Boyd

by Robert Coram

  “Where is your report?” the colonel asked.

  Boyd smiled and tapped a long forefinger against his temple.

  The colonel’s eyebrows rose. The most crucial acquisition project in the Air Force was at stake. He wanted to see something new and startling about how to save the F-X. And this boy wizard from Eglin was standing there, grinning and tapping his temple.

  “You don’t have a briefing?”

  “Sir, you asked me to review the design package and report to you. I’m ready to do so.”

  “If you have no briefing or no report, you are not prepared.”

  “That is incorrect, Sir. I have a report—a well thought-out report.”

  The colonel stared long and hard at Boyd. He leaned back in his chair. “Proceed, Major.”

  Boyd rocked on his heels. He looked the colonel squarely in the eye. In his most earnest and sincere tone he said, “Sir, I’ve never designed a fighter plane before.” Then he paused and nodded toward the design studies stacked on the table. “But I could fuck up and do better than that.”

  An outspoken and confrontational officer such as Boyd rarely lasts long in the Building. In later years one of Boyd’s favorite stories—which may or may not have been true—was how he was fired soon after coming to the Pentagon. Being fired in the military can mean the officer was simply transferred from one job to another. But it also means the officer’s career has ended.

  All his life Boyd told the story of how a colonel not only fired him, but humiliated him by conducting the firing in front of a half-dozen people. Boyd was banished to another office to perform unknown duties. He languished in exile while the F-X and the Air Force were threatened by the Navy. Then the chief of staff heard about the firing, said Boyd was irreplaceable on the F-X project, and ordered the colonel to bring Boyd back. Boyd said the colonel offered him his old job but that he refused unless the colonel publicly rehired him in front of the same group present when he was fired. Boyd always ended the story by laughing and saying, “I got my pound of flesh.”

  Boyd’s ERs do not reflect his being shifted from one job to another. Nor does Christie remember the name of the colonel who supposedly fired Boyd. And given that Boyd was the fair-haired boy sent to the Pentagon to save the F-X, it seems improbable he was fired, especially by a colonel whose own job depended in part on how well Boyd performed.

  None of this matters. Because this story, like the story of tearing down the barracks in Japan, is more revealing if it is not true.

  Boyd was in the Building several months when he was called on to silence a white-haired “Whiz Kid” named Pierre Sprey, who had become a thorn in the Air Force’s side. This brilliant young civilian from Systems Analysis, an office that reported to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), had spent a year preparing a report for the secretary of defense and the president on the Air Force’s structure and budget for waging war in Europe. The Air Force force structure was based on the World War II doctrine—“interdiction bombing,” it is now called—of bombing bridges, railroads, highways, industry, and infrastructure to prevent Soviet forces from overrunning Europe. The civilian’s heretical report said the interdiction mission was flawed, that even if the Air Force had three times as many aircraft, it could not keep Soviet forces from pouring into Europe. The report said the role of tactical air forces in Europe should be twofold: supporting ground troops—close air support, or CAS, as it is called—and maintaining air superiority so that the CAS airplanes could do their jobs without interference. Interdiction should be a minor mission, if pursued at all.

  Even among McNamara’s Whiz Kids—the highly educated and extraordinarily bright young men brought into the Building with a mandate to impose rational thought on both the military and the military budget—Pierre Sprey stood out. Some Whiz Kids traveled on their reputations. Not Sprey. He entered Yale at fifteen and graduated four years later with a curious double major: French literature and mechanical engineering. Then he went to Cornell and studied mathematical statistics and operational research. At twenty-two he was running a statistical consulting shop at Grumman Aviation. He wanted to design aircraft but knew it would be years before Grumman gave him that freedom, so he went to work for Alain Enthoven, the leader and best known of the Whiz Kids.

