itself is a maneuverous success. That's sort of a claim on the table. What is your take on 2003? Yeah, no, I agree with what you were saying that it was very much done by, in a maneuvering

framework. Definitely with the Marines, they refer to it as the Colonel's War, is an idea that the Colonels were allowed to have more initiatives. Their hands weren't so tied. And also with the army, with Tommy Franks, very much was thinking of it in decision cycle terms. We need to be faster than the Iraqi decision cycle. And in that context, those maneuver ideas worked. And they were also supplemented by firepower. At the same time, you know, the Air Force and the air assets, we're doing the best, you know, doing their absolute level best to destroy as much Iraqi military capability as possible to clear the way for that maneuverist assault. So there was firepower and attrition from, from that point of view. And of course, in that particular context,

maneuver warfare, maneuver warfare basics worked. You know, but as you'll get my take from my book, we just need to take everything on a case-by-case basis. There could be another context, a more competent peer adversary where that approach might not work. That approach might be detrimental in a different context. So we just need to, we need a full toolbox. We need maneuver warfare tools in our toolbox. We need attrition, firepower tools in our toolbox. We need as many tools as possible. And we need to be equally proficient at all the tools in our toolbox. We can't just take one tool and say, this is the tool that's going to work for every single job, because there are different jobs and different jobs require different tools. We need to think big.

Stephen Robinson, author of The Blind Strategist, John Boyd and the American Art of War. This has been a really interesting conversation. Thank you very much for making the time. Thank you very much. It's been a really interesting time, and thank you for having me on. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.