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.

Casualties in Iraq (November)

Have some casualty figures for Iraq: tally-shows-spike-casualties-Iraq The source is the U.N. To summarize (with my comments added): 1,959 Iraqi security forces killed in November across Iraq. At least 450 wounded….this is obviously low and I would expect it to…

Update for Iraq and Syria

[Map deleted at the request of AFP] A brief update from AFP. Mainly posted because I like the map of Mosul: Status-main-battle-fronts-Iraq-Syria Highlights: 40 percent of eastern Mosul had been re-taken. Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are 15 miles (25 kilometers)…

Iranian Losses in Syria

In case you weren’t paying close attention, the Assad government in Syria has been heavily propped up by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. Iran has had troops there for a while. According to Iran’s Tasnim new agency, they have lost over a thousand…

Mosul is Cut-off

Mosul is now completely cut-off. Before now, there was still a desert corridor heading off to the west, although I assume the ISIL leaders had bailed out of Mosul long before now: Mosul Completely Surrounded A few interesting points from…

Slow and Low

Slow progress in retaking Mosul and low casualties: mosul-battle A couple of points that caught my attention: “Baghdad doesn’t release official casualty figures, but some medics estimate that it is at least in the low dozens.” “As of late October,…