By John Boyd
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrRNmiSnQlT1xtCZhxil9ruqNq2h_w0p0

Note: This is a work in progress. These notes were hastily taken while listening to the brief linked above.

These notes are mainly from the transcript of Boyd giving the lecture to Marine Corps University students.

Also see: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0151_Boyd_Discourse_Winning_Losing.pdf

Patterns of Conflict

[Tape 1 Side 1]

“… the increasingly abstract discussion surfaces reaching across many perspectives; pulling each and every one apart (analysis), all the while intuitively looking for those parts of the disassembled perspectives which naturally interconnect with one another to form a higher order, more general elaboration (synthesis) of what is taking place.”

“ I’ve showed there are two things you have to be able to do: analyze and synthesize.

Analysis and synthesis. And if you can do that in many different areas, tactics, strategies, goals,

unifying theme, you can run businesses, you can do any goddamn thing you want. And so when

a person calls you an analyst, you’re really only a half-wit. You only got half. Idiot. So there’s

two things that I don’t like being called, one an analyst, and the other is an expert. Because an

expert means he knows everything and can’t learn anything new. He’s rigid. And boy, if you’re

an analytical expert, you’re really in deep trouble.”

“… what you’re trying to find out if we’re going to talk about conflict, you want to reach back, you want to find out those things we call the “invariants,” the constancies, or what the physicists like to call the symmetries. Where you can look at things from different points of view, and you keep seeing the same thing popping out.”

“Terrain does not fight wars. Machines don’t fight wars. People do it and they use their minds. So you better understand the people, because if you don’t understand them, you ain’t going to make it, period. Now it doesn’t mean you don’t pay attention to terrain, you don’t pay attention to

machines but: person, the human being, and the people are what counts. Top and foremost

priority. The terrain is just the means through which you operate. The machines are just tools that you use. All they are.”

“The 25-Year War” by Bruce Palmer and “The Army and Vietnam” by Andrew Krepinevich.

Looked at it from 2 different angles but came to a similar conclusion. 

We didn’t understand our adversary

We didn’t understand ourselves (inferred, not stated directly)

We didn’t understand the tactics. In terms of strategy, we didn’t understand the strategy.

We didn’t understand the nature of that war.

Need to talk about it otherwise we won’t learn and our adversaries will beat us the same old way.

Wellington at Waterloo “Napoleon came on the same old way, and we beat him the same old way.”

“I might add, this is not patterns of war, it’s not patterns of maneuver, or patterns, it’s patterns of

conflict. We look at it in different ways. It’s not “pattern”, it’s “patterns”.”

“If you’re going use this for checklists, [unintelligible] matter of fact, some guys, they wanted to use this as a sort of a checklist, I say, “I got a recommendation for you”. He says, “what?” I say: “burn the son of a bitch.””

“Napoleon said: the moral is to the physical as three is to one” “the point is the moral is much more important than the physical” “ that’s where you’re going to gain enormous leverage on

your adversary“ Not only do we want to understand the physical, the mental, and the moral, but how they interplay with one another. 

you can think of the tactics as being the means toward the strategic end

[26:30]

“So they know they want to get in there fast and get out. Need a hard turn for a very short period

of time, add it back on the energy, take it off, put it on, whatever the case may be. So they can

get their leverage, and knock out the adversary. So what does this suggest? It suggests something like what I call “fast transients”. Today we’ll call it “agility,”“

“Think of it in space and time. In space, you’re trying to stay inside his

maneuver; in time, you want to do it over a very short period of time, otherwise you’re going to

become vulnerable to somebody else.”

How can we generalize this?

“in

order to win we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm in a very general sense over our

adversary. Or pinning it down. Or better yet, get inside what I call observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or loop”

OODA Explanation

“It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re a Russian, you’re an Englishman, an American,

Chinese or what. You have to observe what the hell’s going on here. Then you have to, as a

result of that, looking at the world, you generate images, views, and impressions in your mind.

That’s what you call orientation. Then as a result of those images, views, and impressions,

you’re going have to make a selection, what you’re going to do or what you’re going to do, that’s

a decision. And then you’re going to have to implement or take the action. Then you’re going to

have to observe the consequences of that action, plus you’re dragging peripheral information all

the time, and roll back through that loop again.”

