The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Colonel John Boyd USAF - Feb. 23rd, 2004

www.arlingtoncemetery.net ^

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
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FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

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Colonel John Richard Boyd
(1927 - 1997)

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Col. John R. Boyd, USAF (ret.) had served as an enlisted man from 1945 to 1947 in the Army Air Corps and as an officer in the US Air Force from 8 July 1951 to 31 August 1975.

John Boyd is one of the least known strategists of our time. Luckily it is now possible to study his ideas and life thanks to two recent biographies: Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War and The Mind of War, John Boyd and American Security and also two websites: Defense and the National Interest and War, Chaos and Business.

The leader was "Genghis John,'' his troops "the Fighter Mafia,'' and their project "the Lord's work.''

In a few cramped Pentagon offices, a volatile but brilliant Air Force Colonel secretly led a handful of other pilots and engineers in the development of a revolutionary aircraft design.

They pored over drawings of wings and fuselages, prodding and occasionally bullying contractors. They studied variables for thrust, lift and drag, then shipped their calculations to a co-conspirator in Florida who had access to computers that could analyze and spot flaws in the data.

As the Air Force brass touted the new F-15 Eagle and the Navy worked on the F-14 Tomcat, Colonel John R. Boyd and his henchmen dreamed and schemed of a lighter, more nimble plane that would out-perform both and cost less.

"It was one of the most audacious plots ever hatched against a military service and it was done under the noses of men who, if they had the slightest idea of what it was about, not only would have stopped it instantly, but would have cut orders reassigning Boyd to the other side of the globe,'' author Robert Coram writes in a new book about Boyd, who died of cancer in 1997.

Helped along by a handful of senior officers and congressmen dubious about official claims for the Eagle and the Tomcat, Boyd and his gang provided the intellectual energy for what would become the F-16, a warplane now flown by 22 nations and hailed as the most successful fighter aircraft in history.


John Boyd in 1952 after winning his wings as an Air Force pilot. After basic flying instruction in Mississippi, he trained in jets at Williams AFB, then combat training in the F-86 at Nellis AFB before being sent to Korea. (Boyd Family Photo)

Thirty years later, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushes the development of weapons systems that promise to transform today's military, Boyd's story may serve as both inspiration and warning.

The saga demonstrates that radical change is possible, even in the world's most notoriously hidebound institution, but suggests it must bubble up from deep within the ranks.

"Rumsfeld is trying . . . to impose change from the top down,'' complained Franklin "Chuck'' Spinney, one of the few members of the Fighter Mafia still working in the Pentagon. "And what that means is that they have to have an answer they're trying to impose. . . . The problem is, they haven't done the research to see if that answer is actually workable.''

In contrast, Boyd, the Mafia's godfather and the central figure in the broader military reform movement it spawned, was a cigar-chomping, free-cursing dynamo, notorious for challenging convention and questioning authority at every level. He was endlessly revising projects he'd spent years developing.

Some of Boyd's Mafia also worry that Rumsfeld's vision of transformation relies too heavily on gadgets and not enough on human intellect.

Boyd "would be appalled'' that Osama bin Laden remains beyond the reach of the U.S. military 15 months after the September 11 attacks, said one Boyd contemporary who, because of his continuing association with the military, asked to remain anonymous. The al-Qaida leader, said Boyd's contemporary, is demonstrating how an ability to stay ahead of the opposition in thought and movement can frustrate the most advanced technologies.


North American F-86F Sabre

Though he hit his stride as a flier a half-century ago, Boyd remains a legend among fighter pilots. Training young aviators in Nevada during the 1950s, he became known as "40-second Boyd'' because of his offer to pay $20 to any opponent who could evade him for more than 40 seconds in air-to-air maneuvers; none ever did.

In the 1960s, when contemporaries called him the "`Mad Major,'' Boyd developed the "`Energy-Maneuverability Theory,'' a revolutionary way to measure the performance of different aircraft. It demonstrated the superiority of the Soviet MiGs then in use in Vietnam, spurring development of the F-15.

And in the '70s, convinced that the Air Force had overloaded the Eagle, Boyd not only led the Fighter Mafia, he fathered a way of thinking about warfare that continues to influence the U.S. military and foreign forces.

Embraced most enthusiastically by the Marine Corps, Boyd's theories were critical to development of strategies that helped the United States win the Persian Gulf War of 1991; carried into the private sector, they've been adopted and adapted by businesses such as Toyota, General Electric and Wal-Mart.

Coram, whose book "Boyd'' was three years in the making and reached bookstores last month, is a veteran reporter and pilot. He argues that Boyd may have been the most important student of warfare since Sun Tzu, the Chinese scholar whose 2,400-year-old essay, "The Art of War,'' is still a touchstone for military officers.

"Sun Tzu gave you a rulebook,'' said Mike Wyly, a retired Marine colonel who helped spread Boyd's ideas through the Corps. "What Boyd said is way more applicable in actual thinking about tactics and strategy.''


North American F-100 Super Sabre

Boyd built on Sun Tzu's teaching that the surest way to victory is to so confuse the enemy that he is rendered unable to fight. He read voraciously, simultaneously studying human behavior and the history of warfare, in particular battles in which outnumbered or ill-equipped forces defeated enemies who seemed clearly superior.

