Tag combat

Are Long-Range Fires Changing The Character of Land Warfare?

Raytheon’s new Long-Range Precision Fires missile is deployed from a mobile launcher in this artist’s rendering. The new missile will allow the Army to fire two munitions from a single weapons pod, making it cost-effective and doubling the existing capacity. (Ratheon)
Raytheon’s new Long-Range Precision Fires missile is deployed from a mobile launcher in this artist’s rendering. The new missile will allow the Army to fire two munitions from a single weapons pod, making it cost-effective and doubling the existing capacity. (Ratheon)

Has U.S. land warfighting capability been compromised by advances by potential adversaries in long-range artillery capabilities? Michael Jacobson and Robert H. Scales argue that this is the case in an article on War on the Rocks.

While the U.S. Army has made major advances by incorporating precision into artillery, the ability and opportunity to employ precision are premised on a world of low-intensity conflict. In high-intensity conflict defined by combined-arms maneuver, the employment of artillery based on a precise point on the ground becomes a much more difficult proposition, especially when the enemy commands large formations of moving, armored vehicles, as Russia does. The U.S. joint force has recognized this dilemma and compensates for it by employing superior air forces and deep-strike fires. But Russia has undertaken a comprehensive upgrade of not just its military technology but its doctrine. We should not be surprised that Russia’s goal in this endeavor is to offset U.S. advantages in air superiority and double-down on its traditional advantages in artillery and rocket mass, range, and destructive power.

Jacobson and Scales provide a list of relatively quick fixes they assert would restore U.S. superiority in long-range fires: change policy on the use of cluster munitions; upgrade the U.S. self-propelled howitzer inventory from short-barreled 39 caliber guns to long-barreled 52 calibers and incorporate improved propellants and rocket assistance to double their existing range; reevaluate restrictions on the forthcoming Long Range Precision Fires rocket system in light of Russian attitudes toward the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty; and rebuild divisional and field artillery units atrophied by a decade of counterinsurgency warfare.

Their assessment echoes similar comments made earlier this year by Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, director of the U.S. Army’s Capabilities Integration Center. Another option for countering enemy fire artillery capabilities, McMaster suggested, was the employment of “cross-domain fires.” As he explained, “When an Army fires unit arrives somewhere, it should be able to do surface-to-air, surface-to-surface, and shore-to-ship capabilities.

The notion of land-based fire elements engaging more than just other land or counter-air targets has given rise to a concept being called “multi-domain battle.” It’s proponents, Dr. Albert Palazzo of the Australian Army’s War Research Centre, and Lieutenant Colonel David P. McLain III, Chief, Integration and Operations Branch in the Joint and Army Concepts Division of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, argue (also at War on the Rocks) that

While Western forces have embraced jointness, traditional boundaries between land, sea, and air have still defined which service and which capability is tasked with a given mission. Multi-domain battle breaks down the traditional environmental boundaries between domains that have previously limited who does what where. The theater of operations, in this view, is a unitary whole. The most useful capability needs to get the mission no matter what domain it technically comes from. Newly emerging technologies will enable the land force to operate in ways that, in the past, have been limited by the boundaries of its domain. These technologies will give the land force the ability to dominate not just the land but also project power into and across the other domains.

Palazzo and McClain contend that future land warfare forces

…must be designed, equipped, and trained to gain and maintain advantage across all domains and to understand and respond to the requirements of the future operating environment… Multi-domain battle will create options and opportunities for the joint force, while imposing multiple dilemmas on the adversary. Through land-to-sea, land-to-air, land-to-land, land-to-space, and land-to-cyberspace fires and effects, land forces can deter, deny, and defeat the adversary. This will allow the joint commander to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.

As an example of their concept, Palazzo and McClain cite a combined, joint operation from the Pacific Theater in World War II:

Just after dawn on September 4, 1943, Australian soldiers of the 9th Division came ashore near Lae, Papua in the Australian Army’s first major amphibious operation since Gallipoli. Supporting them were U.S. naval forces from VII Amphibious Force. The next day, the 503rd U.S. Parachute Regiment seized the airfield at Nadzab to the West of Lae, which allowed the follow-on landing of the 7th Australian Division.  The Japanese defenders offered some resistance on the land, token resistance in the air, and no resistance at sea. Terrain was the main obstacle to Lae’s capture.

