Mystics & Statistics

A blog on quantitative historical analysis hosted by The Dupuy Institute

Will This Weapon Change Infantry Warfare Forever? Maybe, But Probably Not

XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) System

The weapon pictured above is the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement (CDTE) precision-guided grenade launcher. According to its manufacturer, Orbital ATK,

The XM25 is a next-generation, semi-automatic weapon designed for effectiveness against enemies protected by walls, dug into foxholes or hidden in hard-to-reach places.

The XM25 provides the soldier with a 300 percent to 500 percent increase in hit probability to defeat point, area and defilade targets out to 500 meters. The weapon features revolutionary high-explosive, airburst ammunition programmed by the weapon’s target acquisition/fire control system.

Following field testing in Afghanistan that reportedly produced mixed results, the U.S. Army is seeking funding the Fiscal Year 2017 defense budget to acquire 105 of the weapons for issue to specifically-trained personnel at the tactical unit level.

The purported capabilities of the weapon have certainly raised expectations for its utility. A program manager in the Army’s Program Executive Office declared “The introduction of the XM25 is akin to other revolutionary systems such as the machine gun, the airplane and the tank, all of which changed battlefield tactics.” An industry observer concurred, claiming that “The weapon’s potential revolutionary impact on infantry tactics is undeniable.”

Well…maybe. There is little doubt that the availability of precision-guided standoff weapons at the squad or platoon level will afford significant tactical advantages. Whatever technical problems that currently exist will be addressed and there will surely be improvements and upgrades.

It seems unlikely, however, that the XM25 will bring revolutionary change to the battlefield. In his 1980 study The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, Trevor N. Dupuy explored the ongoing historical relationship between technological change and adaptation on the battlefield. The introduction of increasingly lethal weapons has led to corresponding changes in the ways armies fight.

Assimilation of a significant increase in [weapon] lethality has generally been marked (a) by dispersion, thus reducing the number of people exposed to the new weapon in the enemy’s hands; (b) by giving greater freedom of maneuver; and (c) by improving cooperation among the different arms and services. [p. 337]

As the chart below illustrates (click for a larger version), as weapons have become more lethal over time, combat forces have adjusted by dispersing in greater frontage and depth on the battlefield (as reflected by the red line).

[pp. 288-289]

Dupuy noted that there is a lag between the introduction of a new weapon and its full integration into an army’s tactics and force structure.

In modern times — and to some extent in earlier eras — there has been an interval of approximately twenty years between introduction and assimilation of new weapons…it is significant that, despite the rising tempo of invention, this time lag remained relatively constant. [p. 338]

Moreover, Dupuy observed that true military revolutions are historically rare, and require more than technological change to occur.

Save for the recent significant exception of strategic nuclear weapons, there have been no historical instances in which new and more lethal weapons have, of themselves, altered the conduct of war or the balance of power until they have been incorporated into a new tactical system exploiting their lethality and permitting their coordination with other weapons. [p. 340]

Looking at the trends over time suggests that any resulting changes will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The ways armies historically have adapted to new weapons — dispersion, tactical flexibility, and combined arms —- are hallmarks of the fire and movement concept that is at the heart of modern combat tactics, which evolved in the early years of the 20th century, particularly during the First World War. However effective the XM25 may prove to be, it’s impact is unlikely to alter the basic elements of fire and movement tactics. Enemy combatants will likely adapt through even greater dispersion (the modern “empty battlefield“), tactical innovation, and combinations of countering weapons. It is also likely that it will take time, trial and error, and effective organizational leadership in order to take full advantage of the XM25’s capabilities.

[Edited]

Afghanistan

Afghan Bomber

By the way, there is still a war going on in Afghanistan and it is not going that well: Helmand

I have always liked the U.N. Secretary General’s periodic updates on the war. The 7 March 2016 report is here: Report on Afghanistan

Just a few highlights:

12. The security situation deteriorated further in 2015. The United Nations recorded 22,634 security incidents, representing a 3 per cent increase compared with 2014 and the second-highest number since 2001. Since the issuance of my previous report, fighting has intensified in Helmand and Baghlan provinces, and Kunduz Province has remained volatile.

15. Reports indicate a substantial increase in casualties among the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces in 2015, the first year in which the forces confronted anti-government elements with much-reduced international military assistance…Insufficient recruitment and high attrition rates posed particular challenges to the sustainability of the Forces…At the current rate, recruitment cannot compensate for the losses generated by absenteeism and casualties, particularly within the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.

24. On 14 February 2016…The report documented 11,002 civilian casualties (3,545 deaths and 7,457 injured) between 1 January and 31 December.