He concluded that successful commanders managed to think and act ahead of their foes. In a briefing titled ``Patterns of Conflict'' and delivered over the years to hundreds of military and civilian officials, he broke decision-making into a continuous four-step cycle -- observe, orient, decide, act -- and demonstrated how the successful commander wins by ``getting inside the loop'' to disrupt and ultimately paralyze his opponent.

Boyd took six hours to deliver the briefing. He never reduced it to writing because he never considered it finished, Coram writes.

One policymaker who heard Boyd's brief in the 1980s was a Wyoming congressman with a strong interest in defense. His name was Richard B. Cheney. As Secretary of Defense a few years later, he brought Boyd back into the Pentagon for private sessions on plans for war in Iraq. Cheney, now vice president, told Coram last year that Boyd "clearly was a factor in my thinking'' as those plans evolved.

"We could use him again now,'' Cheney added. "I wish he was around. . . . I'd love to turn him loose on our current defense establishment and see what he could come up with.''

Coram recounts how Mafia-member Spinney, watching the 1991 war unfold on television at his home in Alexandria, leaped from his chair as a U.S. military spokesman described how thousands of Iraqis were surrendering to Americans who'd gone around their strongholds to hit targets and sow confusion behind the lines.

"We kind of got inside his decision cycle,'' the spokesman told reporters.

Spinney blurted an epithet, grabbed the phone, and called Boyd. "John, they're using your words to describe how we won the war!'' he said. "Everything about the war was yours. It's all right out of `Patterns.' ''


First F-111A prototype

Coram calls Boyd "the most important unknown man of his time.'' He also was among the most difficult.

Secretaries regularly were reduced to tears by his profanity, and superior officers often noted his unkempt appearance; he neglected his family, living with his wife and five kids in a series of tiny apartments well below their means. Two of the children have struggled for most of their lives with depression, and the family worried that a third might boycott Boyd's funeral.

The inattention to his children mirrored Boyd's own upbringing. His father, a salesman in Erie, Pennsylvania, died a few days before John's third birthday; his younger sister had polio as a child, and after their father's death their mother "had to spread herself thin among all of us children,'' Boyd once told an Air Force historian.

Boyd "was the most intense man I've ever met or known,'' said Jim Burton, a retired Air Force Colonel. Burton, along with Spinney and a few other Boyd associates, came to be known as his "acolytes.'' The group grew accustomed during the 1970s to 3 a.m. phone calls from Boyd, who would talk for hours on some point of aircraft design or military strategy.

Boyd was so focused, "you could not communicate with him unless his mind was willing to allow that,'' Burton said. The acolytes trained themselves to recognize when "the window was open,'' he said.

At one time or another, most of the acolytes got what they call the "fork-in-the-road speech.'' It was a jarring perspective on life in the Pentagon.

As Coram recounts it, Boyd would tell them that a day would come when "you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go.'' Then he would point his hand to the left or right.


U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcat at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

"If you go that way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.

"Or'', he said, pointing in the other direction, "you can go that way and you can do something -- something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get good assignments, and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself.''

Ray Leopold, now a vice president of Motorola, was not quite 28 when he heard the speech. He had come to Boyd's Pentagon office with a reputation as one of the brightest young officers in the Air Force; he left having sacrificed his career by helping Boyd document a coverup of the spiraling costs of the B-1 bomber.

"It was the most fun I ever had in the military,'' Leopold says today.

As the speech suggests, Boyd was incorruptible and contemptuous of those -- in uniform or out -- he saw as attempting to push inferior ideas or sell inferior products to the military.

As a major he was nearly court-martialed for cursing out a Colonel and calling him and a roomful of other officers liars. He rescued his career by convincing a General he was right.

Coram describes how a defense contractor once sent its top aircraft designer to meet with Boyd during early planning for what would become the F-16. The man brought aerodynamic estimates for a plane that Boyd quickly recognized as bogus.

Boyd studied the figures, leaned over the charts and said, "I can extrapolate this thing back to where the wing has zero lift. Wow. This airplane is so good that not only does it have zero lift, it has negative drag. . . . If this thing has negative drag, that means it has thrust without turning on the engines. That means when it is on the ramp with all that thrust, even with the engine turned off, you got to tie the . . . thing down or it will take off by itself.''

Boyd ended the conversation: The "airplane is made out of balonium.''


F-15A Eagle prototype

His former associates argue that Boyd would render a similar verdict on Rumsfeld's attempts to transform today's military, though the secretary's demands for a more agile force would seem in line with Boyd's thinking.

Boyd "was a technologist at heart,'' said Chet Richards, who runs a Web site, belisarius.com, dedicated to carrying Boyd's ideas about strategy into the business world. But Boyd's focus, he said, was always on people and their thought processes.

The current Pentagon leadership, in contrast, seems convinced that technology itself is the key to victory, Richards argued. He said Boyd would view as nonsense today's talk of "network-centric warfare,'' and its claim that netted sensors can give commanders a perfect picture of the battlefield.

Others among Boyd's acolytes worry that not only is Rumsfeld's transformation headed in the wrong direction, but the military's culture has become so careerist that it is now impossible for insurgents like Boyd to bring different ideas to the fore.

