Mystics & Statistics

“Quantity Has A Quality All Its Own”: How Robot Swarms Might Change Future Combat

Humans vs. machines in the film Matrix Revolutions (2003) [Screencap by The Matrix Wiki]

Yesterday, Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and prolific writer on the future of robotics and artificial intelligence, posted a fascinating argument on Twitter regarding swarms and mass in future combat.

His thread was in response to an article by Shmuel Shmuel posted on War on the Rocks, which made the case that the same computer processing technology enabling robotic vehicles combined with old fashioned kinetic weapons (i.e. anti-aircraft guns) offered a cost-effective solution to swarms.

Scharre agreed that robotic drones are indeed vulnerable to such countermeasures, but made this point in response:

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.”

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.

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.

In order to avoid this fate, Scharre contends that

The entire thread is well worth reading.

Trevor Dupuy would have agreed with much of what Scharre’s asserts. He identified the relationship between increasing weapon lethality and battlefield dispersion that goes back to the 17th century. Dupuy believed that the primary factor driving this relationship was the human response to fear in a lethal environment, with soldiers dispersing in depth and frontage on battlefields in order to survive weapons of ever increasing destructiveness.

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

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.

Demographics of the United States

The United States is the third most populous country in the world, and has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is likely to remain the third most populous country for a long time to come, as it will certainly not catch up to the two countries with over a billion people (China and India) and will not be surpassed by anyone else any time soon (Indonesia, 4th on the list, has a population of around 264 million in 2017 and a growth rate of 1.1% compared to the U.S. growth rate of 0.7%). It appears that we will be the third most populous country in the world for decades to come.

The United States population for 2018 is estimated at 328.3 million. This is more than twice what it was in 1950. It has been growing at 9.7% or higher for every decade since 1790, with the exception of the 1930s (7.3% for that decade). Annual growth rate in 2017 is 0.7%.

The fertility rates in the U.S. is 1.76 children per woman (2017). This is not that much higher than the 1.61 figure that Russia has (see my previous post on demographics). Almost all developed countries in the world now have a birth rate below 2. It needs to be around 2.1 to achieve replacement rate. The U.S. fertility rate dropped below 2.1 in 1972 and has remained below the replacement rate ever since then, except for two years (2006 and 2007). But, the U.S. population continues to grow, and that growth is due to immigration. If it was not for immigration, the U.S. population would be in decline.

The United States is currently 77.7% “white” (in 2013), which is defined by the census bureau as “having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.” Non-Hispanic “whites” make up 62.6% of the country’s population. The non-Hispanic “white” population is expected to fall below 50% by 2045. Needless to say, this has become a political issue inside the United States, one that I have no interest in discussing on this blog. See: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/

The United Nations predicts the U.S. population will be 402 million in 2050  (compared to their prediction of 132 for Russia in 2050). The U.S. census bureau projects the U.S. population will be 417 million in 2060.

The population has gotten older, with the median age now being 38.1 years. In 1970, at the height of the “youth culture” it was 28.1 years. The demographic “pyramid” from 2015 for the United States is below. This is worth comparing to the Russian “pyramid” in a previous post.

The legal immigration rate of the United States has averaged around 1 million a year from 1989. The legal immigration rate rose to 1.8 million in 1991 and was 1.2 million in 2016. This was very much driven by the Immigration Act of 1990, which raised the cap on immigration. See: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016/table1

The illegal immigration rate is harder to calculate, as some illegal immigrants are deported, some return home and I gather a significant number of them later convert to legal immigrants. It is estimated that there are around 11 million illegal immigrants in this country (2016 estimate). In 1990, it was estimated that there were 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Does that mean that the actual immigration rate from illegal immigration is less than 300,000 a year (as many later become legal immigrants)? It is hard to say exactly, but it appears that our immigration rate is somewhere between 1,300,000 and 1,500,000 a year counting both legal and illegal immigrants.

This is the primary source of our population growth and will probably be so for some time to come. The United States ceased reproducing at replacement rate almost 50 years ago. This is not going to change anytime soon. Some immigration is probably essential to maintain our labor force at current or growing levels (this is as close to a political statement as I am going to get on the subject).

