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The Dupuy Institute

Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis

Slow and Low

Christopher A. Lawrence
November 23, 2016

Slow progress in retaking Mosul and low casualties: mosul-battle

A couple of points that caught my attention:

“Baghdad doesn’t release official casualty figures, but some medics estimate that it is at least in the low dozens.”
“As of late October, US officials said ISIS had lost roughly 900 fighters.”
From 17 October to 1 November, 2,400 precision bombs, artillery rounds, missiles, and rockets were launched into the Mosul area.

So, Iraqi casualties less than 60?…..I have some doubts about the claimed 900 ISIL fighters killed.

Now….tempted to count number of bombs, artillery rounds, etc. per ISIL fighter killed….but not sure this is a particularly meaningful metric.

Anyhow, Mosul is effectively isolated. The main roads have been cut. I gather there is a open area of desert to the west that is not occupied, but any significant movement in the open with our airplanes and drones overhead is probably not advisable. This is fundamentally a mop-up operation, and not surprisingly, it is going slow and with low casualties. We shall see if they take the city in 6 weeks or so.

I still wonder how many ISIL fighters they actually left behind in Mosul.

Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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