Mystics & Statistics

The Military Reform Debate (1982)

Continuing chronologically through the box that was supposed to be trash….next item is a “background pamphlet” for Senior Conference XX: The Military Reform Debate: Directions for the Defense Establishment for the Remainder of the Century, dated 3-5 June 1982. It is 228 pages.

Interesting time period, new president, defense budgets were back on the upswing….so what are they saying? Papers presented in that rather thick book are:

  1. The Challenge of Military Reform by Captain Timothy L. Lupfer
  2. The Case for Maneuver by William S. Lind
  3. Toward a New American Approach to Warfare by Lt. Col. Huba Wass de Czege
  4. The Case for More Effective, Less Expensive Weapon Systems: What “Quality versus Quantity” Issue? by Pierre M. Sprey
  5. The Quantity versus Quality Quandry by William J. Perry
  6. Heavy and Light Ground Forces in the Context of U.S. Grand Strategy by Jeffrey Record
  7. Heavy versus Light Forces: A Question of Balance by John D. Mayer, Jr.
  8. Deficits and the Future of the All Volunteer Force by Major Thomas W. Fagan

Hmmm…looks a little bit like deja vu all over again. I think I will keep it.

One paragraph did footnote a Trevor Dupuy article in Army: “U.S. Military Strategy Has Been Getting a Bum Rap” (September 1980). The paragraph was in the Huba Wass de Czege article and states (page 49):

“It was often been stated that the ‘reformers” are misinformed. At least one noted historian [Dupuy] has taken them to task for their selective use of history. Many “reformers” picture the American tradition of war very selectively.”

Of course, that was way back in 1982.

 

P.S.: Turns out that this report is available on-line at the Hathi Trust Digital Library: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002589401

 

 

 

Battle Outcomes: Casualty Rates As a Measure of Defeat

This third article in the box I was about to trash was also written by someone I knew, Robert McQuie. It was a five-page article published in Army magazine in November 1987 (pages 30-34) called “Battle Outcomes: Casualty Rates As a Measure of Defeat.” I was an article I was aware of, but had not seen for probably around three decades. It was based upon data assembled by HERO (Trevor Dupuy). It was part of the lead-in to the Breakpoints Project that we later did.

The by-line of the article is “A study of data from mid-twentieth century warfare suggest that casualties–whether the reality or the perception of them—are only occasionally a factor in command decisions to break off unsuccessful battles.” 

The analysis was based upon 80 engagements from 1941-1982. Of those 52 were used to create the table below (from page 34):

Reasons for a Force Abandoning An Attack or Defense:

Maneuver by Enemy…………………………..Percent

  Envelopment, encirclement, penetration……..33

  Adjacent friendly unit withdrew………………..13

  Enemy occupied key terrain…………………….6

  Enemy achieved surprise……………………….8

  Enemy reinforced………………………………..4

Total………………………………………………64

 

Firepower by Enemy

  Casualty or equipment losses……………………10

  Heavy artillery or air attacks by enemy…………..2

Total…………………………………………………12

 

Other Reasons

  No reserves left……………………………………….12

  Supply shortage………………………………………..2

  Truce or surrender…………………………………….6

  Change in weather…………………………………….2

  Orders to withdraw…………………………………….2

Total…………………………………………………….24

 

He then goes on in the article to question the utility of Lanchester equations, ending with the statement “It appears as well that Mr. Lanchester’s equations present a drastic misstatement of what drives the outcome of combat.” He also points out that many wargames and simulations terminate simulated battles at 15% to 30% casualties a day, ending with the statement that “The evidence indicated that in most cases, a force has quit when its casualties reached less than ten percent per battle. In most battles, moreover, defeat has not been caused by casualties.”

