Rating: 
Summary: A Must Read for all Military personnel and Historians
Review: I am an Air Force Academy Graduate and former fighter pilot. I have a deree in aeronautical engineering and have trained in air to air combat yet I had never heard of John Boyd. What a shame. His name should have been plastered all over my aero textbooks and in my fighter training manuals.Well, now I know who John Boyd was and his story is an inspiration that should be read by all military personnel. Coming from very humble beginnings, the books shows how one man with an indomitable spirit can make a huge difference. I strongly recommend this book to everyone, especially military
pilots and anyone interested in the history of military tactics.
Rating:
Summary: If one or more of these reasons fit you buy this book
Review: I both enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. It is right for you if your interests fit one or more of the following:
1. It is a fast moving description of a most unusual man. He was not entirely admirable by any means but he had a genius and an integrity that you have to admire.
2. In my younger years I did a lot of flying and had a part in designing aircraft. I found boyd's ideas on aircraft of great interest.
3. I believe that like it or not we must all share in decisions about, not if, but what kind of military forces we must have. This book is only a start but if you are interested there are a number of good follow up books cited about Boyd and his sources of information and ideas on military strategy.
4. It is a useful study of the great difficulty in managing a huge Federal establishment and particularly something as specialized and far reaching as the military.
5. If you like a good story and one or several of these topics interest you buy this book. You will get your money's worth.
Rating:
Summary: If one or more of these reasons fit you buy this book
Review: I both enjoyed and learned a lot from this book. It is right for you if your interests fit one or more of the following:
1. It is a fast moving description of a most unusual man. He was not entirely admirable by any means but he had a genius and an integrity that you have to admire.
2. In my younger years I did a lot of flying and had a part in designing aircraft. I found boyd's ideas on aircraft of great interest.
3. I believe that like it or not we must all share in decisions about, not if, but what kind of military forces we must have. This book is only a start but if you are interested there are a number of good follow up books cited about Boyd and his sources of information and ideas on military strategy.
4. It is a useful study of the great difficulty in managing a huge Federal establishment and particularly something as specialized and far reaching as the military.
5. If you like a good story and one or several of these topics interest you buy this book. You will get your money's worth.
Rating:
Summary: More than OODA loops in this book, and this character
Review: I bought this book to find out more about OODA Loops from a business point of view. What I found was a very interesting, tragic, yet successful character in Colonel John Boyd. Besides being a colorful character, he developed military tactics and strategies that profoundly effected the Air Force and the Marines directly. He started by defining what was required for a successful fighter jet. Then he had to fight the bureaucracy and bomber-pilot generals. Along the way he developed an overall military strategy. What was very interesting to me was the illustration of the in-fighting that goes on in the Air Force (and all services) over the development of new aircraft (weapons). The discussion of the development of the F-15 and the B-1 bomber were most illuminating. Boyd was instrumental in the development of the F-16 fighter jet. Although this book is not devoted to OODA Loops, the author does cover it in more detail than I understood when I bought it. The author provides the complete text of one of Boyd's important papers in the back of the book. This was great. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in military strategy, OODA Loops, Colonel John Boyd, defense procurement, and fighter jets... but because of the heavy swearing by the characters don't loan it to your wife. The story was exciting and easy to read. John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX
Rating: 
Summary: Readable - but not authenic.
Review: I can't improve on the review dated September 21, 2003, by "A reader from Rapid City, SD USA." The quality of the "research" is deplorable.
Rating: 
Summary: "Who is John Galt/Boyd?"
Review: I decided to buy this book after seeing its author, Robert Coram, on C-Span's "Booknotes" with Brian Lamb. IT WAS THE STRANGEST "Booknotes" I'VE EVER SEEN! Several times, Coram almost broke down and wept, especially when Lamb asked him why he wrote about John Boyd. He admitted to a deep emotional bond with his subject, whom he had never met(if my memory serves). And although Coram seemed an articulate and intelligent man, he had the demeanor of a worshipful child when it came to this mysterious fighter-jock who had zoomed off into the rarefied heights of physics, Eastern philosophy, and psychology, returning from these intellectual flights to instruct the Army and Marines on how they should fight, an area in which Boyd had no formal training whatsoever. What's up with that? Just WHO IS this guy? John Boyd reminds me of Ayn Rand's unseen, almost unknown character, John Galt, who lurks like a shadow through most of ATLAS SHRUGGED, but emerges as a hero of uncompromising resistance by the righteously talented against the corrupt mediocrities of an oppressive society. Like Galt, Boyd remained obscure for many years, yet seemed to have some vague iconic status among those on the cutting edge of military thinking, people who were talking about re-introducing the concept of maneuver into land warfare, of developing a faster "decision loop" than the enemy. During my time in the Army, I read some of the magazine articles(mentioned