Boyd

by Robert Coram

  Now Time had a news peg for its cover story. But the magazine still needed a Reformer on the cover. Time wanted Boyd or Sprey but, to the utter astonishment of the magazine, both refused. Neither had any desire for publicity. Since Boyd was the point of contact for the Time reporters, they leaned on him to come up with a cover boy. Boyd pulled Spinney aside and said, “You’re going to be on the cover of Time.”

  Spinney recoiled. “The hell I am.”

  “Listen very carefully to what I am about to tell you,” Boyd said. “After you testify over on the Hill you are going to be vulnerable. They will be after you. This is your protection.”

  Boyd knew that when Pentagon bureaucrats seek vengeance the best strategy is not—as many believe—to keep a low profile but rather to become so prominent that any retribution will be seen for what it is.

  Spinney put on a pinstriped suit and posed for a picture.

  A story about Spinney appeared in the New York Times the week before the hearing. The next Sunday morning, Spinney’s phone rang and a voice identified itself as Bosuns Mate somebody and said, “Admiral Rickover would like to speak with you.” A moment later Admiral Hyman Rickover was congratulating Spinney about what great work he was doing. He wanted to see Spinney’s latest study.

  “I will send it over, Admiral, but I have to tell you it will take several hours to read.”

  “I don’t read anything but executive summaries.” “I don’t have an executive summary.”

  Spinney sent copies of his work and a few days later the admiral called and again congratulated Spinney. Then he mentioned the upcoming hearings and said, “Son, you are not going to win. But it will make a man out of you.”

  The call was very sobering to Spinney. For about five minutes.

  Senator Tower was in charge of all arrangements for the hearing. He proved that he had the best interest of the Pentagon at heart when he scheduled the hearing for a Friday afternoon, a time when many senators have departed the capital for their home states. Even more important, Friday afternoon is one of the most difficult times to get media attention. Tower even tried to schedule the hearing in one of the smallest hearing rooms and to ban television cameras but was overruled by his colleagues.

  To get a big turnout, Time reporters called their colleagues and said the hearings would be next week’s cover story. While the reporters groused about having to work on Friday, they knew the cover story would drive the next week’s news agenda for much of the Washington media.

  On March 4, 1983, Spinney spoke to the joint Senate committees and the room was filled with print and television reporters. David Chu, Spinney’s boss, sat beside him. If he was there as a looming presence to inhibit Spinney’s presentation, he was disappointed. Spinney talked for more than two hours and held nothing back. The Reagan defense budget was going to be a fiscal disaster for America, he said.

  Grassley and the senators on the Budget Committee were shocked, but Tower was calm and unruffled. The joint committee turned to Chu for a response. Spinney’s work is historical, Chu said, and not relevant today. Trust us. The Reagan Administration will not repeat the mistakes of the past. Spinney’s report is irrelevant.

  As Senator Tower and the Pentagon had planned, press coverage was relatively light on Saturday and even less in the big Sunday papers. Many of the stories filed by reporters did not run. By Monday morning the Pentagon was gloating over how it had outmaneuvered the Reformers. Navy Secretary John Lehman said at a meeting, “Well, I guess we laid the Spinney thing to rest.”

  In the middle of the self-congratulations, the March 7, 1983, issue of Time magazine arrived in the Pentagon. Spinney was on the cover, identified as a “Pentagon Maverick.” The cover line was underlined in red and said, “U.S. Defense Spending.” Underneath, in bold type, was the question, “Are Billions Being Wasted?” Most of the eleven-page article was devoted to the reform movement, of which Boyd and Sprey were identified as “architects.” Their ideas for alternatives to weapons proposed by the Pentagon were given great prominence. In fact, the article read as if they had written it.

  The story said that, taking out the effects of inflation, the Army was spending the same amount of money in 1983 on new tanks as it had thirty years earlier, but the number of tanks produced declined by 90 percent. In 1951 the Pentagon spent $7 billion to buy 6,300 aircraft. Now the United States was spending $11 billion to build only 322 aircraft, or 95 percent fewer than in 1951.

