Tag strategic studies

Active Defense, Forward Defense, and A2/AD in Eastern Europe

The current military and anti-access/area denial situation in Eastern Europe. [Map and overlay derived from situation map by Thomas C. Thielen (@noclador) https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1079999716333703168; and Ian Williams, “The Russia – NATO A2AD Environment,” Missile Threat, Center for Strategic and International Studies, published January 3, 2017, last modified November 29, 2018, https://missilethreat.csis.org/russia-nato-a2ad-environment/]

In an article published by West Point’s Modern War Institute last month, “The US Army is Wrong on Future War,” Nathan Jennings, Amos Fox and Adam Taliaferro laid out a detailed argument that current and near-future political, strategic, and operational realities augur against the Army’s current doctrinal conceptualization for Multi-Domain Operations (MDO).

[T]he US Army is mistakenly structuring for offensive clashes of mass and scale reminiscent of 1944 while competitors like Russia and China have adapted to twenty-first-century reality. This new paradigm—which favors fait accompli acquisitions, projection from sovereign sanctuary, and indirect proxy wars—combines incremental military actions with weaponized political, informational, and economic agendas under the protection of nuclear-fires complexes to advance territorial influence…

These factors suggest, cumulatively, that the advantage in military confrontation between great powers has decisively shifted to those that combine strategic offense with tactical defense.

As a consequence, the authors suggested that “the US Army should recognize the evolved character of modern warfare and embrace strategies that establish forward positions of advantage in contested areas like Eastern Europe and the South China Sea. This means reorganizing its current maneuver-centric structure into a fires-dominant force with robust capacity to defend in depth.”

Forward Defense, Active Defense, and AirLand Battle

To illustrate their thinking, Jennings, Fox, and Taliaferro invoked a specific historical example:

This strategic realignment should begin with adopting an approach more reminiscent of the US Army’s Active Defense doctrine of the 1970s than the vaunted AirLand Battle concept of the 1980s. While many distain (sic) Active Defense for running counter to institutional culture, it clearly recognized the primacy of the combined-arms defense in depth with supporting joint fires in the nuclear era. The concept’s elevation of the sciences of terrain and weaponry at scale—rather than today’s cult of the offense—is better suited to the current strategic environment. More importantly, this methodology would enable stated political aims to prevent adversary aggression rather than to invade their home territory.

In the article’s comments, many pushed back against reviving Active Defense thinking, which has apparently become indelibly tarred with the derisive criticism that led to its replacement by AirLand Battle in the 1980s. As the authors gently noted, much of this resistance stemmed from the perceptions of Army critics that Active Defense was passive and defensively-oriented, overly focused on firepower, and suspicions that it derived from operations research analysts reducing warfare and combat to a mathematical “battle calculus.”

While AirLand Battle has been justly lauded for enabling U.S. military success against Iraq in 1990-91 and 2003 (a third-rank, non-nuclear power it should be noted), it always elided the fundamental question of whether conventional deep strikes and operational maneuver into the territory of the Soviet Union’s Eastern European Warsaw Pact allies—and potentially the Soviet Union itself—would have triggered a nuclear response. The criticism of Active Defense similarly overlooked the basic political problem that led to the doctrine in the first place, namely, the need to provide a credible conventional forward defense of West Germany. Keeping the Germans actively integrated into NATO depended upon assurances that a Soviet invasion could be resisted effectively without resorting to nuclear weapons. Indeed, the political cohesion of the NATO alliance itself rested on the contradiction between the credibility of U.S. assurances that it would defend Western Europe with nuclear weapons if necessary and the fears of alliance members that losing a battle for West Germany would make that necessity a reality.

Forward Defense in Eastern Europe

A cursory look at the current military situation in Eastern Europe along with Russia’s increasingly robust anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities (see map) should clearly illustrate the logic behind a doctrine of forward defense. U.S. and NATO troops based in Western Europe would have to run a gauntlet of well protected long-range fires systems just to get into battle in Ukraine or the Baltics. Attempting operational maneuver at the end of lengthy and exposed logistical supply lines would seem to be dauntingly challenging. The U.S. 2nd U.S. Cavalry ABCT Stryker Brigade Combat Team based in southwest Germany appears very much “lone and lonely.” It should also illustrate the difficulties in attacking the Russian A2/AD complex; an act, which Jennings, Fox, and Taliaferro remind, that would actively court a nuclear response.

In this light, Active Defense—or better—a MDO doctrine of forward defense oriented on “a fires-dominant force with robust capacity to defend in depth,” intended to “enable stated political aims to prevent adversary aggression rather than to invade their home territory,” does not really seem foolishly retrograde after all.

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

“JTLS Overview Movie by Rolands & Associates” [YouTube]

[This piece was originally posted on 10 April 2017.]

As the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps work together to develop their joint Multi-Domain Battle concept, wargaming and simulation will play a significant role. Aspects of the construct have already been explored through the Army’s Unified Challenge, Joint Warfighting Assessment, and Austere Challenge exercises, and upcoming Unified Quest and U.S. Army, Pacific war games and exercises. U.S. Pacific Command and U.S. European Command also have simulations and exercises scheduled.

A great deal of importance has been placed on the knowledge derived from these activities. As the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command recently stated,

Concept analysis informed by joint and multinational learning events…will yield the capabilities required of multi-domain battle. Resulting doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel and facilities solutions will increase the capacity and capability of the future force while incorporating new formations and organizations.

There is, however, a problem afflicting the Defense Department’s wargames, of which the military operations research and models and simulations communities have long been aware, but have been slow to address: their models are built on a thin foundation of empirical knowledge about the phenomenon of combat. None have proven the ability to replicate real-world battle experience. This is known as the “base of sand” problem.

A Brief History of The Base of Sand

All combat models and simulations are abstracted theories of how combat works. Combat modeling in the United States began in the early 1950s as an extension of military operations research that began during World War II. Early model designers did not have large base of empirical combat data from which to derive their models. Although a start had been made during World War II and the Korean War to collect real-world battlefield data from observation and military unit records, an effort that provided useful initial insights, no systematic effort has ever been made to identify and assemble such information. In the absence of extensive empirical combat data, model designers turned instead to concepts of combat drawn from official military doctrine (usually of uncertain provenance), subject matter expertise, historians and theorists, the physical sciences, or their own best guesses.

