The original Maverick: an over-the-top fighter instructor who leads a subversive band of brilliant acolytes to build the greatest jets the military never wanted, then sparks a movement that reshapes the art of war.
An action-drama limited series written and produced by Marco Alejandro Santiago, based on the biography by Pulitzer-nominated author Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.
The true-life action-drama of the original Maverick: an over-the-top Air Force Fighter Weapons School instructor pilot who leads a subversive group of brilliant acolytes to build the greatest fighter jets the military never wanted, and then goes on to form a movement that reshapes the art of war.
1959, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, only six years removed from the Korean War, yet air-to-air combat is already a lost art. As an instructor at the prestigious Fighter Weapons School, Captain John Boyd takes it upon himself to codify the lost discipline of aerial tactics, even as the military pivots toward expensive high-tech aircraft and beyond-visual-range missiles. Like a maverick cowboy from a bygone era, Boyd stands alone. Known as "40-Second Boyd" for his standing bet that he could defeat any opponent in simulated combat in under forty seconds, or pay out forty dollars, he writes the "Aerial Attack Study," a document that becomes official Air Force doctrine, and then the bible of air combat for air forces around the world.
Entering civilian life as an engineering student at Georgia Tech, Boyd discovers a radical new way to analyze fighter performance and, stealing over a million dollars of Air Force computer time, develops the Energy-Maneuverability Theory, which is to fighter design what E=mc² is to relativity. Ordered to the Pentagon, Boyd and his acolytes, later known as The Fighter Mafia, force the low-cost F-16 and the A-10 down the throats of a reluctant establishment, shaping the F-15, F-16, A-10, and Navy F-18. In retirement he evolves into a warrior intellect, birthing "Patterns of Conflict," the OODA loop, and the military reform movement, taking only $1 per pay period and living for two decades in a basement apartment as the "Ghetto Colonel," before being summoned to secretly shape the strategy behind the Gulf War's decisive victory.
Fighter Mafia paints a deeply human portrait of an unsung, larger-than-life, and profoundly flawed figure whose ideas still influence competitive sports, litigation strategy, game theory, and business management, a modern-day Sun Tzu, considered by many to be America's greatest military theorist.
Developed as an entertaining but informative story: part humor, part drama, part action. Dramatic inspiration is drawn from award-winning biographical films about unsung, complex heroes of the sciences who changed the world: A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game, The Man Who Knew Infinity, The Theory of Everything, and Hidden Figures.
Robert Coram's Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War chronicles Col. John Boyd and the band of dissident officers and analysts (Pierre Sprey, Chuck Spinney, Tom Christie, James Burton, Col. Mike Wyly, and others) who fought the defense establishment to reshape American air power.