The Ooda Loop
The OODA Loop describes concepts that existed before recorded history but this term and the explanation for it originated with US Air Force colonel John Boyd, who helped develop the Energy–maneuverability theory and passionately advocated for a lightweight fighter and lobbied for the F-16 to be an air-to-air mission specialist craft. Ultimately, the F-16 became a multi-role fighter with a much heavier weight. He also was called back to Washington to help develop the “left hook” strategy in the 1991 Gulf War even though he was retired.
OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide and Act and has been utilized in many areas ranging from warfare, to cybersecurity, to negotiations.
The four-step process focuses on filtering available information, putting it in context and quickly making the most appropriate decision while also understanding that changes can be made as more data becomes available. In the combat environment, it is used to train soldiers to make rapid time sensitive decisions when there isn’t time to gather all the information. But even as the decisions is being acted upon, new information, including the results of the action, should be observed and processed to formulate new decisions and actions that will continue to improve the situation.
Having a high degree of situational awareness increases the quality of the observations. Generally speaking, in order to make good decisions it helps to have good information. This is filtered by the experiences of the group synthesizing the data and the individual responsible for making the decision and can be impacted by Hick’s Law, which states, “The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.” When there are too many moving parts, it’s important to identify the critical pieces of information and their relationship to one another.
This is why some training includes firing weapons overhead, setting off explosions and crawling through mud. These are all new sensations that take time to process. It’s best to encounter them in training so that the brain learns what they mean and how to deal with it. No matter how much you train, combat will be a new experience that can be potentially overwhelming by itself. If you are facing combat for the first time while you are facing mud, noise and other factors for the first time, there is a high probability that your brain will take more time to process the information, as per Hick’s Law. And that might kill you. Ukrainian soldiers have said that training under adverse conditions were a big advantage when they finally experienced combat. Over time, combat itself can slow down and soldiers can make quicker decisions which just might save their lives and the lives of their fellow soldiers.
Experience and repetition shrinks the OODA loop, resulting in quicker, more efficient decisions.
Genetic heritage is also a factor in the Orientation phase. The function of a body isn’t just a physical experience, but a mental one, as well, and some people just think quicker and more clearly than others.
World class athletes have very good skills, but the best among them can also see and recognize situations faster than those around them. In this play, Messi not only controls the ball while surrounded by defenders, he sees all the defenders and his teammates and understands the possibilities. His opponents understand the possibilities, too, but only after Messi put things into motion and only after it’s too late to change the outcome. Messi’s OODA loop is smaller than his opponent’s OODA loop. He can make better decisions quicker than most people on the pitch. Notice Messi’s teammate. He does not anticipate what Messi saw, but he did react to it faster than the closest defender did.
The same ability to discern critical information and its relationship with other information doesn’t just happen at the speed of athletic play or frontline combat. It also happens in the relative calm of military headquarters or that of a boardroom. To illustrate this, there is a clip of the movie, “Margin Call”, a fictionalized account of the Wall Street crash of 2008.
The entire movie plays out between the previous day, frantic late night meetings, and the opening of the stock market the next day. Because the high-risk holdings are rapidly losing value, it’s important to be the first company to dump them, even at a loss, and to do so before other companies realize the situation and also starts dumping their high-risk holdings. Speed was essential to limit the impact on their company to merely a disasterous result, whereas other companies reacting later would be entirely ruined.
Jeremy Irons plays the head of company that doesn’t necessarily understand the details of the complex numbers in a fast-changing interactive market, but he has the mental skill and experience to understand what they mean. Notice how he simplifies the conversation, boiling it down to the core truth that will be the basis of his decision…
The OODA loop is a combat multiplier. If it had to be defined by one word, then “agility” would be a good word. If an army is agile (relative to the opponent), it increases the power of a military force. If it is relatively slow then it decreases military power. The process exists at every level where a decision is made.
At the end of WW2, the US had an enormous production capability that it didn’t need anymore. There were plans to close down certain factories but continue to maintain them should there be a sudden need for production in the future. But money was not allocated for the maintainence of these factories and when the Korean war broke out it took two years before enough 105mm shells were being produced at the WW2 levels. They had a plan to maintain agility in their production capabilities in case of an unforeseen crisis, but they never foresaw the Korean war nor did they spend the money to enact that plan. Their relative slow reaction in understanding strategic threats resulted in slower production capabilities.