  Pentagon officials were in shock. All day long the magazine distributor brought shipment after shipment to the Building. An eleven-page story in Time, that powerful protector of Republican causes, had attacked the sacrosanct Pentagon and defense industry. And during a Republican administration? The impact was monumental.

  Boyd smiled when he saw the cover, skimmed the story, and tossed it aside. He looked at Spinney and said, “Well, that’s done.”

  As expected, the Time cover story caused still another flurry of stories in the national media about the Reagan budget and Pentagon spending and ineffective high-tech weapons. Not only that, but in the Möbius strip that is the congressional-media relationship, the House of Representatives and the Senate called for more hearings. Each hearing brought forth even more coverage. The coverage prompted congressmen and senators to call for still more hearings. This was suddenly the hottest issue in America and every person in Congress wanted to be involved. They were, as Boyd said, “climbing Mount Motherhood.”

  For months, Spinney, always followed by Chu, testified to congressional committees in what many in Washington called the “ChuckieChu Show.” The script was always the same. Spinney’s briefing brought a moment of stunned silence. Then the committee chair turned to Chu, who said the report was historical and therefore irrelevant.

  Senator Grassley prompted the chairman of the Budget Committee to do what no one else thought of doing: ask Spinney to update his conclusions to include the current Reagan budget. The secretary of defense forbade Spinney to do so. This was still another direct assault on senatorial prerogatives and touched off another constitutional debate between the Senate and the Pentagon. That is an issue the Pentagon can push only so far. If one senator publicly raises the issue of civilian control of the military, newspapers all over the country will run cartoons comparing Pentagon generals with military strongmen in a banana republic, or show them jumping up and down on the U.S. Constitution.

  In February 1984, Spinney testified before the House and Senate Budget Committees with a new briefing entitled “Is History Repeating Itself?” His testimony included three years of budget figures from the Reagan Administration. The answer to the question asked in the title of his briefing was a solid and undeniable yes.

  Chu did not accompany him to this hearing.

  As the reform movement reached its peak, a parallel chain of events was taking place in the military services. At first glance, the Army and Marine Corps’ effort at reform are of questionable relevance to the life of John Boyd. But, as will be seen, Boyd and his ideas were at the center of each effort.

  Years later, after John Boyd died, the Army would deny he had ever been involved in that service’s effort at reform. The Marine Corps would claim Boyd as one of its own.

  Chapter Twenty - Seven

  Boyd Joins the Marines

  THE Air Force has never made a serious study of warfare because every historically based effort to do so has come to the inescapable conclusion that the use of air power should be consistent with or—better yet— subordinate to the ground commander’s battle plans, a conclusion that argues against the existence of an independent Air Force. And since Air Force doctrine is hardwired to the idea of independence from ground forces, this branch of the service remains unable to do any original thinking about how air power should be integrated into the strategy of war.

  Thus, while Boyd’s ideas became increasingly well known and acknowledged, and while some Air Force generals thought it would be rather progressive to think about warfare instead of program
management, Air Force efforts to change were little more than sophomoric public-relations stunts. Project Check Mate, the purpose of which was to create a think tank dealing with air warfare and strategy, quickly devolved into little more than a stage play. Then came the “Warrior of the Month” award, in which a large photo of the chosen one was displayed on the fourth floor of the Pentagon. Finally, the Air Force published a reading list of articles and books about war fighting, an idea taken from Boyd’s source list at the end of his “Patterns” briefing. In short, the Air Force did not change at all. Even today, retired senior generals take pride in the fact Boyd’s ideas had no influence whatsoever on the Air Force.

  Nor did his ideas have any effect on the Navy.

