Mystics & Statistics

Missing HERO Reports

Back in 1987 I did a DTIC search for HERO reports (DTIC is the defense library of reports, HERO was Trevor Dupuy’s old company(s) that produced around 130 or so reports). My DTIC search ended up finding something like 40% of HERO reports in their files. As almost of all these reports were done under contract for the government, then the figure should have been something more like 100%.

Now, I guess if I was a responsible citizen, I would have made sure that all the missing reports were identified, copies made, and they were then sent to DTIC. I did not do this, because as I busy running a large project that was behind schedule and over budget (the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base).

But……this little survey got my attention concerning what was preserved in the national report library (like NTIS…National Technical Information Center) and what was not. It raises the question as to whether we are properly preserving the studies and results of all this analysis that various companies have done….or are we loosing some of it. Unfortunately, I have found enough cases over the years of significant and important studies and files disappearing or becoming difficult to find….that I have become concerned. Whether this is indicative of a larger problem I will leave to the reader to determine, but there will be a few blog posts about this subject or the next week or two.

All of our reports and studies are listed on our website here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipubs.htm

It is some 130 HERO reports and 80 TDI reports.

It would be possible to someone to search the NTIS site and see how many these reports can be found (and which ones they cannot find). I would be interested in knowing the results of that if anyone wants to spend a few days doing this. If the problem exists for HERO and TDI reports…then it probably exists for work done by a lot of other companies also.

Did The Patriot BMD Miss Again In Saudi Arabia?

Apparent trajectory of Houthi Burqan ballistic missile fired at Saudi Arabia on 4 November 2017 [New York Times]

On 4 November 2017, Houthi rebels fired a Burqan 2H (a variant of the SCUD) ballistic missile from Yemeni territory aimed at Riyadh International Airport in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis claimed to have intercepted the missile before it hit using a U.S.-made Patriot PAC-2 ballistic missile defense (BMD) system.

A team of independent analysts have challenged that claim, however. Led by Jeffery Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middleberry Institute of International Studies at Monterey, the team analyzed video of an impact near the Riyadh Airport and scattered missile debris. Based on this evidence, they concluded that five Saudi Patriot BMD missiles failed to intercept the incoming missile and that its warhead detonated on the ground just a kilometer away from a busy airport terminal.

The apparent failure of the Patriot BMD continues a string of operational disappointments that extends back to the 1991 Gulf War. Intended for terminal BMD against short and medium range ballistic missile threats, the Patriot forms part of the layered U.S. BMD system, and has also been sold to 14 other countries, including South Korea and Japan.

The credibility of U.S. and regional military defenses against North Korea rests significantly on perceptions of the effectiveness of U.S-made BMD. As President Donald Trump boasted the day after the alleged Saudi missile intercept, “Our [Patriot] system knocked the missile out of the air… That’s how good we are. Nobody makes what we make, and now we’re selling it all over the world.”

North Korean Missile Likely Broke Up on Re-Entry

It looks like the latest North Korea missile that was fired broke up on re-entry: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/02/asia/north-korea-missile-re-entry/index.html

This is not a minor point.

The article also notes the need for the North Koreas to “master missile guidance and targeting” and the two-stage missile was at least partially liquid fueled, which takes time and can provide U.S. intelligence with a warning before it is launched.

Anyhow, it is still a developing program, although they have surprised people with how fast they have developed.

TDI Friday Read: The Validity Of The 3-1 Rule Of Combat

Canadian soldiers going “over the top” during the First World War. [History.com]

Today’s edition of TDI Friday Read addresses the question of force ratios in combat. 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.

Trevor Dupuy and the 3-1 Rule

Human Factors In Warfare: Diminishing Returns In Combat

TDI President Chris Lawrence has also challenged the 3-1 rule in his own work on the subject.

Force Ratios in Conventional Combat

The 3-to-1 Rule in Histories

Aussie OR

Comparing Force Ratios to Casualty Exchange Ratios

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.