As the U.S. government’s interest in scientific management methods blossomed in the late 1950s and 1960s, the Defense Department’s support for operations research and use of combat modeling in planning and analysis grew as well. By the early 1970s, it became evident that basic research on combat had not kept pace. A survey of existing combat models by Gary Shubik and Martin Brewer for RAND in 1972 concluded that

Basic research and knowledge is lacking. The majority of the MSGs [models, simulations and games] sampled are living off a very slender intellectual investment in fundamental knowledge…. [T]he need for basic research is so critical that if no other funding were available we would favor a plan to reduce by a significant proportion all current expenditures for MSGs and to use the saving for basic research.

In 1975, John Stockfish took a direct look at the use of data and combat models for managing decisions regarding conventional military forces for RAND. He emphatically stated that “[T]he need for better and more empirical work, including operational testing, is of such a magnitude that a major reallocating of talent from model building to fundamental empirical work is called for.”

In 1991, Paul K. Davis, an analyst for RAND, and Donald Blumenthal, a consultant to the Livermore National Laboratory, published an assessment of the state of Defense Department combat modeling. It began as a discussion between senior scientists and analysts from RAND, Livermore, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored an ensuing report, The Base of Sand Problem: A White Paper on the State of Military Combat Modeling.

Davis and Blumenthal contended

The [Defense Department] is becoming critically dependent on combat models (including simulations and war games)—even more dependent than in the past. There is considerable activity to improve model interoperability and capabilities for distributed war gaming. In contrast to this interest in model-related technology, there has been far too little interest in the substance of the models and the validity of the lessons learned from using them. In our view, the DoD does not appreciate that in many cases the models are built on a base of sand…

[T]he DoD’s approach in developing and using combat models, including simulations and war games, is fatally flawed—so flawed that it cannot be corrected with anything less than structural changes in management and concept. [Original emphasis]

As a remedy, the authors recommended that the Defense Department create an office to stimulate a national military science program. This Office of Military Science would promote and sponsor basic research on war and warfare while still relying on the military services and other agencies for most research and analysis.

Davis and Blumenthal initially drafted their white paper before the 1991 Gulf War, but the performance of the Defense Department’s models and simulations in that conflict underscored the very problems they described. Defense Department wargames during initial planning for the conflict reportedly predicted tens of thousands of U.S. combat casualties. These simulations were said to have led to major changes in U.S. Central Command’s operational plan. When the casualty estimates leaked, they caused great public consternation and inevitable Congressional hearings.

While all pre-conflict estimates of U.S. casualties in the Gulf War turned out to be too high, the Defense Department’s predictions were the most inaccurate, by several orders of magnitude. This performance, along with Davis and Blumenthal’s scathing critique, should have called the Defense Department’s entire modeling and simulation effort into question. But it did not.

The Problem Persists

The Defense Department’s current generation of models and simulations harbor the same weaknesses as the ones in use in the 1990s. Some are new iterations of old models with updated graphics and code, but using the same theoretical assumptions about combat. In most cases, no one other than the designers knows exactly what data and concepts the models are based upon. This practice is known in the technology world as black boxing. While black boxing may be an essential business practice in the competitive world of government consulting, it makes independently evaluating the validity of combat models and simulations nearly impossible. This should be of major concern because many models and simulations in use today contain known flaws.

Some, such as  Joint Theater Level Simulation (JTLS), use the Lanchester equations for calculating attrition in ground combat. However, multiple studies have shown that these equations are incapable of replicating real-world combat. British engineer Frederick W. Lanchester developed and published them in 1916 as an abstract conceptualization of aerial combat, stating himself that he did not believe they were applicable to ground combat. If Lanchester-based models cannot accurately represent historical combat, how can there be any confidence that they are realistically predicting future combat?

Others, such as the Joint Conflict And Tactical Simulation (JCATS), MAGTF Tactical Warfare System (MTWS), and Warfighters’ Simulation (WARSIM) adjudicate ground combat using probability of hit/probability of kill (pH/pK) algorithms. Corps Battle Simulation (CBS) uses pH/pK for direct fire attrition and a modified version of Lanchester for indirect fire. While these probabilities are developed from real-world weapon system proving ground data, their application in the models is combined with inputs from subjective sources, such as outputs from other combat models, which are likely not based on real-world data. Multiplying an empirically-derived figure by a judgement-based coefficient results in a judgement-based estimate, which might be accurate or it might not. No one really knows.

Potential Remedies

One way of assessing the accuracy of these models and simulations would be to test them against real-world combat data, which does exist. In theory, Defense Department models and simulations are supposed to be subjected to validation, verification, and accreditation, but in reality this is seldom, if ever, rigorously done. Combat modelers could also open the underlying theories and data behind their models and simulations for peer review.

The problem is not confined to government-sponsored research and development. In his award-winning 2004 book examining the bases for victory and defeat in battle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, analyst Stephen Biddle noted that the study of military science had been neglected in the academic world as well. “[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,” he wrote.

This state of affairs seems remarkable given the enormous stakes that are being placed on the output of the Defense Department’s modeling and simulation activities. After decades of neglect, remedying this would require a dedicated commitment to sustained basic research on the military science of combat and warfare, with no promise of a tangible short-term return on investment. Yet, as Biddle pointed out, “With so much at stake, we surely must do better.”

[NOTE: The attrition methodologies used in CBS and WARSIM have been corrected since this post was originally published per comments provided by their developers.]

TDI Friday Read: Multi-Domain Battle/Operations Doctrine

With the December 2018 update of the U.S. Army’s Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) concept, this seems like a good time to review the evolution of doctrinal thinking about it. We will start with the event that sparked the Army’s thinking about the subject: the 2014 rocket artillery barrage fired from Russian territory that devastated Ukrainian Army forces near the village of Zelenopillya. From there we will look at the evolution of Army thinking beginning with the initial draft of an operating concept for Multi-Domain Battle (MDB) in 2017. To conclude, we will re-up two articles expressing misgivings over the manner with which these doctrinal concepts are being developed, and the direction they are taking.