33. Economic growth…remained slow. In January….its growth projection for 2015 had been revised downward…to 1.5 percent…

As of 15 November 2015, there were 162,694 personnel on the official Afghan National Army roster and 6,907 personnel on the Afghan Air Force roster, for a total of 169,601 personnel, a figure that is 32,306 below the end-state objective for January 2016. Also as of 15 November, there were 144,591 personnel serving on the official Afghan National Police roster, a figure that is 43,409 below the end-state objective.

The U.S.has 9,800 people in Afghanistan, down from a peak of NATO forces at 140,000: NATO Training Mission

According to this article Afghan forces suffered 5,500 killed-in-action and more than 14,000 wounded in 2015.

Picture is from my book.

 

 

Oil Prices

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Nice map here (repeated above): Deutsche Bank Map

Couple of things caught my eye:

  1. Nigeria & Venezuela
  2. Of course, Algeria & Libya
  3. Iraq & Iran (which is just been added to the world market)
  4. Kazakhstan
  5. Russia (where the situation is much worse than shown by this map because of their tax system)
  6. Azerbaijan (which just showed up in the news with conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh)

The quote to pull from this article is:

While Nigeria requires an oil price of $85 per barrel to balance its budget in 2016, Kuwait needs only $47 a barrel. If countries used government assets to finance their budget deficits while the oil price was low, Kuwait would hypothetically be able to do this for the next 122 years, while Nigeria could only manage 0.1 years.

 

Screw Theory! We Need More Prediction in Security Studies!

Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent; taken from the January 24, 2005 broadcast of The Tonight Show.
Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent; taken from the January 24, 2005 broadcast of The Tonight Show.

My previous post touched on the apparent analytical bankruptcy underlying the U.S. government’s approach to counterterrorism policy. While many fingers were pointed at the government for this state of affairs, at least one scholar admitted that “the leading [academic] terrorism research was mostly just political theory and anecdotes” which has “left policy makers to design counterterrorism strategies without the benefit of facts.”

So what can be done about this? Well, Michael D. Ward, a Professor of Political Science at Duke University, has suggested a radical solution: test the theories to see if they can accurately predict real world outcomes. Ward recently published an article in the Journal of Global Security Studies (read it now before it goes behind the paywall) arguing in favor of less theory and more prediction in the fields of international relations and security studies.

[W]e need less theory because most theory is an attempt to rescue or adapt extant theory. We need more predictions in order to keep track of how well we understand the world around us. They will tell us how good our theories are and where we need better explanations.

As Ward explained,

[P]rediction is deeply embedded in the philosophy of science… The argument is that if you can develop models that provide an understanding—without a teleology of why things happen—you should be able to generate predictions that will not only be accurate, but may also be useful in a larger societal context.

Ward argued that “until very recently, most of this thread of work in security studies had been lost, or if not lost, at least abandoned.” The reason for this was the existence of a longstanding epistemological disagreement: “Many social scientists see a sharp distinction between explanation on the one hand and prediction on the other. Indeed, this distinction is often sharp enough that it is argued that doing one of these things cuts you out of doing the other.”

For the most part, Ward asserted, the theorists have won out over the empiricists.

[M]any scholars (but few others) will tell you that we need more theory. Doubtless they are right. Few of them really mean “theory” in the sense that I reserve for the term. Few of them mean “theory” in the sense of analytical narratives. Many of them mean “detailed, plausible stories” about how stuff occurs.

In light of the uncomfortable conclusion that more detailed, plausible stories about how stuff occurs does not actually yield more insight, Ward has adopted a decidedly contrarian stance.

I am here to suggest that less is more. Thus, let me be the first to call for less theory in security studies. We should winnow the many, many such “theories” that occupy the world of security studies.

Instead, we need more predictions.

He went on to detail his argument.

We need these predictions for four reasons. First, we need these predictions to help us make relevant statements about the world around us. We also need these predictions to help us throw out the bad “theories” that continue to flourish. These predictions will help drive our research into new areas, away from moribund approaches that have been followed for many decades. Finally, and perhaps most important, predictions will force us to keep on track.

But making predictions is only part of the process. Tracking them and accounting for their accuracy is the vital corollary to improving both accuracy and theory. As Ward pointed out, “One reason that many hate predictions is that talking heads make many predictions in the media, but few of them ever keep track of how well they are doing.” Most, in fact, are wrong; few are held accountable for it.

Of course, the use of empirical methods to predict the outcomes of future events animated much of Trevor N. Dupuy’s approach to historical analysis and is at the heart of what The Dupuy Institute carries on doing today. Both have made well-documented predictions that have also been remarkably accurate. More about those in the next post.

Kursk Book II

Kursk

My Kursk book is back down to $171.80 on Amazon.com, which is below the list price of $195. For a week it was at $275. That was the only week that my book America’s Modern Wars was ranked higher in sales on Amazon.com than my Kursk book. I do consider America’s Modern Wars, being a theoretical analysis of the nature of insurgencies, to be a more significant piece of work than my Kursk book. Still, World War II sells better, even at six times the price.

