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All Guns, No Butter

By George Kenney

Now retired, Thomas P. Christie has served the U.S. government as an influential military analyst and manager. After holding senior positions at the Pentagon on and off from 1973, Christie worked as director of Operational Test and Evaluation from 2001-2005, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, the highest ranking civil service appointment in the Pentagon. Though largely unknown outside the Pentagon, Christie… return to article

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    Thomas P. Christie is a dedicated public servant, a patriot, an extremely effective administrator, and an honorable American.  Not the Marxist idiot type that is normally featured in ITT, but we thank you for the recognition. 

    And yet this article did not get around to mentioning Christie’s greatest single contribution to America. 

    John Boyd was a wild man, a fighter pilot, a warrior, a scholar, and a philosopher.  Boyd changed the art of war, and Christie provided vital help in some of Boyd’s greatest achievements. 

    While in the Air Force as a flight instructor, Boyd developed mathematical tools that proved American fighter aircraft had inferior flight characteristics compared to Soviet aircraft, which resulted in the needless loss of hundreds of American aircraft over Vietnam, not to mention a strategic disadvantage in case of strategic war.  Christie provided the computer time to Boyd so that Boyd could document his findings.  Boyd used his findings and his experience as a fighter pilot to maximize tactics of American fighter pilots in spite of inferior aircraft. 

    Boyd went back to school to study aeronautical engineering, and set out to design a superior fighter aircraft, primarily based on range and maneuverability.  The result was the F-16, undoubtedly one of the outstanding fighter aircraft of all time.  Boyd stole millions of dollars worth of computer time from the Air Force in order to design the F-16, with the help and cover of Thomas P. Christie.

    Boyd then turned his attention to the art of war, and developed the OODA Loop (Google it if you are still with us) and demonstrated how to think ahead of any opponent, in war and in peace. 

    The payoff came in Gulf I.  General Schwartzkopf had a plan to make a frontal marine assault into the prepared Iraqi defenses on the Kuwaiti beaches, not substantially different from Tarawa or Iwo Jima.  John Boyd was acting as confidential advisor to Dick Cheney, the SecDef, and convinced Cheney to apply OODA principles to the assault on Iraq.  The marine landings became a feint, and the real assault came in behind Iraqi lines through the desert.  The rout was complete in four days.

    Robert Coram has an excellent book on this entitled, “BOYD The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War”.  ITT regulars will not enjoy it.

    United States Posted by scorp on Aug 10, 2008 at 3:09 AM
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