Category Methodologies

Human Factors In Warfare: Dispersion

Photo of Union soldiers on the Antietam battlefield by Alexander Gardener.

As I have written about before, the foundation of Trevor Dupuy’s theories on combat were based on an initial study in 1964 of the relationship between weapon lethality, casualty rates, and dispersion on the battlefield. The historical trend toward greater dispersion was a response to continual increases in the lethality of weapons.

While this relationship might appear primarily technological in nature, Dupuy considered it the result of the human factor of fear on the battlefield. He put it in more human terms in a symposium paper from 1989:

There is one basic reason for the dispersal of troops on modern battlefields: to mitigate the lethal effects of firepower upon troops. As Lewis Richardson wrote in The Statistics of Deadly Quarrels, there is a limit to the amount of punishment human beings can sustain. Dispersion was resorted to as a tactical response to firepower mostly because—as weapons became more lethal in the 17th Century—soldiers were already beginning to disperse without official sanction. This was because they sensed that on the bloody battlefields of that century they were approaching the limit of the punishment men can stand.

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.

 

Economics of Warfare 18

Continuing with the eighteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture discussed the “costs of terrorism.” Now we have never done much work on terrorism, neither at The Dupuy Institute (TDI) or at any of Trevor Dupuy’s older organizations (TNDA/HERO/DMSI).  At DMSI in the 1980s, they looked at doing work on terrorism, as part of the effort to “expand the business” but it was really not our core expertise and there was already a considerable number of people out there working the subject. We (HERO Books) did end up publishing a couple of books on terrorism. We no longer have them in stock: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/booksfs.htm

Now, terrorism is part of many insurgencies, and in some cases, may be a primary tool of an insurgency. This is especially true if it is an international political movement, like for example, the anarchists in the 1870s-1920s, which actually did assassinate one of our presidents (William McKinley in 1901) and bombed Wall Street in 1920 (38 killed and 400 wounded). International terrorism is not exactly new. If I was going to do anything on international terrorism, a comparative analysis to the anarchist movement, and other such movements, would be my starting point.

Slides 2 and 3 provide a list of causes of death for Americans in 2014. Of course, various diseases top the list (like cardio-vascular and cancer), and then there are 136,053 deaths in 2014 due to accidents, 47,055 due to drug overdoses, 42,773 due to  “intentional self-harm,” 37,195 due to “transportation accidents,” 10,945 due to firearm assault, 6,721 due to HIV, 6,258 pedestrian deaths and of course…..19 due to terrorism in 2014 (and 44 in 2015…see slide 4).

I think this is a very valid point, if as a society we are concerned where to focus our time, resources and attention. As he points out on slide 4, even the 3,004 American deaths suffered in 2001 (9/11) is will below the number of pedestrian deaths in 2014.

He then references a book on slide 8 by Alan Krueger that makes an argument that the economic impact of terrorism is actually relatively low overall (slides 9-20), including making the argument that overreaction to terrorism is very costly (see slide 13).

He then addresses other papers on slides 21 and 37. These are interesting to look at as they attempt to measure the cost of terrorism, both microeconomic cost and macroeconomic costs. Probably best to read through it yourself.

The link to his lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2018.pdf

 

Economics of Warfare 17-3

Finishing up the examination of the seventeenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at:

https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

The first two posts on this lecture addressed the impact of climate change on political violence and civil conflict. This third part “completely shifts gears” and looks at the war in Syria (starting slide 31).  He provides data for percent of men, woman and children killed by weapon type (i.e. Air attack, mortar, small arms) for Iraq (slide 33) and Syria (slide 34). There are a higher percent of woman and children casualties in Iraq than Syria. Not sure what conclusion to draw from that little factoid without further study.

