Shawn Woodford

Shawn Woodford

Shawn Robert Woodford, Ph.D., is a military historian with nearly two decades of research, writing, and analytical experience on operations, strategy, and national security policy. His work has focused on special operations, unconventional and paramilitary warfare, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, naval history, quantitative historical analysis, nineteenth and twentieth century military history, and the history of nuclear weapon development. He has a strong research interest in the relationship between politics and strategy in warfare and the epistemology of wargaming and combat modeling. All views expressed here are his and do not reflect those of any other private or public organization or entity.

Force Ratios and Counterinsurgency

How many troops are needed to defeat an insurgency? This deceptively innocuous question is laden with political and military peril. The answer is, of course, that it depends. Some contend that a precise ratio of counterinsurgents to insurgents or to…

Iraq/Syria Intervention Scenarios

There are a lot of potential variables to consider in developing a casualty estimate for a potential large-scale intervention. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have floated various proposals to deploy 10,000 U.S. ground combat troops to both Iraq and…