German Army 150mm heavy field howitzer 18 L/29.5 battery. [Panzer DB/Pinterest]
[This series of posts is adapted from the article “Artillery Effectiveness vs. Armor,” by Richard C. Anderson, Jr., originally published in the June 1997 edition of the International TNDM Newsletter.]
Curiously, at Kursk, in the case where the highest percent loss was recorded, the German forces opposing the Soviet 1st Tank Army—mainly the XLVIII Panzer Corps of the Fourth Panzer Army—were supported by proportionately fewer artillery pieces (approximately 56 guns and rocket launchers per division) than the US 1st Infantry Division at Dom Bütgenbach (the equivalent of approximately 106 guns per division)[4]. Nor does it appear that the German rate of fire at Kursk was significantly higher than that of the American artillery at Dom Bütgenbach. On 20 July at Kursk, the 150mm howitzers of the 11th Panzer Division achieved a peak rate of fire of 87.21 rounds per gum. On 21 December at Dom Bütgenbach, the 155mm howitzers of the 955th Field Artillery Battalion achieved a peak rate of fire of 171.17 rounds per gun.[5]
NOTES
[4] The US artillery at Dom Bütgenbach peaked on 21 December 1944 when a total of 210 divisional and corps pieces fired over 10,000 rounds in support of the 1st Division’s 26th Infantry.
[5] Data collected on German rates of fire are fragmentary, but appear to be similar to that of the American Army in World War ll. An article on artillery rates of fire that explores the data in more detail will be forthcoming in a future issue of this newsletter. [NOTE: This article was not completed or published.]
Notes to Table I.
[8] The data were found in reports of the 1st Tank Army (Fond 299, Opis‘ 3070, Delo 226). Obvious math errors in the original document have been corrected (the total lost column did not always agree with the totals by cause). The total participated column evidently reflected the starting strength of the unit, plus replacement vehicles. “Burned'” in Soviet wartime documents usually indicated a total loss, however it appears that in this case “burned” denoted vehicles totally lost due to direct fire antitank weapons. “Breakdown” apparently included both mechanical breakdown and repairable combat damage.
[9] Note that the brigade report (Fond 3304, Opis‘ 1, Delo 24) contradicts the army report. The brigade reported that a total of 28 T-34s were lost (9 to aircraft and 19 to “artillery”) and one T-60 was destroyed by a mine. However, this report was made on 11 July, during the battle, and may not have been as precise as the later report recorded by 1st Tank Army. Furthermore, it is not as clear in the brigade report that “artillery” referred only to indirect fire HE and not simply lo both direct and indirect fire guns.
A U.S. M1 155mm towed artillery piece being set up for firing during the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944.
[This series of posts is adapted from the article “Artillery Effectiveness vs. Armor,” by Richard C. Anderson, Jr., originally published in the June 1997 edition of the International TNDM Newsletter.]
The effectiveness of artillery against exposed personnel and other “soft” targets has long been accepted. Fragments and blast are deadly to those unfortunate enough to not be under cover. What has also long been accepted is the relative—if not total—immunity of armored vehicles when exposed to shell fire. In a recent memorandum, the United States Army Armor School disputed the results of tests of artillery versus tanks by stating, “…the Armor School nonconcurred with the Artillery School regarding the suppressive effects of artillery…the M-1 main battle tank cannot be destroyed by artillery…”
This statement may in fact be true,[1] if the advancement of armored vehicle design has greatly exceeded the advancement of artillery weapon design in the last fifty years. [Original emphasis] However, if the statement is not true, then recent research by TDI[2] into the effectiveness of artillery shell fire versus tanks in World War II may be illuminating.
The TDI search found that an average of 12.8 percent of tank and other armored vehicle losses[3] were due to artillery fire in seven eases in World War II where the cause of loss could be reliably identified. The highest percent loss due to artillery was found to be 14.8 percent in the case of the Soviet 1st Tank Army at Kursk (Table II). The lowest percent loss due to artillery was found to be 5.9 percent in the case of Dom Bütgenbach (Table VIII).