From the beginning, the allied plan for Lae was a joint one. The allies were able to get their forces across the approaches to the enemy’s position, establish secure points of entry, build up strength, and defeat the enemy because they dominated the three domains of war relevant at the time — land, sea, and air.

The concept of multi-domain warfare seems like a logical conceptualization for integrating land-based weapons of increased range and effect into the sorts of near-term future conflicts envisioned by U.S. policy-makers and defense analysts. It comports fairly seamlessly with the precepts of the Third Offset Strategy.

However, as has been observed with the Third Offset Strategy, this raises questions about the role of long-range fires in conflicts that do not involve near-peer adversaries, such as counterinsurgencies. Is an emphasis on technological determinism reducing the capabilities of land combat units to just what they shoot? Is the ability to take and hold ground an anachronism in anti-access/area-denial environments? Do long-range fires obviate the relationship between fire and maneuver in modern combat tactics? If even infantry squads are equipped with stand-off weapons, what is the future of close quarters combat?

Unmanned Ground Vehicles: Drones Are Not Just For Flying Anymore

The Remote Controlled Abrams Tank [Hammacher Schlemmer]
The Remote Controlled Abrams Tank [Hammacher Schlemmer]

Over at Defense One, Patrick Tucker reports that General Dynamics Land Systems has teamed up with Kairos Autonomi to develop kits that “can turn virtually anything with wheels or tracks into a remote-controlled car.” It is part of a business strategy “to meet the U.S. Army’s expanding demand for unmanned ground vehicles”

Kairos kits costing less than $30,000 each have been installed on disposable vehicles to create moving targets for shooting practice. According to a spokesman, General Dynamics has also adapted them to LAV-25 Light Armored Vehicles and M1126 Strykers.

Tucker quotes Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (who else?), director of the U.S. Army’s Capabilities Integration Center, as saying that,

[G]etting remotely piloted and unmanned fighting vehicles out into the field is “something we really want to move forward on. What we want to do is get that kind of capability into soldiers’ hands early so we can refine the tactics, techniques and procedures, and then also consider enemy countermeasures and then build into the design of units that are autonomy enabled, build in the counter to those counters.”

According to General Dynamics Land Systems, the capability to turn any vehicle into a drone would give the U.S. an advantage over Russia, which has signaled its intent to automate versions of its T-14 Armata tank.

Studying The Conduct of War: “We Surely Must Do Better”

"The Ultimate Sand Castle" [Flickr, Jon]
“The Ultimate Sand Castle” [Flickr, Jon]

Chris and I both have discussed previously the apparent waning interest on the part of the Department of Defense to sponsor empirical research studying the basic phenomena of modern warfare. The U.S. government’s boom-or-bust approach to this is long standing, extending back at least to the Vietnam War. Recent criticism of the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment (OSD/NA) is unlikely to help. Established in 1973 and led by the legendary Andrew “Yoda” Marshall until 2015, OSD/NA plays an important role in funding basic research on topics of crucial importance to the art of net assessment. Critics of the office appear to be unaware of just how thin the actual base of empirical knowledge is on the conduct of war. Marshall understood that the net result of a net assessment based mostly on guesswork was likely to be useless, or worse, misleadingly wrong.

This lack of attention to the actual conduct of war extends beyond government sponsored research. In 2004, Stephen Biddle, a professor of political science at George Washington University and a well-regarded defense and foreign policy analyst, published Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle. The book focused on a very basic question: what causes victory and defeat in battle? Using a comparative approach that incorporated quantitative and qualitative methods, he effectively argued that success in contemporary combat was due to the mastery of what he called the “modern system.” (I won’t go into detail here, but I heartily recommend the book to anyone interested in the topic.)

