Mystics & Statistics

A blog on quantitative historical analysis hosted by The Dupuy Institute

Urban Legends

Aachen, October 1944 (source: ww2today.com)

Urban Legends is the title of Chapter 16 of my book War by Numbers. It is one of two chapters in the book that discusses our three urban warfare studies.

Over at the blog site War on the Rocks, there is a new article called: Urban Legend: Is Combat in Cities Really Inevitable?

The article asks:

  1. “First, in what kinds of urban operations will the U.S. military be involved?
  2. “Second, in irregular urban combat what will be the role of U.S. forces?
  3. “Finally, in thinking about deterring and fighting peer adversaries is enough attention being paid to defensive urban operations…”

It then states:

This leads to a larger point. Much of the area in Eastern Europe where U.S. forces could play a key roles in deterring Russian aggression has no large urban centers….Thus, before going all-in on optimizing for urban operations, the U.S. military should take a deep breath for a moment and think carefully about future operations within the context of the National Defense Strategy.

People might also want to look at our original urban warfare report: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/urbanwar.pdf

Our first urban warfare study is dated 11 January 2002 and has been on our website since that time (see: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipubs.htm). To quote from page 78 of this study (bolding not in original):

The primary result of urban terrain…is to reduce advance rates significantly, reduce casualties to some extent and, as a result, to extend the duration of combat….the vast majority of urban terrain encountered will be flanked by non-urban terrain. Operations in these non-urban flanks will potentially advance at a pace two to four times that of the urban operations…This will, of course, result in either the defender withdrawing from the urban terrain, which is what traditionally had occurred, or an assault and eventual mop-up operation by the attacker of the enveloped defenders….

On the other hand, it is possible that one could encounter a situation where the urban terrain could not be bypasses or securely enveloped. The most notable example of such a scenario would be in South Korea, where Seoul, anchored to the west (left flank) by the sea, extends for some 25 kilometers inland and is then flanked east (right) by a substantial mountain range. While this is an important case of US defense planning purposes, it is one of the few hot spots in the world where this situation is found. An examination of an atlas shows few other cities in the world that cannot be bypassed or enveloped.

This discussion, naturally, is repeated in my book War by Numbers, on pages 251-254 in a section called “The Impact of Urban Terrain on Operations.”

Signal Multi-player Game

This was just flagged to me by one of our readers in the UK: https://phys.org/news/2019-05-science-wargames.html

It is a multi-player game developed by researchers at University of California, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. It was done for the Carnegie Corporation, a non-profit: https://www.carnegie.org/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Corporation_of_New_York

They have an open play window every Wednesday and Thursday 1 to 5 PM Pacific Time (4 – 8 EST). The link is here: https://www.signalvideogame.com/

I know nothing about this effort. An image of it is at the top of this blog post. Looks like a fairly typical hex game.

So, What Would We Do with 120,000 Troops in the Middle East?

Parade of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps tank transporters, 21 September 2012

The New York Times reported yesterday that DOD (Department of Defense) has assembled a plan to move as many as 120,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East. The article is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/world/middleeast/us-military-plans-iran.html

A few quotes (bolding in mine):

  1. “…last Thursday, Acting Defense secretary Patrick Shanahan presented an updated military plan that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East….
  2. “…should Iran attack American forces or accelerate work on nuclear weapons, administration officials said.”
  3. “They do not call for a land invasion of Iran, which would require vastly more troops, officials said.”
  4. “More than a half-dozen American national security officers….agreed to discuss them with the The New York Times….”

Now, this really cannot be an invasion force for Iran. Iran is a country of 82 million people with an armed force of over 500,000. Of that force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps makes up 120,000 (about 100,000 in their ground forces) while the Iranian Army consist of 350,000. They also have a 37,000 person air force, 18,000 person navy and 15,000 air defense force. Their army budget is 2 trillion, which is about 0.3 percent of what we spend. All this data is from Wikipedia.

We occupied Iraq in 2003 with an initial invasion force of 75,000 U. S. ground troops, and that ended up not going too well. Iraq had a population of 24 million at the time. Also, Tehran is a long way from the Persian Gulf. Assuming we have learned something in the interim, this probably means we would be looking for an invasion force of several hundred thousand. So, this is probably not an invasion force.

I assume a significant portion of this force is air and naval.