The Russian Artillery Strike That Spooked The U.S. Army

Army And Marine Corps Join Forces To Define Multi-Domain Battle Concept

Army/Marine Multi-Domain Battle White Paper Available

What Would An Army Optimized For Multi-Domain Battle Look Like?

Sketching Out Multi-Domain Battle Operational Doctrine

U.S. Army Updates Draft Multi-Domain Battle Operating Concept

U.S. Army Multi-Domain Operations Concept Continues Evolving

U.S. Army Doctrine and Future Warfare

 

U.S. Army Doctrine and Future Warfare

Pre-war U.S. Army warfighting doctrine led to fielding the M10, M18 and M36 tank destroyers to counter enemy tanks. Their relatively ineffective performance against German panzers in Europe during World War II has been seen as the result of flawed thinking about tank warfare. [Wikimedia]

Two recently published articles on current U.S. Army doctrine development and the future of warfare deserve to be widely read:

“An Army Caught in the Middle Between Luddites, Luminaries, and the Occasional Looney,”

The first, by RAND’s David Johnson, is titled “An Army Caught in the Middle Between Luddites, Luminaries, and the Occasional Looney,” published by War on the Rocks.

Johnson begins with an interesting argument:

Contrary to what it says, the Army has always been a concepts-based, rather than a doctrine-based, institution. Concepts about future war generate the requirements for capabilities to realize them… Unfortunately, the Army’s doctrinal solutions evolve in war only after the failure of its concepts in its first battles, which the Army has historically lost since the Revolutionary War.

The reason the Army fails in its first battles is because its concepts are initially — until tested in combat — a statement of how the Army “wants to fight” and rarely an analytical assessment of how it “will have to fight.”

Starting with the Army’s failure to develop its own version of “blitzkrieg” after World War I, Johnson identified conservative organizational politics, misreading technological advances, and a stubborn refusal to account for the capabilities of potential adversaries as common causes for the inferior battlefield weapons and warfighting methods that contributed to its impressive string of lost “first battles.”

Conversely, Johnson credited the Army’s novel 1980s AirLand Battle doctrine as the product of an honest assessment of potential enemy capabilities and the development of effective weapon systems that were “based on known, proven technologies that minimized the risk of major program failures.”

“The principal lesson in all of this” he concluded, “is that the U.S. military should have a clear problem that it is trying to solve to enable it to innovate, and is should realize that innovation is generally not invention.” There are “also important lessons from the U.S. Army’s renaissance in the 1970s, which also resulted in close cooperation between the Army and the Air Force to solve the shared problem of the defense of Western Europe against Soviet aggression that neither could solve independently.”

“The US Army is Wrong on Future War”

The other article, provocatively titled “The US Army is Wrong on Future War,” was published by West Point’s Modern War Institute. It was co-authored by Nathan Jennings, Amos Fox, and Adam Taliaferro, all graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and currently serving U.S. Army officers.

They argue that

the US Army is mistakenly structuring for offensive clashes of mass and scale reminiscent of 1944 while competitors like Russia and China have adapted to twenty-first-century reality. This new paradigm—which favors fait accompli acquisitions, projection from sovereign sanctuary, and indirect proxy wars—combines incremental military actions with weaponized political, informational, and economic agendas under the protection of nuclear-fires complexes to advance territorial influence. The Army’s failure to conceptualize these features of the future battlefield is a dangerous mistake…

Instead, they assert that the current strategic and operational realities dictate a far different approach:

Failure to recognize the ascendancy of nuclear-based defense—with the consequent potential for only limited maneuver, as in the seventeenth century—incurs risk for expeditionary forces. Even as it idealizes Patton’s Third Army with ambiguous “multi-domain” cyber and space enhancements, the US Army’s fixation with massive counter-offensives to defeat unrealistic Russian and Chinese conquests of Europe and Asia misaligns priorities. Instead of preparing for past wars, the Army should embrace forward positional and proxy engagement within integrated political, economic, and informational strategies to seize and exploit initiative.

The factors they cite that necessitate the adoption of positional warfare include nuclear primacy; sanctuary of sovereignty; integrated fires complexes; limited fait accompli; indirect proxy wars; and political/economic warfare.

“Given these realities,” Jennings, Fox, and Taliaferro assert, “the US Army must adapt and evolve to dominate great-power confrontation in the nuclear age. As such, they recommend that the U.S. (1) adopt “an approach more reminiscent of the US Army’s Active Defense doctrine of the 1970s than the vaunted AirLand Battle concept of the 1980s,” (2) “dramatically recalibrate its approach to proxy warfare; and (3) compel “joint, interagency and multinational coordination in order to deliberately align economic, informational, and political agendas in support of military objectives.”

Future U.S. Army Doctrine: How It Wants to Fight or How It Has to Fight?

Readers will find much with which to agree or disagree in each article, but they both provide viewpoints that should supply plenty of food for thought. Taken together they take on a different context. The analysis put forth by Jenninigs, Fox, and Taliaferro can be read as fulfilling Johnson’s injunction to base doctrine on a sober assessment of the strategic and operational challenges presented by existing enemy capabilities, instead of as an aspirational concept for how the Army would prefer to fight a future war. Whether or not Jennings, et al, have accurately forecasted the future can be debated, but their critique should raise questions as to whether the Army is repeating past doctrinal development errors identified by Johnson.

Comparing Force Ratios to Casualty Exchange Ratios

“American Marines in Belleau Wood (1918)” by Georges Scott [Wikipedia]

Comparing Force Ratios to Casualty Exchange Ratios
Christopher A. Lawrence

[The article below is reprinted from the Summer 2009 edition of The International TNDM Newsletter.]

There are three versions of force ratio versus casualty exchange ratio rules, such as the three-to-one rule (3-to-1 rule), as it applies to casualties. The earliest version of the rule as it relates to casualties that we have been able to find comes from the 1958 version of the U.S. Army Maneuver Control manual, which states: “When opposing forces are in contact, casualties are assessed in inverse ratio to combat power. For friendly forces advancing with a combat power superiority of 5 to 1, losses to friendly forces will be about 1/5 of those suffered by the opposing force.”[1]

The RAND version of the rule (1992) states that: “the famous ‘3:1 rule ’, according to which the attacker and defender suffer equal fractional loss rates at a 3:1 force ratio the battle is in mixed terrain and the defender enjoys ‘prepared ’defenses…” [2]

Finally, there is a version of the rule that dates from the 1967 Maneuver Control manual that only applies to armor that shows:

As the RAND construct also applies to equipment losses, then this formulation is directly comparable to the RAND construct.