The link to his lecture is here (with the part on Syria covered in slides 31-35): http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2017.pdf

Economics of Warfare 17-2

Continuing the examination of the seventeenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture started with a paper by Hsiang, Burke and Miguel that was a survey of 60 different papers from 1994-2013 on interpersonal conflict and climate, intergroup conflict and climate, and “institutional breakdown and population collapse” and climate (see slides 3-8). This is discussed in more depth on my previous post. Starting on slide 26, he then reviews a group of authors who are critical of the findings of Hsiang, Burke and Miguel. The review makes three arguments

  1. Many of 60 studies are quite similar to each other. For example, many contain African countries and some only contain African countries.
  2. There is a lot of variation of what is modeled and how it is modeled.
  3. They omit other studies that reach other conclusions.

They then provided their own meta-analysis for the effect of climate variability on civil conflict on slide 29. The argument here is not “….that climate has no effect on conflict, but, rather, that the effects of climate on conflict are less clear than claimed…” by the previous studies authors “…and that more research is needed to pin down what the real effects are.”

OK…..noted.

Now going back to America’s Modern War, which I seem to do a lot lately, I do have a chapter called “Other Similar Work” (Chapter 7, pages 70-77) that looks at other work similar to the work I present in that book. I provided in Chapter 6 a logistic regression model that keys off of force ratio and insurgent cause compared to outcome. At the time I wrote the book, there were only two similar studies I was aware of that addressed this. Done independently and at the same time as my study was Andrew Hossack’s study over at Ministry of Defence in the United Kingdom. Done after my study and using the database we developed was a study done by Center for Army Analysis (CAA). Certainly the first two criticisms provided above could be partially applied to this comparison, in that these three studies (The Dupuy Institute, Hossack and CAA) are 1) quite similar to each other, including two studies using the same database and, 2) there is some variation (but not much actually) in what is modeled (although all three studies effectively used the same dependent variable). On the other hand, as far as I know, there are no other quantitative studies out there that reach a contradictory conclusion. There are few studies done comparing force ratios to outcome. Shawn listed seven studies one of his posts, but several were related to troops per 1,000 population as opposed to force ratios:

https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2016/01/08/force-ratios-and-counterinsurgency-ii/

and

https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/2016/01/13/force-ratios-and-counterinsurgency-iii/

Only five studies addressed force ratios and they found a positive correlation in all cases (although there was some debate over the significance).

Now, when I was out marketing my book to publishers, one British editor sent the manuscript to two expert reviewers to look at. One came back with the comment that contemporary studies clearly show that a force ratio model is not correct, and therefore they should not publish. I almost felt like trying to argue with this anonymous reviewer, but there were many other things on my plate (including finding another publisher for the book). I get the sense that because force ratio models of insurgency were discussed in the 1950s and 1960s, and were dismissed by some at the time, that people believe that they are passé. But, it does not appear that the original 10-to-1 or similar force ratio model that was quoted in the 50s and 60s was based upon any systematic quantitative analysis. It also does not appear that the dismissal of it in the 1960s was based upon any systematic quantitative analysis.

Anyhow, that was somewhat of a long and not clearly related aside. But sometimes, the Dr. Spagat lectures get me thinking back to my work and how it compares and contrasts these other attempts to quantify and model conflict phenomena. The link to his lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2017.pdf

Economics of Warfare 17 – 1

Examining the seventeenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

As is the case with the last two lectures, this one also focuses on climate and conflict. It starts with a paper by Hsiang, Burke and Miguel (a different paper than the one in the last lecture by the same authors). This paper is not a single test, but a survey of 60 different papers from 1994-2013. There are 15 that look at interpersonal conflict and climate (usually temperature compared to crime), 30 that look at intergroup conflict and climate (often rain or temperature compared to civil conflict), and 15 that look at “institutional breakdown and population collapse” and climate. All these are listed in slides 3-8.

The discussion after that goes into considerable depth (and is certainly worth perusing), but the conclusion on slide 25 is “HBM seem to present a pretty impressive accumulation of evidence associating higher temperatures with more conflict….” (my bolding)

And he notes: “The authors admit that there is not a lot of research spelling out plausible mechanism that might explain why higher temperatures are associated with more violence.”

