Category Historical Analysis Annual Conference

Cost of the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September 2022

The cost of attendance to the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC) on 27-29 September 2022 will be $150 for the entire conference. Dining and hotels are at the expense of the attendees. There will be facilities for virtual attendees and virtual presenters, but the focus of the conference will be in-person presentations and attendees.

Cost for attendance for a single day is $60. As the conference is near Tyson Corner metro (Silver line), then a number of people in the area may wish to attend for only one day.

We are offering a student discount of only $20 a day. That kind of only applies to real students. The conference costs are listed below: 

Costs:

  1. Conference fee = $150
  2. Attendance for one day = $60
  3. Presenters get a $60 discount.
  4. Student discounted price = $20 for a day.
  5. The Dupuy Institute discount = free
    1. Former employees of TDI/TNDA/DMSI/HERO
    2. Former members of the board of TDI

Payment: 

Please make payments to our paypal account SRichTDI@aol.com. 

We will also be able to take payments at the conference but prefer to get a good feel for the number attendees ahead of time. As this is the first time we have held such a conference, it would be nice to know if 40 people are attending or is it more like 160. The facilities we have rented are expandable, but we do need to make some plans before the conference.

The money for the conference is to pay for the conference facilities and will be placed in a separate bank account that will be answerable to an independent board. That board will be elected on the third day of the conference.

The First Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September 2022 in Tysons Corner, VA

Announcing the first Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September, 2022 in Tysons Corner, VA, USA. It is being hosted by The Dupuy Institute but is an open conference and we are looking for interested presenters and attendees from all corners of the historical analysis, operations research, and historical research communities.

Purpose:

To explore and promote the use of historical analysis in understanding military affairs.

It is built in part upon the work done by the HERO (Historical Evaluation Research Organization), TNDA (Trevor N. Dupuy and Associates), DMSI (Data Memory Systems Inc.), TMCI (The Military Conflict Institute), TDI (The Dupuy Institute) and elements of the Cornwallis Group. Similar in concept to the TMCI conferences.

First Conference:

Will be held 27-29 September 2022 at Tysons Corner, Virginia, near Washington, DC. It is in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Trevor N. Dupuy founded organizations and the 30th anniversary of The Dupuy Institute.

It is expected that the conference will include a wide range of attendees and presenters from private industry, academia, the U.S. government, the UK operational research and historical analysis community, and other interested parties.

The first day (Tuesday) of the conference with be focused on Analysis of Conventional Warfare, the second day (Wednesday) on Analysis of Unconventional Warfare and the third day (Thursday) with include Other Analysis of Warfare. Each presentation will be a maximum of 45 minutes with at least 15 minutes set aside for questions and discussion.

If demand is high enough, the conference will be broken into working groups as required.

Historical Analysis:

There is no clear definition as to what historical analysis consists of. For the purposes of this conference, it is that analysis of history that is focused on military affairs and is usually quantitative in approach and based upon a large number of cases (as opposed to being a case study). Historical Analysis is considered a proper subdiscipline of UK Operational Research. It is not considered part of Operations Research in the United States.

The UK Dstl defines historical analysis as “The use of mathematical, statistical, qualitative and other forms of analysis to understand historical engagements, operations, campaigns and conflicts for the purpose of providing impartial analysis and sensitive decision support to policy makers.”

The key elements of what The Dupuy Institute looks for in historical analysis is that it is 1) based upon history, with a strong bias towards primary sources (i.e. unit records), 2) it is a based upon a representative sample of cases, not just a case study of one or two cases, 3) it is analytical in approach, 4) it is using past real-world experience for analyzing and addressing a problem of today. Historical analysis is simply the analysis of real-world experiences.

There are people who are doing surveys of historical operations, basically doing multiple case studies to examine trends and patterns. While these are not based upon the large databases that The Dupuy Institute favors, these are efforts worth examining and such efforts will also be explored at our conferences.

Costs:

Cost of attendance will be $150 for the entire conference. Dining and hotels are at the expense of the attendees. There will be facilities for virtual attendees and virtual presenters, but the focus of the conference will be in-person presentations and attendees.

Call for Presentations:

We are making a call for papers and presentations at that time. We have already set up a preliminary list of presenters.

Long-term Goal:

The long-term goal is a create a series of periodic conferences for the purposes of presenting, examining and encouraging historical analysis of military affairs across a wide-range of issues.

For questions, suggestions, comments, or to volunteer for presentations, please contact:

Christopher A. Lawrence

The Dupuy Institute

(703) 289-0007

LawrenceTDI@aol.com

 

P.S. In subsequent posts I will be posting the rates for the conference, the list of nearby hotels, and a preliminary list of presenters.

So What Does My Book Say About Afghanistan?

Tank park of Soviet tanks near Kunduz, 4 May 2008. These were left over ordnance from the previous war. (photo by William A. Lawrence II).

Now that America has lost another war, what does my book say about Afghanistan?

In 2015 my book, America’s Modern Wars, was published. It took a while to line up a publisher. I ended up having to give it a complete re-working. I do have a chapter on Afghanistan. This book came about as a result of work we were doing in 2004-2005 on providing a duration and casualty estimate for Iraq. This happened to unfortunately, be correct. See: Forecasting the Iraqi Insurgency | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

Then we were contracted to expand our databases and conducted analysis on insurgencies in general. This produced some 16 reports. See I-3 through 14, MISS-1 through 5 and OSD-1 and OTI-1: TDI – The Dupuy Institute Publications

As people outside of DOD heard of our work, we were asked to provide briefings to the U.S. Intelligence community. We ended up with a contract with them (this is OTI-1). At no point in the process we were specifically tasked to look at Afghanistan, although it was one of the 109 cases in our database. Finally, we were asked by the National Intelligence Council to brief on Afghanistan, which we had never done any in-depth analysis of. The briefing was called “Iraq, Data, Hypotheses and Afghanistan (5 December 2008)” This briefing kind of mutated into Chapter 21 of my book “Relating a Force Ratio Model to Afghanistan.” I also will be presenting this briefing “as is” at a conference next September (more on that in January).

All of our work on insurgencies ended in 2009. Apparently, the DOD felt they had a grasp of the issue and did not need our support anymore. So we ceased doing any work on insurgencies after 2009. My book was written 2013-2014 and I did take a moment to update and re-examine a few issues; but, the book is primarily a snap-shot of our analysis and thinking up through 2009. The databases we were using have not been updated since 2008. I have tried to get contracts just to update the databases, but again no interest from DOD. What I would really like to do is update the databases, add in a few more cases, and then update our analysis. Again, not something I am going to do without budget.

So, anyhow, what did my book say about Afghanistan?

First I started the chapter with a quote (see page 253), which is probably a good place to end this particular post:

People often ask me, “How long will this last?” It may happen tomorrow, it may happen a month from now, it may take a year or two, but we will prevail.

–President George W. Bush, 2001, in response to questions in his first news conference 96 hours after the war in Afghanistan had begun.