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Anyone interested would enjoy reading about John Boyd, head of the Fighter Mafia:

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

⬐ lukas099

Seconded, he was truly a remarkable figure in U.S. military history, both for his personality and his accomplishments.

⬐ V_Terranova_Jr

It's an outstanding book about an outstanding man but still a bit of a hagiography when it comes to all the "fighter mafia's" ideas on aircraft design. However, his focus on prioritizing investments in people over weapons is a truly underappreciated part of his legacy.

Another story of an undersung military airpower leader is that of Red Flag & Moody Suter: https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1100flag/

There's a better longform writeup I saw once from one of the military service academies, but I can't seem to find it now.

Col. Boyd must be spinning in his grave!

One of my favorite books: https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

There's a lot about what's wrong with aircraft procurement in this book and how he fought against it. Idealism and pragmatism still lose to politics and money fifty years later!

⬐ jnwatson

There's an argument, by Boyd causing the F-15 and F-16 to succeed, he delayed the inevitable rethinking of the procurement process. If not for Boyd, the Air Force would have had perhaps 1 qualified success (F-18 Super Hornet) in the last 50 years of air platform development.

⬐ dwighttk

Did the Air Force ever use the f18?

⬐ greedo

No.

⬐ rjsw

Other Air Forces have used it, Canada and Australia. Germany is thinking of getting some.

⬐ u10

The Air Force doesn't fly the F-18. Boyd was against the F-15, so I'm not sure where you are getting that from.

⬐ F00Fbug

The F-18 and F-15 prototypes were competing for the same job. F-15 won and MD managed to salvage their investment and sell the YF-17 to the Navy as the F-18.

The F-16 was the card up Boyd's sleeve that nobody saw coming but couldn't argue against it once he put it on the table!

⬐ greedo

No, the F-17 and the F-16 were both part of the LWF (Lightweight Fighter) project. When the F-16 beat out the F-17, the USN decided to pursue the F-17 which became the F-18.

⬐ laverya

I think you mean that the YF-16 and YF-17 were competing. YF-16 won for the USAF, and the Navy chose a derivative of the YF-17 as the F-18 and A-18, later combined into the F/A-18 as avionics improved.

The F-15 is not involved in the F/A-18 story at all.

⬐ u10

The F/A-18 was never in competition with the F-15 WRT the Air Force. It was mandated by congress for the navy to replace the high cost f-14 with something more reasonable costwise. It's true that the F/A-18 was competing with a navalized version of the F-15 but cost factors and the lack of organic multirole made the navalized version of the F-15 unfeasible.

The F-16 did not conform to what Boyd wanted out of a combat aircraft, execpt for the lightweight part. The F-16 has a RADAR, BVR, and while designed as an air superiority it has exceeded expectations as a multirole platform.

⬐ dublin

The Navy has a strong preference for two engines (and so would you, if you were flying at sea), so the F-16 was never an option for them, anyway...

⬐ zepearl

It was extremely interesting from a technological point of view (e.g. funny the mentions about "gold plating", if I remember correctly), but at the same time I thought that it was very depressing (his private life). I'm conflicted about that book... .

⬐ jabl

> There's a lot about what's wrong with aircraft procurement in this book

So for those of us not interested enough to actually go read that book, what is the solution for such insanely expensive military programs?

⬐ bluGill

First, are the programs insanely expensive is a question that needs to be asked. I have no doubt there is waste to cut, but overall, a modern fighter much be complex. A WWI fighter will lose against the more complex fighter every-time, which will lose to the 1950s fighter (The jet engine was just becoming workable at the end of WWII, if the war had gone longer what I'm calling a 1950s fighter would be late WWII). And so on. A modern fighter must have high R&D, and overall we hope to only need a relatively small number of them, which makes it really easy to do division on a per fighter basis and get a really big number.

The incremental cost of a F35 once you have designed it isn't too bad (and it could be made a lot better if it was worth a larger assembly line to make more).

⬐ u10

Boyd and Pierre Sprey are hacks part of the luddite fighter mafia. If it was up to them the most successful fighter plane of all time (F-15) would have been replaced with cheap f-5 clones without BVR or RADAR capabilities.

⬐ dublin

The "cheap F-5 clone" called the F-20 Tigershark would have been one of the most capable and cost-effective fighters ever, but it offered insufficient opportunity for graft and corruption, so it was killed by Congress. It was also no doubt the last time any manufacturer will ever attempt to develop a significant military aircraft at their own expense.

⬐ F00Fbug

I guess that's true to a point, but Boyd was singularly focused on ACM, maybe even obsessed with it. Which is understandable given his background.

I guess it's fortunate that technology continued to advance to the point where the F-16 finally does have improved RADAR and BVR (Block 20 and onward).

But, yeah, they had tunnel vision about the mission.

There's an excellent biography about Boyd (https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...) the pilot who formalized using energy & momentum into actual combat techniques. The book is really good reading.

Take a look at how John Boyd upended the Air Force dev process, but of course that ended with his untimely death. Nobody else was able to do it.

He ran the "Fighter Mafia" which was responsible for the F-15 and F-16 aircraft.

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

"Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War"

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

This is addressed quite well in Robert Coram’s Excellent _Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War_ with the life shaping question:

“Do you want to be somebody, or do something?”

You will be a really big deal at FANG but you are not likely to do as interesting work as you would in a smaller mildly successful company.

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategi...

Check out this biography of Col Boyd (the OODA Loop guy): https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

It's a total hagiography with some dubious historical claims, but a fun and interesting read nonetheless.

