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Combat Power vs Combat Power

Christopher A. Lawrence
December 10, 2017

In my last post, I ended up comparing Combat Effectiveness Value (CEV) to Combat Power. CEV is only part of combat power. In Trevor Dupuy’s formulation, Combat Power is P = (S x V x CEV)

This means that combat power (P) is the product of force strength, including weapon effects (S), operational and environmental factors (V) and human factors (CEV).

From his list of 73 variables on page 33 of Numbers, Predictions and War (NPW), the operational and environmental factors include terrain factors, weather factors, season factors, air superiority factors, posture factors, mobility effects, vulnerability factors, tactical air effects, other combat processes (including surprise), and the intangible factors (which are included in his CEV).

Again, it turns into a much longer laundry list of variables than we have from ADP 3.0.

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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