We did previously intervene in the Persian Gulf during the “Tanker War” between Iran and Iraq. These two nations had been at war since 1980. It is estimated that during their “Tanker War” (1984-1988) 430 civilian sailors were killed. The U.S. became involved on 23 July 1987 with Operation Earnest Will. This operation, which including escorting tankers in the Persian Gulf, led to a U.S. build up of over 30 warships. The biggest loss of American life was an incident that occurred before the tanker escort operation was declared when on 17 May 1987 an Iraqi (not Iranian) F-1 Mirage plane accidently fired two Exocet missiles at the USS Stark, with 37 sailors killed and 21 wounded. The U.S. also lost 2 U.S. Marines killed during Operation Praying Mantis on 18 April 1988 and 10 U.S. Navy wounded on 14 April 1988 (from the USS Samuel B. Roberts hitting a mine). U.S. ships were fired upon, struck mines or took other military actions on July 24 1987, September 22-26, October 10, October 15, October 18, April 14, April 18, July 3 and July 14 1988. There were at least 18 U.S. civilian seamen injured by (Iranian) mines.

During Operation Praying Mantis Iran lost the frigate Sahand (45 crew killed), a gunboat (11 crew killed) and 3 speedboats. They also lost 5 killed in a U.S. raid on Iran Ajr on 22 September 1987 and three other Iranian boats were sunk shortly afterwards. There were some other losses, but I have not tracked them all.

Then there was the USS Vincennes which on 3 July 1988 sunk two Iranian gunboats and then accidently shot down Iran Air Flight 655 for the loss of 290 civilians.

Breakpoints

A couple of our posts on Breakpoints (forced changes in posture) are getting a lot of hits lately. Not sure why or by who. Let me list all of our posts addressing the issue of breakpoints:

What Is A Breakpoint?

Response 3 (Breakpoints)

Breakpoints in U.S. Army Doctrine

C-WAM 4 (Breakpoints)

Diddlysquat

Engaging the Phalanx (part 7 of 7)

It is also discussed in my book War by Numbers, pages 287-289 and briefly mentioned on page 291.

Oh…and here also (forgot about this one as I only did a search on the word “breakpoint”):

Battle Outcomes: Casualty Rates As a Measure of Defeat

Dupuy’s Verities: Combat Power =/= Firepower

A U.S. 11th Marines 75mm pack howitzer and crew on Guadalcanal, September or October, 1942. The lean condition of the crewmembers indicate that they haven’t been getting enough nutrition during this period. [Wikipedia]

The ninth of Trevor Dupuy’s Timeless Verities of Combat is:

Superior Combat Power Always Wins.

From Understanding War (1987):

Military history demonstrates that whenever an outnumbered force was successful, its combat power was greater than that of the loser. All other things being equal, God has always been on the side of the heaviest battalions and always will be.

In recent years two or three surveys of modern historical experience have led to the finding that relative strength is not a conclusive factor in battle outcome. As we have seen, a superficial analysis of historical combat could support this conclusion. There are a number of examples of battles won by the side with inferior numbers. In many battles, outnumbered attackers were successful.

These examples are not meaningful, however, until the comparison includes the circumstances of the battles and opposing forces. If one take into consideration surprise (when present), relative combat effectiveness of the opponents, terrain features, and the advantage of defensive posture, the result may be different. When all of the circumstances are quantified and applied to the numbers of troops and weapons, the side with the greater combat power on the battlefield is always seen to prevail.

The concept of combat power is foundational to Dupuy’s theory of combat. He did not originate it; the notion that battle encompasses something more than just “physics-based” aspects likely originated with British theorist J.F.C. Fuller during World War I and migrated into U.S. Army thinking via post-war doctrinal revision. Dupuy refined and sharpened the Army’s vague conceptualization of it in the first iterations of his Quantified Judgement Model (QJM) developed in the 1970s.

Dupuy initially defined his idea of combat power in formal terms, as an equation in the QJM:

P = (S x V x CEV)

When:

P = Combat Power
S = Force Strength
V = Environmental and Operational Variable Factors
CEV = Combat Effectiveness Value

Essentially, combat power is the product of:

  • force strength as measured in his models through the Theoretical/Operational Lethality Index (TLI/OLI), a firepower scoring method for comparing the lethality of weapons relative to each other;
  • the intangible environmental and operational variables that affect each circumstance of combat; and
  • the intangible human behavioral (or moral) factors that determine the fighting quality of a combat force.

Dupuy’s theory of combat power and its functional realization in his models have two virtues. First, unlike most existing combat models, it incorporates the effects of those intangible factors unique to each engagement or battle that influence combat outcomes, but are not readily measured in physical terms. As Dupuy argued, combat consists of more than duels between weapons systems. A list of those factors can be found below.

Second, the analytical research in real-world combat data done by him and his colleagues allowed him to begin establishing the specific nature combat processes and their interaction that are only abstracted in other combat theories and models. Those factors and processes for which he had developed a quantification hypothesis are denoted by an asterisk below.

You might want to pre-order the book

By the way, if you pre-order The Battle of Prokhorovka through amazon.com it is selling for $28.43: Buy from Amazon The list price on the hardcover is  $44.95. I do not know what price it will be listed at on 1 June 2019 (nor do I have any involvement or say in these matters).

