Category Modeling, Simulation & Wargaming

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB) is one of eight data bases that make up our DuWar suite of databases: See http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/dbases.htm This data base, of 752 engagements, is described in depth at: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/dledb.htm

It now consists of 752 engagements from 1904 to 1991. It was originally created in 2000-2001 by us independent of any government contracts (so as to ensure it was corporate proprietary). We then used it as an instrumental part of the our Enemy Prisoner of War studies and then our three Urban Warfare studies.

Below is a list of wars/campaigns the engagements are pulled from:

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905): 3 engagements

Balkan Wars (1912-1913): 1 engagement

World War I (1914-1918): 25 engagements

…East Prussia (1914): 1

…Gallipoli (1915): 2

…Mesopotamia (1915): 2

…1st & 2nd Artois (1915): 7

…Loos (1915): 2

…Somme (1916): 2

…Mesopotamia (1917): 1

…Palestine (1917): 2

…Palestine (1918): 1

…US engagements (1918): 5

World War II (1939-1945): 657 engagements

…Western Front: 295

……France (1940): 2

……North Africa (1941): 5

……Crete (1941): 1

……Tunisia (1943): 5

……Italian Campaign (1943-1944): 141

……France (1944): 61

…,,,Aachen (1944): 23

……Ardennes (1944-1945): 57

…Eastern Front: 267

……Eastern Front (1943-1945): 11

…….Kursk (1943): 192

……Kharkov (1943): 64

…Pacific Campaign: 95

…….Manchuria (1938): 1

…….Malayan Campaign (1941): 1

…….Phillipines (1942): 1

…….Islands (1944-1945): 4

…….Okinawa (1945): 27

…….Manila (1945): 61

Arab-Israeli Wars (1956-1973): 51 engagements

…1956: 2

…1967: 16

…1968: 1

…1973: 32

Gulf War (1991): 15 engagements

 

Now our revised version of the earlier Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB) of 605 engagements had more World War I engagements. But some of these engagements had over a hundred of thousand men on a side and some lasted for months. It was based upon how the battles were defined at the time; but was really not relevant for use in a division-level database. So, we shuffled them off to something called the Large Action Data Base (LADB), were 55 engagements have sat, unused, since then. Some actions in the original LWDB were smaller than division-level. These made up the core of our battalion-level and company-level data bases.

The Italian Campaign Engagements were the original core of this database. An earlier version of the data base has only 76 engagements from Italy in them (around year 2000). We then expanded, corrected and revised them. So the database still has 40 of the original engagements, 22 were revised, and the rest (79) are new.

The original LWDB was used for parts of Trevor Dupuy’s book Understanding War. The DLEDB was a major component of my book War by Numbers.

As can be seen, it is possible to use this database for model development and/or validation. One could start by developing/testing the model to the 141 Italian Campaign engagements, and then further develop it by testing it to the 141 campaigns from France and the Battle of the Bulge. And then, to test the human factors elements of your models (which if you are modeling warfare I would hope you would have), one could then test it to the 267 division-level engagements on the Eastern Front. Then move forward in time with the 51 engagements from the Arab-Israeli Wars and the 15 engagements from the Gulf War. There is not a lack of data available for model development or model testing. It is, of course, a lot of work; and lately it seems that the  industry has been more concerned about making sure their models have good graphics.

Just to beat a dead horse, we remind you of this post that annoyed several people over at TRADOC (the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command):

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

Finally, it is possible to examine changes in warfare over time. This is useful to understand it one is looking at changes in warfare in the future. The DLEDB covers 88 years of warfare. We also have the Battles Data Base (BaDB) of 243 battles from 1600-1900. It is described here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/badb.htm

Next I will describe our battalion-level and company-level databases.

Battles versus Campaigns (for Validation)

So we created three campaign databases. One of the strangest arguments I have heard against doing validations or testing combat models to historical data, is that this is only one outcome from history. So you don’t know if model is in error or if this was a unusual outcome to the historical event. Someone described it as the N=1 argument. There are lots of reasons why I am not too impressed with this argument that I may enumerate in a later blog post. It certainly might apply to testing the model to just one battle (like the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991), but these are weeks-long campaign databases with hundreds of battles. One can test the model to these hundreds of points in particular in addition to testing it to the overall result.

In the case of the Kursk Data Base (KDB), we have actually gone through the data base and created from it 192 division-level engagements. This covers every single combat action by every single division during the two week offensive around Belgorod. Furthermore, I have listed each and every one of these as an “engagement sheet’ in my book on Kursk. The 192 engagement sheets are a half-page or page-long tabulation of the strengths and losses for each engagement for all units involved. Most sheets cover one day of battle. It took considerable work to assemble these. First one had to figure out who was opposing whom (especially as unit boundaries never match) and then work from there. So, if someone wants to test a model or model combat or do historical analysis, one could simply assemble a database from these 192 engagements. If one wanted more details on the engagements, there are detailed breakdowns of the equipment in the Kursk Data Base and detailed descriptions of the engagements in my Kursk book. My new Prokhorovka book (release date 1 June), which only covers the part of the southern offensive around Prokhorovka from the 9th of July, has 76 of those engagements sheets. Needless to say, these Kursk engagements also make up 192 of the 752 engagements in our DLEDB (Division Level Engagement Data Base).  A picture of that database is shown at the top of this post.

So, if you are conducting a validation to the campaign, take a moment and check the results to each division to each day. In the KDB there were 17 divisions on the German side, and 37 rifle divisions and 10 tank and mechanized corps (a division-sized unit) on the Soviet side. The data base covers 15 days of fighting. So….there are around 900 points of daily division level results to check the results to. I drawn your attention to this graph:

There are a number of these charts in Chapter 19 of my book War by Numbers. Also see:

Validating Attrition

The Ardennes database is even bigger. There was one validation done by CAA (Center for Army Analysis) of its CEM model (Concepts Evaluation Model) using the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Bases (ACSDB). They did this as an overall comparison to the campaign. So they tracked the front line trace at the end of the battle, and the total tank losses during the battle, ammunition consumption and other events like that. They got a fairly good result. What they did not do was go into the weeds and compare the results of the engagements. CEM relies on inputs from ATCAL (Attrition Calculator) which are created from COSAGE model runs. So while they tested the overall top-level model, they really did not test ATCAL or COSAGE, the models that feed into it. ATCAL and COSAGE I gather are still in use. In the case of Ardennes you have 36 U.S. and UK divisions and 32 German divisions and brigades over 32 days, so over 2,000 division days of combat. That is a lot of data points to test to.

Now we have not systematically gone through the ACSDB and assembled a record for every single engagement there. There would probably be more than 400 such engagements. We have assembled 57 engagements from the Battle of the Bulge for our division-level database (DLEDB). More could be done.

Finally, during our Battle of Britain Data Base effort, we recommended developing an air combat engagement database of 120 air-to-air engagements from the Battle of Britain. We did examine some additional mission specific data for the British side derived from the “Form F” Combat Reports for the period 8-12 August 1940. This was to demonstrate the viability of developing an engagement database from the dataset. So we wanted to do something similar for the air combat that we had done with division-level combat. An air-to-air engagement database would be very useful if you are developing any air campaign wargame. This unfortunately was never done by us as the project (read: funding) ended.

As it is we actually have three air campaign databases to work from, the Battle of Britain data base, the air component of the Kursk Data Base, and the air component of the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base. There is a lot of material to work from. All it takes it a little time and effort.

I will discuss the division-level data base in more depth in my next post.

Reviews of NPW

I was just surfing Amazon.com yesterday and noticed that Trevor Dupuy’s book Numbers, Predictions and Wars had 8 reviews. This is odd as I think the book went out of print before Amazon.com existed. The version they were reviewing was the hardcover from 1979. All the reviews were from 2012-2018, all four and five stars. Interesting. Even I don’t have a copy of the hardback version.

Numbers, Predictions & War

Now, if only people would pay more attention to his greatest work, Understanding War. It only has two reviews.

Understanding War

The Battle of Britain Data Base

The Battle of Britain data base came into existence at the request of OSD PA&E (Office of the Secretary of Defense, Program Analysis and Evaluation). They contacted us. They were working with LMI (Logistics Management Institute, on of a dozen FFRDCs) to develop an air combat model. They felt that the Battle of Britain would be perfect for helping to develop, test and validate their model. The effort was led by a retired Air Force colonel who had the misfortune of spending part of his career in North Vietnam.

The problem with developing any air campaign database is that, unlike the German army, the Luftwaffe actually followed their orders late in the war to destroy their records. I understand from conversations with Trevor Dupuy that Luftwaffe records were stored in a train and had been moved to the German countryside (to get them away from the bombing and/or advancing armies). They then burned all the records there at the rail siding.