Next to China, India, Japan and Germany.

Destroyed Tanks In Das Reich

Still working on sorting out the events on 6 July 1943 with the Das Reich SS Division at Luchki.

Das Reich’s first reported destroyed tank was at 0235 on 7 July (T354, R605, page 556). It was a Panzer IV. It then provides a map showing 6 tanks destroyed SSW of Luchki (1 Pz III, 2 Pz IVs, 1 Pz VI and 2 T-34s). The map is undated, but is probably between 6 and 9 July. Das Reich took Luchki (south) on 6 July. This map is shown here:

The Das Reich Valley of Death?

There is a 10-day report for 10 July. These are usually the best source for total loss reports. The report total losses as of 10 July as being 1 Pz III long, 1 Pz IV long and 1 StuG (T313, R387, page 6831). There is also a Corps’ quartermaster log, where they report that as of 7/11, there were three tanks totally destroyed: 1 Pz III, 1 Pz IV and 1 StuG III (T354, R607, pg 507). Hard to square these reports up with the map of Luchki showing six tanks destroyed.

It is only until the 28th of July do we get a complete listing for Das Reich of total losses for the period of 5-18 July. There was no 10-day status report for the 20th of July. The 28 July report records for Das Reich total losses of 2 Pz III, 6 Pz IV, 1 Pz VI and 2 StuG (T354, R607, page 629). This is total of 11 tanks, but does not include T-34s, where at least two were totally destroyed. We ended up recording 18 as destroyed based upon multiple sources (see page 1336 of my Kursk book).

The same report also records LSSAH total losses as 1 Pz Ib, 1 Pz III, 9 Pz IV, 1 Pz VI, 3 StuG, and 3 “Pak Sf.” (Marders). Same for Totenkopf SS, where they report 6 Pz IIIs, 7 Pz IVs, 1 Pz VI, 1 StuG and 2 Marders.

Now this was a clean-up report. There were other earlier reports of total losses that indicate less losses. On 23 July there is a report of tanks destroyed by the corps (T354, R605, page 853). It reports for the II SS Panzer Corps 5 Pz III long, 23 Pz IV long, 3 Pz VI and 5 Sturmgeschutz (assault guns). This does not quite match the report on 28 July. On 28 July they report 9 Pz III (+4), 22 Pz IV long (-1), 3 Pz VI and 6 StuG (+1). There was no fighting between 23 and 28 July, 1943 as the SS Panzer Corps was moving to conduct its next offensive.

A few things come to mind here:

  1. According to our accounting, Das Reich lost 129 tanks damaged and 18 destroyed between 4 July and 18 July (see page 1337 of my Kursk book).
  2. They apparently only lost 13-18 tanks destroyed in that period.
  3. It does appears that tanks are being written off as destroyed several days after they were actually damaged, in some cases a week or more later.
  4. Clearly, looking at destroyed tanks only does not really give a full and proper accounting of the actual fighting.

If you really want to know what is going on with combat among the German armored divisions in WWII, you really need to compare and contrast the ready-for-action reports from day-to-day.

Anyhow, not sure I am any closer to determining what happened on the 6th of July, if any significant did happen.

Demographics of Russia

I am far from an expert on demographics, but it something I do occasionally pay attention to. When it comes to measuring long-term military power and world influence, the basic measurement of power is wealth times population. Or, you can simply stack the countries up by GNP. This puts Russia 11th on the list, below Canada. But looking at Russia’s population alone is useful.

As of January 2018 the population of Russia is estimated at 146.9 million people. This does make it the 9th most populous country on the planet. This does include Crimea and Sevastopol, which has 2.4 million people.

The population of Russia was in steady decline from 1991 to 2013. Even in 2017 Russia was only producing 1.61 children per women. This is below the replacement rates of 2.1. The last time the Russian fertility rate was above 2 was in 1989 and that was only for 7 years. It was below 2 for most of the time before that going back to mid-1960s. Low child birth rates and small families rates seem to be very much a part of the culture. I know a lot of Russians that are only children.

