Our first virtual presentation – How Important are Superior Numbers? – by Dr. David Kirkpatrick

This was the first virtual presentation of the conference. It happened after lunch, so we had resolved some of our earlier issues. Not only was Dr. David Kirkpatrick (University College London) able to give a virtual presentation, but Dr. Robert Helmbold was able to attend virtually and discuss the briefing with him. This is kind of how these things are supposed to work.

Anyhow, the presentation was “How important are Superior Numbers?” and it is posted to our YouTube channel here: (8) How Important are Superior Numbers: Kirkpatrick (version 2) – YouTube

There is an earlier version on the channel that is 1:10 longer. That was uploaded first, but I decided to edit out a small section of the presentation.

The briefing ends at 40:20 and discussion continues for 12 minutes afterwards.

The slides for the briefing were previously posted here: Presentations from HAAC – How important are superior numbers? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

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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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One comment

  1. I’ve quite appreciated having these on YouTube. Admittedly, I listened to most of them at 3 in the morning with an upset toddler, so I’m sure I missed something important or other.

    I do have a question on this topic: With the documents that leaked earlier in the year, I couldn’t help but notice that the casualty estimates seems absurdly low for Ukraine. I suspect that indicates political pressures overriding reality in US/UKR planning.

    Thoughts?

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