John Boyd: Erie's Son

Abstract

I didn’t really know John Boyd. I met him once in the early 1980s and heard his briefing. I cannot tell you, however, the impact that brief four hour presentation on “The Patterns of Conflict” had on me and some of my fellow Army officers at the U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency that day. My reaction was different from the majority who lost interest in the first 15 minutes of the briefing. I recognized that Boyd was on to something that I had not seen or heard before. It was something I had been searching for: answers to lots of questions.