Today's young Pentagon officers see that the path to advancement is the successful procurement of new weapons, said Pierre Sprey, the acolyte probably closest to Boyd. The establishment "is vastly more corrupt and openly so,'' he asserted. That "causes you to retain fewer and fewer real warriors.''

"We need a mechanism of rewarding and listening to leaders who think differently,'' said Tom Christie, who computer-checked the Mafia's math for the F-16.

Now the Defense Department's director of operational testing, Christie heads a small staff that regularly deflates contractors' claims about new systems. The young officers who rotate through his office are dedicated, he said, but it's hard for them to keep faith when systems of questionable merit continue to be funded.


General Dynamics YF-16 prototype

A handful of Boyd associates, including some of the acolytes, have met each Wednesday night for more than 20 years around a quiet bar in the basement of the Officers Club at Fort Myer, less than a mile from Arlington National Cemetery where their mentor is buried.

The usual talk is of Spinney's continuing battles with the Pentagon bureaucracy -- he was a key player a few years ago in bringing concerns about "wing drop'' in the F/A-18 Super Hornet to public attention -- or gossip about the latest test results or cost overruns on planes such as the F/A-22 Raptor or MV-22 Osprey.

For last week's gathering, several dozen of Boyd's friends and admirers turned out to meet and toast Coram, reminisce about old battles, and recall those middle-of-the-night phone calls from Genghis John.

The evening was a reminder of how important Boyd had been in his life -- in all their lives -- Christie said, and at times he could feel himself tearing up.

"John's spirit is here with all of us. We had some great times, and I sure miss him.''

Thanks to Freeper Valin for the idea for this thread

[SAMWolf]

The coming assault on Baghdad already has its first hero: Colonel John Boyd, a foul-mouthed, insubordinate fighter pilot who has been in his grave at Arlington National Cemetery for almost five years.

When Iraq's tyrant is brought down, that inevitable victory will be Boyd's doing. You won't hear Boyd's name being cited in Rose Garden speeches, however. Nor will the Pentagon be authorising any posthumous decorations for the man who, through 30 years of bureaucratic guerilla warfare, transformed America's military.

John Boyd in his Army days

Even though he gave them many of the tools that made Operation Desert Storm such a sweeping success in 1991, the brass continued to hate Boyd with such a passion that, as a final sign of contempt, they sent only a single general as their official representative at his funeral.

But without his influence, the US would almost certainly be preparing to enter Iraq much as it fled Saigon: a vast, muscle-bound killing machine based on the assumption that big budgets and expensive weapons assured victory.

That approach didn't work in Vietnam, nor even in tiny Grenada, where a US expedition force required two days in 1983 to subdue a squad of 200 Cuban construction workers.

"Thank God they have dumb sons of bitches in the Kremlin, too," Boyd fumed not long after. "If they weren't thick as ****, Grenada would prove how weak we really are."

Boyd's disgust was palpable. Army units on the island couldn't call in artillery support from Navy ships because their radios worked on different frequencies. Nor could soldiers on the ground stop air strikes hitting the wrong targets. Almost 30 Americans were killed in the conflict, most the victims of friendly fire.

"Grenada was confusion cubed," Boyd told me in 1985, after the Pentagon released a report whitewashing the invasion's flaws and follies. "Our top guys know the first rule of warfare: always protect your rear."

An F-100 taking off from Nellis AFB circa 1959. Note checkerboard pattern on the vertical stabilizer and nose. This indicates it was a "Hun" from the Fighter Weapons School. It was in the Hun that Boyd became famous as "Forty-Second Boyd," the man who defeated all challengers in simulated air-to-air combat in less than 40 seconds. (USAF Photo)

Boyd devoted the latter half of his career to catching those generals with their pants down. The first half had been spent in the cockpit, first over Korea and later as an instructor at the US Air Force "Top Gun" flight schools.

Had he been just another joystick virtuoso, Boyd would have had a traditional career: step by step up the ladder until retirement, when he could have been expected to join one of the weapons companies, pitching former colleagues on the latest, gold-plated guns, planes and tanks.

That's how the procurement game had always been played at the Pentagon, where a weapon's usefulness was of secondary importance to its cost. Big budgets still mean bigger staffs for the Pentagon's project-development officers - and bigger salaries, too, when they leave to work for General Dynamics, Grumman, or Boeing. To Boyd, the system produced "gold-plated **** shovels" that "hurt us more than the enemy".

So, after rewriting the air combat rulebook he began looking at the broader flaws in US military theory. They were, he concluded, the same ones that had led to disaster in Vietnam, the ultimate symbol of which he saw as the F-111.

"The only good thing about the F-111," he said, "is that the dumbass Soviets believed our propaganda and built their very own piece of useless ****, the Backfire bomber."

His idea of the perfect fighter plane was the F-16. Small, cheap and simple, it used only enough technology to make it a more efficient killing machine - fly-by-wire control systems to save the weight of hydraulics, one engine to keep it small, cut costs and make it hard to target.

Northrop YF-17 Cobra that eventually became the McDonnel Douglas F/A-18 Hornet

When superiors tried to silence his criticisms by pushing him into a dead-end office job, Boyd developed the concept on the sly by "stealing" a million dollars worth of computer time, giving his brainchild a variety of misleading names and slipping the evolving concept past bureaucratic enemies before they realised what they had just authorised. It earned him a wealth of grief.