The seven cases are split almost evenly between those that show armor losses to a defender and those that show losses to an attacker. The first four cases (Kursk, Normandy l. Normandy ll, and the “Pocket“) are engagements in which the side for which armor losses were recorded was on the defensive. The last three cases (Ardennes, Krinkelt. and Dom Bütgenbach) are engagements in which the side for which armor losses were recorded was on the offensive.
Four of the seven eases (Normandy I, Normandy ll, the “Pocket,” and Ardennes) represent data collected by operations research personnel utilizing rigid criteria for the identification of the cause of loss. Specific causes of loss were only given when the primary destructive agent could be clearly identified. The other three cases (Kursk, Krinkelt, and Dom Bütgenbach) are based upon combat reports that—of necessity—represent less precise data collection efforts.
However, the similarity in results remains striking. The largest identifiable cause of tank loss found in the data was, predictably, high-velocity armor piercing (AP) antitank rounds. AP rounds were found to be the cause of 68.7 percent of all losses. Artillery was second, responsible for 12.8 percent of all losses. Air attack as a cause was third, accounting for 7.4 percent of the total lost. Unknown causes, which included losses due to hits from multiple weapon types as well as unidentified weapons, inflicted 6.3% of the losses and ranked fourth. Other causes, which included infantry antitank weapons and mines, were responsible for 4.8% of the losses and ranked fifth.
NOTES
[1] The statement may be true, although it has an “unsinkable Titanic,” ring to it. It is much more likely that this statement is a hypothesis, rather than a truism.
[2] As pan of this article a survey of the Research Analysis Corporation’s publications list was made in an attempt to locate data from previous operations research on the subject. A single reference to the study of tank losses was found. Group 1 Alvin D. Coox and L. Van Loan Naisawald, Survey of Allied Tank Casualties in World War II, CONFIDENTIAL ORO Report T-117, 1 March 1951.
[3] The percentage loss by cause excludes vehicles lost due to mechanical breakdown or abandonment. lf these were included, they would account for 29.2 percent of the total lost. However, 271 of the 404 (67.1%) abandoned were lost in just two of the cases. These two cases (Normandy ll and the Falaise Pocket) cover the period in the Normandy Campaign when the Allies broke through the German defenses and began the pursuit across France.
I have taken a look in previous posts at how the historical relationship identified by Trevor Dupuy between weapon lethality, battlefield dispersion, and casualty rates argues against this assumption with regard to personnel attrition and tank loss rates. What about artillery loss rates? Will long-range precision fires make ground-based long-range precision fire platforms themselves more vulnerable? Historical research suggests that trend was already underway before the advent of the new technology.
In 1976, Trevor Dupuy and the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization (HERO; one of TDI’s corporate ancestors) conducted a study sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory titled “Artillery Survivability in Modern War.” (PDF) The study focused on looking at historical artillery loss rates and the causes of those losses. It drew upon quantitative data from the 1973 Arab-Israel War, the Korean War, and the Eastern Front during World War II.
Conclusions
1. In the early wars of the 20th Century, towed artillery pieces were relatively invulnerable, and they were rarely severely damaged or destroyed except by very infrequent direct hits.
2. This relative invulnerability of towed artillery resulted in general lack of attention to the problems of artillery survivability through World War II.
3. The lack of effective hostile counter-artillery resources in the Korean and Vietnam wars contributed to continued lack of attention to the problem of artillery survivability, although increasingly armies (particularly the US Army) were relying on self-propelled artillery pieces.
4. Estimated Israeli loss statistics of the October 1973 War suggest that because of size and characteristics, self-propelled artillery is more vulnerable to modern counter-artillery means than was towed artillery in that and previous wars; this greater historical physical vulnerability of self-propelled weapons is consistent with recent empirical testing by the US Army.
5. The increasing physical vulnerability of modern self-propelled artillery weapons is compounded by other modern combat developments, including:
a. Improved artillery counter-battery techniques and resources; b. Improved accuracy of air-delivered munitions; c..increased lethality of modern artillery ammunition; and d. Increased range of artillery and surface-to-surface missiles suitable for use against artillery.
