Mystics & Statistics

Building a Wargamer

Interesting article from Elizabeth Bartels of RAND from November 2018. It is on the War on the Rocks website. Worth reading: Building a Pipeline of Wargaming Talent

Let me highlight a few points:

  1. “On issues ranging from potential conflicts with Russia to the future of transportation and logistics, senior leaders have increasingly turned to wargames to imagine potential futures.”
  2. “The path to becoming a gamer today is modeled on the careers of the last generation of gamers — most often members of the military or defense analysts with strong roots in the hobby gaming community of the 1960s and 1970s.”
    1. My question: Should someone at MORS (Military Operations Research Society) nominate Charles S. Roberts and James F. Dunnigan for the Vance R. Wanner or the Clayton J. Thomas awards? (see: https://www.mors.org/Recognition).
  3. One notes that there is no discussion of the “Base of Sand” problem.
  4. One notes there is no discussion of VVA (Verification, Validation and Accreditation)
  5. The picture heading her article is of a hex board overlaid by acetate.

Do Training Models Need Validation?

Do we need to validate training models? The argument is that as the model is being used for training (vice analysis), it does not require the rigorous validation that an analytical model would require. In practice, I gather this means they are not validated. It is an argument I encountered after 1997. As such, it is not addressed in my letters to TRADOC in 1996: See http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/v1n4.pdf

Over time, the modeling and simulation industry has shifted from using models for analysis to using models for training. The use of models for training has exploded, and these efforts certainly employ a large number of software coders. The question is, if the core of the analytical models have not been validated, and in some cases, are known to have problems, then what are the models teaching people? To date, I am not aware of any training models that have been validated.

Let us consider the case of JICM. The core of the models attrition calculation was the Situational Force Scoring (SFS). Its attrition calculator for ground combat is based upon a version of the 3-to-1 rule comparing force ratios to exchange ratios. This is discussed in some depth in my book War by Numbers, Chapter 9, Exchange Ratios. To quote from page 76:

If the RAND version of the 3 to 1 rule is correct, then the data should show a 3 to 1 force ratio and a 3 to 1 casualty exchange ratio. However, there is only one data point that comes close to this out of the 243 points we examined.

That was 243 battles from 1600-1900 using our Battles Data Base (BaDB). We also tested it to our Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB) from 1904-1991 with the same result. To quote from page 78 of my book:

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 ratio) that RAND postulates. In fact it almost looks like the data conspire to leave a noticeable hole at that point.

So, does this create negative learning? If the ground operations are such that an attacking ends up losing 3 times as many troops as the defender when attacking at 3-to-1 odds, does this mean that the model is training people not to attack below those odds, and in fact, to wait until they have much more favorable odds? The model was/is (I haven’t checked recently) being used at the U.S. Army War College. This is the advanced education institute that most promotable colonels attend before advancing to be a general officer. Is such a model teaching them incorrect relationships, force ratios and combat requirements?

You fight as you train. If we are using models to help train people, then it is certainly valid to ask what those models are doing. Are they properly training our soldiers and future commanders? How do we know they are doing this. Have they been validated?

Validation by Use

Sacrobosco, Tractatus de Sphaera (1550 AD)

Another argument I have heard over the decades is that models are validated by use. Apparently the argument is that these models have been used for so long, and so many people have worked with their outputs, that they must be fine. I have seen this argument made in writing by a senior army official in 1997 in response to a letter addressing validation that we encouraged TRADOC to be send out:

See: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/v1n4.pdf

I doubt that there is any regulation discussing “validation by use,” and I doubt anyone has ever defended this idea in public paper. Still, it is an argument that I have heard used far more than once or twice.

Now, part of the problem is that some of these models have been around a few decades. For example, the core of some of the models used by CAA, for example COSAGE, first came into existence in 1969. They are using a 50-year updated model to model modern warfare. My father worked with this model. RAND’s JICM (Joint Integrated Contingency Model) dates back to the 1980s, so it is at least 30 years old. The irony is that some people argue that one should not use historical warfare examples to validate models of modern warfare. These models now have a considerable legacy.

From a practical point of view, it means that the people who originally designed and developed the model have long since retired. In many cases, the people who intimately knew the inner workings of the model have also retired and have not really been replaced. Some of these models have become “black boxes” where the users do not really know the details of how the models calculate their results. So suddenly, validation by use seems like a reasonable argument, because these models pre-date the analysts, and they assume that there is some validity to them, as people have been using them. They simple inherited the model. Why question it?