Military Power was critically acclaimed and received multiple awards from academic, foreign policy, military, operations research, and strategic studies organizations. For all the accolades, however, Biddle was quite aware just how neglected the study of war has become in U.S. academic and professional communities. He concluded the book with a very straightforward assessment:

[F]or at least a generation, the study of war’s conduct has fallen between the stools of the institutional structure of modern academia and government. Political scientists often treat war itself as outside their subject matter; while its causes are seen as political and hence legitimate subjects of study, its conduct and outcomes are more often excluded. Since the 1970s, historians have turned away from the conduct of operations to focus on war’s effects on social, economic, and political structures. Military officers have deep subject matter knowledge but are rarely trained as theoreticians and have pressing operational demands on their professional attention. Policy analysts and operations researchers focus so tightly on short-deadline decision analysis (should the government buy the F22 or cancel it? Should the Army have 10 divisions or 8?) that underlying issues of cause and effect are often overlooked—even when the decisions under analysis turn on embedded assumptions about the causes of military outcomes. Operations research has also gradually lost much of its original empirical focus; modeling is now a chiefly deductive undertaking, with little systematic effort to test deductive claims against real world evidence. Over forty years ago, Thomas Schelling and Bernard Brodie argued that without an academic discipline of military science, the study of the conduct of war had languished; the passage of time has done little to overturn their assessment. Yet the subject is simply too important to treat by proxy and assumption on the margins of other questions In the absence of an institutional home for the study of warfare, it is all the more essential that analysts in existing disciplines recognize its importance and take up the business of investigating capability and its causes directly and rigorously. Few subjects are more important—or less studied by theoretical social scientists. With so much at stake, we surely must do better. [pp. 207-208]

Biddle published Military Power 12 years ago, in 2004. Has anything changed substantially? Have we done better?

So You Still Think You Want A Revolution In Military Affairs?

The Paladin M109A7 next-generation artillery system being manufactured by BAE Systems is a significant upgrade to the combat-proven M109A6 Paladin cannon artillery system. [www.army-technology.com]
Even as the U.S. Army examines ongoing “hybrid” conflicts and tries to conceptualize what wars of the near future are going to be like, it’s leaders continue to believe that a technology-driven Revolution in Military Affairs remains in the cards.

“I think we are on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of ground warfare,” U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., on June 23. “It will be of such significance that it will be like the rifling of a musket or the introduction of a machine gun or it will have such significance impact as the change from horse to mechanized vehicles.”

Revolutionary new technologies such as nanotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence will drive that fundamental change. But while Milley said that a revolution is coming, how exactly the character of ground warfare will shape up remains an open question. “Exactly what that’s going to look like, I don’t know,” Milley said. “I just know that we’re there. We’re on the leading edge of it. I think we’ve got a few years to figure it out—probably less than ten. But I think by 2025, you’re going to see armies—not only the American Army but armies around the world—will be fundamentally and substantively different than they are today.”

Whether technological change will radically change the nature of warfare remains to be seen. The Army is nevertheless pushing forward with changes in training and force structure to adapt to new tactics and technologies already being used by other combatants.

In related news, the Army’s Paladin Integrated Management program to upgrade 133 M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers to M109A7’s to improve the weapon’s reliability, maintainability, performance, responsiveness, and lethality has run into problems. The Department of Defense Inspector General found the M109A7 failed to meet maximum rate-of-fire requirements in tests and requires additional fire extinguisher capabilities in crew compartments. Army observers have warned of recent advances in Russian artillery technology and the need for effective countering capabilities. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cancelled the Army’s proposed next-generation XM2001 Crusader self-propelled howitzer in 2002.

 

Trevor Dupuy’s Combat Advance Rate Verities

t-34_76_4One of the basic processes of combat is movement. According to Trevor Dupuy, one of the most important outcomes of ground combat is advance against opposition. He spent a good amount of time examining historical advance rates, seeking to determine if technological change had led to increases in advance rates over time. On the face of it, he determined that daily rates had increased by about one-half, from about 17 kilometers per day during the Napoleonic Era, to about 26 kilometers a day by the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. However, when calculated by the duration of a campaign, average daily advance rates did not appear to have changed much at all over 200 years, despite the advent of mechanization.

His research on the topic yielded another list of verities. He did not believe they accounted for every factor or influence on advance rates, but he did think they accounted for most of them. He was also reasonably confident that no weapons or means of conveyance then foreseen would alter the basic relationships in his list.[1]

  1. Advance against opposition requires local combat power preponderance.
  2. There is no direct relationship between advance rates and force strength ratios.
  3. Under comparable conditions, small forces advance faster than larger forces.
  4. Advance rates vary inversely with the strength of the defender’s fortifications.
  5. Advance rates are greater for a force that achieves surprise.
  6. Advance rates decline daily in sustained operations.
  7. Superior relative combat effectiveness increases an attacker’s advance rate.
  8. An “all-out” effort increases advance rates at a cost in higher casualties.
  9. Advance rates are reduced by difficult terrain.
  10. Advance rates are reduced by rivers and canals.
  11. Advance rates vary positively with the quality and density of roads.
  12. Advance rates are reduced by bad weather.
  13. Advance rates are lower at night than in daytime.
  14. Advance rates are reduced by inadequate supply.
  15. Advance rates reflect interactions with friendly and enemy missions.

