Colonel John (Richard) Boyd was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and military strategist of the late 20th century whose theories have been highly influential in the military and in business.

Boyd was born on January 23, 1927 in Erie, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Iowa with a Bachelor's degree in economics and from Georgia Tech with a Bachelor's degree in industrial engineering.

Boyd enlisted in the United States Army and served in the Army Air Corps from 1945 to 1947. He subsequently served as a U.S. Air Force officer from July 8, 1951 to August 31, 1975.[3] He was known as "Forty-Second Boyd" for his ability to beat any opposing pilot in aerial combat in less than forty seconds.

Boyd died of cancer in Florida on March 9, 1997 at age 70. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on March 20, 1997.

During the early 1960s, Boyd, together with Thomas Christie, a civilian mathematician, created the Energy-Maneuverability, or E-M, theory of aerial combat. He had to steal the computer time to do the millions of calculations necessary to prove the theory (Boyd was never one to put obedience ahead of duty), but it became the world standard for the design of fighter planes. At a time when the Air Force's FX project (subsequently the F-15) was floundering, Boyd's orders to Vietnam were cancelled and he was brought to the Pentagon to re-do the trade-off studies according to E-M. His work saved the F-15 from being another costly dud. However, cancellation of that tour in Vietnam meant that Boyd would be one of the most important aerial combat strategists with no combat kills. He had only flown a few missions at the tail end of the Korean War, and all of them as a wingman.

Later, Boyd formed the "Fighter Mafia" with Colonel Everest Riccione and Pierre Sprey. Riccione was another Air Force fighter pilot, and Sprey was a civilian statistician working in Systems Analysis. Together, they were the visionaries who conceived the FXX Light Weight Fighter program, which produced the F-16 and F/A-18.

After his retirement from the Air Force in 1975, Boyd continued to work as a consultant in the Tactical Air office of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation (better known as systems analysis). Boyd wanted to work for free, but was not allowed, so he accepted the bare minimum, one day's pay in a fortnight. He once told Spinney (Frank "Chuck" Spinney) that there were two ways to be free: to become rich, or to cut your needs to the bone. He didn't think he could become rich, so he did the latter.[5] Boyd called the TacAir shop, in the notorious Room 2c281, the 'thunder and lightning shop' in contrast to the 'business as usual' that he said prevailed in the rest of the Pentagon. He was known to stand in the doorway, pointing and screaming, 'Out there -- business as usual! In here -- thunder and lightning!'[6]

A popular anecdote credits Boyd for largely developing the strategy for the invasion of Iraq in the first Gulf War. Boyd had presented his briefing, Patterns of Conflict, to Dick Cheney in 1981. By 1990 Boyd had moved to Florida because of declining health, but Cheney called him back to work on the plans for Desert Storm. Boyd had substantial influence on the ultimate 'left hook' design of the plan.

In a letter to the editor of Inside the Pentagon, former Commandant of the Marine Corps General Charles C. Krulak is quoted as saying "The Iraqi army collapsed morally and intellectually under the onslaught of American and Coalition forces. John Boyd was an architect of that victory as surely as if he'd commanded a fighter wing or a maneuver division in the desert."

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