I will stop here and pick this up tomorrow. Starting on slide 26, he then reviews a group of authors who are critical of the findings of Hsiang, Burke and Miguel.

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2017.pdf

 

Economics of Warfare 16

Examining the sixteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture also addresses climate change. In effect, it is looking at the impact of droughts on civil war incidence. The first part of the lecture focuses on a study done by Coutteneir and Soubeyran. It is also a cross-country analysis.

The thing that caught my attention was that they choose to exclude the anti-colonial wars and “internationalized wars:” (slide 2). These are a significant number of cases, although I can understand their reasons for doing so. Certainly the drivers behind these wars was much more the local climate conditions. So, they start by removing the cases that they know are not driven by climate change.

Now, when I originally did the Iraq Casualty Estimate (see Chapter One of America’s Modern Wars) I had a significant number of these “colonial wars of national liberation” in my data set, mostly dating from the 1950s and 1960s. As I was briefing the results of my estimates inside the Army and DOD community in early 2005, this suddenly became an issue. I think one person inside an organization glommed onto this issue as a way of obviating my results. I ended up going over to give the brief in DOD and was notified that they had been informed that my results were biased by having too many “colonial wars of national liberation” in my data set. Not exactly sure how having “colonial wars of national liberation” in my data set biased my estimate of casualties and duration in an Iraq insurgency, but this was the argument they were making. So for my briefing, I did my original briefing, and then added a little addendum that addressed my results if I took out the dozen or so cases of “colonial wars of national liberation.” It did not change my results. This was a fairly embarrassing exercise in that I think that person in question wanted to dismiss my results because they either did not believe them, it violated his cosmology, or the higher ups in DOD had already decided that we would not be facing a major guerilla war. Never really knew what the reasoning was. It is alluded to in my book on page 28.

Anyhow, there are valid reasons I believe for leaving out “colonial wars of national liberation” from this climate change test, but I do not believe there was for my Iraq Casualty Estimate.

With those cases left out, Couttenier and Soubeyran do come up with a fairly consistent and positive relationship between drought and internal armed conflict (slide 2 – 3)

The next part addresses a paper by Hsiang et al. (paper is linked on slide 4). It discussed El Nino. Having lived in California in the 1980s, El Nino is something very familiar to me (as are earthquakes), but Dr. Spagat provides a nice explanation of it on slides 4-5 for his British students. The advantage of looking at El Nino (hotter and dryer periods) and La Nina (colder and wetter periods) is that you again get sort of the side-by-side laboratory effect that social scientists have to struggle to find.

His next series of slides gets into the nuts and bolts of the study, but they ended up tracking “Annual Conflict Risk” (ACR) which is 2% for countries weakly affected by these weather patterns, 3% for countries affected by La Nina (cool and wet) and 6% for countries affected by El Nino (warm and dry). See slide 15.

The next slides examine the studies in more depth, with Dr. Spagat making the statement on slide 23 that “Ultimately, though, I feel that we need some convincing case studies linking ENSO with armed conflict in specific times and places for the Hsiao et al. work to be fully convincing.”

Slides 24-29 end up discussing “panel data”

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2016.pdf

 

Economics of Warfare 15-2

Continuing with the fifteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture addresses the impact of global warming on armed conflict over time. My previous post on the subject concerned a cross-country analysis of the impact of temperature on civil wars in sub-Saharan Africa that was not very convincing, even though it made the rather shocking claim that: “Burke et al. go on to predict 393,000 excess battle deaths caused by climate change…” (my bolding).

Probably the most interesting aspect of the presentation was when Dr. Spagat’s TA used the model to make predictions from the period 2003-2013 and also tested the model with the temperature variable removed from the model. Dr. Spagat’s conclusion was (slide 22) “…They mean that temperature is not very useful for predicting civil war….”