Therefore, we have three basic versions of the 3-to-1 rule as it applies to casualties and/or equipment losses. First, there is a rule that states that there is an even fractional loss ratio at 3-to-1 (the RAND version), Second, there is a rule that states that at 3-to-1, the attacker will suffer one-third the losses of the defender. And third, there is a rule that states that at 3-to-1, the attacker and defender will suffer the same losses as the defender. Furthermore, these examples are highly contradictory, with either the attacker suffering three times the losses of the defender, the attacker suffering the same losses as the defender, or the attacker suffering 1/3 the losses of the defender.

Therefore, what we will examine here is the relationship between force ratios and exchange ratios. In this case, we will first look at The Dupuy Institute’s Battles Database (BaDB), which covers 243 battles from 1600 to 1900. We will chart on the y-axis the force ratio as measured by a count of the number of people on each side of the forces deployed for battle. The force ratio is the number of attackers divided by the number of defenders. On the x-axis is the exchange ratio, which is a measured by a count of the number of people on each side who were killed, wounded, missing or captured during that battle. It does not include disease and non-battle injuries. Again, it is calculated by dividing the total attacker casualties by the total defender casualties. The results are provided below:

As can be seen, there are a few extreme outliers among these 243 data points. The most extreme, the Battle of Tippennuir (l Sep 1644), in which an English Royalist force under Montrose routed an attack by Scottish Covenanter militia, causing about 3,000 casualties to the Scots in exchange for a single (allegedly self-inflicted) casualty to the Royalists, was removed from the chart. This 3,000-to-1 loss ratio was deemed too great an outlier to be of value in the analysis.

As it is, the vast majority of cases are clumped down into the corner of the graph with only a few scattered data points outside of that clumping. If one did try to establish some form of curvilinear relationship, one would end up drawing a hyperbola. It is worthwhile to look inside that clump of data to see what it shows. Therefore, we will look at the graph truncated so as to show only force ratios at or below 20-to-1 and exchange rations at or below 20-to-1.

Again, the data remains clustered in one corner with the outlying data points again pointing to a hyperbola as the only real fitting curvilinear relationship. Let’s look at little deeper into the data by truncating the data on 6-to-1 for both force ratios and exchange ratios. As can be seen, if the RAND version of the 3-to-1 rule is correct, then the data should show at 3-to-1 force ratio a 3-to-1 casualty exchange ratio. There is only one data point that comes close to this out of the 243 points we examined.

If the FM 105-5 version of the rule as it applies to armor is correct, then the data should show that at 3-to-1 force ratio there is a 1-to-1 casualty exchange ratio, at a 4-to-1 force ratio a 1-to-2 casualty exchange ratio, and at a 5-to-1 force ratio a 1-to-3 casualty exchange ratio. Of course, there is no armor in these pre-WW I engagements, but again no such exchange pattern does appear.

If the 1958 version of the FM 105-5 rule as it applies to casualties is correct, then the data should show that at a 3-to-1 force ratio there is 0.33-to-1 casualty exchange ratio, at a 4-to-1 force ratio a .25-to-1 casualty exchange ratio, and at a 5-to-1 force ratio a 0.20-to-5 casualty exchange ratio. As can be seen, there is not much indication of this pattern, or for that matter any of the three patterns.

Still, such a construct may not be relevant to data before 1900. For example, Lanchester claimed in 1914 in Chapter V, “The Principal of Concentration,” of his book Aircraft in Warfare, that there is greater advantage to be gained in modern warfare from concentration of fire.[3] Therefore, we will tap our more modern Division-Level Engagement Database (DLEDB) of 675 engagements, of which 628 have force ratios and exchange ratios calculated for them. These 628 cases are then placed on a scattergram to see if we can detect any similar patterns.

Even though this data covers from 1904 to 1991, with the vast majority of the data coming from engagements after 1940, one again sees the same pattern as with the data from 1600-1900. If there is a curvilinear relationship, it is again a hyperbola. As before, it is useful to look into the mass of data clustered into the corner by truncating the force and exchange ratios at 20-to-1. This produces the following:

Again, one sees the data clustered in the corner, with any curvilinear relationship again being a hyperbola. A look at the data further truncated to a 10-to-1 force or exchange ratio does not yield anything more revealing.

And, if this data is truncated to show only 5-to-1 force ratio and exchange ratios, one again sees:

Again, this data appears to be mostly just noise, with no clear patterns here that support any of the three constructs. In the case of the RAND version of the 3-to-1 rule, there is again only one data point (out of 628) that is anywhere close to the crossover point (even fractional exchange rate) that RAND postulates. In fact, it almost looks like the data conspires to make sure it leaves a noticeable “hole” at that point. The other postulated versions of the 3-to-1 rules are also given no support in these charts.

Also of note, that the relationship between force ratios and exchange ratios does not appear to significantly change for combat during 1600-1900 when compared to the data from combat from 1904-1991. This does not provide much support for the intellectual construct developed by Lanchester to argue for his N-square law.

While we can attempt to torture the data to find a better fit, or can try to argue that the patterns are obscured by various factors that have not been considered, we do not believe that such a clear pattern and relationship exists. More advanced mathematical methods may show such a pattern, but to date such attempts have not ferreted out these alleged patterns. For example, we refer the reader to Janice Fain’s article on Lanchester equations, The Dupuy Institute’s Capture Rate Study, Phase I & II, or any number of other studies that have looked at Lanchester.[4]

The fundamental problem is that there does not appear to be a direct cause and effect between force ratios and exchange ratios. It appears to be an indirect relationship in the sense that force ratios are one of several independent variables that determine the outcome of an engagement, and the nature of that outcome helps determines the casualties. As such, there is a more complex set of interrelationships that have not yet been fully explored in any study that we know of, although it is briefly addressed in our Capture Rate Study, Phase I & II.

NOTES

[1] FM 105-5, Maneuver Control (1958), 80.