There will be plenty of F-16s over Iraq pretty soon, but that won't be Boyd's greatest contribution. Of much greater impact will be the culmination of his life's work, a treatise on military tactics that he penned after retiring to Florida and seeing the F-16 accepted, against all odds, as a frontline mainstay.

"He called it Observe-Orient-Decide-Act - commonly known as the OODA loop," says Boyd's biographer Robert Coram. "Simply rendered, the OODA loop is a blueprint for the manoeuvre tactics that allow one to attack the mind of an opponent, to unravel its commander even before a battle begins."

To Coram and others, including Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Boyd is "the most influential military thinker since Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War 2400 years ago".

Boyd Hall at Nellis AFB, NV

So why should pacifists cheer the memory of a man whose life was devoted to perfecting the use of martial force? Because, if the Iraq invasion goes even remotely according to plan, Saddam's downfall will be short and relatively bloodless. Isolated, unable to trust his generals and with his every move tracked by the cheap, plentiful, all-seeing Predator drones that Boyd also helped to develop, Saddam will have two options: surrender or perish.

The Baghdad campaign will reflect Boyd's greatest insight, the one he borrowed from Sun Tzu. The sweetest victory, said the Chinese sage, is the one that does not demand a battle. Even if you have the weaponry to win it at a canter.

[SAMWolf]

The wild blue yonder was truly his workshop
By Andrew Hamlin

The mortal remains of Air Force Colonel John Richard Boyd went into the ground at Arlington National Cemetery on a rainy day in late March 1997. Only two of his fellow Air Force officers attended, one a three-star general representing the chief of staff. The general "sat alone in the front row and was plainly uncomfortable." A flight of F-15s looked in vain for an opening in the clouds — due to inclement weather, his service would not end with the customary flyover.


John Boyd after retiring from the Air Force. (Boyd Family Photo)

It was a fitting coda to the improbable career of Boyd. In "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War," Robert Coram recounts the life of a brilliant warrior and iconoclastic military thinker who spent his life and his formidable intellect battling the military's bureaucracy in the service of his revolutionary ideas.

For the Air Force, Boyd wrote his "Aerial Attack Study," the first codification of fighter-pilot combat tactics. He topped that with E-M (Energy-Maneuverability) Theory, showing with one fairly simple equation how an aircraft performed by optimizing both pilot performance and aircraft design. He pushed this integral datum through the Pentagon, creating the F-15 and the lightweight F-16 fighters, still USAF mainstays.

At Boyd's funeral, a sizable contingent of Marines dwarfed the Air Force representation. At graveside, a senior Marine Colonel placed the globe-and-anchor insignia beside the urn of ashes; it is the highest posthumous honor the Corps can bestow. In retirement, Boyd developed a fighting system that transformed the Marines. He did so through endless reading — 323 books plus — and ultramarathon telephone calls to the few he trusted, his Pentagon protégés known as the "Acolytes."

He'd analyzed ground warfare throughout history and emerged with optimized combat applications for any given situation. The Pentagon didn't like to use Boyd's name — he'd cursed and humiliated them enough — but his system found fruitful application everywhere from Grenada to the Gulf War to the business world.



At the same time, Boyd percolated "Destruction and Creation," included as an appendix in Coram's book. He wanted "only" to explain the nature of creativity. To take it apart and put it back together again like a machine gun, while achieving a synthesis of Godel's Proof, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and the second law of thermodynamics.

In "Boyd," the Acolytes and others share stories of the man's insatiable intelligence, and the many reasons he never made general, including proud loud-mouthed intolerance for any perceived inferior, rank be damned. They tell of the courts-martial and investigations he faced and the superior officers he chewed out, finger jutting at their chests and cigar ash spilling down the uniforms of men holding his future in their hands. At least twice while exceptionally enraged, Boyd simply set neckties on fire with the glowing butt of his omnipresent Dutch Master.

On the home front, the Colonel housed his wife and five children in a tiny apartment in a shady neighborhood. His oldest son, crippled by polio, helped neighbors by fixing a great many televisions and stereos which had mysteriously fallen off trucks.


John Boyd's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, Section 60, gravesite 3660. He was buried in March, 1997. (Photo by Chet Richards)

Boyd once siphoned off an estimated $1 million worth of computer time from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to use in perfecting his Energy-Maneuverability Theory. The investigating officer told him, finally, that no charges would be filed. Given that, would Boyd be so good as to explain how he performed his trick?

Boyd's preface to that answer could serve as his epitaph. "My goal was not personal. My work was for the best interest of the country. I tried to do it the Air Force Way and was refused at every turn.

"Then I did it my way."

Additional Sources:

www.legendsofairpower.com
www.aviation-history.com
www.saunalahti.fi
www.codeonemagazine.com

[SAMWolf]

The ideas of U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd (1927-1997) have transformed American military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilot and a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerial combat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force's premier fighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped the tactics that saved lives during the Vietnam War and the strategies that won the Gulf War. In addition, Boyd led the Military Reform Movement in the 1970s and the 1980s, calling for radical change in Pentagon procurement procedures. A perceptive and original thinker, he synthesized ideas from across disciplines to formulate his own philosophy about warfare, competition, decision making, and the nature of leadership.