Next Stop Berlin?

053.#2.1Article in The National Interest by Michael Peck on Russia reconstituting the First Guards Tank Army: Next Stop Berlin

This appears to be in response to us sending a brigade to Europe: U.S. Brigade

We send a brigade…they raise a tank army.

Anyhow, the First Tank Army (later First Guards) commanded by Mikhail E. Katukov plays a prominent role in my book on Kursk. In July 1943 it consisted of the III Mechanized Corps (Krivoshein), VI Tank Corps (Getman…love that name) and XXXI Tank Corps (Cherniyenko). It was better handled that many of the other armored units at the Battle of Kursk.

On page 447 on the book I do have a story of a phone call on the morning of July 6 1943 between Stalin and Katukov drawn from “unpublished memoirs” provided to me by the late Col. Sverdlov.  This may be the only published reference to that phone exchange. It stated:

Vatutin ordered that the First Tank Army, II and V Guards Tank Corps should counterattack Tomarovka. I was against this decision. Why would we move our dug-in tanks two kilometers forward exposing them to the 88mm guns that can destroy our T-34s? Our 76.2mm guns could not reach the German tanks even at the 1.5 kilometer distance! Luckily for me, I received a phone call from Stalin in the morning of 6 July. I told him that it would make more sense to fight German tanks from prepared positions. “Okay,” Stalin said, “You won’t counterattack. Vatutin will call you and tell you that.”

From the bio of Katukov (1900-1976) in my book (whose picture is at top of this post) is a story from Col. Sverdlov:

In 1990, the newspaper “The Red Star” asked me [Col. Sverdlov] to write an “unusual” article about Katukov (to commemorate his 90th birthday). I went to the apartment where he lived—an ordinary nine-story building on the Leningrad parkway by the “Sokol” metro [station] where many marshals and army generals used to live back in the days. His wife Ekaterina received me very kindly. She showed me right away all four spacious rooms of the apartment, which she transformed into a museum: pictures, photographs, Katukov’s things. “Our dacha (summer house) is also a museum now, except that it is only visited by combat friends, but that is very rarely,” she said. And then she dazed me with a phrase coming literally from an unknown person, “He did not have children either with his first wife or with me. He couldn’t. He followed treatments before, during and after the war, but with no results. I was, so that you understand, the “field and campaign wife” from as early as 1941 and loved him a lot. He divorced his first wife right after the war and we got married in 1946.” All of this was said in a burst.

The museum was marvelous, and apparently it was very expensive to set up. It revealed immediately that the woman Katukov spent all the war years with, loved him so dearly that it would make any real man jealous. “I even put a memorial granite plaque on the house at my expense; can one really wait for the government?” Ekaterina added.

It’s true that she said all that was already long ago and well known on Katukov’s combat journey. And there was not one single unrespectful word! When we parted, she gave me Katukov’s memoir “At the Edge of the Main Strike,” written by V. Titov based on archival documents and Katukov’s stories. The book had the inscription, “To F. Sverdlov—in hallowed memory of Mikhail Katukov,” and all this after 14 years after his death! That’s what you mean by the real love of a woman! I will take the liberty to suppose say that she inspired him in the war as well. Perhaps Freud was right?!

For the newspaper article, I only described the museum. I earned some praise and double royalties for the article.

Putin Presides over a Slide into Poverty

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Article in Newsweek today: Putin Presides over a Slide into Poverty

Nothing new here (if you have been reading the blog), but a few highlights:

  1. “Russian officials project that the economy will contract 1 percent to 1.5 percent this year…”

2. “Currency devaluation (in 1998), generous state bailouts (in 2008) and a commodity prices rebound (in 2012) allowed the economy to bounce back quickly. None of these fixes are available now….to save the day.”

Oil today is at $39 a barrel for crude (Russia needs at least $50). I don’t think it is going significantly higher anytime soon, and some people are thinking that it is going to slide down some more.

 

Quote from America’s Modern Wars

On Amazon.com
On Amazon.com

Just to reinforce Shawn Woodford’s point below, let me quote from Chapter Twenty-Four, pages 294-295, of my book America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam:

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of having a series of meetings with Professor Ivo Feierabend. I was taking a graduate course in Econometrics at San Diego State University (SDSU). I decided that for my class paper, I would do something on the causes of revolution. The two leading efforts on this, both done in the 1960s, were by Ted Gurr and the husband and wife team of Feierabend and Feierabend. I reviewed their work, and for a variety of reasons, got interested in the measurements and analyses done by the Feierabends, vice the more known work by Ted Gurr. This eventually led me to Dr. Feierabend, who still happened to be at San Diego State University much to my surprise. This was some 20 years after he had done what I consider to be ground-breaking work on revolutions. I looked him up and had several useful and productive meetings with him.