  Sprey is not a physically imposing man. He is about 5’8” and slight of build. His white hair sweeps back theatrically from a high forehead. His speech is slow and considered. He speaks French and German fluently. Women find him gallant and rakish. Men often find him intimidating. He has an intellect as clear and cold as polar ice. If one of Sprey’s friends is asked to describe him, the respondent’s first words are about how smart Sprey is. Some very smart people are said to have a computer for a brain. Sprey is an atomic clock, relentlessly dependable at penetrating to the essence of a subject or a person and laying both bare. He is an absolutist in all things. Sprey’s wit is both biting and erudite. He has an immediate recall of almost everything he has ever read. He knows more about tactical aviation and the history of warfare than do 99 percent of the people in the Air Force. More than one bombastic and patronizing general has been stopped short after a single exchange with Sprey. He is a rarity, a civilian who can take on the Air Force on its own turf and prevail. Unlike many civilians who worked in the Pentagon, Sprey was not intimidated by rank; in fact he thought there was an inverse relationship between the number of stars on a man’s shoulders and his intelligence.

  Sprey brought his searing intellect and unbending rectitude to the Building at the height of the McNamara era. His hours were those of a vampire. Whatever issues he raised had to be taken seriously by the military because, like other issues raised by Systems Analysis, they were codified in Draft Presidential Memos sent to McNamara and then to President Johnson. The military services hated and were afraid of Systems Analysis, and they were especially afraid of Pierre Sprey. He was one of the most formidable men in the Building.

  Air Force generals read Sprey’s report and became almost apoplectic. Interdiction bombing was sacred doctrine. It was the rationale for separating the Air Force from the Army back in 1947. Close air support, ever since those days, was anathema, for it reminded the Air Force that its primary purpose had once been to assist ground forces. There was nothing of the wild blue yonder about close air support, no white scarves, no glory.

  Sprey’s report imperiled two-thirds of the Air Force budget, including $8 billion allocated for the F-X. Thus, the report was not only a dangerous violation of sacred doctrine but, even worse, it threatened the Air Force’s budget and top fighter project. Debunking his report was a top priority of Air Force leadership.

  But there were two big problems. First, Sprey had used targeting information from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Attacking the targeting part of the study would be to attack the Joint Chiefs, and that simply was not done. Second, the data on the number of bombs needed to destroy a given target had come from the Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manuals (JMEMs) computed by Tom Christie down at Eglin. Christie—thanks partially to his work on E-M—was a rising civilian star in the Air Force, and his research was so meticulous that all four services had signed off on the JMEMs at the four-star level.

  Nevertheless, a colonel was ordered by superior officers to declare war on both the report and the civilian who wrote it. Pull out all the stops. We don’t want to know the details; just do whatever it takes to get the job done. But neutralize that civilian son of a bitch.

  The colonel went to Sprey and said, in effect, “This report is not bad work. But it involves lots of tedious hand calculations. Let’s agree on a computer model and then let the computer verify your work.”

  But Sprey knew the ways of the Building. He knew the colonel had a large staff and that he could program computers to spit out whatever results he wanted. “Not unless I can do the same calculations by hand,” he said. It proved to be a wise move. He began having nighttime visits from conscience-stricken young captains and majors who worked for the colone
l and who said they had been ordered to program the computers to give false results in order to discredit the report. Sprey demanded a meeting with the colonel. He could not keep the disgust from his voice as he cited chapter and verse on how the colonel doctored the numbers. “Your numbers are a lie,” he told the colonel in front of a packed conference room.

  The colonel was furious at being embarrassed by a young whip-persnapper, particularly a civilian analyst. He responded in the way of most military men: he attacked. He went up the chain of command all the way to Secretary McNamara and said Sprey had insulted his dignity. He demanded an apology. Word came down for the colonel and the civilian to work out their differences. Sprey not only refused to apologize but stepped up his attacks, saying the colonel was a “slimy creature” who “oozed mendacity.”

  Sprey was nonrated; that is, he was not a pilot. And he had never been a member of the armed services. The outraged colonel therefore assumed he knew nothing of fighter tactics and Air Force doctrine and shifted his attack accordingly. Remembering that this new guy in the Building, this Major John Boyd, was the Air Force’s resident expert on fighter tactics, the colonel decided Boyd’s rare combination of operational experience and intellectual accomplishment could demolish this pesky civilian.

  The colonel who arranged the meeting between Boyd and Sprey must have been like a man locking up two heavyweight champions in a room, then backing up and listening for sounds of battle. He must have wanted to be the fly on the wall and feel the tension, hear the first volleys, and see the blood on the floor.