Many of America's best-known military and political leaders consulted Boyd on matters of technology, strategy, and theory. His notions of time cycles and competitive behavior--known as OODA loops (Observation, Orientation, Decision, and Action)--have influenced not only military combat but also business models in the United States and abroad. Yet despite Boyd's influence within the military and in a variety of professional circles, he published nothing, preferring military briefings as his medium.

"The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security"
by Grant Tedrick Hammond

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Colonel John Boyd: "To Be or To Do"

"One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you're going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go. If you go one way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments. Or, you can go that other way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?"

[SAMWolf]

Veterans for Constitution Restoration is a non-profit, non-partisan educational and grassroots activist organization. The primary area of concern to all VetsCoR members is that our national and local educational systems fall short in teaching students and all American citizens the history and underlying principles on which our Constitutional republic-based system of self-government was founded. VetsCoR members are also very concerned that the Federal government long ago over-stepped its limited authority as clearly specified in the United States Constitution, as well as the Founding Fathers' supporting letters, essays, and other public documents.

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Tribute to a Generation - The memorial will be dedicated on Saturday, May 29, 2004.

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Actively seeking volunteers to provide this valuable service to Veterans and their families.

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Iraq Homecoming Tips

~ Thanks to our Veterans still serving, at home and abroad. ~ Freepmail to Ragtime Cowgirl | 2/09/04 | FRiend in the USAF

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The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul

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[snippy_about_it]

FALL IN to the FReeper Foxhole!



Good Monday Morning Everyone

If you would like added to our ping list let us know.

[Aeronaut]

Good morning Snippy.

Cessna T-50 "Bobcat"

[E.G.C.]

Good morning, Snippy and everyone at the Freeper Foxhole.

[stainlessbanner]

G'Morn'n, Great story today. War, Chaos, and Business

[WhiskeyPapa]

Maneuver Warfare bump.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Boyd ended the conversation: The "airplane is made out of balonium.''

Priceless.

Walt

[The Mayor]

submitting to one another in the fear of God. —Ephesians 5:21

The only leaders qualified to lead are those who have learned to serve.

[snippy_about_it]

As a major he was nearly court-martialed for cursing out a Colonel and calling him and a roomful of other officers liars. He rescued his career by convincing a General he was right.

LOL.

Good morning Sam, I've just read the opening because I have to run off to a training session. I anxiously await reading the rest of this. Boyd sounds very interesting. I'll try to get back in on breaks.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning Aeronaut. Now that looks fairly "normal".

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning EGC.

[snippy_about_it]

Mornin' stainlessbanner. This is an interesting read!

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning WhiskeyPapa.

[snippy_about_it]

Good morning Mayor. I have a class today and I'm running late. I'll see everyone later today.

[The Mayor]

Have a great day!

[E.G.C.]

We had quite a time yesterday. I was just one of many freepers hit by spam both on the my comments page and in Freepmail.

I don't know if any of you caught the action but apparently there are some petty little troublemakers who do not seem to like the idea of conservatives expressing their first amendment right of freedom of expression.

This apparently stemmed from a troll interloping on a thread and getting booted off FR on Saturday night.

[Soaring Feather]

Good morning everyone.

[GailA]

hanoi john and crew are also saying Dubya cut the Veterans Admin

Here's what I've been able to pull up with FR and Google

Click Here

[larryjohnson]

Still lurking and jumping in when moved. A wonderful story of an Air Force officer whom I never heard of. Shocking? well I was not in the aircraft biz. While he may have seen me as a procurement blockhead,I was never in the pentagon during my space/launch work. The fork in the road quote hit me hard and I know the decision I made which slowed my career but I hope made me better for it.

[GailA]

[larryjohnson]

Colonel John Boyd: "To Be or To Do"

"One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you're going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go. If you go one way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments. Or, you can go that other way and you can do something — something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?"

[Professional Engineer]

Hiya Sam. Great thread today!

[Professional Engineer]

Howdy ma'am

[Professional Engineer]

ping

[SAMWolf]

Good Morning Snippy

Monday morning flowers to get your mind off the work week ahead.

[SAMWolf]

Looks like the military had a version too

[SAMWolf]

Morning E.G.C. Made it through the weekend without any rain.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Stainlessbanner.

Thanks for the link, another military idea applied to civilian enterprises.

[SAMWolf]

Morning WhiskeyPapa.

[Johnny Gage]

One of the culminations of Col. Boyd's work:

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Air Power
Lockheed F-16 "Fighting Falcon"

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a compact, multirole fighter aircraft. It is highly maneuverable and has proven itself in air-to-air combat and air-to-surface attack. It provides a relatively low-cost, high-performance weapon system for the United States and allied nations.

In an air combat role, the F-16's maneuverability and combat radius (distance it can fly to enter air combat, stay, fight and return) exceed that of all potential threat fighter aircraft. It can locate targets in all weather conditions and detect low flying aircraft in radar ground clutter. In an air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more than 500 miles (860 kilometers), deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point. An all-weather capability allows it to accurately deliver ordnance during non-visual bombing conditions.