[2] Patrick Allen, “Situational Force Scoring: Accounting for Combined Arms Effects in Aggregate Combat Models,” (N-3423-NA, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 1992), 20.

[3] F. W. Lanchester, Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm (Lanchester Press Incorporated, Sunnyvale, Calif., 1995), 46-60. One notes that Lanchester provided no data to support these claims, but relied upon an intellectual argument based upon a gross misunderstanding of ancient warfare.

[4] In particular, see page 73 of Janice B. Fain, “The Lanchester Equations and Historical Warfare: An Analysis of Sixty World War II Land Engagements,” Combat Data Subscription Service (HERO, Arlington, Va., Spring 1975).

Vessels of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force

JMSDF Destroyers JS INAZUMA (DD 105)and JS SUZUTSUKI (DD117)) commanded by Rear Admiral Tatsuya Fukuda, Commander Escort Flotilla 4, sail in the Pacific for Indo Southeast Asia Deployment 2018 (ISEAD18) in August 2018 while conducting Replenishment At Sea (RAS) training. [Japan Ministry of Defense]

Vessels of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF), 2018-2019
(adapted from Wikipedia, and Jane’s Defense: Sea Module)

Type Class Name

Displacement (tonnes)

 Notes
Attack submarine Sōryū-class  JS Sōryū

 JS Unryū

 JS Hakuryū

 JS Kenryū

 JS Zuiryū

 JS Kokuryū

 JS Jinryū

 JS Sekiryū

 JS Seiryū

 JS Shōryū

 JS Ōryū

4,200

 Additional subs building to be commissioned.
Oyashio-class  JS Uzushio

 JS Makishio

 JS Isoshio

 JS Narushio

 JS Kuroshio

 JS Takashio

 JS Yaeshio

 JS Setoshio

 JS Mochishio

4,000

 2 of 11 built converted to training ships.
Helicopter destroyer Izumo-class  JS Izumo 

 JS Kaga

27,000

 (or Helicopter carrier)
Hyūga-class  JS Hyūga

 JS Ise

19,000
Guided missile destroyer (Aegis) Maya-class  JS Maya

10,500

 JS Maya is expected to be in commission by March 2020.
Atago-class  JS Atago

 JS Ashigara

10,000
Kongō-class  JS Kongō

 JS Kirishima

 JS Myōkō

 JS Chōkai

9,500
Guided missile destroyer Hatakaze-class  JS Hatakaze

 JS Shimakaze

5,900
Destroyer Asahi-class  JS Asahi

6,800

 First Asahi-class destroyer, JS Shiranui, is expected to be in commissioned by March 2019.
Akizuki-class  JS Akizuki

 JS Teruzuki

 JS Suzutsuki

 JS Fuyuzuki

6,800
Takanami-class  JS Takanami

 JS Onami

 JS Makinami

 JS Sazanami

 JS Suzunami

6,300
Murasame-class  JS Murasame

 JS Harusame

 JS Yudachi

 JS Kirisame

 JS Inazuma

 JS Samidare

 JS Ikazuchi

 JS Akebono

 JS Ariake

6,100
Small destroyer Asagiri-class  JS Asagiri

 JS Yamagiri

 JS Yūgiri

 JS Amagiri

 JS Hamagiri

 JS Setogiri

 JS Sawagiri

 JS Umigiri

4,900
Hatsuyuki-class  JS Matsuyuki

 JS Asayuki

4,000
Destroyer escort Abukuma-class  JS Abukuma

 JS Jintsu

 JS Oyodo

 JS Sendai

 JS Chikuma

 JS Tone

2,550

  (or corvette)
Minesweeper Uraga-class  JS Uraga

 JS Bungo

5,500

 Categorized as Mine-countermeasures support ship.
Awaji-class  JS Awaji

 JS Hirado

690

 JMSDF commissions second Awaji-class minesweeper
Enoshima-class  JS Enoshima

 JS Chichijima

 JS Hatsushima

570
Hirashima-class  JS Hirashima

 JS Yakushima

 JS Takashima

570
Sugashima-class  JS Sugashima

 JS Notojima

 JS Tsunoshima

 JS Naoshima

 JS Toyoshima

 JS Ukushima

 JS Izushima

 JS Aishima

 JS Aoshima

 JS Miyajima

 JS Shishijima

 JS Kuroshima

570
Uwajima-class  JS Nagashima

570
Minesweeper controller Ieshima-class  JS Kumejima

 JS Yugeshima

570

 Reconverted Uwajima-class minesweeper.
Landing ship tank Ōsumi-class  JS Ōsumi

 JS Shimokita

 JS Kunisaki

14,000

 The Japanese MoD is planning to perform a major refit on the Osumi-class to improve their amphibious capabilities.
Utility landing craft LCU-2001-class  JS LC No.1

 JS LC No.2

540
Landing craft mechanized YL-09-class  JS YL-11

 JS YL-12

 JS YL-13

 JS YL-14

 JS YL-15

 JS YL-16

 JS YL-17

50
Patrol boat Hayabusa-class  JS Hayabusa

 JS Wakataka

 JS Otaka

 JS Kumataka

 JS Umitaka

 JS Shiritaka

240
Cadet training ship Kashima-class  JS Kashima

4,050
Training vessel Shimayuki-class  JS Shimayuki

 JS Setoyuki

 JS Yamayuki

3,000

 Reconverted Hatsuyuki-class destroyers.
Training submarine Oyashio-class  JS Oyashio

 JS Michishio

4,000

 Reconverted Oyashio-class submarines.
Training support ship Kurobe-class  JS Kurobe (ATS-4202)
Tenryu-class  JS Tenryu (ATS-4203)
Replenishment oiler Mashu-class  JS Mashu

 JS Omi

25,000
Towada-class  JS Hamana

 JS Tokiwa

 JS Towada

15,000
Training support ship Hiuchi-class  JS Hiuchi

 JS Suo

 JS Amakusa

 JS Genkai

 JS Enshu

1,000
Cable laying ship ATC Muroto
Submarine rescue vessel  

 

  JS Chiyoda

7,100

 JMSDF commissions new submarine rescue ship
 JS Chihaya

6,900
Oceanographic research ship AGS Shonan

AGS Nichinan

AGS Futami
Ocean surveillance ship Hibiki-class  JS Hibiki

 JS Harima

 JMSDF orders third, more advanced, Hibiki-class ship.
Experiment ship ASE Asuka
Ice breaker AGB Shirase

20,000
Yacht ASY Hashidate

Japan’s Grand Strategy and Military Forces (IV)

Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) Helicopter Destroyer JS Izumo. [Japan Ministry of Defense}

In my previous post, I took a look at the roots of the extremely close level of integration between the U.S. Navy (USN) and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). This post will look at new Japanese naval technology development efforts that compliment USN capabilities, which in turn further the common strategic interests of both countries.

While officially classed as a helicopter destroyer (per the doctrinal focus on anti-submarine warfare (ASW)), Izumo-class ships are aircraft carriers in many respects, not least by the image they project to other countries in the region. In March 2018, Japanese Defense Secretary Onodera announced that a study was underway to determine if the Izumo-class could embark F-35B fighters. This would give the JMSDF a similar capability to the U.S. Marine Corps’ (USMC) Amphibious Assault Ships or the Royal Navy’s (RN) new Queen Elizabeth class carrier, (65,000 tons empty). At only 27,000 tons fully loaded, the Izumo class is roughly half the size of U.S.S. America (44,971 tons, fully loaded).

The ability to generate air sorties at sea is a key capability that drives the acquisition of aircraft carriers. Generating stealth fighter sorties at sea gives a potent strike capability, which could conceivably be used to strike at North Korean missile launch facilities, for example. This contingency plan alone was enough to draw a diplomatic warning from Beijing.  Undeterred, the Japanese Defense Ministry just announced plans for F-35Bs to be purchased, as well as hypersonic missile capabilities.

Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) Soryu-class submarine Hakuryu (SS-503) arrives at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam for a scheduled port visit. (U.S. Navy/Cmdr. Christy Hagen/Released)

Another example of Japanese maritime power projection capability is the Soryu class submarine, who some have claimed is the “best submarine in the world” (Mizokami-san does good work at Japan Security Watch). Carrying up to 30 “fish,” the Soryu class’s Type 89 torpedo is a formidable weapon, not least of which is its maximum speed of 70 knots, which is faster than the U.S. Mk48 ADCAP torpedo’s 55 knots.

Starting this October, these subs will feature lithium-ion batteries, which can store about double the energy of a lead-acid battery for the same volume, and also offers a weight advantage. This enhances the Soryu’s power projection effectiveness, as the Japanese Ministry of Defense has recently announced deployments to the contested South China Sea.

While these are hailed as a first, it is more likely this was the initial announcement of such deployments, which probably have been ongoing for some time. There is a certain logic to parsing how these information releases are worded:

Demonstrating freedom of navigation, a Japanese submarine for the first time conducted drills in the South China Sea where China is constructing military facilities, according to Japanese government sources. The Defense Ministry secretly dispatched the Kuroshio, a Maritime Self-Defense Force submarine, which conducted anti-submarine drills on Sept. 13 with three MSDF destroyers that were on a long-term mission around Southeast Asia, they said. The ministry had conducted anti-submarine drills only in sea areas around Japan, they added. [emphasis added]

This says nothing about being the first deployment, only the first anti-submarine warfare (ASW) drill.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) has been awarded a contract by the Japanese MoD to build the first two of four ships of a new class of multirole frigate (seen here in computer-generated imagery) for the JMSDF. {Source: MHI]

In accordance with its 2018 National Defense Program Guidelines, Japan is also planning a new type of multi-role frigate. The JMSDF has announced plans “to introduce a new type of destroyer with minesweeping capabilities, with the aim of increasing the number of such vessels to 22 in the 2030s, sources said. In light of the intensifying activities of the Chinese Navy in the East China Sea, including around the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture, the government aims to improve warning and surveillance capabilities.”

According to Jane’s,

[T]his new frigate class, which is intended to carry out surveillance missions in waters surrounding the Japanese archipelago, will be equipped with enhanced multirole capabilities, including the ability to conduct anti-mine warfare operations, which until now have been performed by the JMSDF’s ocean-going minesweepers. Armament on the frigates, each of which will be capable of embarking one helicopter as well as unmanned surface and underwater vehicles, is expected to include the navalized version of the Type-03 (also known as the ‘Chū-SAM Kai’) medium-range surface-to-air missile, a 5-inch (127 mm)/62-calibre gun, a vertical launch system, canister-launched anti-ship missiles, and a SeaRAM close-in weapon system.

From this, we can see that this weapon system is intended to keep the military balance in place in the home waters, more so than a power projection mission. The purpose for these capabilities becomes more clear when considering the investments by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in mine warfare. “Today, the evidence continues to mount that the employment of sea mines remains a core tenet of Chinese naval war-fighting doctrine.” Andrew Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College has written a great white paper on the topic, entiled “Chinese Mine Warfare: A PLA Navy ‘Assassin’ s Mace’ Capability.”  More to follow on this in later posts!

Japan’s Grand Strategy and Military Forces (III)

[John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab]

In my previous post, I looked at the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) basic strategic missions of defending Japan from maritime invasion and securing the sea lines of communication (SLOC). This post will examine the basis for JMSDF’s approach to those tasks.

In 2011, JMSDF Vice Admiral (Ret.) Yoji Koda published an excellent article in the Naval War College Review, entitled “A New Carrier Race?.” Two passages therefrom are particular relevant and illuminating:

In 1952, … the Japan Maritime Guard (JMG) was established as a rudimentary defense organization for the nation. The leaders of the JMG were determined that the organization would be a navy, not a reinforced coast guard. Most were combat-experienced officers (captains and below) of the former Imperial Japanese Navy, and they had clear understanding of the difference between a coast guard–type law-enforcement force and a navy. Two years later, the JMG was transformed into the JMSDF, and with leaders whose dream to build a force that had a true naval function was stronger than ever. However, they also knew the difficulty of rebuilding a real navy, in light of strict constraints imposed by the new, postwar constitution. Nonetheless, the JMSDF has built its forces and trained its sailors vigorously, with this goal in view, and it is today one of the world’s truly capable maritime forces in both quality and size.

