All these loops are happening, and all these loops can be cut off with a need to restart based on observing (seeing, feeling, perceiving) an input which changes our recognition of the problem, or orientation.
If you take a look at each of those steps, you can see where we can help to make faster moves to the next step through exposures, repetition, etc., and that’s the value of OODA.
As an example of large disparity, say a Cessna 152 pilot with a few hundred hours jumps into a hornet vs another hornet flown by a WTI grad. Assuming the Cessna guy even knows he has to get to a merge, he doesn’t have an experience base of what to look for to understand energy package, he doesn’t have his “game plan” options sorted into rapidly assignable categories, and he doesn’t have the stick and rudder skills in this airframe to execute anything. He’s a grape, and there’s a lot of possible ways to increase his performance…what to see, how to interpret, responses categorized into pre-programmed broad courses of action, etc.
Say now you put a nugget hornet guy in a hornet against the WTI…in a Cessna. The WTI guy has all the experience and data points to decide quickly and win…in a hornet, but no capability to execute in the Cessna. OODA doesn’t win. The same thing applies if a commander sees a battlefield situation against a regimental adversary that he’s seen and responded to before and won…but doesn’t have the troops, logistics, equipment to implement that same course of action or…with such a large array of components, his orientation or assessment of the situation could also be incorrect or the information he was receiving about the situation was incorrect, leading his previously used response to be a failure. As a teaching moment, if this were an exercise, this commander could then take a look at what the actual situation was, where his intel was incorrect, and create the mental associations required to have this info onboard for future consideration. You can apply this all the way down to an individual paper miss in the shoothouse…what did I do wrong? Not recognizing rate of reticle movement towards edge of target zone? Accepting overly aggressive trigger actuation? Etc., and affect future performance.
Anyway, that’s how I see it. It’s how I’ve been trained in it, and believe me the aviation world places a lot of emphasis on understanding and improving performance. Take it or leave it. Maybe I’ve explained it poorly, and I could do better in a several hour lecture, but I’ve got to get some work done. But, hopefully, someone finds it useful.