More About the OODA Loop
Your understanding of the OODA loop and having the appropriate respect for this theory will allow you to critically build on a solid foundation which will, in turn, allow you to vet ideas based on their merit, not on their popularity.
Pressing towards a tighter or more controlled OODA loops will guide you in selecting appropriate techniques and actions that will give your efforts real power.
While OODA loops are relevant in all three levels of warfare (strategic, operational, and tactical), in this section we will continue or discussion of the OODA loop and how it functions at the tactical level of gunfighting.
As we mentioned in the definition section above, the “decision making process can be seen as a time competitive observation, orientation, decision, action cycle or ‘OODA loop.’ Each party to a conflict begins by observing… To win any conflict, you need to get inside the adversary’s OODA loop (their decision making process). You can either go through the OODA loop cycle faster than your opponent or you can vary your tempos and rhythms so your opponent cannot keep up with you.”
In order to highlight the above concepts and in order to be able to see the accumulative effect one’s actions can have on the situation, let’s pretend we have a god’s eye view of a gunfight developing on a city street.