6. Despite this greater vulnerability of self-propelled weapons, Israeli experience in the October war demonstrated that self-propelled artillery not only provides significant protection to cannoneers but also that its inherent mobility permits continued effective operation under circumstances in which towed artillery crews would be forced to seek cover, and thus be unable to fire their weapons. ‘
7. Paucity of available processed, compiled data on artillery survivability and vulnerability limits analysis and the formulation of reliable artillery loss experience tables or formulae.
8. Tentative analysis of the limited data available for this study indicates the following:
a. In “normal” deployment, percent weapon losses by standard weight classification are in the following proportions:
b. Towed artillery losses to hostile artillery (counterbattery) appear in general to very directly with battle intensity (as measured by percent personnel casualties per day), at a rate somewhat less than half of the percent personnel losses for units of army strength or greater; this is a straight-line relationship, or close to it; the stronger or more effective the hostile artillery is, the steeper the slope of the curve;
c. Towed artillery losses to all hostile anti-artillery means appears in general to vary directly with battle intensity at a rate about two-thirds of the-percent personnel losses for units of army strength or greater; the curve rises slightly more rapidly in high intensity combat than in normal or low-intensity combat; the stronger or more effective the hostile anti-artillery means (primarily air and counter-battery), the steeper the slope of the curve;
d. Self-propelled artillery losses appear to be generally consistent with towed losses, but at rates at least twice as great in comparison to battle intensity.
9. There are available in existing records of US and German forces in World war II, and US forces in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, unit records and reports that will permit the formulation of reliable artillery loss experience tables and formulae for those conflicts; these, with currently available and probably improved, data from the Arab-Israeli wars, will permit the formulation of reliable artillery loss experience tables and formulae for simulations of modern combat under current and foreseeable future conditions.
The study caveated these conclusions with the following observations:
Most of the artillery weapons in World War II were towed weapons. By the time the United States had committed small but significant numbers of self-propelled artillery pieces in Europe, German air and artillery counter-battery retaliatory capabilities had been significantly reduced. In the Korean and Vietnam wars, although most American artillery was self-propelled, the enemy had little counter-artillery capability either in the air or in artillery weapons and counter-battery techniques.
It is evident from vulnerability testing of current Army self-propelled weapons, that these weapons–while offering much more protection to cannoneers and providing tremendous advantages in mobility–are much more vulnerable to hostile action than are towed weapons, and that they are much more subject to mechanical breakdowns involving either the weapons mountings or the propulsion elements. Thus there cannot be a direct relationship between aggregated World War II data, or even aggregated Korean war or October War data, and current or future artillery configurations. On the other hand, the body of data from the October war where artillery was self-propelled is too small and too specialized by environmental and operational circumstances to serve alone as a paradigm of artillery vulnerability.
Despite the intriguing implications of this research, HERO’s proposal for follow on work was not funded. HERO only used easily accessible primary and secondary source data for the study. It noted much more primary source data was likely available but that it would require a significant research effort to compile it. (Research is always the expensive tent-pole in quantitative historical analysis. This seems to be why so little of it ever gets funded.) At the time of the study in 1976, no U.S. Army organization could identify any existing quantitative historical data or analysis on artillery losses, classified or otherwise. A cursory search on the Internet reveals no other such research as well. Like personnel attrition and tank loss rates, it would seem that artillery loss rates would be another worthwhile subject for quantitative analysis as part of the ongoing effort to develop the MDB concept.
Images from a Finnish Army artillery salvo fired by towed 130mm howitzers during an exercise in 2013. [Puolustusvoimat – Försvarsmakten – The Finnish Defence Forces/YouTube][This piece was originally posted on 24 August 2017.]