“we want to get inside his OODA loop, not him inside ours

Why? Very simple. If we can do that, in a sense we at that point become unpredictable to him, we become ambiguous, hence unpredictable. We generate confusion and disorder in our adversary. Why is that the case? Because he’s going to be generating mental images or impressions that don’t match up to that continually, what, unfolding environment. They don’t match up. “

“we’re deliberately trying to generate a mismatch between that which he observes

and what’s really going on out there. He can’t keep up. Because it generates confusion. Because as he tries to get that mental event, we shift to a new event, new event, new event, so as he falls back further and further and gets more and more out of tune with his environment”

“So the key idea, what you want to do is generate a mismatch between that which he perceives

and that which he must react or adapt to. Note the key word: mismatch.”

“All I have to do is be faster than my adversary. I can be slow as long as I slow his

down even more. So if I’m slow, as long as he’s slower, so it just doesn’t have to speed. It can be ambiguity, deception, many other things you can do.”

F-86 vs MiG-15 story @ [35:00]

“What it means is that intuitive feeling, you can just see into things and know what’s going

on. It’s what we call instinctive or intuitive feel but then you’re talking about battlefield feel.

They call it fingerspitzengefühl.”

“That’s right, it’s always people. Machines don’t fight wars, terrain doesn’t fight wars,

people do and they use their what? Minds. So you keep track of that all the time. So if you got

their minds, or you get inside the other guy’s mind, you pull his socks down. He gets inside

yours, he pulls your socks down. “

[40:30]

“what are you trying to do? Compress the time over which you can

do these things. You want to compress your time for doing it. Turning the argument around,

inhibit his capacity to adapt to such an environment, cloud and distort his observations,

orientation, decision, all the kinds of things you can do to him. In other words you want to

stretch out his time, take him longer than you.”

“when people have doubts and uncertainties, and then they start transmitting

those doubts and uncertainties to one another, it begins to well up into what? Confusion,

disorder, panic, and chaos. Groups start coming apart. “

“the implication is clear: life is conflict, survival, and conquest”

[End of Tape 1 Side 1]

[Tape 1 Side 2]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahsu2zVrydA&list=PLrRNmiSnQlT1xtCZhxil9ruqNq2h_w0p0&index=2]

“Kurt Goedel. He said you cannot determine the consistency of system within itself, or you can’t determine the character and nature of a system within itself. So you just can’t understand military history by only looking at military history. You got to look at related kinds of things too.”

Cant have just one strategic thinker as your model. Need to find those invariants that criss-cross among many of their ideas.

“Let’s assume we don’t have variety and rapidity, what’s that mean? It means you can’t adapt and you become predictable. And in conflict that’s the worst position to be in, where you can’t adapt and you’re predictable”

“harmonize your activities. So you can have focus, you can have direction, you can gain leverage. If everybody wanders off by themselves, all you’ve got is mass entropy, or internal friction. The whole thing comes unglued and you’ll be scarfed up as individuals. So without it, you’re going get leveraged by other people who know how to cooperate. You’ll be isolated”

Initiative: “the ability to think and take action without being urged”

“ very important qualities: variety, rapidity, harmony, and initiative”

Story: “Everybody wants the perfect maneuver, there are no perfect maneuvers. In fact, I remember when I was out in Nellis in the 50s, guys had this so called “last ditch” maneuver, but what if that doesn’t work? What are you going to do, die? You’ve got your favorite maneuver, it didn’t work. I said, Christ, that’s narrow, guys, you better have a repertoire of maneuvers. If that didn’t hammer him, you pull the son of a bitch apart. So if you only got one thing you can do and the guy gets wise, that’s the end of the line for you, if he gets wise. It’s over. You’ve been had”

[Slide 13 7:20]

Sun Tzu

“In his very first chapter, what is he talking about? The citizens have to be in accord with the, the subjects have to be in accord with the rulers of the state, you have to be in harmony with the rulers. In other words, if you can’t get the people working with the rulers, you can’t go to war. As a matter of fact, that’s what the Vietnamese did to us. They got us so we weren’t in accord with one another, and we had to depart from that war in Vietnam.”

“what I call fluidity of action. Remember he said an army should behave like water going downhill, seeking the crevices, avoids the gaps, and strength against weakness.”

Fluidity of action: Strength against weakness, paths of least resistance, adaptability

“So we take all these together, harmony, deception, swiftness of action, fluidity, then with those four together, you can play the so-called dispersion/concentration game. “

We have concentration as a principle of war but not dispersion. Sun Tzu had both.

