What makes this concept useful from a rhythm standpoint is the time between the beats. These are called half-beats, and if they were counted out, they’d sound like, “one-and-two-and-three-and-four.” In the one-two combo, the half beat is the moment after the lead jab has landed, but before the fighter has thrown the back-hand cross. This little fragment of time, this half-beat, is when a fighter is most vulnerable to being caught off-balance and having their rhythm broken. Put differently, these moments are when a fighter is most vulnerable to having their decision-action cycle interrupted.

Hitting the Opponent on the Half-Beat

Ultimately, the aim of getting inside an opponent’s OODA Loop, is to break their rhythm and cause them to miss a beat. Speed undeniably has a role here, because a combatant must have the perception speed, or coup d’oeil, to observe an opportunity, the mental speed to process the evolving situation and available options, and the performance speed to exploit an opening. But, as Bruce Lee wrote, “speed in delivering a stroke will lose most of its effectiveness unless the stroke is properly timed.”[14]

In practice, it is not enough to make decisions as fast as one can, because at a certain point this approach becomes divorced from one’s opponent and their actions. Instead, decisions and actions should ideally happen in a way that sets up an opponent and makes them vulnerable to having their rhythm broken.

Bruce Lee identified two traditional methods by which a fighter could use their cadence to accomplish this setup, the first being to adopt slower than normal actions in the lead up to a decisive attack. In this application, after an opponent has adapted to our cadence, they are vulnerable to sudden accelerations in our actions. Alternatively, the lead up could be at a normal or quicker than normal speed, setting up a final attack at a slower cadence. This strategy effectively forces the adversary to commit to an action, allowing a combatant to watch the reaction and strike once the adversary is out of position. Bruce Lee labeled these methods as “striking on the half-beat.”[15]

Applying these approaches to the OODA Loop in a contest with military opponents is clearly more complex than for a mixed martial arts fighter in the octagon, however, the principles remain the same. To generate advantage through use of the OODA loop, the goal is not to cycle through the process as rapidly as possible as this approach supports dissociation of one’s own decision-making process from that of one’s opponent. Instead, the OODA Loop should be used to identify those little moments in time when the opponent is most vulnerable to having their rhythm broken, and then enabling the action that will cause the most disruption. In other words, the potential of the OODA loop is maximized when it is used to identify and exploit the opponent’s half-beat. Of note, this is consistent with Boyd’s own emphasis on the importance of the orientation stage of the OODA loop.[16]

A recent practical example of this strategy was the September 2019 drone attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, which briefly wiped out half of Saudi Aramco’s production capacity.[17] In this case, the timing of the attacks may have been more important than the physical effects, since they occurred in the lead-up to Aramco’s initial public offering.[18] What’s more, the longer term impact of the attacks may have contributed to reduced investor interest and an Aramco valuation that did not meet its initially intended target.[19] At the very least, the attacks succeeded in compelling Saudi Arabia to focus on restoring its production capacity, in effect breaking their rhythm and forcing them to stop, recover, and get back on time. For the Iranian-backed Houthis, who claimed credit for the attacks, this Saudi pause took shape in the form of ceasefire negotiations, during which the Saudis ceased their bombing campaign.[20] In addition, Iran, widely believed to be responsible for the drone strikes, found increased influence with the Houthis in the aftermath of the attack, which was precisely what the Saudis had been hoping to prevent by entering the Yemen War. The timing of the attack, then, could be argued to have benefitted both the Houthis and Iran by catching the Saudis on a half-beat.

The Takeaway

Boyd’s OODA Loop has long been held up as a means to reduce reaction time and enable quicker and more streamlined decision-making. While greater speed is clearly an advantage in combat, viewing the OODA Loop through the lens of faster is better over-simplifies the model, and prevents combatants from realizing the full potential of this decision-making framework. By understanding that speed and timing are complementary, the potential of the OODA Loop can be maximized by focusing it to identify those moments when an opponent is most vulnerable, and providing options to exploit those openings at the most opportune time.