There is probably no obscurity of combat requiring clarification and understanding more urgently than that of suppression… Suppression usually is defined as the effect of fire (primarily artillery fire) upon the behavior of hostile personnel, reducing, limiting, or inhibiting their performance of combat duties. Suppression lasts as long as the fires continue and for some brief, indeterminate period thereafter. Suppression is the most important effect of artillery fire, contributing directly to the ability of the supported maneuver units to accomplish their missions while preventing the enemy units from accomplishing theirs. (p. 251)
Official US Army field artillery doctrine makes a distinction between “suppression” and “neutralization.” Suppression is defined to be instantaneous and fleeting; neutralization, while also temporary, is relatively longer-lasting. Neutralization, the doctrine says, results when suppressive effects are so severe and long-lasting that a target is put out of action for a period of time after the suppressive fire is halted. Neutralization combines the psychological effects of suppressive gunfire with a certain amount of damage. The general concept of neutralization, as distinct from the more fleeting suppression, is a reasonable one. (p. 252)
Despite widespread acknowledgement of the existence of suppression and neutralization, the lack of interest in analyzing its effects was a source of professional frustration for Dupuy. As he commented in 1989,
The British did some interesting but inconclusive work on suppression in their battlefield operations research in World War II. In the United States I am aware of considerable talk about suppression, but very little accomplishment, over the past 20 years. In the light of the significance of suppression, our failure to come to grips with the issue is really quite disgraceful.
This lack of interest is curious, given that suppression and neutralization remain embedded in U.S. Army combat doctrine to this day. The current Army definitions are:
Suppression – In the context of the computed effects of field artillery fires, renders a target ineffective for a short period of time producing at least 3-percent casualties or materiel damage. [Army Doctrine Reference Publication (ADRP) 1-02, Terms and Military Symbols, December 2015, p. 1-87]
Neutralization – In the context of the computed effects of field artillery fires renders a target ineffective for a short period of time, producing 10-percent casualties or materiel damage. [ADRP 1-02, p. 1-65]
A particular source for Dupuy’s irritation was the fact that these definitions were likely empirically wrong. As he argued in Understanding War,
This is almost certainly the wrong way to approach quantification of neutralization. Not only is there no historical evidence that 10% casualties are enough to achieve this effect, there is no evidence that any level of losses is required to achieve the psycho-physiological effects of suppression or neutralization. Furthermore, the time period in which casualties are incurred is probably more important than any arbitrary percentage of loss, and the replacement of casualties and repair of damage are probably irrelevant. (p. 252)
Thirty years after Dupuy pointed this problem out, the construct remains enshrined in U.S. doctrine, unquestioned and unsubstantiated. Dupuy himself was convinced that suppression probably had little, if anything, to do with personnel loss rates.
I believe now that suppression is related to and probably a component of disruption caused by combat processes other than surprise, such as a communications failure. Further research may reveal, however, that suppression is a very distinct form of disruption that can be measured or estimated quite independently of disruption caused by any other phenomenon. (Understanding War, p. 251)
He had developed a hypothesis for measuring the effects of suppression, but was unable to interest anyone in the U.S. government or military in sponsoring a study on it. Suppression as a combat phenomenon remains only vaguely understood.
A 155mm Paladin howitzer with 1st Battery, 10th Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Task Force Liberty stands ready for a fire mission at forward operating base Gabe April 16, 2005. [U.S. Department of Defense/DVIDS]
Strategic strike? The Army needs to worry about increasing tubes (more than just 155s) and less on fancy munitions. Quantity is a quality all its own in tactical and operational level fires.
— Schrödinger’s Strategist (@barefootboomer) October 1, 2018
@barefootboomer makes a fair point. It appears that the majority of the U.S. Army’s current efforts to improve its artillery capabilities are aimed at increasing lethality and capability of individual systems, but not actually adding additional guns to the force structure.
Are Army combat units undergunned in the era of multi-domain battle? The Mobile Protected Firepower program is intended to provide additional light tanks high-caliber direct fire guns to the Infantry Brigade Combat Teams. In his recent piece at West Point’s Modern War Institute blog, Captain Brandon Morgan recommended increasing the proportion of U.S. corps rocket artillery to tube artillery systems from roughly 1:4 to something closer to the current Russian Army ratio of 3:4.
Should the Army be adding other additional direct or indirect fires systems to its combat forces? What types and at what levels? Direct or indirect fire? More tubes per battery? More batteries? More battalions?