Their population is growing ever so slowly due to immigration. For 2017 they had a net migration of 211,878, and a natural population loss of 135,818. This gave them population gains of 76,060, which is a very small annual gain (0.05% gain a year). In 2010, ethnic Russians made up 77% of the total population.

The population of Russia was 147.4 million in 1990, 148.7 million in 1991, and then it declined at a rate of 0.5% a year, dropped to 142.9 million in 2010 and has increased to 146.9 since then by immigration and seizure of Crimea and Sevastopol. In 2006 the Russian government started simplifying immigration laws, encouraging immigration of ethnic Russian from former Soviet republics. There is probably a limit to how many more people this can draw in. Russia also has about 7 million temporary migrant workers (these are 2011 figures). The Russian population tends to be older than most. The demographic “pyramid” is anything but pyramidal in shape.

As of 2018, the UN is still predicting that Russia’s population will fall to 132 million by 2050. See: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Country-Profiles/

Now, lets compare the population of the Soviet Union/Russia to the United States over time:

                Soviet Union/Russia               United States

1951        182.3 million                             151.3 (1950)

1959        209.0                                        179.3 (1960)

1970        241.7                                        203.2

1977        257.7                                        226.5 (1980)

1982        270.0                                        226.5 (1980)

1990        290.9                                        248.7

1991        293.0                                        248.7 (1990)

2002       145.2 (Russia only)                   281.4 (2000)

2010       142.9                                         308.7

2018       146.9                                         328.3 (est.)

 

So, during the height of the “we will bury you” era the Soviet Union had a population of about 20% larger than the U.S. Russia now has a population less than half the U.S. (and a GDP of less than Canada). It appears that their population will not be growing very fast and may well continue to decline.

Wargaming Thread on Combat Results Tables

Thanks to a comment made on one of our posts, I recently became aware of a 17 page discussion thread on combat results tables (CRT) that is worth reading. It is here:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1344914/crts-101/page/1

By default, much of their discussion of data centers around analysis based upon Trevor Dupuy’s writing, the CBD90 database, the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB), the Kursk Data Base (KDB)  and my book War by Numbers. I was not aware of this discussion until yesterday even though the thread was started in 2015 and continues to this year (War by Numbers was published in 2017 so does not appear until the end of page 5 of the thread).

The CBD90 was developed from a Dupuy research effort in the 1980s eventually codified as the Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB). Dupuy’s research was programmed with errors by the government to create the CBD90. A lot of the analysis in my book was based upon a greatly expanded and corrected version of the LWDB. I was the program manager for both the ACSDB and the KDB, and of course, the updated versions of our DuWar suite of combat databases.

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/dbases.htm

There are about a hundred comments I could make to this thread, some in agreement and some in disagreement, but then I would not get my next book finished, so I will refrain. This does not stop me from posting a link:

Lanchester equations have been weighed….

 

How Many Confederates Fought At Antietam?

Dead soldiers lying near the Dunker Church on the Antietam battlefield. [History.com]

Numbers matter in war and warfare. Armies cannot function effectively without reliable counts of manpower, weapons, supplies, and losses. Wars, campaigns, and battles are waged or avoided based on assessments of relative numerical strength. Possessing superior numbers, either overall or at the decisive point, is a commonly held axiom (if not a guarantor) for success in warfare.

These numbers of war likewise inform the judgements of historians. They play a large role in shaping historical understanding of who won or lost, and why. Armies and leaders possessing a numerical advantage are expected to succeed, and thus come under exacting scrutiny when they do not. Commanders and combatants who win in spite of inferiorities in numbers are lauded as geniuses or elite fighters.

Given the importance of numbers in war and history, however, it is surprising to see how often historians treat quantitative data carelessly. All too often, for example, historical estimates of troop strength are presented uncritically and often rounded off, apparently for simplicity’s sake. Otherwise careful scholars are not immune from the casual or sloppy use of numbers.