Example: “How would you like to take a bunch of guys, nice and concentrated, and attack against a machine gun? It’d clean your ass out. It’s concentrated. You say, wait a minute. I want to spread them out a little bit. Yeah. So what about that? You know, we say, well, we got a caveat; when you keep caveating the principle of concentration, pretty soon there’s no meaning.”

“by playing all these together, you can generate what I call surprise and shock. Too often we treat surprise as input and shock as input. [10:00] I don’t surprise you, you don’t surprise me. I do certain things, you can’t keep up. You become surprised. Surprise is an output, not an input. It’s a reaction, because you couldn’t keep up, you didn’t pay attention, whatever the case may be. Or you’re overwhelmed by what has happened. “

“ shock is just a hard form of surprise, it’s also an output”

“Know your enemy. Any way you can. As a result of that, then you can shape his perception of the world, so you can manipulate his plans and actions, or his strategy and tactics. Or undermine his plans, undermine his strategy.”

“ attack enemy’s plans is the best policy. Or attack his strategy is the best policy. Next best is disrupt his alliances … Split him up, another variation of strength against weakness. Third best is attack his army. In any case, before you attack his army, you want to do all the other things, because then you put the army in what? A weakened condition, so it comes unglued. And then attack cities only when there’s no alternative.”

“ cheng/chi maneuvers, as the basis of throwing your strength against his weaknesses”

“Cheng is the ordinary, chi is the extraordinary. You can also think of cheng as being the direct, and chi as being the indirect. Cheng is being the obvious, chi is being the hidden. More in that sense: Cheng being the deception, chi is being the surprise.”

“What’s the virtue of multiple thrusts?” “What if everybody goes up in the line together?”

“Iif the whole line moves forward, how can you get at the other guy’s flank? You’re just going push his line back. He says, we’re going to attack his flank. No, all you do is just push him back and have casualties. … wait a minute, you got a flank too, you’re trying to get at his flank. That’s right. It’s true you got a flank. It’s not that you’re trying to get at a flank, the key thing is an exposed flank. If I got a tempo or rhythm faster than my adversary, and I’m penetrating, he doesn’t know where the flanks are, you do, you’re carving him up, he can’t carve you up. The issue’s not flanks, exposed flanks are the issue. And so if you have a lot of ambiguity and deception, you’re running on through there, you’re going pull him apart. Go look at the German campaigns or Russian campaigns, et cetera, all those thrusts that are going in there. And then look at the reaction of the people: they come unglued, they don’t know what the hell’s going on. Very powerful.”

Montgomery forced D-Day to have 5 thrusts instead of 3. 

“More and more ambiguity in the adversary’s mind of what’s going on. You slow down his tempo to respond to 24 that correctly, even on the spot”

[Slide 14 18:05]

“ the western commanders were more directly concerned with winning the battle, while the eastern commanders were closer to Sun Tzu, in that they wanted to have their adversary shattered even prior to the battle so they came totally unglued”

“the light troops, in a sense, in some sense sometimes they’re acting as a cheng, and the heavy troops are the chi. Or it swings back the other way, see it right down here. You’re combining operations. [unintelligible] Use one, so when a guy tries to defend himself against one, he sets himself up against the other.”

Sun Tzu: “he who tries to prepare and reinforce everywhere, is everywhere weak”

He now goes over historical battles to show the principles of concentration and dispersion 

Key idea: “If you can operate at a faster tempo than your adversary, you can play the dispersion/concentration game at its widest possible sense. If you operate slower, you’re going to have to get concentrated, because otherwise you’re going to get torn to ribbons. “

Why Clausewitz is wrong

Book eight, chapter nine

Clauswitz “says act with the utmost concentration, and later on he says it’s the highest possible principle. Maybe that why we got it as a principle of war, because it came out of Clausewitz. But then when he goes into the discussion, he shows four exceptions on the idea of concentration. [30:00] Four exceptions! Well, if it’s the highest principle, then why do you have an exception? Not only that, when he talks about speed, there’s no exceptions. He says act with the utmost speed, act with utmost concentration. But concentration’s the highest principle. And then when you read between the lines of concentration, if you can operate fast you don’t require to be concentrated. If that’s the case, then the premier idea’s speed, not concentration. Because with speed, you can play the dispersion/concentration game; in fact, you use it in order to concentrate on your adversary. So where in our principles of war do we have the principle of speed? Not there.”

