AIUntying the Ooda Loop: Future Command and Decision Making
Many now argue that the army’s decisive, lasting advantage would be won not in the physical domain but in the cognitive one, where we know and act faster than an adversary. But in the rush to act faster than the enemy we may be dismantling the very decision model on which the original advantage was built: We are trading the reflection and adaptability of the circle for the velocity of the arrow.
The case for racing to dominate the cognitive domain is, by now, familiar. For years, strategists have argued that the army’s decisive, lasting advantage would be won not in the physical domain but in the cognitive one, where we know and act faster than an adversary. Finishing second in the race for artificial intelligence and intelligence amplification is unacceptable. This argument has taken hold, and the joint force is now running hard. But the urgency to finish first has produced a consequence few anticipated. In the rush to act faster than the enemy we may be dismantling the very decision model on which the original advantage was built.
For two generations, John Boyd’s OODA loop—observe, orient, decide, act—has shaped how the U.S. military thinks about decision advantage. Today, threats that move faster than human judgment are changing that loop. Driven by tactical necessity and often without awareness, the OODA loop is being transformed along a three-stage path toward a “predict-act” (P-A) vector.
This transformation represents a shift in the physics of command. A loop operates as an adaptive, circular system that self-corrects through feedback. By contrast, a vector acts as a straight, one-way arrow defined by direction and magnitude. In a P-A vector, the direction is the shortest line of action from prediction to execution, and the magnitude is the algorithm’s confidence score (see ‘Stage III,’ below). By collapsing the loop into a vector, we are trading the reflection and adaptability of the circle for the velocity of the arrow. This article traces that change across three stages and shows that it is already underway in fielded systems; further, it argues that the speed gained comes with risks we must proactively account for.
Stage I: Compressing Sensing — from Observe-Orient (O-O) to Recognition (R)
The first stage of this transformation occurs in how we “see” the battlefield. In modern conflict, the speed and volume of incoming data mean we can no longer afford the luxury of separate “observation” and “orientation” phases. To meet the demand for speed, we are merging these two steps into a single, automated state of Recognition (R), turning the decision cycle into R-D-A (recognize-decide-act). To recognize is to nearly instantly fuse inputs into a single understanding of the environment, allowing commanders to bypass manual observation and orientation. Instead of being overwhelmed with data, commanders receive a customized operational picture (the new COP) tailored to exactly how they process information.