The Great 3-1 Rule Debate

It is probably long past due to seriously challenge the validity and usefulness of the 3-1 rule again.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like North Korea?

Flight trajectories of North Korean missile tests, May-November 2017. [The Washington Post]

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted another ballistic missile test yesterday. Following a nearly vertical “lofted trajectory,” the test missile reached a height of 2,800 miles and impacted 620 miles downrange in the Sea of Japan. This performance would give the missile, which the North Koreans have designated the Hwasong-15, a strike range of 8,100 miles, which would include all of the United States.

Appended here is a roundup of TDI posts that address the political and military challenges posed by North Korea. It should be noted that the DPRK nuclear program has been underway for decades and has defied easy resolution thus far. There are no clear options at this stage and each potential solution carries a mix of risk and reward. The DPRK is highly militarized and the danger of catastrophic conflict looms large, with the potential to inflict military and civilian casualties running into the hundreds of thousands or more.

The first set of posts address a potential war on the Korean peninsula.

Chronology of North Korean Missile Development

Insurgency In The DPRK?

U.S. And China: Deterrence And Resolve Over North Korea

Casualty Estimates for a War with North Korea

The CRS Casualty Estimates

The second set of posts look at the DPRK ballistic missile threat and possible counters.

So, What Would Happen If The Norks Did Fire An ICBM At The U.S.?

Aegis, THAAD, Patriots and GBI

Defending Guam From North Korean Ballistic Missiles

The Pros And Cons Of Shooting Down North Korean Ballistic Missile Tests

 

 

Ted Gurr Has Passed Away

Dr. Ted Robert Gurr, noted researcher on political violence and author of Why Men Rebel (1970), passed away on 25 November 2017 at the age of 81. His obituary is here:

http://kraftsussman.com/tribute/details/1516/Ted-Gurr/obituary.html

Wikipedia article on Ted Gurr here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Robert_Gurr

 

I never knew him, but his work was a major influence on my work. In the late 1960s, Gurr and Professors Ivo and Rosalind Feierabend led two independent quantitative analysis efforts on the causes of revolutions. Even though they each created their own databases and independently did their own regression analysis of the subject, they came up with similar results. I did have several discussions with Dr. Ivo Feierabend while I was doing some independent work on the causes of revolution.

We have posted about this work before. It is here:

Quote from America’s Modern Wars

Why Are We Still Wondering Why Men (And Women) Rebel?

Why Men Rebel?

Rest in peace Dr. Gurr, and we expect that your work will live on.

U.S. Army Swarm Offensives In Future Combat

For a while now, military pundits have speculated about the role robotic drones and swarm tactics will play in future warfare. U.S. Army Captain Jules Hurst recently took a first crack at adapting drones and swarms into existing doctrine in an article in Joint Forces Quarterly. In order to move beyond the abstract, Hurst looked at how drone swarms “should be inserted into the tactical concepts of today—chiefly, the five forms of offensive maneuver recognized under Army doctrine.”

Hurst pointed out that while drone design currently remains in flux, “for assessment purposes, future swarm combatants will likely be severable into two broad categories: fire support swarms and maneuver swarms.”

In Hurst’s reckoning, the chief advantage of fire support swarms would be their capacity for overwhelming current air defense systems to deliver either human-targeted or semi-autonomous precision fires. Their long-range endurance of airborne drones also confers an ability to take and hold terrain that current manned systems do not possess.

The primary benefits of ground maneuver swarms, according to Hurst, would be their immunity from the human element of fear, giving them a resilient, persistent level of combat effectiveness. Their ability to collect real-time battlefield intelligence makes them ideal for enabling modern maneuver warfare concepts.

Hurst examines how these capabilities could be exploited through each of the Army’s current schemes of maneuver: infiltration, penetration, frontal attack, envelopment, and the turning maneuver. While concluding that “ultimately, the technological limitations and advantages of maneuver swarms and fire support swarms will determine their uses,” Hurst acknowledged the critical role Army institutional leadership must play in order to successfully utilize the new technology on the battlefield.

