Category Conventional warfare

Table of Contents: War by Numbers

Preface                                                                                                   ix

Acknowledgments                                                                                  xi

Abbreviations                                                                                         xiii

  1. Understanding War                                                                        1

  2. Force Ratios                                                                                   8
  3. Attacker versus Defender                                                             14
  4. Human Factors                                                                             16
  5. Measuring Human Factors in Combat: Italy 1943-1944               19
  6. Measuring Human Factors in Combat: Ardennes and Kursk       32
  7. Measuring Human Factors in Combat: Modern Wars                  49
  8. Outcome of Battles                                                                       60
  9. Exchange Ratios                                                                          72
  10. The Combat Value of Superior Situational Awareness                79
  11. The Combat Value of Surprise                                                   121
  12. The Nature of Lower Levels of Combat                                      146
  13. The Effects of Dispersion on Combat                                         163
  14. Advance Rates                                                                            174
  15. Casualties                                                                                    181
  16. Urban Legends                                                                            206
  17. The Use of Case Studies                                                             265
  18. Modeling Warfare                                                                        285
  19. Validation of the TNDM                                                               299
  20. Conclusions                                                                                 325

Appendix I: Dupuy’s Timeless Verities of Combat                                329

Appendix II: Dupuy’s Combat Advance Rate Verities                           335

Appendix III: Dupuy’s Combat Attrition Verities                                    339

Notes                                                                                                     345

Bibliography                                                                                           369

 

The book is 374 pages plus 14 pages of front matter.

 

15 Books Received !!!

I just received my 15 author copies of War by Numbers. So it is now available for $39.95 from Potomac Books (University of Nebraska Press): War by Numbers

This means it should be available from Amazon.com next week: War by Numbers

I don’t how quickly the foreign book sellers will receive them, but expect them to have  copies available in the next couple of weeks.

I did not order 200 copies for The Dupuy Institute to sell, unlike I did with America’s Modern Wars, so it will not be directly available from us: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/booksfs.htm

This figure is on page 175 of the book, Chapter 14: Advance Rates:

 

 

Aussie OR

Over the years I have run across a number of Australian Operations Research and Historical Analysis efforts. Overall, I have been impressed with what I have seen. Below is one of their papers written by Nigel Perry. He is not otherwise known to me. It is dated December 2011: Applications of Historical Analyses in Combat Modeling

It does address the value of Lanchester equations in force-on-force combat models, which in my mind is already a settled argument (see: Lanchester Equations Have Been Weighed). His is the latest argument that I gather reinforces this point.

The author of this paper references the work of Robert Helmbold and Dean Hartley (see page 14). He does favorably reference the work of Trevor Dupuy but does not seem to be completely aware of the extent or full nature of it (pages 14, 16, 17, 24 and 53). He does not seem to aware that the work of Helmbold and Hartley was both built from a database that was created by Trevor Dupuy’s companies HERO & DMSI. Without Dupuy, Helmbold and Hartley would not have had data to work from.

Specifically, Helmbold was using the Chase database, which was programmed by the government from the original paper version provided by Dupuy. I think it consisted of 597-599 battles (working from memory here). It also included a number of coding errors when they programmed it and did not include the battle narratives. Hartley had Oakridge National Laboratories purchase a computerized copy from Dupuy of what was now called the Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB). It consisted of 603 or 605 engagements (and did not have the coding errors but still did not include the narratives). As such, they both worked from almost the same databases.

Dr. Perrty does take a copy of Hartley’s  database and expands it to create more engagements. He says he expanded it from 750 battles (except the database we sold to Harley had 603 or 605 cases) to around 1600. It was estimated in the 1980s by Curt Johnson (Director and VP of HERO) to take three man-days to create a battle. If this estimate is valid (actually I think it is low), then to get to 1600 engagements the Australian researchers either invested something like 10 man-years of research, or relied heavily on secondary sources without any systematic research, or only partly developed each engagement (for example, only who won and lost). I suspect the latter.