in the book)about the "Reformers" and the "Fighter Mafia," but I didn't really know anything about Boyd. He remained in the background, a force whose presence was felt yet not seen. In Robert Coram's biography, Boyd finally emerges, like Galt, from the shadows as a hero. He served his country by making huge contributions in air-combat tactics(his E-M theory), figher design(his work on the F-15&16), and ground warfare(his OODA loop). His ideas have had a deep influence on the way we think about warfighting(as well as other forms of conflict, notably in business), and, as the book demonstrates, affects the thinking, even the vocabulary, of the leaders in the war against terrorism today. Yet, Boyd retired only as a colonel, despised by most of the Air Force and Pentagon establishment, and, when he died, left a ruined family, broken by his neglect. Coram does a fine job of telling Boyd's heroic, yet also tragic(as far as his family is concerned),story. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in military affairs, although I think any reasonably well-informed American citizen would find this a thought-provoking and(perhaps, see caveat below)important book. I also have a few quibbles. After all, most of the fun of writing in a forum like this is in picking nits! Coram's novelistic, sometimes breathless style engages the reader, and makes the book easily readable, exciting, and often, funny. But it has some drawbacks. It tends to oversimplify some issues, such as the battles over the F-15 and F-16. The lack of footnotes is a shortcoming, as is the anonymity of many characters, especially the villainous generals, who Coram and Boyd castigate. If "Boyd" is going to stand the test of time as an artifact of history, we need to know who the bad guys, as well as the good guys, are. And what about the gray guys? Coram presents Boyd's world only in black and white: bureaucrats versus patriots, careerists versus warriors, evil versus good. It sounds a little too much like George Bush's foreign policy and not enough like the real world, even in the Pentagon, to ring true all the time. The one area in which there is ambiguity is in Boyd's troubled family life, about which Coram is perhaps too reticent. I should acknowledge, that, on "Booknotes," Coram gave a pretty good explanation for the novelistic style, and indicated(again, if memory serves me)that a future edition - perhaps on the internet - will be footnoted. I partially agree with J.R. Dunn's review that Coram slips into hagiography from time to time, but, still, I never got the impression Boyd was a saint. On the contrary, he must have been an insufferable pest! But also a man of honor. Coram does succeed in bringing out some of Boyd's more disagreeable(even repulsive) characteristics, even while portraying him as the greatest patriot since George Washington. One more thing. About the Marines. I like the Marines. Some of my best friends are Marines, but really, Coram commits a howler when he claims(p.424),"What is still not generally known...is just how well the Marines performed in the Gulf['91 War]." C'mon! Marines wouldn't be Marines if they were not world-class at publicizing their successes. The Gulf War? Based on History Channel, TLC, A&E and PBS documentaries(about 10 a week for the past 10 years)a viewer would conclude that Marines did most of the fighting, all of the dying, and whatever few Army units there might have been(actually, the large majority of combat forces)were off guarding the camels. But, putting my quibbles aside, I greatly enjoyed the book and learned a lot from it. Which is OK with me. As Robert Coram ably shown in this fine biography, Boyd served his country well, and made huge contributions in air-combat tactics(the E-M theory), fighter design(his
Rating:
Summary: A very big disappointment
Review: I don't remember the last time I was this disappointed in a book. I have 2500+ hours of jet time in the USAF, and about 200 hours of combat time. This book starts out strong, but it has some huge holes in out. Boyd was, obviously, a genius. However, the book makes it sound like he was never wrong about anything. Coram goes out of his way to defend every single idea Boyd ever had, to the point of absurdity. First, he excoriates the Grumman F-14 and the General Dynamics F-111 as awful fighters--"engineering mistakes". This is patently absurd. The F-14 was designed as an interceptor--lugging large missiles (the Phoenix) and a large radar great distances from the carrier battle group to shoot down non-manuevering Soviet bombers and their cruise missiles before they could target the carrier. It was never meant to be a dogfighter. Taking the F-111 to task for not being able to dogfight is even more ridiculous--it was designed from the outset as a bomber, period. Saying that the F-111 is worthless because it can't dogfight is like saying the B-17 of WWII was worthless because it couldn't hold its own against the Messerschmitts.
Then there is the continuing diatribe against the B-1, with some utterly false accusations, such as its inability to fly over mountain ranges with a full bomb load. Hmm, it seemed to do fine over the extremely high mountains of Afghanistan. Then it says it can't reach altitudes flown by commercial airliners. That is true, but that is also true of every other combat loaded aircraft in the inventory. The stuff about the wind turbulence in the aft bay preventing "carpet bombing" is nonsense--the B-1 routinely dropped full loads of Mk-82s over Kosovo and Serbia during Operation Allied Force. He also trots out the tired "fact" that the B-1 didn't participate in Dersert Storm--again, true, but only due to the fact that it wasn't fully qualified for conventional munitions. Of course, the decision (pre-Operation Enduring Freedom) to retire 30 B-1s is seen as "proof" of Boyd's rightness. Coram conveniently leaves out the B-1s outstanding contributions during operations of Afghanistan. More recently, the B-1 performed magnificently over the skies of Iraq, going downtown Baghdad on a routine basis.
