The Dragon’s Jaw

The Thanh Hoa bridge “Dragon’s Jaw” in North Viet Nam was considered strategic to the North’s lines of supply. The bridge would stand for another seven years, withstand 871 sorties, and be the last sight of the aircrews of eleven U.S. jets before being shot down. It was on one of these such sorties in April of 1965 that a flight of four F105 Thunderchiefs were jumped by a formation of MiG 17’s. The F105 Thunderchief or as it was commonly known, the ‘Thud’, was a marvel of the famed Century Series supersonic aircraft build in the 50’s. But inspite of superior speed, the MiG’s shot down two Thuds and damaged another, the fourth pilot had been outmaneuvered by the MiG and, though twice as fast, could not shake it off his tail. It was then that he remembered the advice from a visiting captain from the Fighter Weapons School, snap roll the aircraft. The effect was counter-intuitive, the lumbering response of the Thunderchief slowed the aircraft to a standstill, the MiG swooshed by giving the pilot enough time to light the afterburner and point the aircraft for home.

The captain from the Fighter Weapons School was John Boyd, sometimes referred to as “Forty Second Boyd”. As the story goes, Boyd had a standing bet, he would start any engagement with a fighter on his tail and he could reverse the situation within ‘forty’ seconds or he would pay the challenger $40.

Boyd became critical of the US stratagem of producing faster and faster jets. In a series of maneuvers the more nimble of aircraft will incrementally gain the advantage, Boyd opined “in most situations, absolute speed is much less important than the ability to move from one state to another”. This ability to move from one state to another is what Boyd called transients.

Boyd developed a concept of the “energy maneuverability model”. It was the basis for a mathematical model that could be used to evaluate an aircrafts performance while performing a series of maneuvers. The summation of properties could be compared from one aircraft to another to determine which aircraft would have the advantage in a dogfight. These theories would eventually culminate into one of the greatest aircraft of our time, the F15 Eagle.

Developing his models, Boyd further realized that the pilot who sighted his adversary first would have the tactical advantage. The Thud was an example of an aircraft that was large and easy to see, it appeared as a spec leading a gigantic plume of smoke. This realization helped lead to ‘sleeker’ aircraft and more efficient engines. It also led to Boyd’s acclaimed principle for outmaneuvering and defeating an opponent, the OODA loop. Observe-Orient-Decision-Action. Observe your situation, your adversary, Orient yourself, get on your adversaries ‘six’, Decision, decide on a course of action and Act, execute the plan.

The idea is to see the problem and react to it faster than your adversary. To operate inside of their decision making cycle. This became the answer to the Perennial Question of Information Warfare;
“You can collect, analyze, and move your information faster than your opponent to get an edge. Or you can cutoff your opponent from his own information sources, distort his processing, or prevent him from issuing commands. You can fight the information war inside the weapon’s circuits, or inside the commander’s head. There is no single approach that is always the best, but the ultimate objective is always the same: collect, process, and apply information faster and better than your opponent. Whoever gets to the end of their OODA loop first gets to take the first shot. In modern warfare, that’s often the only shot. Information warfare is what ever you need to do to get to the end of your decision cycle before your opponent gets to the end of his.” (Bruce Berkowitz)

Seven years and over 800 sorties after the disaster at the Dragon’s Jaw, a single laser-guided bomb took out the bridge at Thanh Hoa. A new era of information warfare had been spawned.