“ that’s why if you could set up a tempo or pace faster than your adversary, run these multiple thrusts in there, you can get at the other guy’s exposed flank, so they are exposed, he can’t figure out what you’re up to, so you’re pulling his socks down and he’s not pulling your socks down”

“Well, if he finds out he can’t violate speed but he can violate concentration, tells me that speed is the highest principle. So that’s an internal contradiction in his own goddamn treatise.”

—

“That doesn’t mean you don’t operate concentrated sometimes. Remember, I said you could blend cheng and chi. And of course that was part of the argument. I tend to use the word “focus” rather than “concentration” because I think concentration has too much excess baggage.”

“One thing you want to do, you want to know your adversary; if you use terror, you also may tend to actually goddamn build up his resolve and cause you big problems then too. In other words, you unify him against you. So if you’re going to use that terror, you better understand how you’re going to use it. Will it really pull him apart, or is it going unify him against you? “

[35:00]

He discusses terror at this point and may lead to an interesting discussion on our laws/rules or maybe even Gitmo

[Slide 30 40:00]

“you’re not trying to deceive— you want him to know that you don’t know where you’re going. That’s ambiguity. It’s ambiguous. That’s one of the things in multiple thrusts, you’re generating ambiguity. You got all kinds of impressions in his mind. We’ll point out later on, mental friction or mental entropy. It’s why he can’t cope.”

[Slide 33] which is Slide 50 in the Air University PDF

[Tape 2 Side 1]

“carry out a general, rather than a regulated mission. If I have a general rather than a regulated, what does that provide me? It allows you to be adaptable. If you’re regulated, you’re non-adaptable. With that adaptability then, then you can go after the chink in your foe’s armor, in other words strength against weakness”

Boyd’s War against “synchronization”

“everybody’s seen the Army Field Manual 100-5? “Synchronization.” How in the hell do you synchronize human beings? Remember, they’ve got those four things up front: depth, synchronization, agility, and initiative. Agility and initiative are good. Depth, there’s nothing wrong with it, except it’s in the wrong part of the manual, it should be in the back, getting lower with agility and initiative. Synchronization’s a disaster. You don’t synchronize human beings, you synchronize watches. If harmony is higher, then they should use harmony instead of synchronization. Synchronization is part of harmony, but harmony is not necessarily part of synchronization. In other words, harmony is a more general term. It’s a mistake. So they still, goddamn it, haven’t learned their lesson yet. Then they say, “well, we didn’t mean it.” I said, “then take it out! Then why is it in there?” Not only that, it doesn’t fit with initiative or agility. Initiative and agility are human terms, synchronization’s a mechanical term. Now do machines fight a war, or human beings? Remember, they’re putting up front their philosophy. I’ll tell them right to their face, it’s bullshit. You got to learn how to use that noodle. If they want, they can put something else up here, okay, but you know, it doesn’t go alongside. You don’t synchronize human beings. That’s not saying you shouldn’t synchronize watches, I’m not against that. Once in a while, you want a very tight synchronization with the artillery coming in on a time, on target, or something like that, but you don’t synchronize human beings. You want to talk about artillery, synchronizing watches or something like that. If you use the word “harmony,” you can use the word “synchronization” later on and guess what, it’s in accord with harmony because it’s a subset of harmony, but it’s not all of harmony. They got to get that through their goddamn heads! Synchronization’s a subset of harmony, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have it, but it’s a subset, it does not go for human beings. Anybody who tells they’re going to synchronize me, I get personally irritated.”

Patton on not micromanaging

“I want him to use harmony, he can put the synchronization down in a subset. You can’t know everything of what his troops are going do. Otherwise you’re going go against the very— what he’s going do is lay down what he wants done. They’re going determine how it’s going be carried out. He’s not going know the infinite details, if he tries to get in there, he’s going screw up the operation, period. We’ve done that over and over again. I guess these generals, I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking about, because they ran a platoon one time, twenty years earlier, I guess they still want to fight at the platoon level. Did you know Patton criticized his guy? He told a colonel, “goddamn it, I don’t want you to interfere with their tactics. You just tell them what they’re supposed to do, and they’re going do it, and that’s your jo. Be sure they get the resources,” he told his colonels. Quote. He said, “all you’re going do is muck it up.” He understood that. Can’t say he wasn’t a successful commander.”

Why it happened or where it would be ok:

“ the point I’m trying to bring out with the advent of nuclear weapons and also the communications: boy they didn’t want some guy flinging off nuclear weapons, so they had very tight control, because it’s an awesome weapon. And they should. But you shouldn’t— because you have it at nuclear weapons, you want to have it at all other levels. Once again, that’s a rigidity of mind.”