  If so, he would have been terribly disappointed. He had only a one-dimensional understanding of both Boyd and Sprey. Boyd was not influenced by other people’s judgments. The very idea of being told to attack a man’s intellectual accomplishment simply because it threatened the Air Force budget was humorous. Boyd was anything but hostile that day.

  And the colonel was so locked into his judgment of Sprey as an uncontrollable attack dog that he did not know two of Sprey’s more important attributes. First, Sprey had great respect for the officers he met whom he considered men of integrity. Second, Sprey was a curious man. He was aware of Boyd’s reputation and wondered if Boyd really knew the inner working of air combat or if he simply was there to parrot the Air Force line.

  The meeting was anticlimactic.

  As background for his interdiction study, Sprey had read widely about the combat histories of World War II and Korea. He could talk for hours about air-to-ground and air-to-air combat. So the two men quickly found common interests. When Sprey talked of the combat records of various fighter aces, Boyd’s eyes lit up and he leaned forward, amazed at Sprey’s interest and understanding of an area so dear to him. When Sprey mentioned Richard Bong as America’s leading ace in World War II, Boyd nodded in agreement but then lifted an admonishing finger as he told Sprey that Bong was a one-trick pony. When Sprey said the Air Force needed air-superiority fighters to protect aircraft flying close air support, Boyd agreed. But then he added, “We can’t fly those air-superiority missions in a predictable way; we can’t be like a taxi going up there on schedule. We have to be unpredictable.”

  The conversation went on for hours. Sprey lobbed an idea and Boyd fleshed it out, added perspective, and bounced it back. Boyd told Sprey about the F-X and how he proposed to change it. Ideas ping-ponged between the two men, each adding a twist or new bounce until both sat back with smiles on their faces and respect in their eyes. Boyd was fascinated by Sprey’s knowledge of math and statistics. Sprey could help him hone the E-M Theory into a tool for designing the finest fighter aircraft the world had ever known. And Sprey was excited by Boyd’s profound ideas about fighter combat and by his intellect and rectitude. He had finally met an Air Force officer of fire and conviction. Sprey was not the sort of man who followed other men, but he could follow Boyd.

  Boyd had met the second of the Acolytes.

  Many people think they understand Boyd’s E-M Theory. But few men truly grasp the theory in all of its elegant simplicity. Sprey would come to understand E-M and how to use it as well as Boyd and Christie.

  The meeting between Boyd and Sprey in the Pentagon paralleled, in some respects, the meeting between Boyd and Christie at Eglin. But while Christie became an indulgent uncle, Sprey became a brother.

  Both Christie and Sprey sensed an innocence and purity about Boyd. They believed not only that he would make enormous contributions but that he was a man who often needed protection. A few generals also knew this. But Boyd relied almost daily on Sprey and Christie, while the generals usually appeared at times of crisis.

  When the colonel who had unleashed Boyd asked how the meeting with Sprey had gone, Boyd smiled, gave him an evasive answer, and said he was going to get back with the civilian and finish the job. The colonel went away pleased.

  The F-X now became as much a part of Sprey’s life as it was Boyd’s. After most people departed the Building, Boyd and Sprey were still at their desks. And then around 7:00 or 8:00 P.M., Boyd wandered down to Sprey’s office. In the beginning they met maybe once a week, then twice, then three and four nights. The men pored over E-M charts for the F-X, new designs, and arcane engineering data until long after midnight.

  Then Boyd began showing his briefings to Sprey and asking for an opinion. Sprey often ripped the briefs to shreds. And he did it in such a calm and irrefutable manner, reason stacked atop reason, logic atop logic, that it was impossible to disagree. Boyd referred to a Sprey critique as the “Pierre Sprey buzz saw.” But he knew Sprey was making his work stronger and more focused and virtually impervious to attack. “We’ve got to do our homework, Tiger,” Boyd often said to Sprey. “One mistake and they will leverage the hell out of it.”

  Boyd’s acceptance of Sprey was signaled when he began calling at 4:00 A.M., tossing out new E-M iterations and new ideas about how to use those ideas in the design process. Sprey realized, as had Christie before him, that being Boyd’s friend meant dedicating one’s life to Boyd’s causes. Very few men were ever invited by Boyd to join forces with him. None ever refused. Each sensed intuitively that he was being offered a rare gift. Each was to pay a terrible price for his friendship with Boyd. Each would have paid more.