In the 1960s, he had an entire team doing this work. Several professors were involved, and he had a large number of graduate students coding events of political violence. In addition, he had access to mainframe computers, offices, etc. The entire effort was shut down in the 1960s, and he had not done anything further on this in almost 20 years. I eventually asked him why he didn’t continue his work. His answer, short and succinct was, “I had no budget.”

This was a difficult answer for a college student to understand. But, it is entirely understood by me now. To do these types of analytical projects requires staff, resources, facilities, etc. They cannot be done by one person, and even if they could, that one person usually needs a paycheck. So, the only way one could conduct one of these large analytical projects is to be funded. In the case of the Feierabends, that funding came from the government, as did ours. Their funding ended after a few years, as has ours. Their work could be described as a good start, but there was so much more that needed to be done. Intellectually, one is mystified why someone would not make sure that this work was continued. Yet, in the cases of Ted Gurr and the Feierabends, it did not.

The problem lies in that the government (or at least the parts that I dealt with) sometimes has the attention span of a two-year-old. Not only that, it also has the need for instant gratification, very much like a two-year-old. Practically, what that means is that projects that can answer an immediate question get funding (like the Bosnia and Iraq casualty estimates). Larger research efforts that will produce an answer or a product in two to three years can also get funding. On the other hand, projects that produce a preliminary answer in two to three years and then need several more years of funding to refine, check, correct and develop that work, tend to die. This has happened repeatedly. The analytical community is littered with many clever, well thought-out reports that look to be good starts. What is missing is a complete body of analysis on a subject.

Why Are We Still Wondering Why Men (And Women) Rebel?

Gurr, Why Men RebelThe New York Times published a very interesting article addressing the inability of government-sponsored scholars and researchers to provide policymakers with an analytical basis for identifying potential terrorists. For anyone who has worked with U.S. government patrons on basic research, much of this will sound familiar.

“After all this funding and this flurry of publications, with each new terrorist incident we realize that we are no closer to answering our original question about what leads people to turn to political violence,” Marc Sageman, a psychologist and a longtime government consultant, wrote in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence in 2014. “The same worn-out questions are raised over and over again, and we still have no compelling answers.”

Ample government resourcing and plenty of research attention appears to yield little in advanced knowledge and insight. Why is this? For some, the way the government responds to research findings is the problem.

When researchers do come up with possible answers, the government often disregards them. Not long after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for instance, Alan B. Krueger, the Princeton economist, tested the widespread assumption that poverty was a key factor in the making of a terrorist. Mr. Krueger’s analysis of economic figures, polls, and data on suicide bombers and hate groups found no link between economic distress and terrorism.

More than a decade later, law enforcement officials and government-funded community groups still regard money problems as an indicator of radicalization.

There is also the demand for simple, definitive answers to immediately pressing questions (also known as The Church of What’s Happening Now).

Researchers, too, say they have been frustrated by both the Bush and Obama administrations because of what they say is a preoccupation with research that can be distilled into simple checklists… “They want to be able to do things right now,” said Clark R. McCauley Jr., a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College who has conducted government-funded terrorism research for years. “Anybody who offers them something right now, like to go around with a checklist — right now — is going to have their attention.

“It’s demand driven,” he continued. “The people with guns and badges are so eager to have something. The fact that they could actually do harm? This doesn’t deter them.”

There is also the problem of research that leads to conclusions that are at odds with the prevailing political sentiment or run contrary to institutional interests.

Mr. McCauley said many of his colleagues and peers conducted smart research and drew narrow conclusions. The problem, he said, is that studies get the most attention when they suggest warning signs. Research linking terrorism to American policies, meanwhile, is ignored.

However, the more honest researchers also admit that their inability to develop effective modes of inquiry into what are certainly complicated problems plays a role as well.

In 2005, Jeff Victoroff, a University of Southern California psychologist, concluded that the leading terrorism research was mostly just political theory and anecdotes. “A lack of systematic scholarly investigation has left policy makers to design counterterrorism strategies without the benefit of facts,” he wrote in The Journal of Conflict Resolution.

This state of affairs would be problematic enough considering it has been a decade-and-a-half since the events of 11 September 2001 made understanding political violence a national imperative. But it is even more perplexing given that the U.S. government began sponsoring basic research on this topic in the 1950s and 60s. The pioneering work of scholars Ted Gurr and Ivo and Rosalind Feierabend started with U.S. government funding. Gurr published his seminal work Why Men Rebel in 1970. Nearly a half century later, why are we still asking the same questions?