Are we the world leader in military historical analysis?

I was assembling some marketing material and came up with the cheesy phrase “The world leader in military historical analysis since 1962.”

Now, is that actually true? I kind of think so. If it is not us, then who is the world leader in military historical analysis? What about non-military historical analysis? Is there a leader there? 

Second question: Is it too cheesy or overly presumptive?

Of course, by saying since 1962 we are laying claim to the entire Dupuy legacy, going back to these early reports: TDI – The Dupuy Institute Publications. We did set up 8 of his first 11 reports as free downloads in this link.

The report that has gotten a lot of attention recently is No. 4 “Historical Trends Related to Weapons Lethality (1964)”. This was the report that created the Theoretical Lethality Index (TLI). We have posted about this before: Scoring Weapons And Aggregation In Trevor Dupuy’s Combat Models | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org) and What Is The Relationship Between Rate of Fire and Military Effectiveness? | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org) among other posts.

A definition of historical analysis is provided here: The Second Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 17-19 October 2023 in Tysons Corner, VA | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org). We are probably going to host the third HAAC 8-10 October 2024 at Tysons Corner. 

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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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7 Comments

  1. Link the phrase to the evidence. TND’s pre-analysis of Desert Storm losses looked very good, compared to the competition, particularly since he made the prediction before all the allied troops were in place. You can go on from there.

  2. Over the last 30-40 years I have been conducting wide-ranging research into sources of quantitative information to support the development of computer based rules for historical wargaming.

    The only source I have found that provides evidence based quantitative battlefield data is the Dupuy Institute. I am convinced it is the leader in this field.

  5. That marketing phrase works for me, and I am usually skeptical of such claims!

    From a grammatical perspective, you might consider “military history analysis” so that you have a noun (military) being used as an adjective to delineate a noun (history) that is delineating a noun (analysis) rather than having a noun (military) delineate an adjective (historical) that delineates a noun (analysis). An adverb is the part of speech that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. An adverb that you might want to use to modify “historical” doesn’t readily come to mind. (Of course, none of this might matter since your intended audience is at DOD : – )

    • The UK Operational Research organizations have defined “historical analysis” as a sub-discipline of their “Operational Research.” So, I am using their terminology. I do not think there is any consideration by the U.S. Operations Research community to seriously examine historical analysis. It is why I am hosting our own separate annual historical analysis conferences.

      For the record, the UK invented Operational Research.

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