Robert McQuie was a senior operations research analyst for U.S. Army’s CAA (Concepts Analysis Agency). In 1987 I was working at HERO and considering heading back to school to get a graduate degree in Operations Research (OR). At Trevor Dupuy’s recommendation, I discussed it with Robert McQuie, who stated strongly not to do so because it was a “waste of time.” His argument was that while Operations Research was good at answering questions where the results could be optimized, it was incapable of answering the bigger questions. He basically felt the discipline had reached a dead end.

Anyhow, another keeper.

 

Extending the Battlefield

The second oldest article in this box I was about to throw away is called “Extending the Battlefield” by General Donn A. Starry, US Army. It is dated March 1981 from the Military Review. It is 20 pages long.

Its primary focus is on deep strike. It states 1) First, deep strike is not a luxury; it is an absolute necessity to winning, 2) Second, deep strike, particular in an environment of scarce acquisition and strike assets, must be tightly coordinated over time with the decisive close-in battle…3) Third, it is important to consider now the number of systems entering the force in the near and middle-term future….4) Finally, the concept is designed to be the unifying idea which pulled all these emerging capabilities together so that, together, they can allow us to realize their full combined potential for winning.

This was an approach specifically oriented towards engaging the Soviet second echelon. I was never much of a fan of deep strike, as I sort of felt you probably wanted to engage the first echelon first….and could worry about the second echelon later. A reading of my Kursk book (in case you have the time) clearly shows the limitations of the Soviet two-echelon system of fighting. It did tend to lead to piecemeal attacks.

I met General Starry once. My father worked for him in the Pentagon and during a family visit during the Christmas party, he came down to say Merry Christmas to all the people working in the basement of the building. I happened to be there, and was applying to West Point (U.S. Military Academy) at the time. He sat down and had a half-hour talk with me about why someone should or should not attend West Point. It was nice gesture on his part.

I guess I will keep this article also.

 

New Details of Shoot Down

Article on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/21/politics/us-syria-russia-dogfight/index.html

Highlights:

  1. It was a pair of U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornets
  2. They were operating from the carrier USS George H. W. Bush
  3. They fired an AIM-9 Sidewinder at half a mile away
  4. Syrian Su-22 deployed defensive flares causing the U.S. missile to miss.
  5. They then fire an AIM-120 AMRAAM which hit the Su-22.
  6. Syrian pilot ejected and probably landed in ISIL-controlled territory. Syria states that he is missing.

According to an email sent to me from sources that I cannot confirm the veracity of:

According to a source in the Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF), Lieutenant Colonel Ali Fahd took off in the afternoon of June 18 from the T4 airbase east of Homs.  We know that the warplane is a Soviet made ground attack Su-22M4 with the serial number “3224”.

According to our source the Su-22M4 was loaded with six general purpose OFAB 250-270 bombs. Ali Fahd’s mission was to strike ISIS fighters and vehicles attempting to withdrew from Rusafah in the province of Raqqah towards Sukhnah in the province of Homs and Oqerbat in the eastern Hama countryside – near Ali Fahd’s home town of Salamyiah. Connection with Ali Fahd was lost after reaching the operation area over Rusafah.

According to Ali Fahd’s relative Al-Masdar News reporter, Majd Fahed, Ali Fahd was captured by the SDF and Tiger Forces Leader General Suheil Al-Hassan is negotiating with SDF in order to free Ali Fahd.

The SDF side has released no official comments on the situation. However, SDF sources confirmed that Ali Fahd was captured by the SDF suggesting that the group will release him in the end.

Anyhow, really don’t want to get into “reporting” as I have books to write.

Crown Prince

Well, this is hard to ignore: https://www.yahoo.com/news/saudi-king-upends-royal-succession-names-son-1st-035529307.html

As the article notes: “The all-but-certain takeover of the throne by [31-year old] Mohammed bin Salman awards absolute powers to a prince who has ruled out dialogue with rival Iran, has moved to isolate neighboring Qatar for its support of Islamist groups and who has led a war in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians…..He could be there for 50 years.”

Note: King Salman is 81.

