Coyote Sends: The OODA Loop

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About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .

8 Comments

  1. Anonymous September 25, 2020 at 10:55

    5

  2. Curious Passerby September 25, 2020 at 11:26

    Cool video. I liked the “you racist!” part. The sneaky right hand cell phone/ left-handed shot was clever.

    I’ve always found the OODA loop interesting. If you take the time to learn about John Boyd, the creator of the theory, it gets more interesting.

    If you can find a copy of The Pentagon Wars (the book, not the comedy movie based on it https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-Wars-Reformers-Challenge-Guard/dp/1612516009), there is a description of John Boyd and his life and work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_%28military_strategist%29 Mr. Boyd was truly a great man and he labored in obscurity for many years. We can thank him for dragging the Air Force kicking and screaming to the F16 and, if memory serves, the A10. He was also called “40 Second Boyd” because of his standing challenge he could take any pilot head-to-head in 40 seconds from a disadvantaged position. (I suspect his pre-OODA conceptual thinking may have helped.) Boyd was one of a small cadre of upstart AF officers who tried to force the Air Force to embrace cheaper solutions to problems, rather than big ticket all-in-one solutions from contracts eager to promise the sun and the moon. They tried to get the AF to invest in small, light fighters over big, heavy, expensive all-role fighters. In the end, they basically offered a challenge to manufacturers to build prototypes on their own dime and have head-to-head trials to see which was better. It was probably the greatest feat of military contracting ever. Boyd and other like-minded officers sacrificed their careers at the pentagon trying to drag the DOD into a smarter approach to weapons design and procurement. The comedy movie ignored most of this, but still captures the insanity and corruption of how the DOD does business. For many years, the book was out of print and copies on amazon ran about $75-100, but for some reason the price has come down. It’s a good book to add to your collection.

    I have to add- Boyd developed a briefing (A 90s-era video of it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzRqZnPVeJI), which was eventually called Patterns of Conflict, in which Boyd tries to explain his philosophy of war. He started researching every great military thinker he could find, from Sun Tsu to Patton to produce his lecture, which grew from an hour to two hours to six hours, to 12 hours. His lecture became a general officer must-see and Donald Rumsfeld famously sat through it two times. Boyd refused to share his slides with generals’ staff officers ahead of time and refused to cut the presentation for time. You paid your ticket and you stayed for the whole show.

    If military procurement and spending gets your goat, WIlliam Grieder’s Fortress America is also good. https://www.amazon.com/Fortress-America-American-Military-Consequences/dp/1891620096/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&keywords=fortress+america&qid=1601046875&rnid=283155&s=books&sr=1-14
    It’s very dated as a 1998 critique of how we handled the end of the Cold War, but it’s still fascinating reading.

  3. wwes September 25, 2020 at 13:42

    That’s definitely not going to make it to the mainstream media, but way more people need to be watching it.

  4. Coyyote September 25, 2020 at 15:16

    Boyd, the fighter pilot thar changed the art of war, is a good biography and worthwhile read. I train a lot with my firearms and am pretty proficient. I understand tactics and OODA. Still did not do well against the guy reaching into the pickup – did you?

    How best to handle this situation? For me the answer is to quickly retreat and put distance between myself and the guy reaching into the truck (an option an arresting officer does not have). My handgun with a red dot allows me to make quick accurate shots out to 50 to 75 yards. I routinely train out to 100 yards, so the best option for me is distance, which probably means truck guy misses his first shot while I am completing OODA. Other. Ideas???

  5. SemperFido September 25, 2020 at 19:45

    Not being able to tazer him as soon as he started heading toward the truck window I would have shot him and apparently been a racist. Try as I might, even when I knew which pulls were going to involve a gun I couldn’t shoot him before he got his shot off. This video is sobering.

  6. Johnny Paratrooper September 25, 2020 at 20:30

    This is why, whenever I cleared houses in Baghdad, I used the one rule that my Delta Cadre and the 82nd Cadre taught me that I will never, ever forget. Read carefully because this is VERY important. It saved my life a dozen times that I know off. Possibly hundreds of times. Once, I cleared 70 houses with one other Paratrooper in 4-5 hours. House Borne IED’s weighing up to 2,000 pounds were a thing. The whole house, brand new, was built on a bomb. Every terrorist cell had a ambush house for us, and they had fake “Actionable” intelligence to draw us, or the SOG/SOF team guys to these houses. One SEAL team(3-4 guys, not a “Group”) was completely obliterated during operations one night. The entire house was turned into a mushroom cloud of noise, dust, screams, and violence as soon as every man entered the door. After that, all MOUT Ops(Military Operations in Urban Terrain) in Baghdad were two man teams.

    Baghdad was the ONLY urban environment in the entire GWOT. Everything else was a village, or town, and you could stand on mainstreet and see the end of the city.

    A hard lesson to learn. Learn from our mistakes. Because your friends will be killed, and it can ALL be prevented. The first rule is don’t go in unless you have to. Tactical Callouts are much, much better and safer for you and your men. Order the enemy to surrender or burn their house down with whatever you have. We had Incendiary Armor piercing AT84s. They have the red/black rings on them. There are three types that I know of. Double Red band for bunkers and soft targets, Double Black Band for Main Battle Tanks, and Red/Black Multi-Purpose for those Airborne Ranger days.