The F-16 is being built under an unusual agreement creating a consortium between the United States and four NATO countries: Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. These countries jointly produced with the United States an initial 348 F-16s for their air forces. Final airframe assembly lines were located in Belgium and the Netherlands. The consortium's F-16s are assembled from components manufactured in all five countries. Belgium also provides final assembly of the F100 engine used in the European F-16s. The long-term benefits of this program will be technology transfer among the nations producing the F-16, and a common-use aircraft for NATO nations. This program increases the supply and availability of repair parts in Europe and improves the F-16's combat readiness.

USAF F-16 multi-mission fighters were deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1991 in support of Operation Desert Storm, where more sorties were flown than with any other aircraft. These fighters were used to attack airfields, military production facilities, Scud missiles sites and a variety of other targets.

Originally conceived as a simple air-superiority day fighter, the aircraft was armed for that mission with a single six-barrel Vulcan 20-mm cannon and two Sidewinder missiles, one mounted at each wingtip. Over the years, however, the mission capability of the aircraft has been extended to include ground-attack and all-weather operations With full internal fuel, the aircraft can carry up to 12 000 pounds of external stores including various types of ordnance as well as fuel tanks.

The original F-16 was designed as a lightweight air-to-air day fighter. Air-to-ground responsibilities transformed the first production F-16s into multirole fighters. The empty weight of the Block 10 F-16A is 15,600 pounds. The empty weight of the Block 50 is 19,200 pounds. The A in F-16A refers to a Block 1 through 20 single-seat aircraft. The B in F-16B refers to the two-seat version. The letters C and D were substituted for A and B, respectively, beginning with Block 25. Block is an important term in tracing the F-16's evolution. Basically, a block is a numerical milestone.The block number increases whenever a new production configuration for the F-16 is established. Not all F-16s within a given block are the same. They fall into a number of block subsets called miniblocks. These sub-block sets are denoted by capital letters following the block number (Block 15S, for example). From Block 30/32 on, a major block designation ending in 0 signifies a General Electric engine; one ending in 2 signifies a Pratt & Whitney engine.

Specifications:
Primary Function: Multirole fighter
Builder: Lockheed Martin Corp.
Power Plant: one Pratt and Whitney F100-PW-200/220/229 or one General Electric F110-GE-100/129 with 27,000 pounds Thrust.
Crew: F-16C: one; F-16D: one or two

Dimensions:
Length: 49 feet, 5 inches (14.8 meters)
Height: 16 feet (4.8 meters)
Wingspan: 32 feet, 8 inches (9.8 meters)

Performance :
Speed: 1,500 mph (Mach 2 at altitude)
Ceiling: Above 50,000 feet (15 kilometers)
Maximum Takeoff Weight: 37,500 pounds (16,875 kilograms)
Combat Radius: [F-16C] 740 nm (1,370 km) w/
Range: Over 2,100 nm (2,425 mi; 3,900 km)

Armaments:
One M-61A1 20mm multibarrel cannon with 500 rounds;
external stations can carry up to six air-to-air missiles, conventional air-to-air and air-to-surface munitions and electronic countermeasure pods.

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All photos Copyright of Global Security.Org

[SAMWolf]

"My goal was not personal. My work was for the best interest of the country. I tried to do it the Air Force Way and was refused at every turn.
"Then I did it my way."

I like this one, I'll bet everyone who has ever served or worked for a large corporation has run into this problem.

[SAMWolf]

Good Morning Mayor.

[SAMWolf]

Col. Boyd was fascinating to read about. What a determined man! Thanks for the lead on him Valin.

[Pukin Dog]

You have outdone yourself, my friend.

Well Done.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Feather

Goldfinch feather

[SAMWolf]

Morning GailA. Thanks for the link

[Soaring Feather]

Thanks Sam, I have not seen a single Goldfinch feather. Beautiful.

[SAMWolf]

Morning larryjohnson. Nice to see ya drop in.

The fork in the road quote hit me hard and I know the decision I made which slowed my career but I hope made me better for it.

If you feel it made you better, then it had to be the right decision in the long run, right?

[Valin]

On This Day In History


Birthdates which occurred on February 23:
1417 Paul II [Pietro Barbo], Italy, Pope (1464-71)
1633 Samuel Pepys London England, navy expert/composer (Diary, Memoirs)
1649 John Blow composer of 1st English opera (Venus & Adonis) (baptized)
1685 George Frideric Händel Halle Germany, organist/baroque composer (Messiah)
1734 Mayer Amschel Rothschild Frankfurt, founder (House of Rothschild)(it's all a plot)
1776 John Walter II London, chief proprietor (The London Times, 1812-47)
1818 Major General Jeremy F Gilmer General/Chief Engineer Confederate War Department
1824 Lewis Cass Hunt Brigadier General (Union volunteers), died in 1886
1838 Gilbert Moxley Sorrel Brigadier General (Confederate Army), died in 1901
1865 Barney Dreyfuss baseball owner (Pittsburgh Pirates)
1868 William E B Du Bois Great Barrington MA, civil rights writer (Souls of Black Folk)
1879 Agnes Arber English biologist/philosopher (Mind & the Eye)
1883 Victor Fleming Pasadena CA, director (Wizard of Oz, Gone With Wind)
1883 Karl Jaspers Oldenburg Germany, existentialist philosopher
1904 William L Shirer historian (Rise & Fall of 3rd Reich)
1911 G Mennen Williams Detroit MI, Sup Court Justice/(Governor-D-MI, 1949-60)
1917 Kenneth Tobey actor (Chuck-Whirlybirds)
1928 Vasily Grigoryevich Lazarev Siberia USSR, cosmonaut (Soyuz 12, 18A)
1929 Elston Howard Yankee catcher (1st black New York Yankee/1963 AL MVP)
1937 Tom Osborne college football coach
1939 Majel Barrett Columbus OH, actress (Christine Chapel-Star Trek)
1940 Peter Fonda actor (Easy Rider, Lilith, Wild Angels, Trip)
1943 Fred Biletnikoff NFL wide receiver (Oakland Raiders)
1944 Johnny Winter [John Dawson], Leland MS, guitarist (Silver Train)
1947 Colin Sanders British computer engineer (Solid State Logic)
1951 Ed "Too Tall" Jones NFL linebacker (Dallas Cowboys)
1963 Bobby Bonilla New York NY, outfielder (New York Mets, Baltimore Orioles, Marlins)

