Doughty was born in Tullos, Louisiana, on November 4, 1943, to parents John and Georgia Doughty.^[1][2]

He attended the United States Military Academy, graduating in 1965. Doughty subsequently completed a tour of duty in Germany before deploying to Vietnam in an advisory role in 1968. Upon his return to the United States, Doughty pursued graduate study, earning a master's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972, followed by a doctorate from the University of Kansas in 1979. From 1979 to 1981, Doughty served a second stint in Germany. In 1985, he was named head of the history department at West Point, and retired from the position in 2005.^[1][2]

Doughty devoted much of his career to studying French military actions during the world wars.^[3] He held the Harold Keith Johnson Chair in Military History at the U.S. Army Military History Institute from 1995 to 1996.^[4]

He is the father of the singer-songwriter Mike Doughty^[5]

In 1986, Doughty received the Paul Birdsall Prize from the American Historical Association.^[6] The Society for Military History named him the 2006 awardee of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize [de].^[7]

• Doughty, R. A. (2014) [1985]. The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–39 (Stackpole, Mechanicsburg, PA ed.). Hamden, CT: Archon Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-1460-0.
• Doughty, Robert A. (1990). The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940. Archon Books. ISBN 978-0-208-02281-3.^[8]
• Doughty, Robert A.; Flint, Roy K.; Gruber, Ira D. (1995). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations from 1600 to 1871. Vol. I. D.C. Heath. ISBN 978-0-669-20939-6.^[9]
• Doughty, Robert A.; Flint, Roy K. (1995). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations Since 1871. Vol. II. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-669-20940-2.^[10]
• Doughty, Robert A. (2005). Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War. Belknap. ISBN 978-0-674-01880-8.^[11]