Dr. Perry shows on page 25:

Data-segment……..Start…….End……Number of……Attacker…….Defender

Epoch…………………Year…….Year……..Battles………Victories……Victories

Ancient………………- 490…….1598………….63………………36……………..27

17th Century……….1600…….1692………….93………………67……………..26

18th Century……….1700…….1798………..147…………….100……………..47

Revolution…………..1792……1800…………238…………….168…………….70

Empire……………….1805……1815…………327……………..203…………..124

ACW………………….1861……1865…………143……………….75…………….68

19th Century……….1803…….1905…………126……………….81…………….45

WWI………………….1914…….1918…………129……………….83…………….46

WWII…………………1920…….1945…………233……………..165…………….68

Korea………………..1950…….1950…………..20……………….20………………0

Post WWII………….1950……..2008…………118……………….86…………….32

 

We, of course, did something very similar. We took the Land Warfare Data Base (the 605 engagement version), expanded in considerably with WWII and post-WWII data, proofed and revised a number of engagements using more primarily source data, divided it into levels of combat (army-level, division-level, battalion-level, company-level) and conducted analysis with the 1280 or so engagements we had. This was a much more powerful and better organized tool. We also looked at winner and loser, but used the 605 engagement version (as we did the analysis in 1996). An example of this, from pages 16 and 17 of my manuscript for War by Numbers shows:

Attacker Won:

 

                        Force Ratio                Force Ratio    Percent Attack Wins:

                        Greater than or         less than          Force Ratio Greater Than

                        equal to 1-to-1            1-to1                or equal to 1-to-1

1600-1699        16                              18                         47%

1700-1799        25                              16                         61%

1800-1899        47                              17                         73%

1900-1920        69                              13                         84%

1937-1945      104                                8                         93%

1967-1973        17                              17                         50%

Total               278                              89                         76%

 

Defender Won:

 

                        Force Ratio                Force Ratio    Percent Defense Wins:

                        Greater than or         less than          Force Ratio Greater Than

                        equal to 1-to-1            1-to1                or equal to 1-to-1

1600-1699           7                                6                       54%

1700-1799         11                              13                       46%

1800-1899         38                              20                       66%

1900-1920         30                              13                       70%

1937-1945         33                              10                       77%

1967-1973         11                                5                       69%

Total                130                              67                       66%

 

Anyhow, from there (pages 26-59) the report heads into an extended discussion of the analysis done by Helmbold and Hartley (which I am not that enamored with). My book heads in a different direction: War by Numbers III (Table of Contents)

 

 

Battle Outcomes: Casualty Rates As a Measure of Defeat

This third article in the box I was about to trash was also written by someone I knew, Robert McQuie. It was a five-page article published in Army magazine in November 1987 (pages 30-34) called “Battle Outcomes: Casualty Rates As a Measure of Defeat.” I was an article I was aware of, but had not seen for probably around three decades. It was based upon data assembled by HERO (Trevor Dupuy). It was part of the lead-in to the Breakpoints Project that we later did.

The by-line of the article is “A study of data from mid-twentieth century warfare suggest that casualties–whether the reality or the perception of them—are only occasionally a factor in command decisions to break off unsuccessful battles.” 

The analysis was based upon 80 engagements from 1941-1982. Of those 52 were used to create the table below (from page 34):

Reasons for a Force Abandoning An Attack or Defense:

Maneuver by Enemy…………………………..Percent

  Envelopment, encirclement, penetration……..33

  Adjacent friendly unit withdrew………………..13

  Enemy occupied key terrain…………………….6

  Enemy achieved surprise……………………….8

  Enemy reinforced………………………………..4

Total………………………………………………64

 

Firepower by Enemy

  Casualty or equipment losses……………………10

  Heavy artillery or air attacks by enemy…………..2

Total…………………………………………………12

 

Other Reasons

  No reserves left……………………………………….12

  Supply shortage………………………………………..2

  Truce or surrender…………………………………….6

  Change in weather…………………………………….2

  Orders to withdraw…………………………………….2

Total…………………………………………………….24

 

He then goes on in the article to question the utility of Lanchester equations, ending with the statement “It appears as well that Mr. Lanchester’s equations present a drastic misstatement of what drives the outcome of combat.” He also points out that many wargames and simulations terminate simulated battles at 15% to 30% casualties a day, ending with the statement that “The evidence indicated that in most cases, a force has quit when its casualties reached less than ten percent per battle. In most battles, moreover, defeat has not been caused by casualties.”

Robert McQuie was a senior operations research analyst for U.S. Army’s CAA (Concepts Analysis Agency). In 1987 I was working at HERO and considering heading back to school to get a graduate degree in Operations Research (OR). At Trevor Dupuy’s recommendation, I discussed it with Robert McQuie, who stated strongly not to do so because it was a “waste of time.” His argument was that while Operations Research was good at answering questions where the results could be optimized, it was incapable of answering the bigger questions. He basically felt the discipline had reached a dead end.

Anyhow, another keeper.

 

Extending the Battlefield

The second oldest article in this box I was about to throw away is called “Extending the Battlefield” by General Donn A. Starry, US Army. It is dated March 1981 from the Military Review. It is 20 pages long.

