Mystics & Statistics

A blog on quantitative historical analysis hosted by The Dupuy Institute

Russian Economy is Growing

The Russian economy is growing, very slowly granted, and at a rate of only 0.5% annually. Still, this is a lot better than the 3.7% drop they suffered in 2015 (World Bank figures….the article says 2.8%): https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-gdp-grows-0-5-percent-q1-state-134712641.html

Not only was their economy dropping, but not surprising, they were running significant budget deficits ($21 billion in 2016, or 3% of GDP) and their cash reserves were running low (National Wealth Fund had $72.71 billion as of September 2016). Much of this decline was driven by the price of oil and secondarily, by the limited sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union (and the counter-sanctions issued by Russia). These sanctions are still in place and the price of oil is not something the Russians have control over. I don’t see the sanctions being lifted anytime soon, so Russian economic growth is dependent as the price of oil staying stable or moving up. Putin is up for re-election to his fourth term in March 2018 for a six-year term, so a stable economy would be helpful, although few doubt the outcome of the election. Growth after a recession can sometimes be strong, for example the U.S. economy grew at 2.5% in 2010 after 18 months negative growth. The Russian recovery at 0.5% is a little anemic.

The ruble is at 57 to a dollar.

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

 

War Stories On The Future Of The Tank

DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T). [YouTube]

I have been late to the rodeo in bringing attention to the wonderful War Stories podcast’s season ending episode. It culminated the first season’s arc covering the history of armored warfare by looking forward at possible directions for the development of future tanks. Adin Dobkin and Angry Staff Officer bring their usual mix of military insight and humor to bear on a fascinating topic.

They conclude by speculating that future tanks will glide over the ground rather than drive or roll over it. This leads them to turn their dials up to 11 in an bonus interseason episode devoted to the decline of armored vehicles in the Star Wars movies. You will find this mix of sci-fi nerdiness and the theory and practice of armored warfare nowhere else.

Go listen. You won’t regret it.

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).

The U.S. Air Force’s Grandpaps, the B-52 and KC-135, Just Keep On Flying

These planes are older than you: a KC-135 refuels a B-52 in flight.

Over at The Daily Beast, Clive Irving has a neat piece about the venerable U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress and it’s little brother, the KC-135 Stratotanker. The B-52, which turns 65 years old this year, and the KC-135 were both designed by Boeing aeronautical engineers Ed Wells and George Schairer.

Wells and Schairer came up with the basic design for the B-52 over one weekend in 1948, drawing upon advanced concepts developed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The first prototype flew in 1952.

Six days after that first B-52 flight, the two pitched an idea to the Boeing board for a jet-powered passenger aircraft, which they would get the U.S. government pay to develop by marketing it as a military tanker for the B-52. This program would yield the KC-135 and the civilian Boeing 707 airliner. The first KC-135 flew in 1956.

Although seeking replacements, the Air Force is planning on keeping both the B-52 and KC-135 in service past 2050, when both airframes will be over 100 years old. Boeing won a contract to replace the KC-135 in 2011, but its new tanker is woefully late and over budget.

The 76 B-52s have a 70% readiness rate due to their relative simplicity to maintain and the Air Force is about to approve $4 billion in new engines to keep them flying.

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

Insurgency In The DPRK?


North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visits the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, July 27, 2014. [KCNA/REUTERS]

As tensions have ratcheted up on the Korean peninsula following a new round of provocative actions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK; North Korea), the prospect of war has once more become prominent. Renewed hostilities between the DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK; South Korea) is an old and oft studied scenario for the U.S. military. Although potential combat is likely to be intense, there is consensus that ROK forces and their U.S. allies would eventually prevail.

There is a great deal less clarity about what might happen after a military defeat of the DPRK. Military analyst and Columbia University professor Austin Long has taken a very interesting look at the prospect of an insurgency arising from the ashes of the regime of Kim Jong Un. Long does not confine the prospect of an insurgency in the north to a post-war scenario; it would be possible following any abrupt or forcible collapse of authority.

Long begins by looking at some of the historical factors for insurgency in a post-regime change environment and then examines each in the North Korean context. These include 1) unsecured weapons stockpiles; 2) elite regime forces;3) disbanded mass armies; 4) social network ties; 5) mobilizing ideology; and 6) sanctuary. He concludes that “the potential for an insurgency beginning after the collapse of the DPRK appears contingent but significant.”

With so much focus on the balance of conventional conflict, the potential for insurgency in North Korea might be of secondary concern. Hopefully, recent U.S. experience with the consequences of regime change will lead political and military planners to take it seriously.

Hockey Play-Off Games 6 & 7, Part II

When I was watching the first round of the Stanley Cup play-offs (Capitals versus Maple Leafs) and they posted a stat that when the seven-game play-off rounds are scored three won games to two, then the leading team wins the round 78% of the time. Mathematically, if the teams were equal, then it would be 75% of the time (same chance as with two coin tosses). See previous post: Hockey Play-off Games 6 & 7

Right now, all four match-ups in the second round of the Stanley Cup play-offs are split 3 to 2 (Nashville over St. Louis, Anaheim over Edmonton, Ottawa over New York and Pittsburgh over Washington). Now, if the teams are roughly equal to each other and with average luck, then three of the leading teams will win and there will be one upset. Hoping it will be the Washington Capitals.

Battle of Tarigo Convoy

The Italian Destroyer Lampo

On 16 April 1941, four British destroyers operating out of Malta, moved to intercept an Axis convoy moving along the coast of Tunisia. The British were able to intercept the convoy due to intercepted radio messages (but it was not Ultra). The Axis convoy consisted of three Italian destroyers protecting four German troopships and an Italian ammunition ship. The British attacked at night, having radar on several of their destroyers, which the Italians did not have. This night action that started at only 2,000 yards and at times closed to within 50 yards, with the Italians having all three destroyers and all five cargo ships sunk or beached. This one sided affair also ended up costing the British one destroyer, torpedoed by a sinking Italian destroyer, now commanded by an Italian junior officer. Around 1,800 men were killed in this convoy.

The British Destroyer Mohawk

While I was researching this, I came across a poorly translated article called the “Sinking of the Tarigo Convoy” by Cristiano D’Adamo. This article got my attention because he tracks the accounts of this battle as presented in nine books and accounts from 1948 to 1998. Of those nine accounts, only four mention that the British had radar and only two mention the interception of Italian signals. Seven of the nine accounts were missing critical material as to why the battle shaped up the way it did and why it was so one-sided. His article is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060910011054/http://regiamarina.net/engagements/tarigo/tarigo_us.htm

This is an exercise similar to what I did in Appendix VII “A History of the Histories” in my book Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka. In that appendix, I tracked a number the accounts of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka that had been written over the years. It continues to surprise me how many major errors and significant omissions are made in widely published military historical works.