The Dupuy Institute has the following capabilities:
Comparison of fighting capabilities of opposing forces (systemic strengths and weaknesses) based upon:
- Command and organizational arrangements, leadership, force structure, intelligence, and logistics;
- Training, cultural and psychological profiles, and flow of information;
- Doctrinal flexibility or constraints in utilizing new weapons and technologies.
Validation of models or simulations and of scenarios for field exercises. Validation is a process, based on historical data and trends, that assists in determining whether a scenario, model, or simulation is an accurate representation of the real world. The Dupuy Institute has the capability to do this independently or to provide primary source historical data for agency in-house validations;
Estimating casualties for combat or operations other than war;
Providing lessons learned from studies of cause and effect chains among responsible players at the political, theater, operational, and tactical levels;
Analysis of group behavior (impact of various combat activities on units) and other human factors (historically-based aggregate measures of leadership, training, morale, organizational capacity, and cultural characteristics) in battles;
Studies of the specific impact on combat caused by new technology and improvements in weapons, based on historic trends and experiential data. This enables projections of ways in which future wars should be fought and understanding of what elements constitute “force multipliers.”
These capabilities merge operations research with historical trends, actual combat data, and real world perspectives creating applied military history in its most useful sense.