What do you think?
UPDATE: I got a few responses to my queries. The balance reflected this view:
Quantity has a quality all its own until it’s outranged, then it has none at all. The Army shouldn’t seek range, precision, responsiveness, and capacity in isolation, but holistically.
More is always better when it comes to Indirect fires. We’ve shifted to reliance on Joint fires and reduced our organic capability, in number of tubes and battalions. All our potential peer/near-peer adversaries outrange and out gun us. We need to fix that.
— Schrödinger’s Strategist (@barefootboomer) October 5, 2018
There were not many specific suggestions about changes to the existing forces structure, except for this one:
More mortars of all types (light, medium, heavy) at battalion and below.
Are there any other thoughts or suggestions out there about this, or is the consensus that the Army is already pretty much on the right course toward fixing its fires problems?
Soldiers fire an M777A2 howitzer while supporting Iraqi security forces near al-Qaim, Iraq, Nov. 7, 2017, as part of the operation to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. [Spc. William Gibson/U.S. Army]
The U.S. Army Long Range Fires Cross Functional Team
A recent article in Army Times by Todd South looked at some of the changes being implemented by the U.S. Army cross functional team charged with prioritizing improvements in the service’s long range fires capabilities. To meet a requirement to double the ranges of its artillery systems within five years, “the Army has embarked upon three tiers of focus, from upgrading old school artillery cannons, to swapping out its missile system to double the distance it can fire, and giving the Army a way to fire surface-to-surface missiles at ranges of 1,400 miles.”
The Extended Range Cannon Artillery program is working on rocket assisted munitions to double the range of the Army’s workhouse 155mm guns to 24 miles, with some special rounds capable of reaching targets up to 44 miles away. As I touched on recently, the Army is also looking into ramjet rounds that could potentially increase striking range to 62 miles.
To develop the capability for even longer range fires, the Army implemented a Strategic Strike Cannon Artillery program for targets up to nearly 1,000 miles, and a Strategic Fires Missile effort enabling targeting out to 1,400 miles.
The Army is also emphasizing retaining trained artillery personnel and an improved training regime which includes large-scale joint exercises and increased live-fire opportunities.
Increasing the proportion of U.S. corps rocket artillery to tube artillery systems from roughly 1:4 to something closer to the current Russian Army ratio of 3:4.
Fielding a tube artillery system capable of meeting or surpassing the German-made PZH 2000, which can strike targets out to 30 kilometers with regular rounds, sustain a firing rate of 10 rounds per minute, and strike targets with five rounds simultaneously.
Focus on integrating tube and rocket artillery with a multi-domain, joint force to enable the destruction of the majority of enemy maneuver forces before friendly ground forces reach direct-fire range.
Allow tube artillery to be task organized below the brigade level to provide indirect fires capabilities to maneuver battalions, and make rocket artillery available to division and brigade commanders. (Morgan contends that the allocation of indirect fires capabilities to maneuver battalions ended with the disbanding of the Army’s armored cavalry regiments in 2011.)
Increase training in use of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assets at the tactical level to locate, target, and observe fires.
U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy Face Long Range Penetrating Strike Challenges
The Army’s emphasis on improving long range fires appears timely in light of the challenges the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy face in conducting long range penetrating strikes mission in the A2/AD environment. A fascinating analysis by Jerry Hendrix for the Center for a New American Security shows the current strategic problems stemming from U.S. policy decisions taken in the early 1990s following the end of the Cold War.
In an effort to generate a “peace dividend” from the fall of the Soviet Union, the Clinton administration elected to simplify the U.S. military force structure for conducting long range air attacks by relieving the Navy of its associated responsibilities and assigning the mission solely to the Air Force. The Navy no longer needed to replace its aging carrier-based medium range bombers and the Air Force pushed replacements for its aging B-52 and B-1 bombers into the future.
Both the Air Force and Navy emphasized development and acquisition of short range tactical aircraft which proved highly suitable for the regional contingencies and irregular conflicts of the 1990s and early 2000s. Impressed with U.S. capabilities displayed in those conflicts, China, Russia, and Iran invested in air defense and ballistic missile technologies specifically designed to counter American advantages.