Its primary focus is on deep strike. It states 1) First, deep strike is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity to winning, 2) Second, deep strike, particular in an environment of scarce acquisition and strike assets, must be tightly coordinated over time with the decisive close-in battle…3) Third, it is important to consider now the number of systems entering the force in the near and middle-term future….4) Finally, the concept is designed to be the unifying idea which pulled all these emerging capabilities together so that, together, they can allow us to realize their full combined potential for winning.

This was an approach specifically oriented towards engaging the Soviet second echelon. I was never much of a fan of deep strike, as I sort of felt you probably wanted to engage the first echelon first….and could worry about the second echelon later. A reading of my Kursk book (in case you have the time) clearly shows the limitations of the Soviet two-echelon system of fighting. It did tend to lead to piecemeal attacks.

I met General Starry once. My father worked for him in the Pentagon and during a family visit during the Christmas party, he came down to say Merry Christmas to all the people working in the basement of the building. I happened to be there, and was applying to West Point (U.S. Military Academy) at the time. He sat down and had a half-hour talk with me about why someone should or should not attend West Point. It was nice gesture on his part.

I guess I will keep this article also.

 

NTC Exercise

This article caught my attention (updated the link): https://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-military-might-not-best-164000460.html

I remember observing a National Training Center (NTC) rotation around 2000 (the map shown above is not from this exercise). It was an armor or mechanized brigade and an air mobile brigade against the usual reinforced company of very experienced defending opposing forces.

One of the first disasters occurred when the air mobile brigade decided to conduct an insertion against an opposing force (OPFOR) that was completely ready for this. They ended up loosing a number of helicopters and were halted. So much for their “verticle envelopment” effort. Interesting enough, in 2003, outside of Baghdad, I gather we attempted the same thing, with similar results. An army fights as it trains.

The other early disaster was an early morning (still dark) attack that failed to take a large hill in the south of the battlefield that was enemy occupied. This hill gave the defenders complete oversight of the entire U.S. armored brigades’ attack in the morning.

Still, with the vertical envelopment having failed, and with their flank not covered, they then attacked forward with rather predictable results, especially when they hit the minefield that extended across the open area of the battlefield. It turned out that the brigades’ engineering assets were still in the rear. It took some time (read: hours) to bring them up. In the meantime the brigade was stranded in the middle of a wide-open desert area that was over-watched by the enemy. This experience may have been a career killer for the brigade commander.

Their only success came from an attached “Ukrainian armored company” that was not Ukrainian, but was actually people from the opposing forces playing an attached foreign contingent. They managed to maneuver through some rocky area on the north side of the battlefield, because they knew it intimately, bypassed the minefield that was holding up the rest of the brigade, and flanked the defenders. I gather this won the battle for the attackers.

Anyhow, I have no knowledge that allows me to comment on Captain Metz’s article, other than to note what I saw in my observation of a NTC exercise.

Back to the Future

The opening sentence of an article by Dan Goure caught my attention: “Every decade of so since the 1960s, the U.S. Army creates a requirement for what can nominally be described as a light tank.” The article is here: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/its-back-the-future-mobile-protected-firepower-20539?page=show

It reminds me of a meeting we had in late 2000 with Walt Hollis, Deputy Under Secretary of the Army (Operations Research). He started the meeting by telling us that something like “Every now and then, someone seems to want to bring back the light tank.” He then went on to explain that these requirements are being pushed from the top (meaning by the Chief of Staff of the Army) and they should probably have a study done on the subject. He then asked us to do such an effort.

We did and it is here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/mwa-2lightarmor.pdf

We decided to examine the effectiveness of lighter-weight armor based upon real-world experience in six possible scenarios:

  1. Conventional conflicts against an armor supported or armor heavy force.
  2. Emergency insertions against an armor support or armor heavy force.
  3. Conventional conflict against a primarily infantry force (as one might encounter in sub-Saharan Africa).
  4. Emergency insertion against a primarily infantry force.
  5. A small to medium insurgency (includes an insurgency that develops during a peacekeeping operation).
  6. A peacekeeping operation or similar Operation Other Than War (OOTW) that has some potential for violence.

Anyhow, I am not going to summarize the report here as that would take too long. I did draft up a chapter on it for inclusion in War by Numbers, but decided to leave it out as it did not fit into the “theory testing” theme of the book. Instead, I am holding it for one of my next books, Future American Wars.

The interesting aspect of the report is that we were at a meeting in 2001 at an Army OR outfit that was reviewing our report, and they told us that the main point of action they drew from the report was that we needed to make sure our armor vehicles were better protected against mines. As our report looked at the type of tank losses being suffered in the insurgencies and OOTWs, there were a lot of vehicles being lost to mines. Apparently they had not fully realized this (and Iraq did not occur until 2003).

