The OODA Loop is a name for a way of describing and analyzing the decision-making process an entity (human or an organization) goes through in making every decision. While the name probably doesn’t exactly draw you in, getting a handle on the OODA loop has the potential to give you a tremendous advantage over an attacker. Since it’s involved in every decision we make, it seems like we should all be intimately familiar with it, and at some level we are. But, most people haven’t assigned names for the steps, or thought of it quite this way. Let’s take a closer look and see how it can help us with personal security.
OODA stands for: “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.” The concept was developed by the late U. S. Air Force fighter pilot, Colonel John Boyd. According to Col Boyd, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one’s opponent. This is referred to as, “Getting inside their OODA loop,”
Col Boyd’s approach is aggressive. It stresses the value of seizing and maintaining the initiative. He was known as “Forty Second Boyd” for his standing bet that as a fighter pilot instructor, he could start from a disadvantaged position, and defeat any opposing pilot in less than 40 seconds. The military in general and the Marine Corps, in particular, really liked his thinking. Beginning in 1980, the Marines began incorporating his ideas into their doctrine and training.
So, what is the OODA loop?
Observe: This is having situational awareness, seeing what’s going on. To make it a little easier to track with my explanation, think of it as seeing a hulking figure ahead of you in the shadows as you’re walking down the street at night. At this point, it’s just a mental snapshot of a figure in the shadows. You have observed it but, have not yet assessed if it’s a threat or not. Of course, if you fail to observe the figure, you don’t have an opportunity to assess or react.
Orient: This is the process of evaluating the meaning of what you observed (the stimulus). This is when you determine the dark shadow is actually a man and you realize that he may be a threat because he’s holding crowbar in a way that facilitates him being able to use it to strike. The more novel the stimulus is to you the longer it will take to orient. Generally, a person with situational awareness will be able to transition to an appropriate response much more quickly while an unaware person’s brain will often not recognize danger until it is too late. Col Boyd considered “orient” to be the most important part of the OODA loop. He made the point that heritage, cultural traditions and previous experiences all shape the way you observe. How you observe shapes the way you decide and act.
Decide: This is the selection of a course of action out of all the choices your brain identifies. In our example, some of the possible choices include dialing 911, shooting him, running away screaming, ducking into an open business, or staying out of range and assessing the situation further. (There are many more possibilities.) The more options are identified, the longer it will take to decide. The fewer options there are, the faster the decision can be made. If the situation is totally foreign, a person may freeze as their brain tries to put together a response to something it never previously considered. That’s slow, like a deer in the headlights. Conversely, if someone has made many such decisions in the past, they will be able to make a selection much faster. That’s why realistic and practical training is so necessary. For our example, let’s assume you decide to stay out of range and to do so by crossing the street before getting close to the man with the crowbar
Act: This is the actual act to execute your decision. For our example, this is your act of crossing the street.
The OODA loop is a fixed process. Once started, the progression occurs and becomes a continuous loop with each party observing, orienting, deciding and acting in response to the acts of the other(s). In our example, once the man in the shadows observes that you are crossing the street, he must go through the loop before he can take an action in response to you crossing the street. He has to observe that you crossed the street and orient that on your new trajectory, you will not come within range of his crowbar. His brain must identify possible responses. Then he needs to select a response out of the possibilities identified. Once that decision is made, he is prepared to act. He then acts. You observe his action and go through the cycle again. He observes your action and goes through the cycle. You react to him, and he to you and so on.
But, it’s actually not as neat and clean as that. A new loop (or loops) can feed into a previous set before the earlier loop has been completed. That means that if someone observes a new stimulus before they have had an opportunity to act, they must go back through the Observe, Orient and Decide steps before they are ready to Act. If they get yet another new stimulus during that process, they must start over again. This can occur over and over. Due to the restarts, they are trapped in the loop and are unable to act. That is the essence of what it means to get inside someone’s OODA loop. As you can imagine, it is a huge advantage. You can complete multiple actions while your opponent is confused and doing nothing. For example, if Col Boyd’s opponent observed Boyd roll right, and was orienting to this move but before he could decide or act, Boyd rolled left, it would require Boyd’s opponent to start the OODA loop all over again. Boyd’s goal would be to take another action before his opponent could cycle through the loop to Action. As mentioned above, the more novel or unexpected the action taken, the longer it takes an opponent to orient. The longer the opponent is stuck in the orient phase the more likely their frame of reference will be demolished and the more likely that any action they do take will be inappropriate and ineffective.
An interesting side note that should give us all hope for developing the ability to use the OODA loop to our advantage is that Col Boyd found that once pilots learned to get through their OODA loop while keeping their opponents in theirs, he discovered that after five actual air combat experiences that pilot became practically invincible. They could cycle the loop faster than their opponents and be the first to act effectively. Another interesting, and possibly related, parallel is that a pilot who has shot down five enemy planes is generally considered an Ace. (The WW I German pilot, Baron Von Richthofen (the Red Baron) was credited with 80 air combat victories. I think he had a handle on the OODA loop even if he didn’t call it that.) On the upside, I don’t think you need to have five violent encounters to be able to utilize the OODA loop, with the right training and practice, you may be a Red Baron in the making.
The best way to get through an OODA loop faster than a bad guy and take appropriate action is to override the steps by addressing them in advance, effectively removing them from the cycle time. That can be done with tailored training designed to preprogram both the recognition of specific threats and the response. Such training has been utilized in the classical martial arts for a very long time. The training has one prerequisite and two components. As a prerequisite, one must be able to accept a certain level of chaos. The first component is to train to immediately categorize what’s observed. That’s training to recognize a specific threat. For example, through experience and training a boxer or martial artist can acquire the ability to recognize when their opponent is loading up for a punch before the punch begins. They don’t consciously think about it. Rather, their brain recognizes very subtle cues (or tells) that signal a punch is coming. It is not necessary to orient because the cues mean that a punch is about to be thrown. Thus, a particular threat is recognized. By virtue of the prior training, their brain is already oriented to that threat. The second half of the training is a matter of practicing to execute pre-determined decisions in response to recognized threats. For example, you may train to respond to a punch to the side of your face by sidestepping and executing a counter punch. If you pre-program the response to a stimulus you eliminate the need to go through the mental assessment of possible responses and the need to select among those possibilities. Thus, by training to recognize a threat and automatically execute a pre-determined response you are avoiding the two slowest parts (Orient and Decide) of the OODA loop. That likely puts you inside your opponent’s loop and they must go back to the orient stage in response to your action. The training is initially practiced very slowly to develop smoothness. Then practiced at ever increasing speed so that when engaged in combat there will be comprehensive and immediate action taken, essentially without thought. A pre-determined response is not necessarily a perfect response. But, as General George Patton said, “A good plan violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” Action beats reaction. To borrow a line from Col Boyd, “Whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives.”
Your goal is to get inside the bad guy’s OODA loop and go home alive.
After I finished this article, I stumbled across an article by Steve Tarani in, ”Shooting Illustrated.” I think it’s well done, and his examples are excellent. Here’s a link to his article: https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2019/3/20/using-the-ooda-loop-for-self-defense/
Stay safe. Train well.
[…] the situation. Loncar stood motionless to be shot. ( Here’s an article on the OODA Loop: Another Non-Secret Secret: The OODA Loop Part I | Critical Edge ) Words can’t adequately describe such a tragic loss of a young […]
Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure what you’re trying to communicate. Would you be kind enough to amplify?