Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence discusses his VP role model and his debate prep on “This Week.”

Let’s stop pretending what he ( Pence) is talking about. Cheney was the “grownup” in the relationship and Bush was the “spoiled kid”.

We can see from where Mike Pence is coming from. He will have to run the country and become the commander-in-chief, because, like Bush, Trump isn’t up to it. He is not completely ignorant, but stupid.

Bush, in a stupor, had to have his Chief of Staff run the war in Iraq, because he, Bush, thought it was about another Crusades.

My guess is that Pence will continue the war against Islam, while ignoring Nixon’s connection to Globalization, while Trump moves America towards authoritarianism. #fail

Source: Mike Pence Says His Role Model Vice President is Dick Cheney

Beyond 2013 Retrospective Day I

“What we have done in Afghanistan has made zero difference….our orientation was wrong…”

If our orientation was wrong then, because orientation has been called the most important letter in the OODA loop, it probably means we got everything else wrong in the loop as well.

But it also should be noted that the fact that our orientation was wrong was not caused by ignorance of Boyd–we got it wrong because our leaders found out they were not Boyd.

The one principle the followers of Boyd try to take advantage of, besides deception, is to accomplish two tasks to your enemy’s one.

So it is likely that our war in the Middle East was always supposed to have been the one-two punch of Afghanistan and Iraq together.

When discussing Orientation and getting the Orientation  wrong, in the context of Boyd, Orientation begins in the workspace and the workspace was not Afghanistan.

The area of orientation was Afghanistan/Iraq and the judgment of getting it right or wrong needs to be taken from a position observing both.

So it is likely we didn’t just get the position in our orientation wrong, but hell yes we got it wrong!

But we are now pivoting towards the Indo-pacific and our position as well as our orientation is changing.

Like our war with Russia, the position we took in our orientation with Afghanistan and Iraq is an old position. If this position is right or wrong should be judged by history. It is just too hard for the person going through something like this to keep a clear head.

In the context of Boyd, the position of this next pivot point is highly critical. As I imagine Boyd would have said explicitly, the point that we are pivoting on will represent our orientation into the future.

So, as we pivot in a different direction towards Afghanistan and Iraq, where in the world can you mark an x on a map that represents our values? It is our values that we will use as a pivot.

It will be interesting to learn from the zenpundit if there was any talk about our orientation going forward at #BoydandBeyond?

via zenpundit.com » Blog Archive » Boyd & Beyond 2013 Retrospective Day I.

Discrete Paths

Larry Dunbar • ” It doesn’t account for incumbent (defender) advantage over new entries (attackers).”

If we pretend for a moment that the OODA loop is different than the OODA process, and say that the OODA process is mostly structured as a series of time-steps, while the OODA loop is structured as a parallel circuit, with discrete paths running parallel with each other. Under this pretence, the advantage Venkatesh Rao is talking about is running on a different, but parallel, path than the example you talk about.

Rao’s advantage is in the structure path of the loop, while your advantage (the advantage of the incumbent) is on the path I label D&C,(Destruction and Construction) after Boyd’s concept.

Although I believe that the math in Rao’s concept is flawed, the concept follows the strategic path.

The strategic path deals with structure, or form, that the loop will eventually take, and because Rao’s concept deals with structure (“executive decision” function) there is definitely an exponent. The exponent represents the structure of the loop and the exponent is the advantage of his concept.

The path of D&C does not have a exponent. Although D&C deals a lot with the culture of the loop which has an exponent, the model of the D&C path only says C=-D, so C+D=0.

In your example C+D did not equal zero, and that is the advantage of the incumbent.

In other words, if the incumbent force is in command of D&C, the advantage it has is the normal fact that the insurgency that is trying to control the D&C is never able to have complete command of the logic in the D&C, which leaves the OODA loop with a serial circuit.

This means the loop is left partially “open” in series.

I am not sure this is bad.

While it leaves open a path the “winner” doesn’t really want to leave open, the advantage represents growth (a well known growth) and, possibly, another way out, if your loop goes horribly wrong.

What’s Boyd say about that? If you are not will or unable to take the necessary steps to win, then you need to switch sides?

So while Rao’s strategy is trying to tear up structure, with the fight between who is in command on the straight-aways and who is in control at the corners, the incumbent advantage is leaving a door open, just in case Rao has his math wrong.

A Successful Landing

Much of Hector’s success in building a manufactured home that will withstand a drop from 10 feet has to do with the crossing of a quantum amount of energy across a gap into another dimension.

From my study of Boyd’s work with the OODA loop, I have determined that there is only one “way” into the next dimension, but 3 paths. So, while you may not agree with the “way” into another dimension, you still have to follow all 3 paths at the same time. So now the game gets interesting.

