Mystics & Statistics

Mosul

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Well, they are finally going to re-take Mosul. I think we heard that before, but this time it is probably true.

Link: Mosul

They are saying they may take it by the end of 2016 or early 2017. That is a very long time, considering how close the Iraq Army is to it. They are 70 km (45 miles) away from Mosul! Mosul was taken by ISIL in early June 2014. So they are looking at 2 1/2 years before the second city of Iraq is reclaimed.

Just for comparison on 30 March 1972, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong started their large spring offensive (the Easter Offensive). On 1 May 1972, the South Vietnamese Army gave up Quang Tri in the most northern province in Vietnam. This was the provincial capital of Quang Tri province. They withdrew from the capital and the province at that time. In mid-September 1972, the South Vietnamese Army had retaken Quang Tri. This was 4 1/2 months later. They held it until the 1975 offensive, which ended South Vietnam.

 

Influencing the Price of Oil and the War in Syria

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Caption: Kurdish Cavalry, 1915

 

The real problem the Russian economy is suffering from is that oil has dropped from $100 a barrel to $30 a barrel. The Russian government budget was once based upon oil remaining at least $80 a barrel. The current Russian government budget is based upon oil remaining at least $50 a barrel. This is not happening. The end result has been two successive years of 10% budget cuts.

Right now the Russian ruble is moving back up into the range of 60 rubles for a dollar. It was in the 70s, it used to be in the 30s. This recent rise is mostly caused by an increase in the price of oil. Russia and Saudi Arabia have agreed to hold production stable, which is having some impact on the prices. But, this is still not recovery. The Russian economy is going to be declining or stagnant for the foreseeable future (for at least the next two years…which gets us close to their March 2018 presidential election).

So, the question is, what can Russia do to bring the price of oil back up? Obviously, reduce supply or increase demand. In fact, demand seems to be decreasing as the Chinese and some other economies slow. This is probably not something they can control. They could reduce their own supply, which would cause the price to go up. But, this does not solve Russia’s problem as it would be at the expense of less barrels sold, and oil is a major part of their economy and the government budget.

Therefore, their only real option is to reduce supply world-wide. This is really only possible if Saudi Arabia and OPEC decide to. But they have a problem in that Iran, which is also supporting Assad and is an OPEC member, is putting oil back into the marketplace. Iran is now joining the world order and able to sell oil. This was one of by-products of the agreement on nuclear development limitations. Whether or not you agree with the Iran nuclear deal, it is helping us at the gas pump. It is also probably making it impossible for Saudi Arabia to really significantly boost the price of oil.

Of course, they may not want to. Saudi Arabia and Russia are on different sides of the war in Syria. A Russia directly involved in a war in the Middle East is kind of a unique event. They have had multiple wars with Turkey, but their last war ended with World War I (1918). They did occupy the northern half of Iran during World War II, but withdrew after the end of the war. They provided considerable support to the Egyptians and Syrians during the 1973 Arab-Israeli Wars, but stay away from active intervention. But this Russian intervention in Syria provides an additional incentive for Saudi Arabia not to let oil prices rise much, as this only feeds the Russian military. We have seen Russian recently limit and curtail their invention in Syria.

I have known a lot of Russians. Not one has ever told me in private conversation how much they love Bashar Assad and how much Syria contributes to Russia’s economy and defense. In fact, from an economic and military point of view, Russia’s defense of the Assad regime makes little sense. If he was gone from power tomorrow, not sure many in Russia would miss him.

So, what does Russia gain from supporting Assad?

 

 

Sortie Counts

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OK…..so U.S. has flown more than 55,000 sorties since August 2014 (actually we started our first air missions on 8 August…so almost 19 months).

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-16/u-s-bombing-of-islamic-state-fell-to-8-month-low-in-february?cmpid=yhoo.headline

Russian flew 9,000 sorties in 5 1/2 months (see two posts below).

55,000/19 = 2,895 sorties a month

9,000/5.5 = 1,636 sorties a month

 

 

Left Behind

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Nice article in the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21694996-putin-appears-turn-hard-power-diplomacy-russians-show-their-hand

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 will retain its naval presence in Tartus; at least a dozen fast jets will continue to fly from its air base near Latakia; about 1,000 military advisers and special forces will stay; and the recently-installed S-400 air defence system covering the north-west of the country will also be kept in place. Should the fragile “cessation of hostilities” that Russia and America brokered last month fall apart, it can re-escalate very quickly. But for now, Russia can cut the $3m a day cost of its military operation, while preserving much of the leverage it has bought.

Not sure how they got the price tag either. Very cheap compared to U.S. deployments (which usually are in the billions). Maybe we can contract them.

