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Energy–maneuverability theory is a model of aircraft performance. It was developed by Col. John Boyd, a fighter pilot, and Thomas P. Christie, a mathematician with the United States Air Force, [1] and is useful in describing an aircraft's performance as the total of kinetic and potential energies or aircraft specific energy.
In the early 1960s, Boyd, together with Thomas Christie, a civilian mathematician, created the energy–maneuverability theory, or E-M theory, of aerial combat. A legendary maverick by reputation, [ 9 ] Boyd was said to have stolen the computer time to do the millions of calculations necessary to prove the theory.
Boyd was a US Air Force colonel who had developed the energy–maneuverability theory of air combat. This was based on formulas that revealed a fighter aircraft's ability to maneuver, allowing direct comparison between different designs using simple metrics.
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It was spurred by then-Major John Boyd's 'energy-maneuverability' (E-M) theory, which indicated that excessive weight would have severely debilitating consequences on the maneuverability of an aircraft. Boyd's design called for a light-weight fighter with a high thrust-to-weight ratio, high maneuverability, and a gross weight of less than ...
The Fighter Mafia was a controversial group of United States Air Force officers and civilian defense analysts who, in the 1960s and 1970s, advocated for fighter design criteria in opposition to those of the design boards of the time, and the use of John Boyd and Thomas P. Christie's energy-maneuverability (E-M) theory in designing fighter aircraft.
While working with Boyd at Eglin AFB, Christie was deeply involved with the development of the Energy-Maneuverability theory of aerial combat. [3] The work on this theory was not officially sanctioned and Christie and Boyd resorted to "stealing" computer time to compare the performance of U.S. and Soviet military aircraft which resulted in the ...
Much of the modern energy-management techniques, which are used in maneuvers like the Yo-Yos, were only described scientifically after John R. Boyd developed his Energy-Maneuverability theory during the Vietnam War. [7]