Then starting slide 23, the presentation looks at an effort by O’Loughlin et al. to look the impact of temperature and precipitation not by cross-country analysis, but by looking at local variations. They divided up East Africa into grid that are about 100 by 100 kilometers. They then measured it to a dependent variable that was the number of violent incidents. They then tested it using a “negative binomial regression model” (another methodology I have no experience using). They ran five different simple models, of which only one produced a statistically significant measure, and it was negative (meaning more rain = less violence). A sixth model he ran (“GAM splines”) did provide some fits by using different sized deviations and fitting a smoothed curve to these estimates (I really haven’t take the time to figure out what he did). The end result was that this last model provided some indication that:

  1. Wet weather reduce violent incidents
  2. Large warn deviations (unusually warm weather) increase violent incidents.

The O’Loughlin paper is here: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/45/18344.full

All the papers discussed are in the Dr. Spagat’s slides, so you can see the original. Just to grab a few quotes from the O’Loughlin paper:

  1. “Recent studies concerning the possible relationship between climate trends and the risks of violent conflict have yielded contradictory results….”
  2. “Sweeping generalizations have undermined a genuine understanding of any climate–conflict link, whereas cumulative results from the numerous studies of individual communities are difficult to summarize.”

This, of course, harkens back to my first observations over a decade ago when I saw the CNA study that was predicting increased wars, violence and problems (and perhaps increased U.S. intervention) as a result of climate change. Again….we really do not know if this is the case. Added to that, some of the areas that may be most affected by climate change are the areas that the United States are not likely to get heavily involved in (read: Sub-Sahara Africa). So, while climate change may be a very real problem, it may not have a huge impact on our defense policy and planning in the next couple of decades outside of the Arctic (and the Arctic is a whole separate discussion). We should be careful not to assume a significant cause-and-effect (climate change = many more wars) when there is not strong evidence to do so.

The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2015.pdf

Economics of Warfare 15-1

Moving onto the fifteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture addresses the impact of global warming on armed conflict over time. If you happen to be one of those who believes that global warming is pseudo-science/a scientific hoax/an excuse to troll for research $$$/an invention of Al Gore/a liberal plot/a religion/a Chinese plot/obviously false because it was cold yesterday/and so forth…..then probably best to stop reading. On the other hand, we have done some proposals on measuring the impact of climate change on violence and consider this a legitimate area of study. Our attention was drawn to the subject over a decade ago when a CNA (Center for Naval Analysis) paper came out that postulated that global warming could result in more violence. This conclusion does not appear to have been based upon any analysis of data, just the assumption that as things get worse (in the environment) then things are going to get worse (with armed conflict). Of course, going back to Feierabend & Feierabend (and I do go back to them a lot)….poorer counties had less political violence than developing countries. Therefore, it does not necessarily follow that worse environmental and economics conditions results in more violence. The effect may be the reverse, which is that declining conditions may actually result in a reduction of violence. We really don’t know. Trying to examine these effects analytically was the gist of my proposals on the subject, but sequestration happened and budget for anything seemed to disappear.

So….first two sentences of Dr. Spagat’s slides are

“There is a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is getting warmer over time.”

“It is reasonable to imagine that a side effect of global warming could be an increase in armed conflict over time.”

Slide 2 looks at possible channels that could lead to conflict

  1. Dwindling food supply
  2. Dwindling water supply
  3. Sea Level changes causing migration.

On slide 3 he then addresses a study by Burke and others that attempt to address these concerns using a cross-country regression approach and linear probability model.

On slide 5 the results are summarized as “…an increase of 1 degree centigrade for a  particularly country in a particular year is associated with a 0.0447 increase in the probability of there being an ongoing civil war….”

and on slide 11 as: “This means that Burke et al. predict that 15.8-17.1% of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2030 will suffer from big civil wars rather than the 11% that would occur without the warming climate.”

and on slide 16 as: “Burke et al. go on to predict 393,000 excess battle deaths caused by climate change…” (my bolding). Dr. Spagat then examines this number in the next two slides. It doesn’t sound like he fully accepts it.