  The Army, on the other hand, made a serious effort to change. No branch of the U.S. military was harmed more by the Vietnam War than was the Army—widespread drug use, pervasive racial troubles, and the “fragging” of officers being obvious examples. Plus, the senior noncommissioned officer corps was virtually wiped out by the war. The Army had to reinvent itself. But no one quite knew how to go about it.

  In 1976 the Army made an attempt to change its ancient doctrine of attrition warfare, but the effort showed how very difficult it is for the military to abandon an old doctrine and adopt a new one. The new Army field manual still placed heavy emphasis on centuries-old ideas of firepower and orderly frontal assaults. The Army continued to rely on the idea that whoever has the biggest guns and the most soldiers will win; it favored a toe-to-toe slugfest with heavy casualties in which the winner is the last man standing.

  Boyd constantly ridiculed the Army for spending months developing a new doctrine only to come up with essentially the same thing they had when they started. When Army generals were in his briefing audience, he would wave a copy of the 1976 doctrine overhead and, in his usual subtle and understated fashion, say, “It’s a piece of shit.”

  Whether or not Boyd’s frequent and devastating critique of the Army doctrine had any influence is not known. But—and perhaps this is coincidence—as Boyd’s briefing gained more and more followers, the Army came under increasing criticism from both within and without. For whatever reason, in 1982 the Army again revised its doctrine. Donn Starry, the four-star general in charge of the Training and Doctrine Command, received credit for the new AirLand Battle Doctrine, but it was written largely by Lieutenant Colonel Huba Wass de Czege, a Harvard-educated, fast-rising young officer. In those days, Wass de Czege was considered a freethinking officer receptive to new ideas. He often invited Boyd out to Fort Leavenworth, the home of the Army’s Command and Staff College, to lecture both to his colleagues and to classes at the college. He and Boyd talked frequently by telephone.

  In 1982, Boyd and Wass de Czege ran into each other at a West Point symposium on the military reform movement. Wass de Czege told Boyd the new doctrine was about to be announced and that it stressed four tenets: initiative, agility, depth of operations, and synchronization. Boyd though the first three were splendid, a sign that the Army was indeed serious about discarding the old heavy fire-power theories in favor of maneuver warfare. But what the hell was synchronization doing in the new Army doctrine? Synchronization is evening up the front line; it means an Army moves at the speed of its slowest unit. Synchronization is a fundamental part of the old doctrine of attrition warfare, and it obviates all the other changes. An army that relies on synchronization is not an army that practices maneuver warfare. “You synchronize watches,” Boyd shouted, “not people.”

  Wass de Czege agreed. But he said his bosses had insisted that synchronization be part of the doctrine. Boyd pointed his finger at Wass de Czege and said, “Don’t ever again let them do that to you.” The Army had to change its ways, Boyd said. “They still believe in high diddle diddle, straight up the middle.”

  The Army not only adopted most of Boyd’s theories regarding maneuver warfare, they even created the School of Advanced Military Studies—SAMS, for short—and placed Wass de Czege in charge. SAMS was for the top graduates in each class at Command and Staff College—an extra year for studying the history of warfare. Boyd’s briefing was part of the curriculum up through the mid-1980s. From the beginning, there was an aura about the SAMS graduates; they were called “Jedi Knights” and were considered the brightest young officers in the Army. Spinney thought all this signified radical change. If the Army wanted to clutch the old security blanket of synchronization, well, it was just not that important. “You are overreacting,” he told Boyd.

  But Boyd was adamant. “This idea of synchronization will ruin the Army.”

  The time was drawing nigh when, in a very dramatic fashion, Boyd would be proven correct.

  After the Air Force, Navy, and Army came the Marine Corps. What happened to the Marine Corps as a result of John Boyd is one of the great untold stories of modern military history. To understand the enormity of the changes Boyd wrought, one must know something about the Marines.