This continuity with the World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) is evident in several practices. The JMSDF generally re-uses IJN names of for new vessels, as well as its naval ensign, the Kyokujitsu-ki or “Rising Sun” flag. This flag is seen by some in South Korea and other countries as symbolic of Japan’s wartime militarism. In October 2018, the JMSDF declined an invitation to attend a naval review held by the Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) at Jeju island, due to a request that only national flags be flown at the event. This type of disagreement may have a material impact on the ability of the JMSDF and the ROKN, both allies of the United States, to jointly operate effectively.

Koda continued:

Since the founding of the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) and within it the JMSDF, in 1954…the bases of Japan’s national security and defense are the capability of the JSDF and the Japanese-U.S. alliance… Thus the operational concept of the JSDF with respect to the U.S. armed forces has been one of complementary mission-sharing, in which U.S. forces concentrate on offensive operations, while the JSDF maximizes its capability for defensive operations. In other words, the two forces form what is known as a “spear and shield” relationship… [T]he JMSDF ensures that Japan can receive American reinforcements from across the Pacific Ocean, guarantees the safety of U.S. naval forces operating around Japan, and enables U.S. carrier strike groups (CSGs) to concentrate on strike operations against enemy naval forces and land targets…[so] the JMSDF has set antisubmarine warfare as its main task…ASW was made the main pillar of JMSDF missions. Even in the present security environment, twenty years after the end of the Cold War and the threat of invasion from the Soviet Union, two factors are unchanged—the Japanese-U.S. alliance and Japan’s dependence on imported natural resources. Therefore the protection of SLOCs has continued to be a main mission of the JMSDF.

It is difficult to overstate the degree to which the USN and JMSDF are integrated. The US Navy’s Seventh Fleet is headquartered in Yokosuka, Japan, where the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, a Nimitz-class super carrier, is stationed. Historically, this position was filled by the U.S.S. George Washington, which is currently back in Virginia undergoing refueling and overhaul. According to the Stars and Stripes, she may return to Japan with a new air wing, incorporating the MQ-25A Stingray aerial refueling drones.

According to the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA), the USN has the following ships based in Japan:

  • Yokosuka (south of Tokyo, in eastern Japan)
    • One CVN (nuclear aircraft carrier), U.S.S. Ronald Reagan
    • One AGC (amphibious command ship), U.S.S. Blue Ridge
    • Three CG (guided missile cruisers)
    • Seven DDG (guided missile destroyers)
  • Sasebo (north of Nagasaki, in the southern island of Kyuushu)
    • One LHD (amphibious assault ship, multi-purpose), U.S.S. Bon Home Richard
    • One LPD (amphibious transport dock), U.S.S. Greenway
    • Two LSD (dock landing ship)
    • Four MCM (mine counter measure ship)

One example of this close integration is the JS Maya, a Guided Missile Destroyer (DDG), launched on 30 July 2018. The ship is currently outfitting and is expected to be commissioned in 2020. A notable feature is the Collective Engagement Capability (CEC) (see graphic above). CEC is a “revolutionary approach to air defense,” according to John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (which is involved in the development), “it allows combat systems to share unfiltered sensor measurements data associated with tracks with rapid timing and precision to enable the [USN-JMSDF] battlegroup units to operate as one.”

Zhang Junshe, a senior research fellow at the China’s People’s Liberation Army Naval Military Studies Research Institute, expressed concern in Chinese Global Times about this capability for “potentially targeting China and threatening other countries… CEC will strengthen intelligence data sharing with the US…strengthen their [US and Japan] military alliance. From the US perspective, it can better control Japan… ‘Once absolute security is realized by Japan and the US, they could attack other countries without scruples, which will certainly destabilize other regions.’”

Japan’s Grand Strategy and Military Forces (II)

Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) ships and the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group conduct Annual Exercise 2016. [U.S. Navy]

In my first post on Japan’s grand strategy, I examined its “free and open” Indo-Pacific policy and briefly reviewed its armed forces—nominally “self-defense forces (SDF)”—as well as the legal reasons for this euphemism, and the Japanese government’s plans to clarify this constitutional conundrum.

The next several posts in this series will focus on a general overview of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), why this branch is considered primary (or dominant), some history in terms of how it came to be, the current missions, defense concepts, current capabilities and how they have been envisioned, how they are deployed, and a look ahead about options under consideration.

According to an excellent article in the Naval War College Review by Toshi Yoshihara, “the Japanese often describe their key national characteristic in nautical terms, with the familiar notion that ‘Japan is a small island nation lacking resource endowments and is thus highly dependent upon seaborne commerce for its well-being.’”

A few key facts, according to Jane’s Defense: Sea Module:

  • Japan has the world’s seventh-largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).
  • Japan operates a large commercial fishing fleet of about 200,000 vessels.
  • 90% of Japan’s oil is shipped from the Middle East.
  • 60% of Japan’s food is imported by sea.

The JMSDF is therefore tasked with the fundamental naval missions of defending Japan from maritime invasion and securing the sea lines of communication (SLOC). A recent article in the Japan News, spelled out why SLOC protection is vital for Japan:

[T]he South China Sea is a key sea-lane for Japan. If it became necessary to take a detour around the South China Sea, the additional time and fuel costs are estimated to be 1½ days and $120,000 for travel via the Sunda Strait, and three days and $240,000 for travel via the Lombok Strait. Both of these straits can be perilous, with strong tidal currents, sunken ships and shoals. If either were to see a large increase in marine traffic, chaos is predicted to ensue.

We can see this concern clearly in the recent JMSDF exercise deployment through the South China Sea, the straits of Sunda and Malacca, and onwards to India.

[The Japan News (Yomiuri Shimbun)]

For Indo Southeast Asia Deployment 2018 (ISEAD18) from 26 August to 30 October 2018, JMSDF vessels JS Kaga (DDH 184), JS Inazuma (DD105), JS Suzutsuki (DD117), stopped at Subic Bay, Philippines; Jakarta, Indonesia; Colombo, Sri Lanka; Visakhapatnam, India; and Changi, Singapore. The exercise included naval various exercises with port call countries, as well as the British and U.S. navies. This activity yielded important agreements, such as the maritime surveillance pact between Japan and India to share information on Chinese ship locations.