Now, Burke based his study on the period from 1981-2002. One of Dr. Spagat’s TAs then used the model to make predictions from the period 2003-2013. There is nothing like trying to use a model to predict the past. It sort of shows whether it really works or not. This was the reasoning because the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base and the Kursk Data Base that we did (they were model validation data bases). It is related in concept to what I did in America’s Modern War, pages 65-68 when I tested my logistics probability model back to the 68 cases used to create the model and tried to figure out for each case why the model was predicting wrong. Once you have a model, there are lots of things to test it to in the past. If you can’t predict the past, you may not be able to predict the future.

Anyhow, the results are on slide 19 and summarized in slide 20 as

  1. “There are 414 “no war” predictions…A war actually happens in 11 out of these 414 cases.”
  2. “There are 37 predictions of “war”. War actually happens in 7 out of these 37 cases.”

Not sure I am any smarter at this point, but I am certainly amused.

His final point is “The Burke et al. model seems to be of some use in predicting wars although it seems have a general tendency to predict war too often.”

And then Dr. Spagat TA test how important the temperature variable is for making these predictions, so takes the temperature variable out of the model !!! This produces a table (slide 21) that is almost identical to his original table. The impact of removing the temperature from the model is that it produced five more false positives (predicted wars that did not happen). I am even more amused.

Spagat’s conclusion (slide 22) is “…They mean that temperature is not very useful for predicting civil war….”

This is a good point to stop…I will pick up the rest of this lecture in another post. The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2015.pdf

Economics of Warfare 14

Well, I managed to turn Dr. Spagat’s last lecture into three blog posts. Probably could do that for most of them. There is a lot in them. Moving onto the fourteenth lecture from Professor Michael Spagat’s Economics of Warfare course that he gives at Royal Holloway University. It is posted on his blog Wars, Numbers and Human Losses at: https://mikespagat.wordpress.com/

This lecture focuses on the impact of foreign aid on a conflict and starts with a study by Nunn and Qian (link to it is on slide 1). It is another cross-national study (by the way, I love cross-national studies). As always, Dr. Spagat’s asides are loaded with meaning. In this case, on slide 2 he again mentions the problem of reverse causation, where the subject you are trying to measure (the dependent variable) is in fact, probably influencing the so-called independent variable. In effect, you are trying to establish cause-and-effect when there is also a flow the other way (the effect is affecting the cause).

Moving through to slide 14 is the rather counterintuitive conclusion of the study done by Nunn and Qian which is that “US food aid seems to contribute to prolonging conflicts but not to starting new ones.” Not sure what to make of that.

He then shifts to a study that focuses just on the Philippines using an approach called the “regression discontinuity approach” (which is something I have never played with). What gets my attention is that the paper’s author’s (Crost, Felter and Johnston)  set up a way to do a side-by-side experiment looking at different municipalities that received aid vice ones that did not. As Dr. Spagat notes on slide 16: “Once again, the idea is to create a situation that resembles a controlled experiment.”

This “controlled experiment” or “side-by-side approach” was the basis of our three urban warfare studies done for the Center for Army Analysis and our situational awareness study that we did for OSD Net Assessment. In the first we looked at engagement results in urban areas vice non-urban areas; and in the situational awareness study we compared engagement results for situations where they knew a lot about their enemy compared to those where they did not. Both of these studies are discussed in some depth in my upcoming book War by Numbers, which I still think will be released this August.

The discussion after that gets a little dense, but the conclusion presented on slide 26 is that also that “…aid leads to conflict.” and “…that insurgents work specifically to prevent aid flowing so that they can prevent local governments from winning over its citizens by providing them with good services.” Interesting. We really have not done any comparable work on this.

Starting on slide 27, he looks are an analytical paper examining the issue rape during Civil War. Again, this is not something we have examined, but the paper is available through a link on slide 27 and discussed by Dr. Spagat in slides 27-34.

Anyhow, I could have easily broken this discussion into three or even four blog posts….but did not this time. Probably more useful than reading my blog post is to actually read Dr. Spagat’s lecture. The link to the lecture is here: http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhte/014/Economics%20of%20Warfare/Lecture%2014.pdf