So, when HERO (Trevor Dupuy’s Historical Evaluation Research Organization) did their work on the Italian Campaign (which was funded by the Air Force), they had to find records on the German air activity with the Luftwaffe liaison officers of the German armies involved. The same with Kursk, where one of the few air records we had was with the air liaison officer to the German Second Army. This was the army on the tip of the bulge that was simply holding in place during the battle. It was the only source that gave us a daily count of sorties, German losses, etc. Of the eight or so full wings that were involved in the battle from the VIII Air Corps, we had records for one group of He-111s (there were usually three groups to a wing). We did have good records from the Soviet archives. But it hard to assemble a good picture of the German side of the battle with records from only 1/24th of the units involved. So the very limited surviving files of the Luftwaffe air liaison officers was all we had to work with for Italy and Kursk. We did not even have that for the Ardennes. Luckily the German air force simplified things by flying almost no missions until the disastrous Operation Bodenplatte on 1 January 1945. Of course, we had great records from the U.S. and the UK, but….hard to develop a good database without records from both sides. Therefore, one is left with few well-documented air battles anywhere for use in developing, evaluating and validating an air campaign model.

The exception is the Battle of Britain, which has been so well researched, and extensively written about, that it is possible to assemble an accurate and detailed daily account for both sides for every day of the battle. There are also a few surviving records that can be tapped, including the personal kill records of the pilots, the aircraft loss reports of the quartermaster, and the ULTRA reports of intercepted German radio messages. Therefore, we (mostly Richard Anderson) assembled the Battle of Britain data base from British unit records and the surviving records and the extensive secondary sources for the German side. We have already done considerable preliminary research covering 15 August to 19 September 1940 as a result of our work on DACM (Dupuy Air Combat Model)

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM)

The database covered the period from 8 August to 30 September 1940. It was programmed in Access by Jay Karamales.  From April to July 2004 we did a feasibility study for LMI. We were awarded a contract from OSD PA&E on 1 September to start work on the database. We sent a two-person research team to the British National Archives in Kew Gardens, London. There we examined 249 document files and copied 4,443 pages. The completed database and supporting documentation was delivered to OSD PA&E in August 2005. It was certainly the easiest of our campaign databases to do.

We do not know if OSD PA&E or LMI ever used the data base, but we think not. The database was ordered while they were still working on the model. After we delivered the database to them, we do not know what happened. We suspect the model was never completed and the effort was halted. The database has never been publically available. PA&E became defunct in 2009 and was replaced by CAPE (Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation). We may be the only people who still have (or can find) a copy of this database.

I will provide a more detailed description of this database in a later post.

The Use of the Two Campaign Data Bases

The two large campaign data bases, the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) and the Kursk Data Base (KDB) were designed to use for validation. Some of the data requirements, like mix of personnel in each division and the types of ammunition used, were set up to match exactly the categories used in the Center for Army Analysis’s (CAA) FORCEM campaign combat model. Dr. Ralph E. Johnson, the program manager for FORCEM was also the initial contract manager for the ACSDB.

FORCEM was never completed. It was intended to be an improvement to CAA’s Concepts Evaluation Model (CEM) which dated back to the early 1970s. So far back that my father had worked with it. CAA ended up reverting back to CEM in the 1990s.

They did validate the CEM using the ACSDB. Some of their reports are here (I do not have the link to the initial report by the industrious Walt Bauman):

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a320463.pdf

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a489349.pdf

It is one of the few actual validations ever done, outside of TDI’s (The Dupuy Institute) work. CEM is no longer used by CAA. The Kursk Data Base has never used for validation. Instead they tested Lanchester equations to the ACSDB and KDB. They failed.

Lanchester equations have been weighed….

But the KDB became the darling for people working on their master’s thesis for the Naval Post-Graduate School. Much of this was under the direction of Dr. Tom Lucas. Some of their reports are listed here:

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/links.htm

Both the ACSDB and KDB had a significant air component. The air battle over the just the German offensive around Belgorod to the south of Kursk was larger than the Battle of Britain. The Ardennes data base had 1,705 air files. The Kursk data base had 753. One record, from the old Dbase IV version of the Kursk data base, is the picture that starts this blog post. These files basically track every mission for every day, to whatever level of detail the unit records allowed (which were lacking). The air campaign part of these data bases have never been used for any analytical purpose except our preliminary work on creating the Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM).