If you are interested in how the Pentagon, Air Force and Navy decides to fund and build aircraft, I highly recommend reading this book [1]. It's about the father of the A-10, F15 (sort of), F-16 and FA-18. Fascinating read about how the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics. (it's about the life of John Boyd, not just how aircraft a chosen but its covered quite a bit in the book)

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/031...

⬐ Terr_

> the armed forces will completely ignore data on flight characteristics due to politics

There's a comedy/dramatized-history called "The Pentagon Wars" starring Cary Elwes, following the development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA

⬐ josephcooney

This is hilarious.

⬐ Terr_

I find it's applicable to some software projects as well.

⬐ josephcooney

Indeed. I was thinking exactly the same thing.

⬐ ProAm

Ill watch this later. They talk about testing the Bradley in the book and how they pretty much fudged all the tests to get it into service even though people knew it would be a tomb for soldiers if they ever went to war in it.

⬐ Uhhrrr

I second this book recommendation. Reading one of Boyd's more epic slide decks might be interesting to some: http://www.ausairpower.net/JRB/poc.pdf

The priority placed on tight OODA loops jibes well with the Lean Startup doctrine, I think. Of course, since there's always an aggressive competitor for resources in Boyd's field, he emphasizes messing up their OODA loop as well.

⬐ ajmurmann

There is a great book that translates Boyd's philosophy to business: https://www.amazon.com/Certain-Win-Strategy-Applied-Business...

I generally love reading about how other fields do what we call Agile. It allows you to set the principles behind the implementations.

⬐ Uhhrrr

Could you give an example of how it helped you figure out something in business?

⬐ WalterBright

That book (i.e. Boyd's story) is amazing. I had no idea what he'd done. For anyone interested in military aviation, it's a must read.

⬐ wallace_f

Also, note the Vanguard rocket. We lost the space race due to politics. We had the people who knew how to build it--who later built the Saturn V--and after they did, were promptly kicked out.

The Soviets had childish, despicable politics of their own going on, with important rocket engineers like Korolev being accused by his colleague Glushko of treason, sending Korolev to the gulag for Glushko's professional advantage.[1]

Korolev went on to help design to Tupolev tu-2, a formidable bomber in WWII, from prison. Later he was Chief Designer of the Soviet's rocket program before dying of cancer (had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized).

Maybe the reason we see no signs of life in the universe is that all life evolves to conquer itself.

1 -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Imprisonment

⬐ WalterBright

The way I read it, there was some question that orbiting spacecraft would violate airspace, and with itchy fingers on the launch button, Eisenhower was unwilling to provoke the Soviet Union. He delayed the space program until the Soviets launched Sputnik, which settled the issue. If that's true, it was a good, pragmatic decision.

⬐ greenhouse_gas

>there was some question that orbiting spacecraft would violate airspace

Almost. He didn't want to avoid launching satellites, he wanted to avoid launching _military_ satellites, which is why they had to use Vanguard (which was a civilian rocket). Once Sputnik launched on an R-7, there was no more need.

⬐ wallace_f

I have heard that as well, but to the best of my knowledge I don't believe it is accurate. Here is Wikipedia, from the Space Race page.

>The Space Race began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961

⬐ masklinn

> The Soviets had childish, despicable politics of their own going on, with important rocket engineers like Korolev being accused by his colleague Glushko of treason, sending Korolev to the gulag for Glushko's professional advantage.[1]

It went both ways, Glushko consisered Korolev to be irresponsibly cavalier and autocratic with anything outside of [Korolev's] specialities, which included Glushko's (liquid-fueld rocket engines).

> had he not, his plan to go to the Moon may have been realized

Probably not: Glushko's OKB-456 controlled the design of high-power liquid-fueld engines (which would ultimately lead to the RD-170 and its various derivatives), Korolev refused Glushko's engine design (RD-270), Glushko thus refused working with Korolev and on LOX/Kerosene engines[0].

It was Korolev who decided to go with a metric fuckton of NK-15 instead of listening to Glushko.

[0] he would ultimately design the LOX/Kerosene RD-170, but 20 years after the F1, one of the reasons for refusing to do so for the N1 was the lacking techno-industrial environment and inferior coke-prone fuels available to him in the 60s)

⬐ wallace_f

We could debate the merits of either's designs, but Korolev was the first to (1) develop an ICBM (2) put a satellite in orbkt, and (3) impact and orbit a payload on the moon

⬐ masklinn

Sure, and then he failed to put a man on the moon.

One of the cool things about the biography of John Boyd (http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316...) was the quoting from and parsing of his performance reviews in the US Air Force.

Robert Coram's biography of John Boyd is very good.

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...

For anyone interested in learning more, the book 'Boyd' provides a lot of useful background information on

- why the F-35 is a total disaster - the Pentagon's intrinsic inability to make reasonable decisions

In a nutshell, this guy Boyd pioneered modern fighter jet design (and important general strategic theorems as well), but spent his career fighting crony-bureaucrats to get any of it adopted by the U.S. military

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-The-Fighter-Pilot-Changed/dp/0316...

See "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War" for a more complete description of his life. The article doesn't do it justice.

http://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who-Changed/dp/0316...

⬐ Symmetry

Not only did Boyd make important contributions to the theory of air combat (and contests under time pressure in general), he helped develop ways to quantify the manoeuvrability of aircraft leading to the F-15 and F-16.

⬐ jedc

Or the book "Certain to Win" which was written by one of his "disciples" with Boyd's input on how to apply all of Boyd's thoughts (which are far more complex than what the blog post shows) to business situations.

http://www.amazon.com/Certain-Win-Strategy-Applied-Business/...

⬐ joeycfan

Yes. Boyd was a great sage of air warfare. A national hero.