U.S. officers and noncommissioned officers can accelerate that comfort [with new weapons] by beginning to postulate about the use of swarms well before they hit the battlefield. In the vein of aviation visionaries Billy Mitchell and Giulio Douhet, members of the Department of Defense must look forward 10, 20, or even 30 years to when artificial intelligence allows the deployment of swarm combatants on a regular basis. It will take years of field maneuvers to perfect the employment of swarms in combat, and the concepts formed during these exercises may be shattered during the first few hours of war. Even so, the U.S. warfighting community must adopt a venture capital mindset and accept many failures for the few novel ideas that may produce game-changing results.

Trevor Dupuy would have agreed. He argued that the crucial factor in military innovation was not technology, but the organization approach to using it. Based on his assessment of historical patterns, Dupuy derived a set of preconditions necessary for the successful assimilation of new technology into warfare.

  1. An imaginative, knowledgeable leadership focused on military affairs, supported by extensive knowledge of, and competence in, the nature and background of the existing military system.
  2. Effective coordination of the nation’s economic, technological-scientific, and military resources.
    1. There must exist industrial or developmental research institutions, basic research institutions, military staffs and their supporting institutions, together with administrative arrangements for linking these with one another and with top decision-making echelons of government.
    2. These bodies must conduct their research, developmental, and testing activities according to mutually familiar methods so that their personnel can communicate, can be mutually supporting, and can evaluate each other’s results.
    3. The efforts of these institutions—in related matters—must be directed toward a common goal.
  3. Opportunity for battlefield experimentation as a basis for evaluation and analysis.

Is the U.S. Army up to the task?

So Why Are Iraqi Records Important?

Last preachy post on this subject:

The Sad Story Of The Captured Iraqi DESERT STORM Documents

So, why does it matter? Well, Iraq has been involved in three wars in recent time that are significant.

We engaged them in the 1991 Gulf War. Even though this was a truly lopsided result, we do not have good two-sided data available for this war (it may exist, but it is classified/closed). As this was our largest conventional operation since the Korean War (1950-1953), then having good two-sided data for this war would be useful. As it is, the last major conventional fight that the U.S. participated in where there is good two-sided data is in Italy through June 1944. After that, German records significantly degrade and we do not have a good collection of opposing force data for Korea, Vietnam or Iraq….although we do have it for Grenada ;).

Then we invaded and conquered Iraq in 2003. This was effectively a three-division operation that went extremely well also. As this was the last major conventional operation we conducted, it would be useful to have good data for the opposing side (hopefully we do, but again, it is classified/closed).

But, probably most significant is the Iran-Iraq War from 1980-1988. This was the largest conventional war since the early 1970s (India-Pakistan in 1971 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1973). This was also the first major war that used chemical weapons since World War I (1914-1918). Chemical weapons and nerve agents were used extensively by Iraq against the Iranians, and also brutally against Kurdish civilians. Iran did make limited used of chemical weapons in response. It is also the only extensive use of nerve agents in warfare. This is probably important to understand and analyze. We do not have records from the Iranian side, so it would be nice to have records from the Iraqi side. Hard to analyze their operations if we have records from neither side. We really have no actual operational data on the effects of chemical weapons in combat since 1918, and we have no operational data on the effects of nerve agents in combat. This could be a major shortfall.

Now, the documents destroyed, according to the article we originally cited, was only the material captured during the 1991 Gulf War, with records dating back to 1978.  Some of it (at least 60%) was preserved on digital tapes. And, perhaps we have preserved all the military records we captured in 2003. So, in fact there may be an extensive collection available (at least 725,000 pages), although it is classified or closed to researchers. Based upon our track record of record preservation from Vietnam and onward, I have reason to be concerned.

Anyhow, a related link on our chemical warfare studies (including links to articles on the Iran-Iraq War):

Survey of German WWI Records

 

P.S. There are over a dozen counties in the world that still have chemical warfare arsenals, including Syria, Iran and North Korea.