Then there are the contradictions. Coram gives Boyd credit for the F-15 and F-16 on the cover flap and at the end, but in the middle of the book we learn that those airplanes are not what Boyd wanted--he wanted light, day fighters armed with little in the way of radars or missiles. The excellent manueverability of both aircraft are due to Boyd--the reason they are the excellent fighters they are today has nothing to do with him. The F-15 is supreme because of its excellent radar and missiles. Between the F-15 and the F-16, neither has ever scored a guns kill in combat, and most of the missile kills have been with the AIM-7 Sparrow or the AIM-120 AMRAAM, with only a few AIM-9 Sidewinder kills. Boyd was brilliant in many ways, but he didn't foresee the technological revolution that would finally make radar and missiles come to the forefront. If the USAF had listened to Boyd, and not "gold-plated" the F-15, the Gulf War victory (for which he is given credit) would have turned out very differently.
Of course, there is also the attack on the USAF for not thinking originally about air power. This is again, ridiculous. The fury of the air assault on Iraq in Desert Storm, largely due to some very creative thinking on the part of Col John Warden and his staff at Checkmate, was the reason for the 100-hour ground war.
Of course, if there actually had been "meticulous research" by Coram as claimed in another review, we would have found these things out. Instead, it seems that the "research" mainly consisted of believing everything Boyd or his allies ever said, and not bothering to find out if perhaps there was a dissenting viewpoint. All in all, a huge disappointment of a book. If you know little about airpower, you may enjoy it. If you have a clue about airpower, forget it.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly entertaining and probably true
Review: I enjoyed reading this book very much. The author seems to have researched his subject as thoroughly as possible, and he writes well. The book can be appreciated at several levels. First, Boyd is a fascinating and colorful character. Second, the interaction between Boyd and the organization in which he functioned raises interesting issues about how an organization keeps itself functional and capable while exploring and adopting innovative ideas. Third, the modern insights into warfare are very interesting. Finally, the author's portrayal of the Pentagon is plausible enough to be quite unsettling.
Rating:
Summary: Read it and then think about it
Review: I enjoyed reading this book, but in the weeks since reading it, a sour taste has developed in my mouth. While I have no doubt as to the brilliance of Col. Boyd, I have to question the author's fawning over him. As other reviews have said, he did revolutionize warfare, but at a tremendous cost to himself, his family and his associates. I would characterize Col. Boyd as a true warrior that could not transition to any other kind of life. When he wasn't in combat, he was figuring out how to win the next war. His energy-management theory and algorithms for air combat maneuvering was revolutionary and helped prepare the U.S. for the next war. In the previous paragraph, I originally put in "When he wasn't fighting", but that would have been inaccurate - he seemed to be always fighting. As the dust jacket says, there were few generals he didn't anger - but this is where the story doesn't quite make sense. Coram uses Boyd's evaluation reports ("ERs") throughout the book as a tool to help illustrate what was going on in Boyd's life but he continually notes that three-star reviewing officers were on Boyd's side during the ER process. This, coupled with his apparent ability to come and go as he pleased (to the Pentagon, no less) and his access to the powers that be makes me wonder if he was actually a tool used by the generals that were so villified in the book. If this is the case, then there is a certain poetic irony to the situation that the generals allowed Boyd to advance his theories, at his personal cost, while they were able to sit back and watch the post Vietnam changes be implemented without risk to themselves. If this is true, then when it really mattered, somebody was already inside Boyd's decision loop; something that the author seems to imply that was impossible. myke
Rating:
Summary: Interesting read on little-known influencer of art of war
Review: I first heard of Boyd the fighter pilot when I operated out of Boyd Hall at Nellis AFB and saw the blurb about him in the entryway. When the book came out, I was eager to find out more, especially since I have flown F-16s for many years, and was interested in more of its background, since the book promised revealing Boyd's influence in the development of the modern fighter. I did find the book interesting, but I think not in the way the author intended. As a fighter pilot, Boyd seems to have been exceptional, but that aspect was only worth a few chapters (which is about how much it took). I thought the author spent entirely too much time on Boyd's childhood, trying to lay the groundwork for explaining his eccentric behavior. As a person, I found Boyd anything but admirable. He was a lousy officer, a lousy husband, and a lousy father (based on the facts laid out in the book). And by the author's own accounts, Boyd was somewhat less than fully truthful in some of his recounts of past exploits. One thing I got from the book was that if Boyd had been able to improve his interpersonal relationship skills even a little, he could have had a much greater, positive affect on all the things he is known to have influenced and probably many he is not known for. But I strongly agree with what Boyd said about "doing something" or "being someone" (careerists) in the Air Force (trust me, after 18 years I understand - I chose to do and consequently got burned). This brings me to the three things I thought made the book a worthwhile read. I loved the nitty gritty that surrounded Boyd as the fighter pilot. I thought it interesting to compare the then and now, to read about some of the first jet fighters from a fighter pilot's perspective. But what I found even more interesting was the story surrounding Boyd's lengthy time at the pentagon and the influences and swirling controversy Boyd affected on the developments of the fighters of my era, the F-111, F15, A-10 and F-16. The third was Boyd's direct influence on the change in much of the doctrinal thinking across the services in his later years. So, as a vehicle to bring the reader through these interesting eras, Boyd was worthy of a book. I only wish the author hadn't spent so much effort trying to make Boyd out as a super-human who just wasn't understood, instead of what he was, an eccentric fighter pilot with some great ideas and the convictions to see them through.
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