NOTES

[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (New York: Paragon House, 1987), pp. 158–163.

The U.S. Army’s Theory of Warfare…?

TP 525-3-1Last week, I touched on the ongoing effort by the U.S. Army to assess the nature of Russian advances in military technology and how they might affect the nature of combat on future battlefields. In a previous post, I highlighted that the Army’s preliminary conclusions about changes in near-future ground combat were being challenged by the other armed services in the context of debates over the next fiscal year U.S. military budget.

According to recently-confirmed Secretary of the Army, Eric Fanning, in order to persuade its critics, the Army needs to a better job of explaining the role it plays. “What I would have to do first of all is… tell the Army story… and the reason to do that is to make sure that the Army is properly resourced.”

Nadia Schadlow, a senior program officer at the Smith Richardson Foundation, pushed back against the idea that the Army needs a better narrative. She contends that the Army has already developed a theory of warfare that spells out how it believes near and medium-term wars will be fought and that it is now up to the critics to explain what aspects of this theory they object to and why.

Schadlow sketched out the U.S. Army’s current theory of warfare as it has been explained by senior Army leaders and in doctrinal publications.

The Army view is that conflicts in the future, like those in the past, will ultimately be resolved on land. Army forces will be essential components of joint operations to create sustainable political outcomes while defeating enemies and adversaries who challenge U.S. advantages in all domains: land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace. Army contributions to joint operations provide multiple options to civilian and military leaders. These capabilities include tailorable and scalable combinations of special operations and conventional forces, regionally aligned and globally responsive combined arms teams, and foundational theater capabilities to enable joint operations.

The notion of a military service defining its own theory of warfare—as opposed to adopting a general theory of warfare—is an interesting one. [Schadlow drew the paragraph above from TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1 The U.S. Army Operating Concept 2020-2040: Win in a Complex World (2014)] Schadlow referenced a recent article by U.S. Army Major Robert Chamberlain that assessed the German Army’s theory of warfare in the context of its military defeat at Verdun in 1916. Chamberlain defines a theory of warfare as

[A] description of how a military intends to produce strategic outcomes. In making a decision to apply a military remedy to a strategic problem, one employs a theory of warfare to determine how and if the proposed solution will work. In the modern world, the development of grand strategy often receives theories of warfare as a given. Due to the time and expense required to develop and train a modern military, the strategic decision-makers are bound by the military capabilities and doctrine that exist when they assume power.

He spelled out what a theory of warfare does for a military organization.

A theory of warfare provides the ordering principles of a military whether made explicit or not. It is a description of the strategic environment, of what the military is, and how it applies itself against an adversary. Everything else that a military does—how it dresses, organizes itself, procures equipment, imposes discipline, generates force, sees terrain, treats captured enemies, deals with civilians, and so forth—is largely a function of how it defines and achieves  success in war.

Chamberlain’s definition for a theory of warfare is idiosyncratic and he does not make reference to the very large body of existing scholarship on warfare theory. It sounds a good deal more like an operating concept rather than a general theory of warfare. Schadlow’s definition is also problematic in that it seems like a self-referential description of how the U.S. conceptualizes the contemporary operating environment and the tasks the Army carries out as part of the overall joint force responsibilities. She twice cites the Army’s contention that future conflicts will be ultimately decided on land, but does not explain why. An Army theory of warfare would be more compelling if it also explained warfare in the other domains, not just on the ground.

Nevertheless, theories and theorizing are useful exercises in critical thinking. Even if Chamberlain’s concept does not rise to the level of a theory of warfare, it does show that effort is being made within the U.S. military to break down these ideas into their constituent parts and rethink how they work together. This is a subject I plan to return to in the near future.

