Professional Military Education

What is “maneuver warfare”? Who is Air Force Colonel John Boyd, who throughout the late 1970s and 1980s found a captive audience in the Marine Corps leadership? In Episode 11, Major Ian Brown discusses the evolution of the Marine Corps' doctrinal publication, MCDP-1: Warfighting. Furthermore, he focuses on the contribution of Air Force Colonel John Boyd, who developed a brief called “Patterns of Conflict.” This brief combined Boyd’s study of military history with his earlier technical development of Energy-Maneuverability (E-M) theory. The result was a transformational concept of warfare by maneuver, which the Marine Corps released in 1989 in a publication called “Fleet Marine Force Manual 1” (FMFM 1). FMFM 1 was later revised and updated under the direction of General Krulak, 31st Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. In 1997, Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 was published under the name Warfighting. Maj Brown wrote a book entitled, A New Conception of War: John Boyd, the U.S. Marines, and Maneuver Warfar