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon

The Battle of Prokhorovka book — why?

My original contract back in 1999 to prepare the Kursk book was for a single book of 450 pages. During the writing process….the book grew. This is discussed in this article: http://www.aberdeenbookstore.com/the-largest-history-book-ever

When I realized how large the book was, I contacted the publisher and discussed the issue with him. I suggested that we go ahead and complete the large book I was writing and then go back and do an abridged version. He graciously agreed, but unfortunately I was unable to complete the original book in 2003/2004 (although it was mostly done) due to my work at The Dupuy Institute, magnified by a war or two going on.

So, when I was finally able to get back to this book (thanks to government budget cuts and sequestration), I was left with an original book of 1,662 pages. Clearly there was a need for a smaller book.

This is not that book. This book is the updated chapters of the original book that focus on the fighting by the SS Panzer Corps, III Panzer Corps, parts of the Sixth Guards Army, Sixty-Ninth Army, Fifth Guards Army, Fifth Guard Tank Army and parts of the Seventh Guards Army from 9 to 17 July 1943. As such, it is 40% of the original book sectioned off as a separate stand alone book.

I could do four such books from my original book. This is the first of these books. I am currently finishing up a second such book (Aces at Kursk: The Belgorod Offensive Air War). I could do two more books along that line (Battle of Tolstoye Woods and The Belgorod Offensive), although I am not sure that I ever will. It depends on demand, sales, the publisher’s interest, my time, and my mood.

I may also get around to writing a single 300-page book summarizing the offensive in the south. We shall see. There are a lot of other projects I am also considering.

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon

Throwing the Dice

This is a follow-up to the blog post:

China and Russia Defeats the USA

One of readers commented on this post and posted the following link: Paper Wargames and Policy Making

In case you are not reading the comments to our blog post, wanted to make sure this was brought to your attention. The article is worth taking a look at just for the pictures. A few highlights:

  1. “In my lifetime, computer-based simulation have largely taken over analytical gaming, sometimes bringing new levels of investigative power, but often just providing the illusion of it as the details of the models and their simplifying assumptions become invisible to players and to the policymakers whose decisions the games are supposed to inform.”
  2. However, it gradually became clear [with the Baltic states wargame] — rather disconcertingly–that we were out in front of most of the official planning, not following in its wake.”
  3. “The resulting game….resolves combat using 12-hour turns and 10-km hexes; units are battalions of ground forces, SAM batteries, and half-squadrons of aircraft (12 fighters or six bombers).”
  4. “…and they like throwing the dice.”

The Battle of Prokhorovka — what does the book consist of

The book consists of:

  1. 638 numbered pages (and 14 pages of front matter)
  2. 75 Listed illustrations and maps
  3. Four photo sections
    1. 15 terrain photos
    2. 12 recon photos
    3. 64 battlefield photos
    4. 70 commander photos
  4. One map section with 17 maps
  5. 18 numbered tables
  6. 21 graphs
  7. 44 sidebars
  8. 76 engagement sheets

Just for the record, my original mega-book consisted of 192 engagement sheets. So one could make the argument that this book covers 40% of the Belgorod offensive (at least compared to the original book).

The book was edited by the same editor of the original book, Ariane Smith of Capital A: http://www.capitala.net/. Therefore, it is of a very similar format and style.

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon

The Battle of Prokhorovka – 16 chapters

My new book The Battle of Prokhorovka consists of 16 chapters (the original mega-book had 27). The chapters are:

1. Preparing for the Showdown…..page 13
2. The Soviets Prepare…..page 35
3. The Belgorod Offensive: 4-8 July 1943…..page 51
4. The XLVIII Panzer Corps Heads West: 9 – 11 July 1943…..page 113
5. The Advance on Prokhorovka: 9-11 July…..page 133
6. The Advance on the Severnyii Donets: 9-11 July 1943…..page 203
7. The Situation as of 11 July 1943…..page 229
8. The Air War: 9-18 July 1943…..page 243
9. The Tank Fields of Prokhorovka, 12 July 1943…..page 291
10. SS Panzer Corps Attack Stalls, 13 July 1943…..page 359
11. Soviet Counterattacks against the III Panzer Corps: 12-13 July 1943…..page 375
12. Aftermath of Prokhorovka: 13 July 1943…..page 401
13. Cleaning Up the Donets Triangle: 14-15 July 1943…..page 475
14. The Battlefield is Quiet: 16-17 July 1943…..page 511
15. The German Withdrawal: 18-24 July 1943…..page 539
16. Post-Mortem…..page 559

There are only two short appendices in this book (the original book had 7 appendices totaling 342 pages):

Appendix I: German and Soviet Terminology…..page 615
Appendix II: The Engagements…..page 623

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon