Salvage & Doing Da OODA Loop

Salvage and Doing Da OODA Loop

CO - AUTHORS

Rik F. van Hemmen

Hannah van Hemmen

President and Senior Partner, MARTIN, OTTAWAY, van HEMMEN & DOLAN, INC.

Senior Environmental Programs Specialist, Port Authority of NY & NJ

This article is a modified excerpt from a larger technical paper titled “Game Theory for the Maritime Professional” written by Rik van Hemmen and Hannah van Hemmen. It originally ran in Soundings in 2014 and is republished and slightly updated at the request of the Chair of the ASA’s Marketing & Communications Committee, Rebecca Garcia-Malone, who professes to a secret fascination with the subject. S alvage is always related to rapidly developing and changing circumstances. Salvage can be compared to a fight against nature and some people like to think of it in terms of combat.

One combat (and game theory) concept, the OODA loop, has very useful application in salvage.

The OODA loop was developed by John Boyd, a US Air Force officer and pilot who was one of the most amazing characters of the second half of the 20th century that nobody has heard of. In the engineering realm he was one of the major synthesizers of the F-16 fighter and he was also an amazing fighter pilot. In the 1950’s he developed a fighter pilot training method that he eventually named the OODA loop.

It stands for “Observe”, “Orient (Orientate)”, “Decide” and “Act”. The loop is continuous, so it loops right back to “Observe” after you “Act”.

A novice in a fighter cockpit tends to observe enemy fighters and then freeze in panic, not knowing what to do until he or she gets shot down. To prevent early death, John Boyd would train the novice to observe (get data), to figure out where the problem was (orient; what will kill me, what will make me win?), to engage the option that is most effective under the circumstancesi (decide; this is a complex and deeply technical task in fighter aircraft), to take the action (act) and to see what happened after the action was taken and start the loop all over again. The trick is to perform this loop faster than the opponent.

On an engineering level OODA is a simple feedback loop, and well known in most branches of engineering. As such, the basis of the OODA loop is nothing magical, but the objective of the OODA loop is to come out of the loop ahead of the opponentii (or to not die in a rapidly developing situation).

The OODA loop can be incredibly effective in many maritime circumstances. Interestingly, John Boyd’s methods were often ignored by the Air Force, but US Marines and Navy Seals took his concepts to heart and named him an honorary Marine. These services are quite familiar with the OODA loop concepts and consider it to be part of their training. It turns out the OODA loop is equally useful in salvage.

The quality of an OODA loop is determined by the quality of the steps and the execution speed of the loop. Thus, great data but slow loop speed would not result in a winning loop. Failure in any part of the loop results in failure of the loop in its entirety.