The U.S. now faces a strategic environment where its long range strike platforms lack the range and operational and technological capability to operate within these AS/AD “bubbles.” The Air Force has far too few long range bombers with stealth capability, and neither the Air Force nor Navy tactical stealth aircraft can carry long range strike missiles. The missiles themselves lack stealth capability. The short range of the Navy’s aircraft and insufficient numbers of screening vessels leave its aircraft carriers vulnerable to ballistic missile attack.
Remedying this state of affairs will take time and major investments in new weapons and technological upgrades. However, with certain upgrades, Hendrix sees the current Air Force and Navy force structures capable of providing the basis for a long range penetrating strike operational concept effective against A2/AD defenses. The unanswered question is whether these upgrades will be implemented at all.
Afghan National Army soldiers simulate clearing a compound with help from their instructors at the 2nd Brigade, 205th Corps ANA Non-commissioned Officer Academy on Forward Operating Base Eagle in Zabul province Jan. 10, 2012 [{Wikimedia]
Last Friday, Rod Nordland published an article in the New York Times alleging that Afghan security forces (Afghan National Army (ANA) and police) had suffered an average of 57 killed in action (KIA) per day during the previous week, up from 22 killed per day in 2016. If true, such reports would indicate a dramatic increase in loss rates over the previous years.
These reported figures should be regarded critically, however. It is not clear how Nordland arrived at the total of 22 KIA per day for 2016. His article cited another article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff, published in the Times on 30 October 2017. This reported Afghan security forces casualties for 2016 at 6,700 KIA and 12,000 wounded in action (WIA), which works out to an average of 18.36 KIA per day (6,700/365), not 22. The total number of KIA + WIA works out to an average of 51.23 per day (18,700/365).
The lede of Gibbons-Neff’s 2017 article was that the U.S. and Afghan governments had stopped providing official strength and loss figures for the Afghan security forces. Citing the last report of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Gibbons-Neff reported Afghan security forces losses from 1 January-8 May 2017 (126 days) as 2,531 KIA and 4,238 WIA. This works out to an average of 20.08 KIA (2,531/126) and 53.72 KIA + WIA (6,679/126) per day.
Nordland arrived at the figure of 57 KIA per day based on a report of 400 Afghan security forces killed in the week leading up the publication of his article on 21 September 2018. He calculated it by averaging the total over the previous seven days (400/7). Casualty rates in combat have been highly variable, historically. Brief spikes in rates are common. In the same paragraph reporting the 400 KIA total, Nordland quoted senior Afghan government officials stating that the daily average for recent months had been 30 to 40 KIA per day.
It is possible to use the figures cited by Nordland and Gibbons-Neff to make ballpark estimates for Afghan security forces casualties in 2017 and 2018. Even if the weekly loss of 400 KIA for 14-20 September 2018 represents an abnormally high total, it is reasonable to conclude that the Afghan security forces are very likely incurring sharply higher combat losses in 2018 than the previous two years. These figures do not include counts of missing or captured and thus underestimate the actual numbers of battle casualties being suffered by the Afghan forces. It is also possible that the estimates of 30-40 KIA per day apply only to the peak spring-to-autumn fighting season, which would somewhat reduce the overall 2018 KIA and WIA totals.
As Nordland reported, these losses are resulting in an increasing strain on the Afghan forces. His article stated that the strength of the ANA and police in April 2018 was 314,000, 38,000 below the authorized total of 352,000, and that the actual total was likely even lower due to fraudulent reporting and unreported desertions. The ANA suffered a monthly attrition rate of 2.9 percent in early 2017 from combat casualties, desertion, and failed reenlistments, requiring one-third of the overall force to be replaced by new recruits annually. That attrition rate is undoubtedly far higher now and almost certainly not sustainable for long.
In comparison, the Afghan government reported in August that its security forces had killed 42 Taliban fighters per day, or 1,300 per month. For the year ending in March 2018, it claimed to have killed 13,600 insurgent fighters. There has been no independent confirmation of these claims and they should be treated skeptically.
