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.

5,000

IS Weakening Inside Mosul Key quote: “We still anticipate that somewhere between 5,000 or so fighters are inside Mosul,” Garver said. “We’re still anticipating a tough fight.” There are also ISIL fighters outside of Mosul. Note that the article states…

Population around Mosul

Mosul is a big prize. The Islamic State is fundamentally different without this city. A few population stats pulled from this article: Up to One Million Could Flee Mosul 1. “An estimated 3 million people live under Islamic State rule…

Neanderthals

Nominally this blog is about “quantitative historical analysis”….not just as related to defense, not just as related to The Dupuy Institute’s work. We have not posted much here outside of our immediate areas of expertise (and one could certainly argue…

Joe Gould

My search for the largest history book ever written brought me to this man: Joe Gould He was working on a book called “An Oral History of Our Time” that was supposedly 9,000,000 words (compared to my feeble 791,698 words…

Mosul to be Retaken Soon?

It looks like Mosul is about to be retaken soon: Mosul Assault in Focus…. It is about time. Don’t recall many cases where the insurgents grabbed a major city and it took the conventional forces over two years to retake…