  First, the Marine Corps, at about one hundred seventy-three thousand troops, is considerably smaller than the Air Force (three hundred fifty-seven thousand), Army (four hundred eighty thousand), or Navy (three hundred seventy-two thousand). Marines live with the constant fear of being subsumed into the Army or Navy. When the Navy, of which the Marines are a part, portions out dollars, Marines always end up holding the short end of the stick. Old equipment that nobody wants? Give it to the Marines.

  The U.S. Marine Corps is a separate and distinct culture within the military. Marines are considered both primitive and elitist—primitive because all Marines are basically infantrymen, and elitist because they are so few in number and so good at what they do. They are warriors and for them there is no higher calling than defending their country in battle. The battle flags of these proud, sea-going troops go back to the “halls of Montezuma and the shares of Tripoli.” They are the first to fight and they are given the dirtiest and bloodiest assignments. Got a beach held by vastly superior forces that needs taking? A country that needs taming? Send in the Marines.

  Other services recruit by making promises. The Marines recruit by looking for a few good men. Almost from the beginning, the Marines have been considered the military’s knuckle draggers, men who charge up a hill until they take it, classic up-the-middle troops who not only take horrendous casualties but boast of those casualties. No part of the U.S. military, however, has more esprit de corps, more respect for the military way, and more reverence for the individual than the Marine Corps. The Marine creed of Semper Fidelis—always faithful—is a living breathing thing. When a Marine agrees to do something, looks someone in the eye and says, “Semper Fi,” you know he will do what he promised. The Marines are more than a military organization; they are a national institution.

  No two branches of the American military are farther apart than the Air Force and the Marines. It is a cultural chasm almost impossible for civilians to understand. There are the obvious differences: the Air Force is the youngest branch of the military and fights its battles in the skies, a place where wars rarely are decided, while Marines fought for America’s independence in 1775 and still fight in the mud, where the fate of nations and the course of history are resolved. But there are less obvious differences as well. The Air Force is a technocracy while the Marines are a warrior culture. This all boils down to one thing: Marines are utterly contemptuous of the Air Force.

  It is against this backdrop that Boyd’s influence on the Marine Corps must be considered.

  The education and training of Marines, both enlisted personnel and officers, is conducted largely at Marine Base Quantico, about thirty miles south of Washington. Boyd came to Quantico through the offices of an extraordinary man: Lieutenant Colonel Michael Duncan Wyly. For a decade, Boyd and Wyly were Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside for the radical changes that took place in the Marine Corps. Boyd’s ideas were the foundation and the impetus for the changes, but Wyly, as an active-duty Marine Corps officer, was the agent of change. Starting in 1980, Wyly became
a critical player in Boyd’s story.

  Mike Wyly cannot remember a time when he did not want to be a Marine. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, hearing stories of his uncle Donald Duncan, a Marine Corps captain who, on June 6, 1918, led the 96th Company of the 6th Marines to a place in northeast France called Belleau Wood. Uncle Donald put on his service greens that morning, lit his pipe, and marched his men into battle. When he came upon a German machine-gun nest he took the pipe from his mouth, pointed it at the Germans, and said, “Hit their line together, boys. The guide is right.”

  The Marines lined up on the man on the far right. Uncle Donald stood out front and motioned for his Marines to follow, and they attacked the machine gun. Uncle Donald died that day. Belleau Wood became a hallowed name in Marine Corps history because that is where more Marines died than on any other day in Marine Corps history and because that is where Marines stopped the German advance. That is also where they acquired one of their most treasured nicknames: teufelhunden—“devil dogs.”

  Mike Wyly’s relatives always finished this story by saying that if Uncle Donald had lived, he would have become commandant of the Marine Corps.

  Wyly wanted to join the Marine Corps as an enlisted man. Even today he is not quite sure why. His father wanted him to go to Annapolis and become an officer. Wyly was seventeen when he made a deal with his father; he would apply to Annapolis if his father would allow him to join the Marine Corps reserves. So Wyly sent in his application to Annapolis, then signed up in the Marine Corps and went off to boot camp.