However, just as careless treatment of qualitative historical evidence results in bad history, the same goes for mishandling quantitative data. To be sure, like any historical evidence, quantitative data can be imprecise or simply inaccurate. Thus, as with any historical evidence, it is incumbent upon historians to analyze the numbers they use with methodological rigor.

OK, with that bit of throat-clearing out of the way, let me now proceed to jump into one of the greatest quantitative morasses in military historiography: strengths and losses in the American Civil War. Participants, pundits, and scholars have been arguing endlessly over numbers since before the war ended. And since nothing seems to get folks riled up more than debating Civil War numbers than arguing about the merits (or lack thereof) of Union General George B. McClellan, I am eventually going to add him to the mix as well.

The reason I am grabbing these dual lightning rods is to illustrate the challenges of quantitative data and historical analysis by looking at one of Trevor Dupuy’s favorite historical case studies, the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg, for the unreconstructed rebels lurking out there). Dupuy cited his analysis of the battle in several of his books, mainly as a way of walking readers through his Quantified Judgement Method of Analysis (QJMA), and to demonstrate his concept of combat multipliers.

I have questions about his Antietam analysis that I will address later. To begin, however, I want to look at the force strength numbers he used. On p. 156 of Numbers, Predictions and War, he provided the following figures for the opposing armies at Antietam:The sources he cited for these figures were R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, The Compact History of the Civil War (New York: Hawthorn, 1960) and Thomas L. Livermore, Numbers and Losses of the Civil War (reprint, Bloomington: University of Indiana, 1957).

It is with Livermore that I will begin tracing the historical and historiographical mystery of how many Confederates fought at the Battle of Antietam.

Das Reich Tank Losses on 6 July, 1943

On 6 July 1943, we estimate that the Das Reich SS Division lost 30 tanks damaged and destroyed. We have them starting the battle on the evening of 4 July with the following:

Pz I Command:                1

Pz II:                                 0 (and 1 in repair)

Pz III short (Command):   8

Pz III short:                       1

Pz III long:                       52 (and 11 in repair)

Pz III Observation:            9 (not counted)

Pz III Command:               1

Pz IV long:                       30 (and 2 in repair)

Pz VI:                               12 (and 2 in repair)

StuG III:                            33

Marder II:                           2 (and one in repair)

Marder III 76.2mm:            8

T-34:                                18 (and 9 in repair)

Total                               166 (and 26 in repair)

 

This is from the Kursk Data Base (KDB).

Tank status report for 5 July from 4th PzA files (T313, R366, page 2209), no time given. It records:

Pz III short: 1

Pz III long: 45

Pz IV: 27

Pz VI: 12

Command: Not reported

StuG: 32

 

This file was not used. There are some errors in other parts of this report. The file we did use was 5.7.43 19:40 hours from the army files (T313, R368. page 4282), which states:

Pz III short: 1

Pz III long: 52

Pz IV long: 27

Pz VI: 11

T-34: 16

Command: 8

StuG: 21

 

It took me a while to find all these files, which is why this blog post was so late today.

The next report from Das Reich is at 0235 on 7 July. Not sure why the delay, as the other division’s in the corps were submitting daily reports. They report:

Pz III short: 1

Pz III long: 47

Pz IV: 16

Pz VI: 7

Command: 6

StuG: 14

Total losses: 1 Pz IV.

 

We assume that this report at 0235 on 7 July is the end of the day report for July 6. That gives us a count of at least 47-48 tanks lost since the start of the offensive. One will note that they claim only one tank completely lost, yet there are six tanks listed destroyed in the gully SSW of Luchki. Is this an indication that they may have been lost on subsequent days and towed there?

The Kursk Data Base records 19 tanks damaged/destroyed on the 5th and 30 tanks damaged/destroyed in the 6th. These counts include T-34 losses. On the 6th this includes 2 Pz III short (Command), 5 Pz III longs, 11 Pz IV longs (one listed as destroyed), 4 Pz VIs, 7 StuG IIIs, and 1 T-34.