How to give an order

“ if you want to give an order, you can always give an order. What you want to do is, you want to tell somebody what you expect. Let them determine how it’s going to be carried out. You should also tell them why you want it done. You know, so they can see that 38 there’s a reason for it, not some goddamn bullshit in itself. And then you should put in, also, let them determine how, what, why, determine how. And then you should put in whatever constraints that you want, because remember, you’re probably going deposit this thing in a larger context, and if they start doing anything they want, it can cause you some problems. So you should put constraints. Unfortunately, what we do is make the constraints so goddamn narrow, the guy can only do one thing, so therefore he’s got no freedom of action.”

Story about following the checklist

“I’ll give you a good example of when I was overseas, of how they wanted me to do it. I was initially … sent over to Task Force Alpha. You probably know that was the old sensor program, …  In any case, over in southeast Asia. In any case, one night— eventually they made me base commander. They went through seven base commander in two years. They said, “Boyd, you got to clean it up there.” I didn’t want the job, hell I don’t want this goddamn, but I had to take it over. Well, one night I’d been there for— hell, I didn’t even know what my responsibilities were, so—a couple of our electric goons, those spy C-47s crashed, listening and ELINT13 gear and all that on there [unintelligible]. Of course, guys are out there in areas where there might be guerrillas and that, those people sent us some choppers. So the guy says, “you’re the commander on the spot.” Now I hadn’t been there too long. I said “I am?” He says, “yeah, okay let’s go down.” And he said, “here’s your checklist.” I goddamn near fell over. I said, “what do you mean, checklist?” I took that goddamn thing and threw it, it went out the window. I said, “now where’s a map, let’s find out where they are, and let’s start making some decisions.” The guy brought the checklist back in, and I threw it back out the goddamn window. Some captain. I said, “you can’t operate this way.” They don’t know, you know, I said, “if I read this, those guys’ will die of starvation out there before we get to them.” So I said, “now where’s the map?” I said, “get that goddamn thing out. You point where they are.” They said, “We don’t know.” I said, “Who knows?” He said, “we’ll find out. We’re on that.” I said, “fine. What resources do we have available?” I’m going to take the choppers out there, then we found out we don’t have enough choppers, so they had a [unintelligible] They said, “Yeah, but these guys got to go first.” Fuck that, I don’t care. I said, “What is the situation out there?” [15:00] So I reversed the whole order, and sent the choppers out and everything else. And he kept bringing the checklist back. I said, “I don’t give a goddamn to hell you’re [unintelligible] you bring it back in here again.” He said— you know, as the new guy. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I got them all out. Blew up the two goons. You know, we had to blow them up because security [unintelligible] we got them all in there. I didn’t go by any goddamn checklist. I said, you know, what do you have, went down my way, and did things that had to be done. If I started reading a checklist, hell, [unintelligible]. That’s bullshit. Of course, I’m a fighter pilot, I think that way. It’s just like he’s a fighter pilot back here, every year. I think they maybe still had it when I was there. They had this huge book. You got to sign about all the regulations that you’ve signed it, and so if you violate it, they can hand you your ass. Well, nobody ever reads the son of a bitch, they just signed it and walk out the door and said “yeah, I read the son of a bitch.” That’s a huge deception.”

Napoleon

-Emphasized the conduct of war from the top down.

-Strategic success to gain grand tactical success then tactical success

-He had scheme in his mind his marshals didnt know. Since they didnt know they had to do what he wanted. Got more rigid as you go down.

-Result: Strategic maneuvers, ambiguous and deceiving prior to tactical concentration. After they were stereotyped and obvious.

“So the Napoleonic Spirit, strategic fog followed by stereotyped and ruinous tactical assault.”

Clausewitz

“We’ve all heard him say war’s an instrument of policy. Anybody see anything wrong with that? The military’s an instrument of policy. When you say something’s an instrument, what are you really inferring? You’ve got control over it. In other words, you’ve got— you know, a tool or an instrument, you’ve got control of it. But you can’t control war.”

“uncertainty of information acts as an impediment to vigorous activity”

“he brings in very strongly the importance of psychological and moral forces and effects, since we’re talking about animate objects. Danger being one of them. Intelligence. Here he’s talking about not an intelligence service but mental intelligence and emotional factors. Emotional factors, courage, confidence. Fear, anxiety, alienation, being the negative ones. Courage, confidence, and esprit being the positive ones. They can go either way, either impede or stimulate, in fact, depending upon the circumstances.”