Short and Sweet

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 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 Lebanon in 1982-1984 that was effectively ended by the barracks bombing that killed 241 Marines; or the brief humanitarian mission to Somalia 1992-1994 that generated the book and movie Black Hawk Down; or the 1991 Gulf War; or one-year deployment to Bosnia in 1995; or any number of short and sweet interventions that were not always so sweet and short.

Obviously the real “short and sweet” list is pretty short. Panama 1989, Grenada 1984 and….and….and…… Most commitments either take much longer that that (like Bosnia), or the conflict continues rattling on long after we left (pretty much the rest of the cases mentioned in the first paragraph), and sometimes they require us to re-engage or they mutate in ways we did not expect (for example: Libya and Somalia). Getting in, kicking tail, taking names, and getting out sounds like a great idea. Just doesn’t work out that way very often.

Russia is now wrapping up its 5 ½ month commitment in Syria. It was not that big, maybe 3,000 to 6,000 uniformed personnel, plus aircraft. Still, this mission was unique in many ways. It was really the first case of Russia doing an intervention away from its immediate borders (and pretty much one of the few cases of the Soviet Union doing one also). Neither Russia nor the Soviet Union had ever played far from home, if you ignore the communist international, world wide revolutionary movements and a few dozen missiles sent to Cuba. Still, Russia/Soviet Union had rarely actually committed conventional forces into combat in a country that is not connected to it by border. Even their failed war in Afghanistan (1979-1989) was connected by a border. They were part of the Kosovo peacekeeping forces. But besides that, Syria is the only case I can think of in the last 100 years of a Russian or Soviet ground invention in a country not connected by a border.

They are now withdrawing (so they claim). Syria is the location of the only Russian military bases outside their country, so obviously some forces are remaining.

But, Syria remains Syria. It is a country of 18 million people that is only around 13% Shia (primarily Alawite). Up until the civil war started five years ago, the Alawite minority ruled the country under Bashar Assad. It is around 10% Christian (which were sometimes allied with their fellow minority, the Alawites), 3% Druze, 9% Kurds (Sunni) and 60% Sunni Arab (and no…these numbers don’t add up to 100%). Of course, having an Alawite minority over the top of the Sunni majority pretty much guaranteed that there would eventually be a conflict. Now the Russia intervention has bolstered the Alawites. Hard to imagine if Russia actually pulls out, how the bolstered Alawites maintain their current position.

Still, perhaps Russia has given Assad and the Alawites enough breathing space for them to now stand on their own. This has not been the case in a number of past interventions (U.S. in Vietnam, USSR in Afghanistan, U.S. in Iraq).

A Brazilian Protestors

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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 set of protests against a government that recently won reelection with 51% of the vote in October 2014. What happened?

Well, without going into depth into all the issues, the Brazilian economy is now declining. The Brazilian economy, which grew at annual average of 3.3% to 3.4% a year over the course of 14 years (from 2000-2013), only grew 0.1% in 2014 and then declined 3.8% in 2015. Now it is forecasted to decline 3.5% in 2016 (IMF forecast). This is a big deal and we are seeing the natural backlash.

There are a couple of countries in Eastern Europe with similar large economic declines. The Russian economy declined by at least 3.7% last year (official figures) and will be continuing to decline this year. The Ukrainian economy did even worse, declining by something like 12.5% in 2015.

Walls

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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 a 2 meter (7 foot) tall fence, with a tank ditch 6 meters wide and 2-3 meters deep.

See:

http://www.rferl.org/contentinfographics/the-great-wall-of-ukraine/27573891.html

https://www.rt.com/news/258837-ukraine-fence-russian-border/

http://uatoday.tv/politics/lsquo-great-wall-of-ukraine-rsquo-russian-border-fortification-less-than-10-built-478829.html

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/27/the-great-wall-of-ukraine.html

(Note: The Daily Beast article may not link).

We actually did do a chapter on the effectiveness of border barriers in America’s Modern Wars (Chapter Ten: Sanctuaries, Border Barriers and Population Resettlement). In our 83 examples there were 13 in which the counterinsurgency force utilized border barriers. Thus, barriers were present in approximately 16% of our cases.

  1. Indochina War (1946-1954)
  2. Algerian War (1954-1962)
  3. Vietnam II (1961-1964)
  4. Vietnam War (1965-1973)
  5. Namibia (1966-1989)
  6. Rhodesia II (1972-1979)
  7. Polisario Rebellion (1973-1991)
  8. Cambodia (1978-1989)
  9. USSR in Afghanistan (1979-1989)
  10. Kashmir (1988 – present)
  11. Second Intifada (2000-2005)
  12. Hamas War (2006)
  13. Hezbollah War (2006)

We conducted a statistical analysis of the relationship between outcome and the presence or absence of border barriers among the 83-case MISS dataset using Fisher’s Exact Test (see below).

