In 1987 DMSI (Trevor Dupuy’s old company) was giving a week-long course on the fundamentals of the U.S. military at a government agency. The final day was a board discussion that included Trevor Dupuy. The subject came up about whether the U.S. Army could use a general staff system similar to what the Germans had (and which Trevor wrote about in his book Genius for War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945)
During the discussion Trevor stated that the United States Armed Forces actually has nine general staffs. He proceeded to list them: 1) the army staff, 2) the staff of the secretary of the army, the same for the air force (+2), the same for the navy (+2), and of course, 7) the Joint Staff and 8) the Office of Secretary of Defense. That makes eight. “What is the ninth staff?” a student asked. “The GAO” Trevor responded.
This article just appeared this morning in the Boston Globe. It starts: “Russia is not the country you think it is. Its economy is smaller than South Korea’s.” That sounds like a familiar stat.
The claim in the first article that Russia is the world’s tenth largest economy is probably no longer correct. In 2014, according to World Bank and the United Nations, it was the tenth largest economy with a GDP of 1,860,598 or 1,849,940 million U.S. dollars (two different sets of figures). This put it behind India and ahead of Canada ($1,785,387 in both sets of figures). In 2015 the IMF figures put the Russian economy at $1,324,734, which put it twelfth on the list, behind Canada (1,552,386) and South Korea (1,376,868). Hard to say if these figures factored in all the drama of 2015 (ruble dropping by more than half and the economy shrinking by 3.7%). Pretty certain Russia is no longer among the ten largest economies in 2016. Just for comparison, according to the IMF the United States economy was $17,947,000 in 2015.
An interesting contribution by Philip McCarty examined the creation of a committee by the War Office, chaired by retired general Sir George Bartholomew, to assess the lessons of British defeat in France in 1940. This quick and dirty effort resulted in a series of recommendations that varied in military validity, as well as acceptability within the British Army establishment. This is an interesting case study of the actual mechanics of evolution in warfare and how military establishments evaluate military experience. Implications of tactical success or failure are not necessarily readily apparent, nor is it always possible to act immediately on them when identified. Sometimes the right conclusions can still produce wrong solutions.
Trevor N. Dupuy argued that “the application of sound, imaginative thinking to the problems of warfare (on either an individual or an institutional basis) has been more significant than any new weapon.” The preconditions for successfully assimilating changes required:
Imaginative, competent, knowledgeable leadership.
Effective coordination of a nation’s economic, technological-scientific, and military resources.
Opportunity for evaluation and analysis of battlefield experience.[1]
Successful change and innovation is both difficult and rare. It is seldom a smooth process.
I find the conclusion toward the end the article interesting:
“My analysis found that on the largest scale – casualty rates from battles grouped by underlying geology – all of these limestone-related factors appear to balance. That is, it didn’t really matter if a soldier was attacking across limestone, igneous and sedimentary rock, or terrain underlain by sand and clay, the casualty rates were consistently between 12 and 15 percent.”
Office of Medical History, U.S. Army Medical Department
Trevor N. Dupuy developed some hypotheses about casualty rates in combat in the process of quantifying the effects of surprise and relative combat effectiveness.[1] After testing these hypotheses against historical combat data, Col. Dupuy believed them valid enough to be considered verities. His confidence in them ranged from absolute for most to reasonable certainty for a few. The first two points are statements of combat experience, but they are directly relevant to the nature of battle attrition. As with his verities of combat, these will be discussed in more detail in subsequent posts.
Personnel Attrition Verities
In the average battle, the attack’s numerical strength is about double the defender’s.
In the average modern battle the attacker is more often successful than the defender.
Casualty rates of winners are lower than those of losers.
Small forces casualty rates are higher than those of large forces.
More effective forces inflict casualties at a higher rate than less effective opponents.
There is no direct relationship between force ratios and casualty rates.
In most modern battles, the numerical losses of attacker and defender are often similar.
Casualty rates for defenders vary inversely with strength of fortifications.
Casualty rates of a surprising force are lower than those of a surprised force.
In the average modern battle, attacker casualty rates are somewhat lower than defender casualty rates.
In bad weather, casualty rates for both sides decline markedly.
In difficult terrain, casualty rates for both sides decline markedly.
The casualty-inflicting capability of a force declines after each successive day in combat.
Casualty rates are lower at night than in daytime.
Casualty rates are higher in summer than in winter.