Scharre agreed that robotic drones are indeed vulnerable to such countermeasures, but made this point in response:
I think this is 100% correct! The genius of robotic vehicles is that they don't have to be survivable. They can be built cheaply and expendable, overwhelming the adversary with mass. 5/
He then went to contend that robotic swarms offer the potential to reestablish the role of mass in future combat. Mass, either in terms of numbers of combatants or volume of firepower, has played a decisive role in most wars. As the aphorism goes, usually credited to Josef Stalin, “mass has a quality all of its own.”
Numbers matter. For an adversary willing to treat individual units as expendable, swarming is a very appealing tactic. 9/
Overwhelming the enemy through sheer mass has been an effective military tactic throughout the ages. In fact, that's precisely how the Allies won World War II, by overwhelming the Axis through an onslaught of iron. 10/
As Paul Kennedy wrote, "No matter how cleverly the Wehrmacht mounted its tactical counterattacks … it was to be ultimately overwhelmed by the sheer mass of Allied firepower." 12/
Scharre observed that the United States went in a different direction in its post-World War II approach to warfare, adopting instead “offset” strategies that sought to leverage superior technology to balance against the mass militaries of the Communist bloc.
During the Cold War, the United States adopted an "offset strategy" to counter Soviet numerical superiority with qualitatively superior technology — first nuclear weapons then information-age precision-guided weapons. 13/
While effective during the Cold War, Scharre concurs with the arguments that offset strategies are becoming far too expensive and may ultimately become self-defeating.
The logical conclusion of that strategy is the current death spiral of the U.S. military — rising platform costs and shrinking quantities leading to qualitatively superior weapons but in insufficient quantities to deliver operational results. 14/
And it's not about the budget. More money won't save the U.S. from this trap. From 2001-2008 the base (non-war) budgets of the Navy and Air Force grew by 22% and 27% respectively in real dollars. # of assets declined by 10% for ships and nearly 20% for aircraft. 16/
In order to avoid this fate, Scharre contends that
The United States needs to change the way it produces combat power, focusing on the most cost-effective way to accomplish its operational goals rather than building next-gen "X" programs at any price. 17/
Robots might very well change that equation. Whether autonomous or “human in the loop,” robotic swarms do not feel fear and are inherently expendable. Cheaply produced robots might very well provide sufficient augmentation to human combat units to restore the primacy of mass in future warfare.
Canadian soldiers going “over the top” during an assault in the First World War. [History.com][This post was originally published on 1 December 2017.]
How many troops are needed to successfully attack or defend on the battlefield? There is a long-standing rule of thumb that holds that an attacker requires a 3-1 preponderance over a defender in combat in order to win. The aphorism is so widely accepted that few have questioned whether it is actually true or not.
Trevor Dupuy challenged the validity of the 3-1 rule on empirical grounds. He could find no historical substantiation to support it. In fact, his research on the question of force ratios suggested that there was a limit to the value of numerical preponderance on the battlefield.
TDI President Chris Lawrence has also challenged the 3-1 rule in his own work on the subject.
The validity of the 3-1 rule is no mere academic question. It underpins a great deal of U.S. military policy and warfighting doctrine. Yet, the only time the matter was seriously debated was in the 1980s with reference to the problem of defending Western Europe against the threat of Soviet military invasion.
It is probably long past due to seriously challenge the validity and usefulness of the 3-1 rule again.
This series of posts was based on the article “Iranian Casualties in the Iran-Iraq War: A Reappraisal,” by H. W. Beuttel, originally published in the December 1997 edition of the International TNDM Newsletter. Mr Beuttel was a former U.S. Army intelligence officer employed as a military analyst by Boeing Research & Development at the time of original publication. He also authored several updates to this original article, to be posted at a later date, which refined and updated his analysis.
NOTES
This series of posts was based on the article “Iranian Casualties in the Iran-Iraq War: A Reappraisal,” by H. W. Beuttel, originally published in the