As the diagram shows the next dimension is perpendicular to the Past and Future and there are three ways across the gap between the Past and Future. If you guys can’t get it, go virtual.

It should be noted that when you are in the gap, you are in another dimension, so these paths across the gap between the Past and Future are very important.

At least they are important if you believe in another dimension–a dimension somewhere between heaven and hell, perhaps.

I am thinking that an answer to that question is worth looking into.

The Missing Operational Level

CAAT and Red Team

ISAF has a Counter Insurgency Assistance and Advisory Team (CAAT) as an in-theater think tank about the conduct of COIN. This CAAT could provide the vital link between the conduct of the campaign and the appropriate theory and doctrine behind COIN, in order to point out the lack of a cohesive operational plan. Instead, the CAAT conducts courses for low level coalition force commanders in COIN tactics, as noted above. This is no doubt influenced by the conclusion that COIN, in its current conception, is only a tactic, lacking an operational aspect. CAAT thus becomes a lessons learned and teaching center for tactical level COIN.

The red team, of which one is attached to IJC, analyzes operational plans in order to identify critical and decisive points, and to point out those where the risk or the consequence is highest. The analysis of the plan is still based on the soundness of the general plan and concept, not questioning the approach as a whole, but rather identifying the points of severe risk. All analysis is based on the premise that assumptions and facts of the original order are correct. The Red Team can thus not alter or suggest changes and flaws in the overall campaign concept, but only point at individual parts of the plan that are associated with risk or grave consequence at failure. This stays well in line with the rest of IJC focus on singular efforts and tactical level operations.

Where the CAAT and the Red Team effectively could have provided a sanity check to the overall concept, or pointing out the lack of cohesion in plan and the lacking overall operational plan, it becomes, rather as the rest of IJC, predominantly focused on individual, isolated efforts.

Not only a “sanity check”, but the gaming between the CAAT and the Red Team (which is really what the above article is talking about) produces a re-orientation of anyone Observing.

The Destruction, caused by the feed-forward of critical and decisive points not Observed by CAAT, by the Red Team, combines with theConstruction, caused by feed-back of the advantage observed by the Red Team, by CAAT’s Action of  re-orienting to that advantage (the D&C in the OODA loop).

As the above narrative in quotes is telling us that there is no reorientation by CAAT in the environment of the game. My guess is that this is not a mistake, but a tactic.

In other words, the Small Wars Journal isn’t explaining a flaw in the plan, but a tactic in the strategy of those Observing the environment of the war.

For whatever the reason, those observing don’t want the CAAT to reorient. This tactic (of limiting the Destruction and Construction in the processing of the OODA loop) is a way of controlling reorientation in the operation of the war.

via The Missing Operational Level | Small Wars Journal.

The Operational Level Of War Does Not Exist

Armies are destroyed or defeat by tactics. Wars are won and lost by strategy.

Yes but, all strategy is flawed, so to win at war you always need to keep up with the process, i.e. the OODA loop, and change, i.e. Destruction and Construction (D&C in the context of quantum movement of energy that the OODA loop represents). Strategy give war structure (the machines of war are very good against structure) between both Ends (End,Way, and Means of strategy), but the OODA loop (process) gives strategy its Means to bridge the gap between Observation/Action or Past/Future.

Meanwhile, change (D&C) gives strategy the Way to complete the process.

There is no force in the movement of mass, and when you are talking the OODA loop we are talking the movement of mass.

As Boyd would say: it’s about people stupid (I am paraphrasing here of course).

Mass (people) simply moves from where it has been (the past) to where its volume can (the future). The force developed in Observation only adds the potential of the mass. not direction, i.e. force can move in a different direction (feedforward or feedback) than the mass in a OODA loop.

The mass in the OODA loop has to keep moving forward, as it is able, unless something collapses, such as its Orientation.

An Orientation is a position of advantage in the environment Observed. The Orientation itself doesn’t need to collapse to cause problems, only its position that gives it an advantage.

I mean at the same time you are relying so heavily on strategy, one needs to be able to look at the energy not available in the system and compare it to the energy available, and decide, “how healthy are you?”

Hannibal couldn’t do it, neither could Napoleon.

Today’s military commanders can do it, because they not only have access to open-source intelligence (OSI) that are able to Observe the flaws in the narrative (its the narrative that strategy uses to build structure with), but military commanders are also able to judge what they are doing, because OSI are able to compare the narrative to a specific time/space in the future/past, and make available the entropy of the system in their judgement, or they are judged by and with the entropy of the system itself.

via The Operational Level Of War Does Not Exist.