The John Boyd Library
When I was writing my
dissertation on how to apply John Boyd's thinking to the problem of
counter-insurgency, a most valuable resource was the
Defense in the
National Interest website maintained by his friend and acolyte, Chester
Richards. Alas, weeks before I submitted the paper, Chet decided to abandon
the website, and he invited anyone who cared to download the materials
there. I did so for all the documents in my bibliography. To these I have
added other available books and monographs by and about John Boyd. Blue
skies! -- Daniel Ford
A Discourse on Winning and Losing
The
Discourse is a spiral-bound document, dated 1987 but probably
assembled in 1992. I got my copy from the curators of the Boyd Papers at
the U.S. Marine Corps Archives at Quantico, Virginia, where I spent a
fascinating week mining the thoughts of this self-taught strategic genius.
The Discourse contains four sets of briefing slides, plus his
monograph entitled Destruction and Creation, in this order:
Aerial Attack Study
($2.95 PDF reproduction of Boyd's 1965 tactical manual for fighter combat)
New Conception of Air-to-Air
Combat (Boyd's 1976 "Fast Transients" briefing)
The Essence of Winning & Losing
(Boyd's 1996 summary briefing)