Someone just asked me about a quote in the following article:
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/11/army-wants-smaller-brigades-stronger-divisions-lots-of-robots/
The quote is:
“Historical data on direct-fire engagements “shows that our enemies generally shoot first 80 percent of the time,” Sando said. “We don’t like those odds, [so] we want to avoid the close fight if we can. If we can’t avoid it, we want to enter it under conditions that are favorable to us.”
The question was: did this statistic come from us or do we know where it came from? Well, it definitely did not come from our work or Trevor Dupuy’s work. I have never heard of such a claim before.
Does anyone know where this came from? Is there some study or piece of quantitative historical analysis that this claim is based upon. I have my doubts about the accuracy of this claim.
If the data was drawn from unconventional (recent) warfare scenarios, then by nature of those conflicts, the insurgents initiate engagements more often than the counterinsurgents do. Not sure it would be as high as 4-to-1.
If it was drawn from conventional war scenarios, then by their nature it should be 50/50, unless you are always the attacker. Even then I am not it would be as high as 4-to-1.
Given the standard rules of engagement, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if 80% of the time the enemy was shooting first. That is how you know they are the enemy. I presume in many cases where we did shoot first, there are still less questions asked if this is not reported.
It also sounds suspiciously like a take on Marshall’s “80% of troops don’t fire their weapon” meme. A meme that is pretty well discredited.
As an aside, I did see this (opinionated) right up of the results of the recent War over war for Nagorno-Karabakh : https://thesaker.is/understanding-the-outcome-of-the-war-for-nagorno-karabakh/
He notes heavy casualties on both sides. Not sure if there is a good source for that info.
It might be true for Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is a unconventional war scenario. If he is planning for conventional war, that statistic would really not be applicable.
It is possible the quote was taken out of context, with all the qualifiers added before and after removed.
I did think about adding that to the discussion, but hesitated reopening that old debate (I also left it out of War by Numbers). Still, it is part of the “culture.” I few years ago, I had a retired Lt.Col. at MCWL (Marine Corps Warfighting Lab) quote the SLA Marshall statistics to me like they were fact. He was in a position that he should have known better.
It does depend on what you define as heavy casualties. I mean they are recording over 200 tanks destroyed in six weeks of fighting, most of them I gather in the first two weeks. On the other hand, we do multiple have division-level engagements in World War II that had over 100 tanks lost in a day.
Chris,
I thought that David Rowland’s work on infantry effectiveness showed that Marshall’s assertions were not as baseless as has been claimed. Am I confusing something?
–Shawn
Trevor discussed Marshall and Rowland here:
https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2017/10/12/military-history-and-validation-of-combat-models/
If Marshall had simply been talking about degradation of effectiveness of fire in combat, then there would not have been much controversy. On the other hand, Marshall gave out very specific figures that only 15% of rifleman and 25% of crew served weapons were fired in combat. This was not based upon any surveys except one he may have done in the Pacific in 1942/43. He did do any such surveys in the ETO (even though he said he did).
It is probably a little simplistic to say that degradation effects in combat are caused by people not firing their weapons. The degradation effects are certainly there, and there in force, as David Rowland’s work shows. But, SLA Marshall’s work is not the work to quote on this subject.