Human Factors in Warfare: Quantifying Morale

Radio broadcast, 1943. Copyprint. Bob Hope Collection, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress (150)

My colleague Chris Lawrence has taken me to task with regard to my last post on the topic of morale. I asserted that Trevor Dupuy’s claim that human factors influenced the outcome of combat was controversial. Chris pointed out that it was, in fact, Col Dupuy’s claims that 1) human factors in combat could be measured and quantified; and 2) that quantified human factors should be incorporated into combat models, that were really the sources of controversy.

Chris is indisputably correct about that. In my defense, I chose the wording I used in my post deliberately to weasel around an apparently problematic contradiction. While Col Dupuy did indeed believe that human factors in combat could be quantified, he was dubious about the prospect of individually quantifying some of those specific factors, including morale. Since my post was primarily about Dr. Fennell’s work on morale, I side-stepped that issue. Well, today I am going to wade on in.

Col Dupuy first addressed the quantification of human factors in combat in his book Numbers, Predictions & War, published in 1979. His original combat model, the Quantified Judgment Model (QJM), incorporated 73 different variable elements and parameters, including 11 he defined as intangible. By intangible, he meant variables “which are – at least for the present – impossible to quantify with confidence, either because they are essentially qualitative in nature, or because for some other reason they currently defy precise delineation or measurement.”[1] He also believed that “some (such as logistics) may lend themselves to assessment indirectly through the measurement of their effects.”[2]

He divided those intangible variables into three categories[3]:

Sometimes calculable

Probably calculable; not yet calculated

Intangible; probably individually incalculable
  • Combat effectiveness
  • Logistics
  • Leadership
  • Training/experience
  • Initiative
  • Morale
  • Time
  • Space
  • Momentum
  • Intelligence
  • Technology

With regard to leadership, training, and morale, Col Dupuy asserted that

These subjective qualities are almost impossible to assess in absolute terms with complete objectivity. However, the relative capabilities of the opposing leaders in terms of skill, nerve, and determination can probably have more influence on the outcome of a battle than any of the other qualitative variables of combat— if there is a substantial difference in the qualities of leadership of the opposing sides. The same is true, probably to a somewhat lesser extent, if there are substantial differences in the state of training or of combat experience of the two sides, and if there are great differences in their respective states of morale. Accordingly, where solid historical information warrants, these three variables can be given mathematical weights, either individually, or in relationship with the other elements of combat effectiveness, on the basis of professional military judgment, but (under the present “state of the art”) this weighting process is bound to be highly subjective.[4]

Col Dupuy included morale as an independent variable in the QJM’s combat power formula and offered a table of suggested values [5]. However, he did not explain in any detail how to assess morale or apply it in the QJM.

QJM-TNDM Morale Table

As I quoted in my last post, as of 1987, Col Dupuy continued to contend ambivalently that “even though it may not be easily defined and can probably never be quantified, troop morale is very real and can be very important as a contributor to victory or defeat.” He never resolved this seeming contradiction in his writings, but as with several of the intangible variables he identified, he did acknowledge the potential for defining and quantifying some of them. Dr. Fennell’s demonstration of a strong correlation between morale level and rates of sickness, battle exhaustion, desertion, absence without leave and self-inflicted wounds suggests, at least in the British Second Army in northwest Europe in 1944-45, a potential methodology for quantifying morale which could allow its impact to be measured indirectly in much the same manner Col Dupuy measured combat effectiveness. Whether or not the notion of doing so remains controversial will be interesting to see.

NOTES

[1.] Trevor N. Dupuy, Numbers, Predictions & War: Using History To Evaluate Combat Factors And Predict The Outcome Of Battles (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1979), p. 36

[2] ibid., p. 37.

[3] ibid., p. 33.

[4] ibid., p. 37-38.

[5] ibid., p. 231.

Human Factors in Warfare: Measuring Morale

Figure One: Second Army, Weekly Admissions per 1,000 to General Hospitals and Casualty Clearing Stations for Sickness, Battle Exhaustion and SIW, 11 June 1944 to 5 May 1945. Morale scale equivalents are presented on the right hand Y-axis. (Dr. Jonathan Fennell)
Figure One: Second Army, Weekly Admissions per 1,000 to General Hospitals and Casualty Clearing Stations for Sickness, Battle Exhaustion and SIW, 11 June 1944 to 5 May 1945. Morale scale equivalents are presented on the right hand Y-axis. (Dr. Jonathan Fennell)

One of Trevor Dupuy’s more important and controversial contributions to a theory of combat was the assertion that outcomes were dictated in part by behavioral factors, i.e. the human element. Among the influential human factors he identified were leadership, training, experience, and manpower quality. He also recognized the importance of morale.