Pre-Development Work for a Theory of Combat (1980)

Well, as my page proofs for War by Numbers have been sent back to the publisher, I decided to do a little office clean-up before I rolled my sleeves up and continued work on my other books. I have a couple of boxes marked “trash?” Just opened one up and flipped through it, and it was actually pretty damn interesting collection of material. The earliest is a report dated June 13, 1980 done by Dr. Janice Fain called a “Pre-Development Work for a Theory of Combat.” It was done by CACI for the Defense Nuclear Agency.

I gather Dr. Fain was one of the earliest members of CACI (my memory says “one of the founders” but I have not been able to confirm this. She was list as a senior associate of CACI in an article on Lanchester equations in 1977: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/Fain.pdf). She worked with Trevor Dupuy as a friend and consultant in the 1980s. In particular, she took over and ran the Breakpoints Project (1987) after the contract was awarded to us. I wrote the proposal for the effort, but was busy heading up Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, so they gave the project to her to manage.

Anyhow, this draft final report of 92 pages has three chapters: 1) What is a Theory of Combat, 2) Theory Development of Combat Processes, and 3) A General Structure for Combat Theory.

Just flipping through it (as there is never time to read all this) I see that Trevor Dupuy is referenced extensively. Also referenced is Donald S. Marshall (one of the other founders of The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI)) and James Taylor (Naval Post-Graduate School). They are both associates of Trevor Dupuy.

If someone wants to take a look at this, contact me.  I don’t think I will be throwing this away.

NTC Exercise

This article caught my attention (updated the link): https://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-military-might-not-best-164000460.html

I remember observing a National Training Center (NTC) rotation around 2000 (the map shown above is not from this exercise). It was an armor or mechanized brigade and an air mobile brigade against the usual reinforced company of very experienced defending opposing forces.

One of the first disasters occurred when the air mobile brigade decided to conduct an insertion against an opposing force (OPFOR) that was completely ready for this. They ended up loosing a number of helicopters and were halted. So much for their “verticle envelopment” effort. Interesting enough, in 2003, outside of Baghdad, I gather we attempted the same thing, with similar results. An army fights as it trains.

The other early disaster was an early morning (still dark) attack that failed to take a large hill in the south of the battlefield that was enemy occupied. This hill gave the defenders complete oversight of the entire U.S. armored brigades’ attack in the morning.

Still, with the vertical envelopment having failed, and with their flank not covered, they then attacked forward with rather predictable results, especially when they hit the minefield that extended across the open area of the battlefield. It turned out that the brigades’ engineering assets were still in the rear. It took some time (read: hours) to bring them up. In the meantime the brigade was stranded in the middle of a wide-open desert area that was over-watched by the enemy. This experience may have been a career killer for the brigade commander.

Their only success came from an attached “Ukrainian armored company” that was not Ukrainian, but was actually people from the opposing forces playing an attached foreign contingent. They managed to maneuver through some rocky area on the north side of the battlefield, because they knew it intimately, bypassed the minefield that was holding up the rest of the brigade, and flanked the defenders. I gather this won the battle for the attackers.

Anyhow, I have no knowledge that allows me to comment on Captain Metz’s article, other than to note what I saw in my observation of a NTC exercise.

Syrian SU-22 shot down by U.S. Navy F/A-18E

Well, this is not the first drama over the skies of Syria: https://www.yahoo.com/gma/u-shoots-down-syrian-fighter-jet-over-syria-210705900–abc-news-topstories.html

Back on 24 November 2015, a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian SU-24M with a AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. Turkey is a member of NATO.

This is the first plane the U.S. has shot down since Kosovo in 1999. In 1999 Serbia lost 6 Mig-29s: three shot down by USAF F-15s, one by a USAF F-16, one by a RNAF F-16 (Royal Netherlands Air Force) and one probably by friendly (Serbian) fire from the ground. The U.S. lost an F-16C and F-117 Nighthawk from anti-aircraft.