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM)

This, of course, leads into our next blog post on the Battle of Britain data base.

Validation Data Bases Available (Kursk)

The second large campaign validation database created was the Kursk Data Base (KDB), done 1993-1996. I was also the program manager for this one and it ran a lot smoother than the first database. There was something learned in the process. This database involved about a dozen people, including a Russian research team led by Col. (Dr.) Fyodor Sverdlov, WWII veteran, author and Frunze Military academy; and ably assisted by Col. (Dr.) Anatoli Vainer, ditto. It also involved was the author Dr. Richard Harrison, and of course, Richard Anderson and Jay Karamales. Col. David Glantz helped with the initial order of battle as a consultant.

The unique aspect of the database is that we obtained access to the Soviet archives and was able to pull from it the unit records at the division, corps and army-level for every Soviet unit involved. This was a degree of access and research never done before for an Eastern Front battle. We were not able to access the Voronezh Front files and other higher command files as they were still classified.

The KDB tracked the actions of all divisions and division-sized units on both sides for every day of the German offensive in the south for 4 July 1943 to 18 July 1943. Kursk is a huge battle (largest battle of WWII) and consists of four separate portions. This database covered only one of the four parts, and that part was similar in size to the Battle of the Bulge and the air battle was larger than the Battle of Britain. On the German side were 17 panzer, panzer grenadier and infantry divisions while on the Soviet side were 37 rifle divisions and 10 tank and mechanized corps. There were 9 attacking German armored divisions versus 10 Soviet tank and mechanized corps at the Belgorod Offensive at Kursk. At the Battle of the Bulge there were 8 attacking (engaged) German armored divisions versus 9 U.S. armored divisions. The database design and what data was tracked was almost the same as the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB). The stats on the data are here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/kursk.htm

The database was programmed in Dbase IV and is DOS based. Dbase IV has the advantage that it allowed text fields. Dbase III did not, so we were limited to something like 256 characters for our remarks fields. With Dbase IV, the remarks fields sometimes grew to a page or two as we explained what data was available and how they were used to assemble daily counts of strengths and losses. Sometimes they were periodic (vice daily) reports and sometimes contradictory reports. It was nice to be able to fully explain for each and every case how we analyzed the data. The Dbase IV version of the KDB is publicly available through NTIS (National  Technical Information Service). The pictures in this blog post are screen shots from the Dbase IV version.

We also re-programmed the data base into Access and rather extensively and systematically updated it. This was in part because we took every single unit for every single day of the battle and assembled it into 192 different division-on-division engagements for use in our Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB). This was done over a period of 11 years. We did the first 49 engagements in 1998-99 to support the Enemy Prisoner of War (EPW) Capture Rate Study for CAA (Center for Army Analysis), report E-4 (see http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub3.htm). Some of the other engagements were done later to support the study on Measuring the Value of Situational Awareness for OSD Net Assessment (Andy Marshall’s shop), reports SA-1. We (meaning me) then finished up the rest of the engagements in 2004 and 2009. In the end we had assembled an engagement record for every single division-on-division level engagement for the Belgorod Offensive. Added to that, in 1999 I began working on my Kursk book, which I had mostly finished in 2003 (but was not published until 2015). So over time, we rather systematically reviewed and revised the data in the database. This is not something we were able to do to the same extent for the ACSDB. The 192 engagements in DLEDB were then summarized as 192 separate “engagement sheets” in my Kursk book. There are also 76 of these engagement sheets available in my new Kursk book coming out in June: The Battle of Prokhorovka. This new book covers the part of the Belgorod offensive centered around the Battle of Prokhorovka.

Validation Data Bases Available (Ardennes)

We never seem to stop discussing validation at The Dupuy Institute even though it seems like most of the military operations research community only pays lip service to it. Still, it is something we encourage, even though it has only been very rarely done. A major part of our work over the years has been creation of historical databases for use in combat model validation, combat model testing, and combat model development. Over a series of posts, let me describe what databases are available.

First there are two big campaign databases. These are fairly well known. It is the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) and the Kursk Data Base (KDB). I was the program manager for both of them.