“ He takes all the interaction of all these things and lumps them under the notion of friction. The interaction of many of these factors, including all those above. And because that’s all very complex, that tends to, what, impede activity.”

“Anybody remember his famous statement? “Friction is the only concept”—I’m quoting him now—“is the only concept that more or less corresponds with those factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.” The point is, if you haven’t accounted for friction, you’re not talking about real war. And he’s quite right, if you think about it. Because the way he looks at friction, you read it very carefully. He treats it almost the same way we treat the modern— the way we look at the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy.”

What he’s trying to do is overcome his own internal friction.

“ Clausewitz overemphasized the decisive battle and underemphasized strategic maneuver”

“Also, he emphasized method and routine at the tactical level. Why did he do it? His own words, to reduce his own internal friction. Is there anything wrong with that? He wasn’t looking outward. He was always looking at things in an absolute sense. “

“Clausewitz is concerned with trying to overcome or reduce friction and uncertainty. He failed to address if you want to try to magnify adversary’s friction and uncertainty. The point is, if you have routine in your own services and become predictable, you’ve also lowered your adversary’s friction relative to you. You’ve got to think of it both ways. “

“And he incorrectly stated, “a center of gravity,” quoting him, “is always found where the mass is concentrated most densely.” That’s not always true. In a donut, the center of gravity, well, there is no mass. In a hollow steel ball, it’s where the steel isn’t. In a dumbbell, it’s in the connection between the mass. You can come up with counterexample after counterexample. It’s not correct. “

Clausewitz “Did not see that many non-cooperative conflicting centers of gravity paralyze adversary by denying him the opportunity to operate in a directed fashion, hence impede vigorous activity and magnify friction. [30:00] That’s the game the guerrillas play to the hilt. “

Vulnerabilities vs center of gravity

Boyd talks about how vulnerabilities is a better term than center of gravity.

“Remember, as a matter of fact, Sun Tzu said it. …  seize that which is the vulnerability, seize that which your adversary holds dear or values most highly. Then he will conform to your desires. That’s a vulnerability. He said that, Sun Tzu back 400, 500. Seize that which your adversary holds dear and values most highly. Then he will conform to your desires.”

“you want to go after your adversary’s weakness, strength against weakness. You may not know that exactly. One way of finding out, though, is multiple thrusts. Because some are going to get hung up. Some will leak through. The ones that are leaking through, you know they’re doing it. So then you can shift your schwerpunkt and ram it home through those. In other words, you’re adapting to circumstances.”

“You may find a weakness and go through, but he may not be too vulnerable necessarily. But also because you’ve got the weakness— because you act, then you can exploit that weakness. Then you can direct that out of that weakness and effort into his vulnerability. “

“If you go after something that’s vulnerable, a critical vulnerability, he probably knows it is too. So therefore, he’s going to put a lot of forces there. Now you’ve got strength going against strength. In other words, you’ve got Verdun and all those battles [unintelligible]. Do you understand what I’m saying? So it’s sometimes better to exploit the weakness. As a result, you can get to the vulnerability.”

“you’ve got to set up some kind of operation to exploit some weakness, which may not be critical. Then if you can get him to goddamn allocate toward that weakness and expose that vulnerability, there’s nothing wrong in that. But you’ve got to get the exposure first, otherwise you can’t get to it. “

“The mission is what has to be done. The intent is the reason behind it and usually encompasses a larger effort. “

“ you’ve got mission. You’ve got the intent. And behind that it’s more, a little bit more insidious, you’ve got motive. Mission first, more specific as you like to say. Then the intent. Then the motive. So the mission is what you want done to these guys. The intent is the higher level intent behind it. And there also may be a political motive even behind that intent.”

“You’ve got to lay something out ahead of time, but as it begins to unfold, you might want to change that intent too. As it unfolds a different way, say hey, I can gain leverage by this. Then you shift the schwerpunkt, you shift your intent, and tell your people why. “

“ All I said is you want to get that exposed. If you don’t expose that first critical vulnerability, he knows it’s there. You’re going to get strength going against strength”

“what you’ve got to do is get him to expose that vulnerability by exploiting his weaknesses, whatever they are, or creating weaknesses, whatever they are.”

[Tape 2 Side 2]