  It was seven years before the remaining Acolytes met Boyd. Each would know in his turn the opprobrium that Sprey was about to experience. The calumny Sprey had received because of his interdiction study was nothing compared to what was about to come his way because of Boyd. The Blue Suiters came to view the Boyd / Sprey relationship as a friendship forged in hell. And they would unleash the seemingly omnipotent bureaucratic powers of the Building against the two men. The careers of many would change; even the Pentagon would change.

  Boyd and Sprey formed the nucleus of what in a few years would be the most famous, most detested, and most reluctantly respected ad hoc group in the Building, a group that history would know as the “Fighter Mafia.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bigger-Higher-Faster-Farther

  BOYD was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

  On one hand was Boyd’s belief that E-M could produce the most remarkable fighter in history. On the other hand was the implacable and relentless nature of the Bigger-Faster-Higher-Farther fraternity to make the F-X bigger and heavier—and more expensive—by loading it with every high-tech gizmo known to man.

  Boyd was a man possessed. He bulldozed ahead, knocking over people and ideas and long-cherished beliefs. He was so intemperate in his speech and actions that it seemed to many he was out of control. He was still angry and hurt about being passed over for lieutenant colonel below the zone. “I’m a mere major,” he said again and again. The F-X was a glorious opportunity for him not only to show the Air Force the practical value of his work but to serve as the vehicle that could ensure he made lieutenant colonel within the zone.

  To accomplish his goals, Boyd had to conquer a host of institutional obstacles. First, he had to overcome the technical incompetence at Wrig
ht-Pat, where engineers had proven they were unable to produce a simple conceptual design for the F-X. At the same time, he could not ignore Wright-Pat, as they were the only official Air Force source for basic engineering data on the aircraft. He suspected much of the data was incorrect, but he had to use it. Second, he had to make people understand that E-M was not just the best way, but the only way to measure air-to-air performance in an airplane. Even though both the Air Force and industry were enamored of E-M, not everyone yet grasped the full dimensions of what it could accomplish. It was new and different. And anything new and different is feared by a bureaucracy. Finally, Boyd had to upgrade E-M from the area of tactics and move it more firmly into the area of aircraft design.

  Preaching the gospel of E-M was an ongoing and ever-changing process, much of it dictated by day-to-day discoveries and iterations and permutations as Boyd pressed ever deeper into an area of aeronautical engineering where no one had gone before. This could not have happened without having Tom Christie at Eglin. On Christie’s staff was an Air Force lieutenant who did nothing but E-M computer work. From the Pentagon, Boyd called the lieutenant three and four times daily about revisions and upgrades for the E-M computer program and E-M charts. One night Christie’s phone rang and he knew it was Boyd. He looked at his watch. The hour was late, and Boyd was so intense that Christie knew if he picked up the phone that he would be held captive for hours. So he did not answer. He and his wife, Kathy, sat and talked and read and shook their heads in wonderment as the phone rang for thirty-two minutes before Boyd gave up.

  Christie’s work brought him to the Pentagon almost on a weekly basis. Every time, his briefcase was filled with new E-M data. One Monday, Boyd told Sprey about the “Wild Hog” (as Christie was known because of his large appetite), and Sprey suggested they go to Don Quixote, a restaurant in Shirlington that on Monday night served all the filet mignon a customer could eat for a fixed price. Sprey, a refined man, ate two small steaks. Boyd’s competitive side was in full flower that night, and he matched Christie steak for steak until the count was at five each. Christie sighed and sat back. Boyd grinned in satisfaction and rubbed his stomach. He had eaten as much as the Wild Hog and to him that was a victory. But Christie was only taking a break, allowing his food to settle to make room for more. After resting a moment, he again tucked into the steaks. Boyd watched in amazement as Christie ate four more. Boyd was unusually silent as the three men walked to the door. Christie knew he would pout all evening. It was only a dinner, but Boyd saw it—as he saw most everything—as a contest. The three men stood in the door and looked across the parking lot for their car. Christie smiled and turned to Boyd and said, “What say we go out for some pizza before we go back to work?”