The ACSDB is a database tracking the actions of all divisions on both sides for every day of the Battle of the Bulge, from 16 December 1944 to 16 January 1945. That was 36 U.S. and British Divisions and 32 German Divisions and Brigades. It tracked the strength, equipment, losses, ammunition and oil for each of these units. The stats on the database are here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/ardennes.htm

The ACSDB was done from 1987 to 1990 at Trevor Dupuy’s old company, DMSI. There was around 16 or so people involved with it, including consultants like Hugh Cole and Charles MacDonald. We pulled up the units records for all the units on both sides from the U.S. Archives, UK Public Records Office, and the German achives in Freiburg. It was the largest historical database ever created (I do seem to be involved in creating some large things, like my Kursk book).

The database was programmed in Dbase III and is DOS based. The data base was delivered to CAA (Center for Army Analysis). It is publicly available through NTIS (National Technical Information Service). The pictures in this blog post are screen shots from the DBase III version. We do have our own corporate proprietary version re-programmed into Access and with some updates done by Richard Anderson (coauthor of Hitler’s Last Gamble).

The One Board Wargame To Rule Them All

The cover of SPI’s monster wargame, The Campaign For North Africa: The Desert War 1940-43 [SPI]
[This post was originally published on 22 September 2017.]

Even as board gaming appears to be enjoying a resurgence in the age of ubiquitous computer gaming, it appears, sadly, that table-top wargaming continues its long, slow decline in popularity from its 1970s-80s heyday. Pockets of enthusiasm remain however, and there is new advocacy for wargaming as a method of professional military education.

Luke Winkie has written an ode to that bygone era through a look at the legacy of The Campaign For North Africa: The Desert War 1940-43, a so-called “monster” wargame created by designer Richard Berg and published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1979. It is a representation of the entire North African theater of war at the company/battalion level, played on five maps which extend over 10 feet and include 70 charts and tables. The rule book encompasses three volumes. There are over 1,600 cardboard counter playing pieces. As befits the real conflict, the game places a major emphasis on managing logistics and supply, which can either enable or inhibit combat options. The rule book recommends that each side consist of five players, an overall commander, a battlefield commander, an air power commander, one dedicated to managing rear area activities, and one devoted to overseeing logistics.

The game map. [BoardGameGeek]

Given that a bingo clash review states that to complete a full game requires an estimated 1,500 hours, actually playing The Campaign For North Africa is something that would appeal to only committed, die-hard wargame enthusiasts (known as grognards, i.e. Napoleonic era slang for “grumblers” or veteran soldiers.) As the game blurb suggests, the infamous monster wargames were an effort to appeal to a desire for a “super detailed, intensive simulation specially designed for maximum realism,” or as realistic as war on a tabletop can be, anyway. Berg admitted that he intentionally designed the game to be “wretched excess.”

Although The Campaign For North Africa was never popular, it did acquire a distinct notoriety not entirely confined to those of us nostalgic for board wargaming’s illustriously nerdy past. It retains a dedicated fanbase. Winkie’s article describes the recent efforts of Jake, a 16-year Minnesotan who, unable to afford to buy a second-end edition of the game priced at $400, printed out the maps and rule book for himself. He and a dedicated group of friends intend to complete a game before Jake heads off to college in two years. Berg himself harbors few romantic sentiments about wargaming or his past work, having sold his own last copy of the game several years ago because a “whole bunch of dollars seemed to be [a] more worthwhile thing to have.” The greatness of SPI’s game offerings has been tempered by the realization that the company died for its business sins.

However, some folks of a certain age relate more to Jake’s youthful enthusiasm and the attraction to a love of structure and complexity embodied in The Campaign For North Africa‘s depth of detail. These elements led many of us on to a scholarly study of war and warfare. Some of us may have discovered the work of Trevor Dupuy in an advertisement for Numbers, Predictions and War: Using History to Evaluate Combat Factors and Predict the Outcome of Battles in the pages of SPI’s legendary Strategy & Tactics magazine, way back in the day.

TDI Friday Read: Engaging The Phalanx

The December 2018 issue of Phalanx, a periodical journal published by The Military Operations Research Society (MORS), contains an article by Jonathan K. Alt, Christopher Morey, and Larry Larimer, entitled “Perspectives on Combat Modeling.” (the article is paywalled, but limited public access is available via JSTOR).

Their article was written partly as a critical rebuttal to a TDI blog post originally published in April 2017, which discussed an issue of which the combat modeling and simulation community has long been aware but slow to address, known as the “Base of Sand” problem.