Morale is an ephemeral quality of military forces and is certainly intangible. Yet even though it may not be easily defined and can probably never be quantified, troop morale is very real and can be very important as a contributor to victory or defeat. The significance of morale is probably inversely proportional to the quality of troops. A well-trained, well-led, cohesive force of veterans will fight well and effectively even if morale is low… Yet for ordinary armies, poor morale can contribute to defeat.[1]

Dr. Jonathan Fennell of the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London recently set out to determine if there were ways of measuring morale by looking at the combat experiences of the British Army in World War II. Fennell proposed

that the concept of morale has no place in a critical analysis of the past unless it is clearly differentiated from definitions associated solely or primarily with mood or cohesion and the group. Instead, for morale to have explanatory value, particularly in a combat environment, a functional conceptualisation is proposed, which, while not excluding the role of mood or group cohesion, focuses its meaning and relevance on motivation and the willingness to act in a manner required by an authority or institution.

Fennell constructed a multi-dimensional model of morale

By drawing on studies made across the social sciences and on primary archival evidence from the British and Commonwealth Army’s experiences in North Africa in the Second World War… It suggests that morale can best be understood as emerging from the subtle interdependencies and interrelationships of the many factors known to affect military means.

Fennell tested his methodology by developing a weekly morale score using bi-weekly censorship summaries of letters and correspondence from members of the British Second Army in the Northwest Europe Campaign in 1944-45.

These summaries proved a useful source to describe and ‘quantify’ levels of morale (through the use of a numerical morale scale). Where morale was described as ‘excellent’, it was awarded a score of 3. ‘High’ morale was given a score of 2 and ‘good’ morale was scored 1. ‘Satisfactory’ morale was given a score of 0 (neither positive or negative). Morale described as ‘severely tried’ was scored -1, while ‘low’ and ‘very low’ morale were scored -2 and -3 respectively.

He then correlated these scores with weekly statistics compiled by the British Second Army and 21st Army Group on rates of sickness, battle exhaustion, desertion, absence without leave (AWOL) and self-inflicted wounds (SIW).

The results of the correlation analysis showed that the tabulated rates (the combined rate of sickness, battle exhaustion, desertion, AWOL and SIW) had an extremely strong negative correlation with morale (-0.949, P<0.001), i.e. when morale was high, sickness rates etc. were low, and when morale was low, sickness rates etc. were high. This is a remarkably strong relationship and shows that these factors when taken together can be used as a quantitative method to assess levels of morale, at the very least for the Army and campaign under discussion.

The results are shown on the graph above. According to Fennell,

This analysis of morale supports the conclusions of much of the recent historiography on the British Army in Northwest Europe; morale was a necessary component of combat effectiveness (morale in Second Army was broadly speaking high throughout the victorious campaign); however, morale was not a sufficient explanation for Second Army’s successes and failures on the battlefield. For example, morale would appear to have been at its highest before and during Operation ‘Market Garden’. But ‘Market Garden’ was a failure. It is likely, as John Buckley has argued, that ‘Market Garden’ was a conceptual failure rather than a morale one. Morale would also appear to have been mostly high during operations in the Low Countries and Germany, but these operations were beset with setbacks and delays.

Fennell further explored the relationship between morale and combat performance, and combat performance and strategy, in his contribution to Anthony King, ed., Frontline: Combat and Cohesion in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). An earlier version of his chapter can be found here.

NOTES

[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, Understanding Defeat: How To Recover From Loss In Battle To Gain Victory In War (New York: Paragon House, 1990), p. 67

Kursk Book Availability

Kursk

Amazon.com is now charging $275 for my Kursk book. For some reason, they had always discounted it to below list price. Last week, the discounted ended and it now cost well above list price. We have no say in what Amazon.com does or does not do. We have watched the odd price fluctuations on the book prices there with considerable bemusement.

It is available from Aberdeen Bookstore at the list price of $195. If you click on the image of the book to the right of this post then it will lead you there.

The link is: Aberdeen Bookstore