The status report for 7 July is probably in the message of 8 July dated at 0830, which list tank status from 6.7.43. This could be a 7 July report and was used as such in the Kursk Data Base. It is from 4th Panzer Army files (T313, R366, page 2251):

Pz III: 43

Pz IV: 25

Pz VI: 6

Command tank: 7

T-34: 14

Stug: 7 (!)

 

Status report for 8 July (from 4th Panzer Army files, T313, R366, page 2247):

Pz III long: 31

Pz IV long: 14

Pz VI: 0  (hard to read)

Command Tank: 7

T-34: 12

StuG: 21

 

Report does have a handwritten figure of 45 next to it (31+14 = 45)

The next report of tank status we have for Das Reich is for 9 July. They report:

                           Division      Corps (1830)     Corps (1905)   4th PzA Report (2300)

Pz III short:            0

Pz III long:           31                   33                   31                      38 (31)

Pz IV:                  13                   15                    13                     13

 Pz VI:                   1                     1                      1                       1

Command tank:    7                     7                      7                            (7)

T-34:                     7                     7                      7

Stug:                   26                   26                    26                       26

 

For the Kursk Data Base, these were the nuts and bolt calculations we did for all nine German panzer and panzer grenadier divisions for all 15 days of the operation. We also did the same for all 10 Soviet tank and mechanized corps. While we may have made a error here and there on a given day, we did try to count and track tank strengths and losses for every single day, even when the records were not cooperating. I believe the KDB is the most accurate accounting of tank losses at the Battle of Kursk.

Anyhow, this is related to this previous post, as I am still trying to sort out what might of occurred near the village of Luchki on 6 July, 1943:

The Das Reich Valley of Death?

With six tanks reported destroyed to the SSW of Luchki, perhaps all on 6 July, and the Das Reich SS Division losing around 30 tanks on 6 July, there may have been a major fight there that is not otherwise documented.

The 3-to-1 Rule in Recent History Books

This seems to be the rule that never goes away. I have a recent a case of it being used in a history book. The book was published in English in 2017 (and in German in 2007). In discussing the preparation for the Battle of Kursk in 1943 the author states that:

A military rule of thumb says an attacker should have a superiority of 3 to 1 in order to have a chance of success. While this vague principal applies only at tactical level, the superiority could be even greater if the defender is entrenched behind fortifications. Given the Kursk salient’s fortress-like defences, that was precisely the case.

This was drawn from Germany and the Second World War, Volume VIII: The Eastern Front 1943-1944: The War in the East and on the Neighboring Fronts, page 86. This section was written by Karl-Heinz Frieser.

This version of the rule now says that you have to have a superiority of 3-to-1 in order to have a chance of success? We have done a little analysis of force ratios compared to outcome. See Chapter 2: Force Ratios (pages 8-13) in War by Numbers. I never heard the caveat in the second sentence that the “principal applies only at tactical level.”

This rule has been discussed by me in previous blog posts. Dr. Frieser made a similar claim in his book The Blitzkrieg Legend:

The 3-to-1 Rule in Histories

These books were written by a German author who was an officer in the Bundeswehr, so apparently this rule of thumb has spread to some of our NATO allies, or maybe it started in Germany. We really don’t know where this rule of thumb first came from. It ain’t from Clausewitz.

Questioning The Validity Of The 3-1 Rule Of Combat

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.

TDI Friday Read: Iranian Casualties In The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War

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.

Iranian Casualties in the Iran-Iraq War: A Reappraisal (1)

Iranian Missing In Action From The Iran-Iraq War (2)

Iranian Prisoners Of War From The Iran-Iraq War (3)

The “Missing” Iranian Prisoners Of War From The Iran-Iraq War (4)

Iranian Killed In Action and Died of Wounds In The Iran-Iraq War (5)

Iranian Wounded In Action In The Iran-Iraq War (6)

Iranian Chemical Casualties In The Iran-Iraq War (7)

Iranian Civilian Casualties In The Iran-Iraq War (8)

A Summary Estimate Of Iranian Casualties In The Iran-Iraq War (9)