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Deaths which occurred on February 23:
0155 Polycarp disciple of Apostle John, arrested & burned at stake
1447 Eugene IV [Gabriele Condulmer], Italian Pope (1431-47), dies
1468 John Gutenberg German inventor (boekdrukkunst), dies
1792 Joshua Reynolds English portrait painter (Simplicity), dies at 68
1821 John Keats Romantic poet, dies of tuberculosis at 25 in Rome
1848 John Quincy Adams 6th US President (1825-1829), dies of a stroke at 80
1900 William Butterfield architect of the Gothic revival, dies
1915 Robert Smalls Reconstruction congressman, dies at 75 in South Carolina
1924 Thomas Woodrow Wilson 28th US President (1913-21), dies
1930 Fahne Hoch lyricist (Horst Wessel) German Nazi, dies at 22
1945 Aubrey Cousins Canadian sergeant (Victoria Cross), dies in battle
1965 Stan Laurel comedian (Laurel & Hardy), dies in California of heart attack at 74
1969 Abd al-Aziz Abd al-Rahman al-Faisal al-Saud King Saudia, dies at 67
1976 Fuzzy Knight actor (Gun Town, Ragtime Cowboy Joe), dies at 74
1990 James Gavin commandant US 82nd Airborn Division (Normandy), dies at 82
1990 Jose Napoleon Duarte President of Salvador (1984-89), dies at 62
1995 Peter Guy Wykeham Fighter Pilot (Bi-plane ace) dies at 79

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Reported: MISSING in ACTION

1968 DONALD MYRON L.---MORAVIA NY.
[03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1968 GUTTERSON LAIRD---CULVER CITY CA.
[03/14/73 RELEASED BY DRV, ALIVE AND WELL 98]
1968 HUBLER GEORGE L.---MOAB UT.

POW / MIA Data & Bios supplied by
the P.O.W. NETWORK. Skidmore, MO. USA.

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On this day...
0303 Emperor Diocletian orders general persecution of Christians
1455 Johannes Gutenberg prints 1st book, the Bible (estimated date)
1574 France begins 5th Holy War against Huguenots
1660 Charles XI becomes king of Sweden
1672 Joan Blaeus publishers destroyed by fire in Amsterdam
1689 Dutch prince William III proclaimed king of England

1778 Baron von Steuben joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge

1792 Humane Society of Massachusetts incorporated (erected life-saving stations for distressed mariners)
1792 Joseph Haydn's 94th Symphony in G, premieres
1813 1st US raw cotton-to-cloth mill founded in Waltham MA
1820 Cato Street conspiracy uncovered
1821 College of Apothecaries organized in Philadelphia; 1st US pharmacy college
1822 Boston is incorporated as a city
1836 Alamo besieged by Santa Anna; entire garrison eventually killed
1847 Battle of Buena Vista, México; Zachary Taylor defeats Mexicans
1854 Great-Britain & Orange Free state sign Convention of Bloemfontein
1861 By popular referendum, Texas becomes 7th state to secede from US
1861 President-elect Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington DC to take office
1869 Louisiana governor signs public accommodations law
1870 Mississippi is re-admitted to US
1874 Major Walter Winfield patents game called "sphairistike" (lawn tennis)
1883 Alabama becomes 1st US state to enact an antitrust law
1883 American Anti-Vivisection Society organized (Philadelphia)
1886 Aluminum manufacturing process developed
1886 London Times publishes world's 1st classified ad
1887 French/Italian Riviera struck by Earthquake; 2,000 die
1892 1st college student government established, Bryn Mawr PA
1896 Tootsie Roll introduced by Leo Hirshfield
1898 In France, Emile Zola is imprisoned for writing his "J'accuse" letter accusing government of anti-Semitism & wrongly jailing Alfred Dreyfus
1903 Cuban state of Guantanamo leased to USA
1904 Control of Panamá Canal Zone acquired by US for $10 million
1905 Rotary Club International established by 4 men in Chicago
1910 1st radio contest held (Philadelphia)
1915 Nevada enforces convenient divorce law
1916 French artillery kills entire French 72nd division at Samogneux Verdun
1917 February revolution begins in Russia
1919 Benito Mussolini founds the Facist party of Italy
1921 1st US transcontinental air mail flight arrives in New York NY from San Francisco CA
1927 President Coolidge creates Federal Radio Commission (FCC predecessor)
1934 Casey Stengel becomes manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers
1934 Coronation of King Leopold III of Belgium
1936 1st rocket air mail flight, Greenwood Lake NY
1938 Joe Louis KOs Nathan Mann in 3 for heavyweight boxing title
1940 Walt Disney's animated movie "Pinocchio", released
1942 Japanese sub fires on oil refinery in Ellwood CA
1943 German troops pull back through Kasserine-pass Tunisia