 

Outcome by Presence/Absence of Border Barriers
Outcome Yes No Total
Blue 2 40 42
Gray 2 9 11
Red 9 21 30
Total 13 70 83

 

When we test the hypothesis about a nonrandom relationship between insurgency outcome and the border barriers factor in the two-by-three table above using Fisher’s Exact Test, the p-value is 0.0090. The data suggest strong evidence that the two factors may be associated.

We also tested the more specific hypothesis that the odds of a Blue outcome are different in the absence vs. the presence of border barriers by ignoring the gray observations in the testing procedure. The p-value from the Fisher’s Exact Test is 0.0045 in this case, which can be considered strong evidence in support of this hypothesis.

Thus, it appears that the tests confirm that border barriers have not been significant in combating insurgencies, based on the outcome. This is not unexpected, although it could perhaps be considered counterintuitive. Overall, the insurgents won 69% of the time when there was a border barrier vice 30% of the time when there was not one. We suspect that there is another factor in play here (for example: border barriers are usually built in response to large, intractable insurgencies).

Third-Party Insurgencies

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 rebellion or insurgency. Kind of like what is going on in Donetsk and Lugansk in Ukraine.

We did do a little work to examine if the level of outside support results in insurgent victory. It was been the perception of the number of counterinsurgent theorists that significant outside support is important for an insurgent victory. Our analysis, based upon an examination of 89 cases was that it was in fact, not a primary driver of insurgent success. To provide a table from page 79 of America’s Modern Wars:

Outcome by Type of Outside Support
Outcome Primarily Indigenous Some Considerable Not Applicable Total
Blue 11 20 9 2 42
Gray 5 6 0 0 11
Red 7 18 5 0 30
Total 23 44 14 2 83

This table compares the amount of outside support (primarily indigenous, some, and considerable) to the outcome (blue = counterinsurgent victory, red = insurgency victory, and gray = outcome is not a clear victory for either side). Outcome compared to type of outside support produced no discernable pattern. The counterinsurgents or intervening force tended to win more often then not, no matter what the degree of outside support was for the insurgency. Our statistical test indicated that there was no correlation here.

There was no correlation whether we tested to our entire dataset of 83 cases, limited the test to only those 62 cases that were clearly insurgencies (did not include the peacekeeping operations and interventions in our larger dataset), or only those 36 case that were insurgencies against outside intervening forces. If there was a consistent trend in this data, it was that insurgencies with considerable outside support lost more often than insurgencies that were primarily indigenous. This is counterintuitive, but it made of cases that include almost every major and not-so-major insurgency since World War II. But there appears to be little correlation between the degree of outside support for an insurgency and the outcome of the insurgency.

Of course, the purpose of the third-party insurgency may not be to obtain clear victory, but for lesser political purposes, including disrupting an opponent or forcing concessions from them.

Revitalizing Wargaming

In case you missed this: http://warontherocks.com/2015/12/revitalizing-wargaming-is-necessary-to-be-prepared-for-future-wars/

Three major actions are called out at the end of the article:

  1. Our first initiative, currently underway, is to establish a wargaming repository to better understand and guide existing wargaming efforts and to share derived insights across the defense enterprise.
  2. Our second initiative is to form a Defense Wargaming Alignment Group (DWAG). It is important that wargames be allowed to thrive outside of the planning, programming, budget, and execution (PPBE) process so that natural bureaucratic forces cannot subvert them.
  3. Finally, because we rely so heavily on our allies and partners in almost everything the Department of Defense does, the department will examine how to better include our close allies and partners in our wargaming efforts and how to best share results.

The article ends with the statement:

Innovation thrives in a culture that embraces experimentation and tolerates — better yet, encourages — dissent and risk-taking. We must create an environment in the Department of Defense that encourages exactly this type of thinking. Building a reinvigorated wargaming enterprise is a major step toward that goal.

Are They Channeling Trevor Dupuy?

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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 and equipment for the various classes of NATO and Russian units. Overall unit scores were adjusted to account for differences in training, sustainment, and other factors not otherwise captured. Air unit combat strengths were derived from the results of offline engagement, mission, and campaign-level modeling.

This looks like some kind of firepower or combat power score, or perhaps Trevor Dupuy’s OLIs (Operational Lethality Indexes). As they say “systematic scoring” one wonders what system they used. Know of only one scoring system that is systematic (meaning the OLIs, which are based upon formulae). The subject is probably best summarized in Dr. James Taylor’s article on “Consistent Scoring of Weapons and Aggregation of Forces:” http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/v2n2.pdf. This is the same James Taylor who wrote the definitive two-volume work on Lanchester equations.

I do note with interest the adjustment for “differences in training, sustainment, and other factors.” That is always good to see.

Also noted:

Full documentation of the gaming platform will be forthcoming in a subsequent report.

Look forward to reading it.