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.

Russian Economy

A couple of economic articles of interest: A nice explanatory article: How the oil crisis wrecked Russia and obliterated Venezuela And one on Kaliningrad (the city formerly known as Konigsberg): The economy in Kaliningrad is so bad that one mayor put…

They are on Schedule

Well, they are on schedule: iraqi-forces-attempt-first-push-mosul Two weeks ago Peshmerga Brigadier General Sidwan Barzani (nephew of the president and telecom millionaire) said that there would be a two-week advance and a six-week mop up. So far, they appear to be…

Body Counts

Have some estimate of losses from the operations around Mosul. See: us-general-says-800-900-fighters-killed-mosul This operations have been going on since Monday, October 17, so I am guessing they cover a 10 day or so period. A few factoids: Up to 900…

Disease

The AIDS epidemic has always held my attention because it is a modern disease that was recently spread. Serves as a warning as to how difficult it is to respond to a new disease or a new variant of a…

More than Halfway to Mosul

Anyhow, this week it appears that the Iraqis have advanced more than halfway to Mosul. The town of Bartella was freed on Thursday: Raise flag in Bartella They are now only 9 miles from Mosul. When the offensive started, it…

Russian Fleet Strength

The Carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the Battle Cruiser Peter the Great are the only two ships of that size in the Russian fleet (keying off the previous post). One source places their active strength at: 1 Carrier (58,660 tons displacement)…

Duration Estimate II

Retired Major General “Spider” Marks was on CNN this morning. He did not buy into the estimate of Mosul being taken in two-three months. I suspect the duration will be driven by three or four factors: How serious of a…

Duration Estimate for Mosul

OK…..someone published a duration estimate for Mosul: Mosul Estimate Not sure a Peshmerga Brigadier General is supposed to be providing this information to the press, but I assume it comes from some of their planning. The main points: “The Battle…