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the NATO nations also slashed their defense budgets. As an example, Germany’s tank force fell from 5,000 to 312. The US produced enough shells for asymmetrical conflicts, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but not enough for an extended conventional conflict among near-peer combatants. They rolled over the conventional forces of Iraq. They did not anticipate being in a near-peer conflict themselves and they did not forsee supplying an ally that would be in a near-peer conflict. To make matters worse, their stockpiles did not have enough ammo to maintain sufficient levels of fires until such productivity could be created.
They had plenty of time to change their capabilities as new Observations were made over the years, but they did not change their production capabilities or their stockpile levels. It didn’t change with the rise of Putin within Russia, or the wars in Chechnya and Georgia, and only a few changes were made with the first invasion of 2014. For whatever reason, they did not forsee the possibility of an open Russian invasion of Ukraine until months before the event, and even then, they didn’t start to increase production until a year after their realization.
The Observations were there. Russian troops were already inside Ukraine since 2014. They could not Orient themselves to make a Decision that was based on the true relationships of the various Observations. They could not forsee a situation in which they, or someone they would support, would be in a long conventional war. It’s one thing to ramp up production lines for ammo. It’s another level of committment to start producing tanks and IFV’s.
Observers with different Orientational influences (and unburdened by democratic and bureaucratic processes) have been frustrated by the speed at which the NATO nations have ramped up production. It is not what anyone could describe as “agile”. It is, in fact, a force multiplier that detracts from the military power of NATO and Ukraine. This is in sharp contrast to the US performance of WW2 that earned them the name as the “Arsenal of Democracy”. But then, there are several differences (and some similarities) between the Orientation of the US in 1941 and now. The perceived threat to the US is different, and the willingness to spend money to support Ukraine is nowhere close to the committment to spend money in their own defense during WW2. The EU had similar problems in addition to their reliance on Russian energy.
Russia had its own problems. Based on their Observations and Orientation, they Decided that the Ukrainian army could not, and would not, be able to resist a full-fledged invasion. Had Russia conducted a full invasion instead of a partial invasion in 2014, that might have been true. But since then the Ukrainian militias were incorporated as regular units in the Ukrainian army and became veterans. Russian Decisions and Actions did not take that into account.
Russia entered Ukraine in exploitation mode, in long columns designed for speed, not security. Ukraine was outnumbered, but they were much more agile. They hit the columns and moved away before Russia could effectively react. They killed Russian generals that had to explain in person to their subordinates what they wanted accomplished. Unencrypted Russian radio messages gave Ukrainians more Observations that alerted them to new developments and they made new Decisions in the evolving situation that took advantage of Russia’s slower OODA loop. Ukrainian citizens, armed with a few rifles and Molitov cocktails, formed their own small units and attacked isolated logistical units, or single armored vehicles. They took these Actions without direction from above, based on their own Observations and Orientation.
Even unarmed farmers Observed unattended Russian armored vehicles. Their Orientation compelled their Decisions and Actions to tow them away and deliver them to the Ukrainian army before the Russian army could organize a recovery effort. The farmers’ OODA loop was quicker than the Russian army’s OODA loop…
Eventually, though, even Russia’s slow loop came to the conclusion that their initial assessments were incorrect. Ukraine was not ripe for exploitation, and their exposed columns were vulnerable to Ukrainian hit and run attacks and artillery bombardments. So they pulled their forces out of the north and consolidated them in the Donbass and the south.
At the end of August, 2022, the lines were fairly stable, Ukraine had built up a small reserve, and they Observed that 55 km southeast of Kharkiv, a section of the Russian line was held by a weak separatist unit. On top of that, the Russians only had one regiment as a reserve in that area. Ukraine decided to launch a counter-attack and moved their units into place. This build up was noticed by the Russians for four days, yet they did not react to it. Ukraine had never launched a large counter-attack before and Russia could not connect the critical pieces of information and their relationships to each other. Even as Ukraine broke through, it took Russia seven days before they were able to re-establish a defensive line by rushing newly mobilized troops into battle and pulling other units out of the line elsewhere in Ukraine. Even then they only had enough time to do so because Ukraine had to halt to consolidate their gains and establish new logistical pipelines.