Illustration by Bartolomeu Velho, 1568 AD

China and Russia Defeats the USA

A couple of recent articles on that latest wargaming effort done by RAND:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/rand_corp_wargames_us_loses_to_combined_russiachina_forces.html

The opening line states: “The RAND Corporation’s annual ‘Red on Blue’ wargame simulation found that the United States would be a loser in a conventional confrontation with Russia and China.”

A few other quotes:

  1. “Blue gets its ass handed to it.”
  2. “…the U.S. forces ‘suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China from overrunning U.S. allies in the Baltics or Taiwan:”

Also see: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/did-rand-get-it-right-in-its-war-game-exercise/

A few quotes from that article:

  1. “The US and NATO are unable to stop an attack in the Balkans by the Russians,….
  2. “…and the United States and its allies are unable to prevent the takeover of Taiwan by China.

The articles do not state what simulations were used to wargame this. The second article references this RAND study (RAND Report) but my quick perusal of it did not identify what simulations were used. A search on the words “model” and “wargame” produced nothing. The words “simulation” and “gaming” leads to the following:

  1.  “It draws on research, analysis, and gaming that the RAND Corporation has done in recent years, incorporating the efforts of strategists, regional specialists, experts in both conventional and irregular military operations, and those skilled in the use of combat simulation tools.”
  2. “Money, time, and talent must therefore be allocated not only to the development and procurement of new equipment and infrastructure, but also to concept development, gaming and analysis, field experimentation, and exploratory joint force exercises.”

Anyhow, curious as to what wargames they were using (JICM – Joint Integrated Contingency Model?). I was not able to find out with a cursory search.

Dupuy’s Verities: The Effects of Firepower in Combat

A German artillery barrage falling on Allied trenches, probably during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, during the First World War. [Wikimedia]

The eleventh of Trevor Dupuy’s Timeless Verities of Combat is:

Firepower kills, disrupts, suppresses, and causes dispersion.

From Understanding War (1987):

It is doubtful if any of the people who are today writing on the effect of technology on warfare would consciously disagree with this statement. Yet, many of them tend to ignore the impact of firepower on dispersion, and as a consequence they have come to believe that the more lethal the firepower, the more deaths, disruption, and suppression it will cause. In fact, as weapons have become more lethal intrinsically, their casualty-causing capability has either declined or remained about the same because of greater dispersion of targets. Personnel and tank loss rates of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, for example, were quite similar to those of intensive battles of World War II and the casualty rates in both of these wars were less than in World War I. (p. 7)

Research and analysis of real-world historical combat data by Dupuy and TDI has identified at least four distinct combat effects of firepower: infliction of casualties (lethality), disruption, suppression, and dispersion. All of them were found to be heavily influenced—if not determined—by moral (human) factors.

Again, I have written extensively on this blog about Dupuy’s theory about the historical relationship between weapon lethality, dispersion on the battlefield, and historical decline in average daily combat casualty rates. TDI President Chris Lawrence has done further work on the subject as well.

TDI Friday Read: Lethality, Dispersion, And Mass On Future Battlefields

Human Factors In Warfare: Dispersion

Human Factors In Warfare: Suppression

There appears to be a fundamental difference in interpretation of the combat effects of firepower between Dupuy’s emphasis on the primacy of human factors and Defense Department models that account only for the “physics-based” casualty-inflicting capabilities of weapons systems. While U.S. Army combat doctrine accounts for the interaction of firepower and human behavior on the battlefield, it has no clear method for assessing or even fully identifying the effects of such factors on combat outcomes.

NYMAS in Manhattan on Friday, 26 April

I will be presenting my book War by Numbers at the New York Military Affairs Symposium (NYMAS) on Friday, 26 April, at the Soldiers Sailors Club in New York City. The announcement is here: http://www.nymas.org/

The format is that I talk for an hour or so, and then take questions for the next 45 minutes.

There is a presentation on Friday the 12th of “The Grosse Importance of Kleine Krieg: Logistics, Operations, and ‘Little Wars’ in the late 17th Century Low Countries” by John Stapleton, U.S. Military Academy.