1945 US Marines raise flag on Iwo Jima, famous photo & statue

1947 General Eisenhower opens drive to raise $170 million in aid for European Jews
1954 1st mass inoculation with Salk vaccine (Pittsburgh)
1956 20th Congress of CPSU closes in Moscow
1956 Russian party leader Khrushchev attacks memory of Stalin
1960 Demolition begins on Brooklyn's Ebbets Field (opened in 1913)
1966 Aldo Moro forms Italian government
1966 Premier Obote grabs power in Uganda
1967 25th amendment (Presidential succession) declared ratified
1967 US troops begin largest offensive of Vietnam War
1969 Nayif Hawatimah forms Democratic People's Front for Liberation of Palestine
1971 Lieutenant Calley confesses & implicates Captain Medina
1976 Owners announce spring training won't open without a labor contract
1979 Frank Peterson Jr named 1st black general in Marine Corps
1980 Eric Heiden wins all 5 speed skating golds at Lake Placid Olympics
1985 Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight throws a chair during a game
1985 US Senate confirms Edwin Meese III as Attorney General
1987 Supernova 1987A in LMC 1st seen; 1st naked-eye supernova since 1604
1987 Russian Writers Union accepts Boris Pasternak posthumous as member
1991 US insists Iraq publicly announce it is leaving Kuwait by 12 PM EST
1991 North Carolina is 1st NCAA basketball team to win 1,500 games
1997 Ali Abu Kamal opens fire in Empire State Building & kills 1
1997 NBC TV shows "Schindler's List", completely uncensored, 65 million watch
1997 Scientists in Scotland announced they succeeded in cloning an adult mammal, producing a lamb named "Dolly"
1998 Supreme Court lets Megan's Law stand
1998 Tornadoes in Florida kills at least 31

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Holidays
Note: Some Holidays are only applicable on a given "day of the week"

World : International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day
Brunei : National Day
Guyana : Republic Day (1970)
US : Iwo Jima Day (1945)
US : Wine Appreciation Week (Day 2)
US : Engineers Week (Day 2)
Macadamia Nut Month

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Religious Observances
Ancient Rome : Terminalia; festival of Terminus, god of boundaries
Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholic : Memorial of St Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, martyr
old Roman Catholic : Feast of St Peter Damian, bishop of Ostia/confessor/doctor (2/2)
Lutheran : Commemoration of Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, missionary
Christian : Shrove Monday

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Religious History
155 Martyrdom of Polycarp, an early Church Father who was a disciple of the Apostle John. Arrested at age 86, Polycarp was burned at the stake for refusing to deny the Christian faith.
1744 Colonial missionary to the American Indians David Brainerd wrote in his journal: 'There is a God in heaven who over-rules all things for the best; and this is the comfort of my soul.'
1775 Anglican hymnwriter John Newton wrote in a letter: 'How great and honorable is the privilege of a true believer! That he has neither wisdom nor strength in himself is no disadvantage, for he is connected with infinite wisdom and almighty power.
1834 Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in his journal: 'Rose early to seek God and found Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?'
1970 The Holy Eucharist was distributed by women for the first time in a Roman Catholic service.

Source: William D. Blake. ALMANAC OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1987.

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Thought for the day :
"Love is sentimental measles."

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You Know You're Having A Bad Day When...
The bird singing outside your window is a vulture.

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Murphys Law of the day...(Agnes Allen's Law)
Almost anything is easier to get into than out of.

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Amazing Fact #65,991...
In Disney's Fantasia, the Sorcerer's name is Yensid, which is Disney spelled backward.

[SAMWolf]

Nice graphic. Goes good with this one:

[SAMWolf]

Morning PE. Thanks to Valin, he pointed me to the right places.

[SAMWolf]

Makes you wonder how many people are capable of making the right decision.

[SAMWolf]

Morning Johnny. Thanks

[SAMWolf]

Thanks Pukin Dog. Had some help with this one. Got some good info from Valin.

[SAMWolf]

Saw my first Godlfinch with it's summer feathers Saturday.:-)

[SAMWolf]

1778 Baron von Steuben joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge

“Von Steuben [who served under Frederick the Great], accustomed to Prussian discipline, was quite impatient with the laxity, the irregularities, and the inefficiency of the American troops. He insisted on meticulous attention to all details, and when his anger was roused, he swore in French and German. After he had exhausted those languages, he would turn to an officer with the plea, ‘My dear Jones, swear for me in English!’ The good results of his work were soon evident.”

[SAMWolf]

1945 US Marines raise flag on Iwo Jima, famous photo & statue

The Foxhole has a thread on the Iwo Flag raising coming on Wednesday.