‘Your Lyin’ Eyes’: Visualizing the A2/AD Environment in Europe

The Russia – NATO A2AD Environment. [CSIS]

Over, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Ian Williams, Kathleen Weinberger, and Colonel John O’Grady have assembled data on NATO and Russian anti-access/area denial (known as A2/AD, love it or hate it) capabilities, which has been turned into a fascinating interactive graphic. The capabilities depicted include “air defenses, counter-maritime forces, and theater offensive strike weapons, such as short- or medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other precision guided munitions.”

Information on the map is divided into six categories:

Russia – Air Defense: Includes deployments of long-range Russian anti-air missile systems. Specific systems represented are the S-300 and S-400. Not included in map are Russia’s shorter ranged, highly mobile air defense assets, such as the Buk family of surface to air missile systems. These “shoot and scoot” launchers are embedded with Russian ground forces, and thus do not have fixed locations.

Russia – Land-based Strike: Includes deployments of short-range offensive ballistic missile systems, such as the SS-26 or Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, as well as deployments of Russian Oniks anti-ship missiles to Kaliningrad.

Russia – Naval strike: This category reflects the range (from notional locations) of Russia’s sea-based SS-N-30A Kalibr-type cruise missiles, and its SS-N-27 Sizzler anti-ship missiles.

NATO – Air Defense: Shows the estimated coverage areas and home-base disposition of NATO PATRIOT missile units, separately showing ballistic missile and air defense coverage areas. Although not reflected in this map, NATO is heavily reliant on fighter aircraft for air defense.

NATO – Naval Strike: Reflects the estimated range of U.S. Tomahawk Block IV (TLAM-E) sea-based cruise missiles.

NATO – Ports of Debarkation/Embarkations (PODs): These points show key logistical infrastructure, such as airports and seaports (APODs / SPODs), that could be used by NATO forces.

Figuring out how to fight effectively in this environment is what is keeping American and Western national security thinkers and planners up at night these days. The Third Offset Strategy was the first crack at doing so. Whether it will survive into the incoming Trump administration remains to be seen, though some signs indicate that it will. Stay tuned, folks.

Tanks and Russian Hybrid Warfare

tanks-russian-hybrid-warfareU.S. Army Major Amos Fox, currently a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, has produced an insightful analysis of the role of tanks in Russian hybrid warfare tactics and operations. His recent article in Armor, the journal of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence at Ft. Benning, Georgia, offers a sense of the challenges of high-intensity combat on the near-future hybrid warfare battlefield.

Fox assesses current Russia Army tactical and operational capabilities as quite capable.

Russia’s contemporary operations embody the characteristic of surprise. Russian operations in Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate a rapid, decentralized attack seeking to temporally dislocate the enemy, triggering the opposing forces’ defeat. These methods stand in stark contrast to the old Soviet doctrine of methodical, timetable-and echelon-driven employment of ground forces that sought to outmass the opposing army. Current Russian land-warfare tactics are something which most armies, including the U.S. Army, are largely unprepared to address.

Conversely, after achieving limited objectives, Russia quickly transitions to the defense using ground forces, drones and air-defense capabilities to build a tough, integrated position from which extrication would be difficult, to be sure. Russia’s defensive operations do not serve as a simple shield, but rather, as a shield capable of also delivering well-directed, concentrated punches on the opposition army. Russia’s paradoxical use of offensive operations to set up the defense might indicate an ascendency of the defense as the preferred method of war in forthcoming conflicts.

These capabilities will pose enormous challenges to U.S. and allied forces in any potential land combat scenario.

Russia’s focus on limited objectives, often in close proximity to its own border, indicates that U.S. Army combined-arms battalions and cavalry squadrons will likely find themselves on the wrong end of the “quality of firsts” (Figure 4). The U.S. Army’s physical distance from those likely battlefields sets the Army at a great disadvantage because it will have to hastily deploy forces to the region, meaning the Army will arrive late; the arrival will also be known (location, time and force composition). The Army will have great difficulty seizing the initiative due to its arrival and movement being known, which weakens the Army’s ability to fight and win decisively. This dynamic provides time, space and understanding for the enemy to further prepare for combat operations and strengthen its integrated defensive positions. Therefore, U.S. Army combined-arms battalions and cavalry squadrons must be prepared to fight through a rugged enemy defense while maintaining the capability for continued offensive operations.

Fox’s entire analysis is well worth reading and pondering. He also published another excellent analysis of Russian hybrid warfare with a General Staff College colleague, Captain (P) Andrew J. Rossow, in Small Wars Journal.