At no time did Ukraine outnumber the Russian troops, but their OODA loop was smaller than the Russians’ loop. Smaller and quicker. More agile. It was a force multiplier that let them accomplish more with fewer troops.
There have been times when Ukraine’s OODA loop was not fast enough. The Russian withdrawal from Khereson and the right bank of the Dnieper was one such lost opportunity.
It is extremely difficult to withdraw under enemy pressure. It is even harder to do so over a river. If Ukraine attacked as Russia withdrew, some Russian units would have to have been sacrificed so that others could withdraw. There was also the possibility of a Russian collapse and a Ukrainian exploitation, or maybe Ukraine could have observed and bombarded the Russians crossing the Dnieper. We don’t have the facts that Ukraine did, all we had were the public statements that it might be a Russian trap. As it was, Russia executed a well-organized, uncontested withdrawal by set timetables and over 20,000 troops and their associated equipment made it across the river safely. Either Ukraine didn’t have the Observations required to provide them with an understanding of the actual situation or their Orientation somehow inhibited a Decision that would provide the best outcome for that situation.
Both the Ukrainian and Russian armies are tied to the heritage of the Soviet army which can be characterized, in part, by top-down decisions that allow little to no initiative at lower levels. This is still true of the Russian army. In the Ukrainian army, some older senior leaders still operate in this manner but some of the senior leaders and the younger generation of leaders are embracing low-level initiative. At the beginning of the open invasion, Ukraine could not have made those attacks on the exposed Russian columns without low-level initiative. Brigade and battalion commanders would move their units to a location and provide the logistics and whatever intelligence they had, but the company and platoon commanders would be out of touch with their leadership for hours, sometimes days, as they moved to engage the Russians or to hold a key piece of terrain.
A key component of low-level initiative are Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO’s). These are the sergeants that run any western army. In peacetime, it can take ten years for a soldier to develop into a platoon-level NCO. In war, it has to happen a lot quicker. They train their soldiers, look after their well-being and try to keep them alive while accomplishing the objectives given to them by their leadership.
Ukraine is developing their NCO corps while Russia is suppressing it. It’s a reflection of their cultures. Individuality can be a threat to an autocratic state and Putin is the state. So threats are suppressed, individuals are suppressed and corruption doesn’t reward innovation, it kills it. Progress still happens. Change still happens, but at a much slower rate.
Ukraine is struggling with its own corruption, but some progress is being made with the appointments of a new generation of leaders. Civilians use their own initiative to develop drones. A soldier in the 54th Brigade says that they’re constantly looking for better ways to conduct assaults and pass it on to other units. Ukraine still has issues, as any army does, but their OODA loop is much smaller than Russia’s, in a large part because of the contributions of the lower ranks. Innovation is how a nation without a navy is driving Russia’s Black Sea navy away from Sevastopol in search of refuge to the east. Ukraine is driving the action and Russia is reacting, always a step behind.
Ukraine’s advantage over Russia is in the Orientation phase. They’re not any smarter than the Russians, but they have a different culture that allows them to behave differently. When they are aware of new information, they have a greater chance of understanding its value and relationship to information they already know, whereas in Russia, they have a culture of lying within the army because meeting the expectations of superiors is valued more than providing the superiors with the truth, even if it is unfavorable.
And then there is experience. Ukraine has a much lower casualty rate, so they are retaining and gaining a much greater level of experience in their units. Russia’s high casualty rate means inexperienced and poorly trained personnel are replacing their veterans. The average mobilized soldier lasts 4.5 months before becoming a casualty, which is not enough time to become a veteran, so Russian units are collectively becoming less experienced over time.
Ukraine’s OODA loop is becoming smaller while Russia’s loop is becoming larger.
This trend is not enough to win the war for Ukraine by itself. Russia’s large pool of manpower can compensate for many of its shortcomings, but Ukraine will continue to transform itself faster than Russia. At some point, the speed and complexity of Ukraine’s actions might just overwhelm the Russian defender’s ability to react and a crack will appear in their defenses.
This was a really, really good article about general organization (decision making & problem solving) from political to company to military. My god what society we could have if the government could read this.