Face Validation

The phrase “face validation” shows up in our blog post earlier this week on Combat Adjudication. It is a phrase I have heard many times over the decades, sometimes by very established Operation Researchers (OR). So what does it mean?

Well, it is discussed in the Department of the Army Pamphlet 5-11: Verification, Validation and Accreditation of Army Models and Simulations: Pamphlet 5-11

Their first mention of it is on page 34: “SMEs [Subject Matter Experts] or other recognized individuals in the field of inquiry. The process by which experts compare M&S [Modeling and Simulation] structure and M&S output to their estimation of the real world is called face validation, peer review, or independent review.”

On page 35 they go on to state: “RDA [Research, Development, and Acquisition]….The validation method typically chosen for this category of M&S is face validation.”

And on page 36 under Technical Methods: “Face validation. This is the process of determining whether an M&S, on the surface, seems reasonable to personnel who are knowledgeable about the system or phenomena under study. This method applies the knowledge and understanding of experts in the field and is subject to their biases. It can produce a consensus of the community if the number of breadth of experience of the experts represent the key commands and agencies. Face validation is a point of departure to determine courses of action for more comprehensive validation efforts.” [I put the last part in bold]

Page 36: “Functional decomposition (sometimes known as piecewise validation)….When used in conjunction with face validation of the overall M&S results, functional decomposition is extremely useful in reconfirming previous validation of a recently modified portions of the M&S.”

I have not done a survey of all army, air force, navy, marine, coast guard or Department of Defense (DOD) regulations. This one is enough.

So, “face validation” is asking one or more knowledgeable (or more senior) people if the model looks good. I guess it really depends on whose the expert is and to what depth they look into it. I have never seen a “face validation” report (validation reports are also pretty rare).

Who’s “faces” do they use? Are they outside independent people or people inside the organization (or the model designer himself)? I am kind of an expert, yet, I have never been asked. I do happen to be one of the more experienced model validation people out there, having managed or directly created six+ validation databases and having conducted five validation-like exercises. When you consider that most people have not done one, should I be a “face” they contact? Or is this process often just to “sprinkle holy water” on the model and be done?

In the end, I gather for practical purposes the process of face validation is that if a group of people think it is good, then it is good. In my opinion, “face validation” is often just an argument that allows people to explain away or simply dismiss the need for any rigorous analysis of the model. The pamphlet does note that “Face validation is a point of departure to determine courses of action for more comprehensive validation efforts.” How often have we’ve seen the subsequent comprehensive validation effort? Very, very rarely. It appears that “face validation” is the end point.
…
Is this really part of the scientific method?
…

A Time for Crumpets

Charles MacDonald published in 1985 A Time for Trumpets, one of the better books on the Battle of the Bulge (and there are actually a lot of good works on this battle). In there he recounted a story of why the German Panzer Lehr Panzer Division, commanded by General Fritz Bayerlein, was held up for the better part of a day during the Battle for Bastogne. To quote:

For all Bayerlein’s concern about that armored force, he himself was at the point of directing less than full attention to conduct of the battle. In a wood outside Mageret, his troops had found a platoon from an American field hospital, and among the staff, a “young, blonde, and beautiful” American nurse attracted Bayerlein’s attention. Through much of December 19, he “dallied” with the nurse, who “held him spellbound.” [page 295]

Apparently MacDonald’s book was not the only source of this story: http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=186079

Now, I don’t know if “dallied” means that they were having tea and crumpets, or involved in something more intimate. The story apparently comes from Bayerlein himself, so something probably happened, but exactly what is not known. He was relieved of command after the failed offensive.

Fritz Bayerlein, March 1944 (Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1978-033-02/Dinstueler/CC-BY-SA 3.0)

When we met with Charles MacDonald in 1989, I did ask him about this story. He then recounted that he was recently at a U.S. veterans gathering talking to some other people, and some lady came up to him and told him that she knew the nurse in the story. MacDonald said he would get back to her….but then could not locate her later. So this was an opportunity to confirm and get more details of the story, but, it was lost (to history). But it does sort of confirm that there is some basis to Bayerlein’s story.

Now, this discussion with MacDonald is from memory, but I believe (the authors) Jay Karamales, Richard Anderson and possibly Curt Johnson were also at that dinner, and they may remember the conversation (differently?).

Anyhow, A Time for Strumpets Trumpets is a book worth reading.