Trevor Dupuy and Technological Determinism in Digital Age Warfare

Is this the only innovation in weapons technology in history with the ability in itself to change warfare and alter the balance of power? Trevor Dupuy thought it might be. Shot IVY-MIKE, Eniwetok Atoll, 1 November 1952. [Wikimedia]

Trevor Dupuy was skeptical about the role of technology in determining outcomes in warfare. While he did believe technological innovation was crucial, he did not think that technology itself has decided success or failure on the battlefield. As he wrote posthumously in 1997,

I am a humanist, who is also convinced that technology is as important today in war as it ever was (and it has always been important), and that any national or military leader who neglects military technology does so to his peril and that of his country. But, paradoxically, perhaps to an extent even greater than ever before, the quality of military men is what wins wars and preserves nations. (emphasis added)

His conclusion was largely based upon his quantitative approach to studying military history, particularly the way humans have historically responded to the relentless trend of increasingly lethal military technology.

The Historical Relationship Between Weapon Lethality and Battle Casualty Rates

Based on a 1964 study for the U.S. Army, Dupuy identified a long-term historical relationship between increasing weapon lethality and decreasing average daily casualty rates in battle. (He summarized these findings in his book, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (1980). The quotes below are taken from it.)

Since antiquity, military technological development has produced weapons of ever increasing lethality. The rate of increase in lethality has grown particularly dramatically since the mid-19th century.

However, in contrast, the average daily casualty rate in combat has been in decline since 1600. With notable exceptions during the 19th century, casualty rates have continued to fall through the late 20th century. If technological innovation has produced vastly more lethal weapons, why have there been fewer average daily casualties in battle?

The primary cause, Dupuy concluded, was that humans have adapted to increasing weapon lethality by changing the way they fight. He identified three key tactical trends in the modern era that have influenced the relationship between lethality and casualties:

Technological Innovation and Organizational Assimilation

Dupuy noted that the historical correlation between weapons development and their use in combat has not been linear because the pace of integration has been largely determined by military leaders, not the rate of technological innovation. “The process of doctrinal assimilation of new weapons into compatible tactical and organizational systems has proved to be much more significant than invention of a weapon or adoption of a prototype, regardless of the dimensions of the advance in lethality.” [p. 337]

As a result, the history of warfare has been exemplified more often by a discontinuity between weapons and tactical systems than effective continuity.

During most of military history there have been marked and observable imbalances between military efforts and military results, an imbalance particularly manifested by inconclusive battles and high combat casualties. More often than not this imbalance seems to be the result of incompatibility, or incongruence, between the weapons of warfare available and the means and/or tactics employing the weapons. [p. 341]

In short, military organizations typically have not been fully effective at exploiting new weapons technology to advantage on the battlefield. Truly decisive alignment between weapons and systems for their employment has been exceptionally rare. Dupuy asserted that

There have been six important tactical systems in military history in which weapons and tactics were in obvious congruence, and which were able to achieve decisive results at small casualty costs while inflicting disproportionate numbers of casualties. These systems were:

  • the Macedonian system of Alexander the Great, ca. 340 B.C.
  • the Roman system of Scipio and Flaminius, ca. 200 B.C.
  • the Mongol system of Ghengis Khan, ca. A.D. 1200
  • the English system of Edward I, Edward III, and Henry V, ca. A.D. 1350
  • the French system of Napoleon, ca. A.D. 1800
  • the German blitzkrieg system, ca. A.D. 1940 [p. 341]

With one caveat, Dupuy could not identify any single weapon that had decisively changed warfare in of itself without a corresponding human adaptation in its use on the battlefield.

Save for the recent significant exception of strategic nuclear weapons, there have been no historical instances in which new and 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; the full significance of this one exception is not yet clear, since the changes it has caused in warfare and the influence it has exerted on international relations have yet to be tested in war.

Until the present time, the application of sound, imaginative thinking to the problem of warfare (on either an individual or an institutional basis) has been more significant than any new weapon; such thinking is necessary to real assimilation of weaponry; it can also alter the course of human affairs without new weapons. [p. 340]

Technological Superiority and Offset Strategies

Will new technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence provide the basis for a seventh tactical system where weapons and their use align with decisive battlefield results? Maybe. If Dupuy’s analysis is accurate, however, it is more likely that future increases in weapon lethality will continue to be counterbalanced by human ingenuity in how those weapons are used, yielding indeterminate—perhaps costly and indecisive—battlefield outcomes.

Genuinely effective congruence between weapons and force employment continues to be difficult to achieve. Dupuy believed the preconditions necessary for successful technological assimilation since the mid-19th century have been a combination of conducive military leadership; effective coordination of national economic, technological-scientific, and military resources; and the opportunity to evaluate and analyze battlefield experience.

Can the U.S. meet these preconditions? That certainly seemed to be the goal of the so-called Third Offset Strategy, articulated in 2014 by the Obama administration. It called for maintaining “U.S. military superiority over capable adversaries through the development of novel capabilities and concepts.” Although the Trump administration has stopped using the term, it has made “maximizing lethality” the cornerstone of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, with increased funding for the Defense Department’s modernization priorities in FY2019 (though perhaps not in FY2020).

Dupuy’s original work on weapon lethality in the 1960s coincided with development in the U.S. of what advocates of a “revolution in military affairs” (RMA) have termed the “First Offset Strategy,” which involved the potential use of nuclear weapons to balance Soviet superiority in manpower and material. RMA proponents pointed to the lopsided victory of the U.S. and its allies over Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War as proof of the success of a “Second Offset Strategy,” which exploited U.S. precision-guided munitions, stealth, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems developed to counter the Soviet Army in Germany in the 1980s. Dupuy was one of the few to attribute the decisiveness of the Gulf War both to airpower and to the superior effectiveness of U.S. combat forces.

Trevor Dupuy certainly was not an anti-technology Luddite. He recognized the importance of military technological advances and the need to invest in them. But he believed that the human element has always been more important on the battlefield. Most wars in history have been fought without a clear-cut technological advantage for one side; some have been bloody and pointless, while others have been decisive for reasons other than technology. While the future is certainly unknown and past performance is not a guarantor of future results, it would be a gamble to rely on technological superiority alone to provide the margin of success in future warfare.