Summation of our Validation Posts

This extended series of posts about validation of combat models was originally started by Shawn Woodford’s post on future modeling efforts and the “Base of Sand” problem.

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

This post apparently irked some people at TRADOC and they wrote an article in the December issue of the Phalanx referencing his post and criticizing it. This resulted in the following seven responses from me:

Engaging the Phalanx

Validation

Validating Attrition

Physics-based Aspects of Combat

Historical Demonstrations?

SMEs

Engaging the Phalanx (part 7 of 7)

This was probably overkill…..but guys who write 1,662 page books sometimes tend to be a little wordy.

While it is very important to identify a problem, it is also helpful to show the way forward. Therefore, I decided to discuss what data bases were available for validation. After all, I would like to see the modeling and simulation efforts to move forward (and right now, they seem to be moving backward). This led to the following nine posts:

Validation Data Bases Available (Ardennes)

Validation Data Bases Available (Kursk)

The Use of the Two Campaign Data Bases

The Battle of Britain Data Base

Battles versus Campaigns (for Validation)

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

Battalion and Company Level Data Bases

Other TDI Data Bases

Other Validation Data Bases

There were also a few other validation issues that had come to mind while I was writing these blog posts, so this led to the following series of three posts:

Face Validation

Validation by Use

Do Training Models Need Validation?

Finally, there were a few other related posts that were scattered through this rather extended diatribe. It includes the following six posts:

Paul Davis (RAND) on Bugaboos

Diddlysquat

TDI Friday Read: Engaging The Phalanx

Combat Adjudication

China and Russia Defeats the USA

Building a Wargamer

That kind of ends this discussion on validation. It kept me busy for while. Not sure if you were entertained or informed by it. It is time for me to move onto another subject, not that I have figured out yet what that will be.

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Christopher A. Lawrence
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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