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

In short, because so little is empirically known about the real-world structures of combat processes and the interactions of these processes, modelers have been forced to rely on the judgement of subject matter experts (SMEs) to fill in the blanks. No one really knows if the blend of empirical data and SME judgement accurately represents combat because the modeling community has been reluctant to test its models against data on real world experience, a process known as validation.

TDI President Chris Lawrence subsequently published a series of blog posts responding to the specific comments and criticisms leveled by Alt, Morey, and Larimer.

How are combat models and simulations tested to see if they portray real-world combat accurately? Are they actually tested?

Engaging the Phalanx

How can we know if combat simulations adhere to strict standards established by the DoD regarding validation? Perhaps the validation reports can be released for peer review.

Validation

Some claim that models of complex combat behavior cannot really be tested against real-world operational experience, but this has already been done. Several times.

Validating Attrition

If only the “physics-based aspects” of combat models are empirically tested, do those models reliably represent real-world combat with humans or only the interactions of weapons systems?

Physics-based Aspects of Combat

Is real-world historical operational combat experience useful only for demonstrating the capabilities of combat models, or is it something the models should be able to reliably replicate?

Historical Demonstrations?

If a Subject Matter Expert (SME) can be substituted for a proper combat model validation effort, then could not a SME simply be substituted for the model? Should not all models be considered expert judgement quantified?

SMEs

What should be done about the “Base of Sand” problem? Here are some suggestions.

Engaging the Phalanx (part 7 of 7)

Persuading the military operations research community of the importance of research on real-world combat experience in modeling has been an uphill battle with a long history.

Diddlysquat

And the debate continues…

Diddlysquat

This blog post is generated as a response to one of Richard Anderson’s comments to this blog post:

Validating Attrition

Richard Anderson used to work with me at Trevor Dupuy’s company DMSI and later at The Dupuy Institute. He has been involved in this business since 1987, although he has been away from it for over a decade.

His comment was: “Keep fighting the good fight Chris, but it remains an uphill battle.”

It is an uphill battle. For a brief moment, from 1986-1989 it appeared that the community was actually trying to move forward on the model validation and “base of sand” type issues. This is discussed to some extent in Chapter 18 of War by Numbers (pages 295-298).

In 1986 the office of the DUSA (OR) * reviewed the U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency’s (CAA) casualty estimation process in their models. This generated considerable comments and criticism of how it was being done. In 1987 CAA, with I gather funding from DUSA (OR), issued out the contract to develop the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB). I was the program manager for that effort. That same year they issued out the contract to study Breakpoints (forced changes in posture) which I was also involved in.

So we had the army conducting an internal review of their models and finding them wanting. They then issued out a contract to validate them and they issued out a contract to examine the issue of breakpoints, which had not been seriously studied since the 1950s. This was at the initiative of Vandiver and Walt Hollis.

After that, everything kind of fell apart. The U.S. defense budget peaked in 1989 and the budget cuts started. So, even though the breakpoints study got a good start, there was no follow-on contract. The ACSDB ended up being used for a casual top-level validation effort that did not get into the nuts and bolts of the models. All the dozens of problems identified in the internal DUSA(OR) report resulted in no corrective action taken (as far as I know). Basically, budget was declining and maintaining hardware was more important that studies and analysis.

There was a resurgence of activity in the early 1990s, which is when the Kursk Data Base (KDB) was funded. But that was never even used for a validation effort (although it was used to test Lanchester). But funding was marginal during most of the 1990s, and the modeling community did little to improve their understanding and analysis of combat.

The nature of the missions changed after 9/11/2001 and The Dupuy Institute ended up focused on insurgencies (see America’s Modern Wars). Budget again started declining in 2009 and then sequestration arrived, killing everything.

The end result was that there was a period from 1986-1989 when the U.S. modeling community appeared to have identified their problems and were taking corrective action. Since 1989, for all practical purposes, diddlysquat.

So…..30 years later…..I am still fighting the “good fight.” But I am not optimistic. Nothing is going to happen unless people at senior levels fund something to happen. For the price of a Stryker or two, a huge amount of productive and useful work could be done. But to date, having an extra Stryker or two has been more important to the army.

For this year and next year the U.S. Army has increasing budgets. If they wanted to take corrective action….now would be the time. I suspect that bureaucratic inertia will have more weight than any intellectual arguments that I can make. Still, I have to give it one last try.

 

* DUSA (OR) = The Deputy Under Secretary of the Army (Operations Research). It was headed by Walt Hollis forever, but was completely shut down in recent times.