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| A diagrammatic representation of USAF Col John Boyd's Observe - Orient - Decide - Act (OODA) Loop. |
The above decision making model will be my reference point during my attendance at a major warfare conference in London in the next few days. The OODA Loop is fully explained here and a good example of how Donald Trump has (unwittingly) used it appears here
The conference is on information superiority in warfare and, make no mistake, information, in all walks of life, is an invaluable commodity. The thing to remember, however, is that information has its own nature and rules which defy total domestication even by the most dedicated adherent. So, even before I attend this important conference, I am already circumspect about the grand pronouncement western war fighting says it aims at;
Information Superiority is defined by Western militaries as “the operational advantage derived from the ability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary’s ability to do the same.”
With an annual budget of over US$700 billion, failures to win (outright) the war in Afghanistan, makes a mockery of such a grand pronouncement and opens up avenues to discuss more decisive factors in warfare.
