Status of Defense Act

A month ago, I flagged pages 253-254 of the report 116-48, supporting the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020. This report is here: https://www.congress.gov/116/crpt/srpt48/CRPT-116srpt48.pdf

This kicker was the statement that “The committee is concerned that…these models…has not been adequately validated….using real world data….[and] are simplistic by comparison…” The entire four paragraphs are quoted in this blog post:

U.S. Senate on Model Validation

The current text of the actual Defense Act, dated 6/27/19 is here: https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s1790/BILLS-116s1790es.pdf

Now, I don’t know how these two 609- and 1726-page documents connect, but I gather the requirements still exist to have a team “..to assess the quality of these models and make recommendations…not later than December 31, 2020.”

Does anyone know anything further about this effort?

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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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