The faster the front line moves, the lower the casualty rates for both sides.
Casualty rates seem to decline during river crossings.
An “all-out” effort by one side raises loss rates for both sides.
A force with greater overall combat power inflicts casualties at a greater rate than the opponent.
The killed-to-wounded distribution of personnel casualties in twentieth century warfare is consistent.
Average World War II division engagement casualty rates in Western Europe were 1% to 3% per day.
Attrition rates in the 1973 October War were comparable to World War II.
Casualty rates for major power forces in minor hostilities after 1945 are about half those experienced in World War II.
Material Attrition Verities
Material loss rates are related to personnel casualty rates.
Tank loss rates are five to seven times higher than personnel casualty rates.
Attacker tank loss rates are generally higher than defender tank loss rates.
Artillery material loss rates are generally about one-tenth personnel casualty rates.
Self-propelled artillery loss rates are two-to-three times greater than for towed guns.
The loss rates of light, to medium, to heavy artillery weapons are in the proportion: 2.2/1.8/1.0.
Michael Kofman assessed the premises of RAND’s wargame and expressed skepticism of the call for a buildup of American and NATO ground forces to deter Russian military aggression. Kofman argued instead that
The way forward is to shore up deterrence by punishment, which has been working just fine all these years. That means leveraging U.S. airpower and the Navy as a global force able to horizontally expand the theater of conflict and inflict colossal military and economic punishment on Russia should it aggress against a NATO member state. As a consolation to AirLand Battle warriors, perhaps we can call the strategy Air-to-Land Battle. It also means the United States must focus on mobility in theater and assets that counter, rather than match, the Russian military. This is why Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, is right in arguing that the number one need is for Army combat aviation in Europe. The United States should also revisit the nuclear toolkit, since the credible threat of nuclear escalation had always been an important pillar in deterring Russian aggression against NATO.
In rebuttal, RAND’s Karl Mueller, David Shlapak, Michael Johnson and David Ochmanek defended the focus of their wargame, arguing that “the whole point of the games was to explore, develop, test, and refine concepts, based on our best — and evolving — understanding of Russian doctrine, tactics, and capabilities, as well as NATO’s extant capabilities and options for enhancing them.” They take specific issue with Kaufman’s emphasis upon threats of post hoc punishment.
In contrast, deterrent approaches that depend upon threatening to punish Russia for occupying the Baltic states after the fact, as Kofman prefers, would be susceptible to Russian leaders imagining — rightly or wrongly — that these threats would not actually be carried out. Similarly, a threat by the Baltic states to wage prolonged partisan warfare against an occupying force might well lack credibility given the potential costs to the populace of doing so, especially against an occupier as ruthless as the one that razed Grozny. Leaving the Baltic states to fend for themselves in the event of an invasion would also represent a catastrophic failure by NATO to honor its Article 5 responsibilities.
A NATO strategy based on temporarily accepting the inevitability of an invasion succeeding and instead mobilizing an overwhelming force to counterattack against Russian forces and liberate the Baltic states might encounter similar skepticism in the Kremlin. It would depend on the alliance remaining determined to right the wrong through costly military action even after months of Russian reinforcement, propaganda, and subversion. Moreover, Moscow might well persuade itself that threats to use nuclear weapons in defense of Kaliningrad (which would stand in the way of a counteroffensive as a “nuclear landmine” in Kofman’s incisive turn of phrase) and its newly acquired territory in the Baltics would be sufficient to deter NATO from carrying through with a “we shall return” promise. Indeed, such an expectation could prove to be correct.
The arguments and criticisms made by Kofman and the RAND team are thoughtful, well-reasoned, and well worth the time to peruse. They also demonstrate the insight that wargaming can bring to strategic problems.
However, the question that comes to my mind is, what strategic interest would Russia serve by invading the Baltics in the first place? Even without NATO imposing extra costs through an active defense, occupying them would reap negligible, if any, political, economic or military advantages for Russia, and would likely impose significant costs in terms of damage to relations with the West. It would also entail an expensive military occupation and suppression of a potential insurgency. Unfortunately, wargaming the correlation of forces does not seem to be able provide a plausible strategic motivation for such a Russian gambit to begin with.
![British Mark III Tank in ditch, 1917 [Wikimedia Commons]](https://dupuyinstitute.dreamhosters.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/British-Mark-III-Tank-in-ditch-1917.jpg)
