Left Behind
Nice article in the Economist: The interesting point is that they give stats as to what they are leaving behind (have no idea how they know this): The first is that Russia is not pulling out its forces completely.…
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis
Nice article in the Economist: The interesting point is that they give stats as to what they are leaving behind (have no idea how they know this): The first is that Russia is not pulling out its forces completely.…
It would be nice to have short, quick, sharp interventions. Basically, go into a troubled country, kick tail, and then leave shortly thereafter with everything resolved. Sort of like we did in Libya in 2011; or that peacekeeping mission in…
If you watch the international news (probably best done by not watching American news channels) you may have noticed a few protestors in the streets of Rio and Sao Paolo, more than a million actually. This is a very big…
Walls are all the rage now. According to various articles, Ukraine is planning on building a wall along its border with Russia. This is some 1200 miles and costs $200 million. It is not a wall, it is a actually…
Not a whole lot of analytical work has been done on third-party insurgencies. A third-party insurgency is a conflict where an external state or trans-national organization played a major role in initiating, sustaining, bringing to victory, or otherwise supporting a…
In case you missed this: Three major actions are called out at the end of the article: Our first initiative, currently underway, is to establish a wargaming repository to better understand and guide existing wargaming efforts and to share…
Continuing the RAND description of their hex boardgame: Ground unit combat strengths were based on a systematic scoring of individual weapons, from tanks and artillery down to light machine guns, which were then aggregated according to the tables of organization…
There have been a number of tests of Lanchester equations to historical data over the years. Versions of Lanchester equations were implemented in various ground combat models in the late 1960s and early 1970s without any rigorous testing. As John…
RAND described the combat system from their hex boardgame as such: The general game design was similar to that of traditional board wargames, with a hex grid governing movement superimposed on a map. Tactical Pilotage Charts (1:500,000 scale) were used, overlaid…
RAND has published a report on its analysis of “NATO’s Eastern Flank” (meaning the three Baltic states). The PDF can be obtained here: Of particular interest to us is Appendix A: Methodology and Data (page 12). RAND is using…