    When you clear houses, or are dealing with a near/far threat, follow this one rule.

    “You don’t have to wait for a threat in order to flick your safety off and point your weapon at a target”
    -Delta Force.

    Meaning, in the real world, you can go ahead and take your safety off, and point your weapon at everyone and everything.
    Women and Children included. And believe me, in a places like Baltimore and Baghdad the women and children are as mean as any gang member. Because gangs, communists, and islamic terrrorists, are a family. This includes the women, children, and ten year old boys.

    Whenever I entered and cleared a building, ANY BUILDING AT ANY TIME, my safety was on “3 round burst”, or full auto for my SAW. And I pointed my weapon at EVERYONE. Literally everyone. No exceptions. I’m an egalitarian like that. I used my Tac light vigorously and generously inside of buildings. (A Tac light, in the open, is suicide after sundown) You can disable your Tac-light switch by removing the pressure switch remote line. So you don’t have to worry about accidental discharges of white light.

    My unit, before I got there, had two men chewed up by an AK when they accidentally discharged their Taclights breaching a door. One man was shot in the pelvis(destroying his bladder and seriously damaging a kidney tube), and just above the IBAS through his ribs and into his back plate. The other was shot three times in the legs, and had about 9 holes in him, shattering his femurs. Both of them are still messed up. This happened from about 200 yards away(Point target AK ambush distance) I’m told. The enemy shooters escaped untouched, despite 15 men with machine guns returning fire, and Ariel overwatch. This occurred in the orchard fields outside Samarra at a farmhouse.

    Be careful. There is no reset button. You only get one chance to win. FYI, bad guys are not afraid of guns… And they aren’t afraid of you. Don’t be afraid of them.

  7. Badger September 28, 2020 at 09:21

    [ Possible dupe due to previous AP server glitch; Moderator please delete if already posted, thanks. ]

    First, yes it’s a sobering video. One reason is that it’s clear that you can “win” (by a millisecond) and still get shot, which is no consolation.

    The second thing that comes to mind is that, having read Boyd’s work, the ‘Orient’ portion as depicted in the video implies that the only option is going to be engagement, which is not correct. In fact, one viable option that remains – especially for a pilot facing terrible odds- is to disengage completely. Yes, sometimes living to fight another day is the preferable alternative. The ‘Orient’ portion is more encompassing than “meeting the threat.” It should be taken as “what is my vulnerability to this potential threat and can I achieve (or not) a position of advantage?”

    If the video is just a sobering exercise in reaction time, it does a fine job of illustrating that. Thanks for posting it. One can imagine how little time there is, especially with someone like (aka) Alex Blaine in Kenosha (gray camo pants) who walks around with pistol already in-hand.
    So if it’s only that reaction exercise disregard the following:

    If the intent is to go further to support certain behaviors by law enforcement personnel that ‘s another matter and, in fact, the video does seem to take that line in its intro graphics. What it doesn’t address is that this concept, employed by the military, is different for a cop and needs to be. Why? Because, frankly, being “uncooperative” is not a capital offense. Simply fleeing a traffic stop on foot is not a capital offense. Also, failing to follow conflicting commands issued in rapid succession should not be a capital offense. A perennial example of this is “Freeze, don’t move! Let me see your hands!” No hands = get shot. Showing hands (which requires moving) = get shot.

    I’m with Coyote as to putting some distance into the mix. I wonder (but don’t know) if that would also allow a bit more time for determining an alternative outcome. I’m not a cop, so don’t know if they are taught, for instance, that one of the options to someone fleeing or not respecting commands during a stop could be, “Ok, we’ve got the license info, we know where this POS lives, we’ll hook him up later.” Certainly not appropriate to all situations, but sometimes, Instead of benign encounters turning into something else. We have seen many times that “disrespect” of the badge moves the encounter away from simply “issuing a municipal citation” to “WINNING the encounter.” I’m not justifying bad-actor scumbag behavior or saying that drunks should be allowed to just get back in the car & drive away. Simply noting behavior over time and this goes back to helping Dad man the ramparts during the original Watts riots in ’65. Research the original incident & contemplate if it could’ve been handled differently. The notion of “win the encounter regardless” is not a new thing.

  8. Hector Elizondo May 9, 2021 at 13:29

    Most LE don’t have the slightest clue anout the ooda loop, how to use it, how to recognized if a loop is bein run on you by the opfor, or how to negate the loop. If a loop is being run on you, there are only two ways out. Deny the fight, or alter the dimension of the loop. (John Boyd, BFM-101, 1978)
    LE’s entrance into the domain of the loop is through the force continuum. But LE management does not allow any serious training into the force continuum, let alone – articulation of threat. Neither does the military… so it all goes back to training. The more you have, the better your pre-emptive situational awareness. The more you have, the further you can go into an event and still maintain control-AND- have a safe, functional, exit strategy. Any fool can stumble into a problem, but only a trained individual wll have a navigatable course out of a problem. This minimizes the standard LE response of scream and shoot. Replacing it with scream, then shoot, and much safer, more logical alternatives.

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