Category Kursk Data Bases

The Battle of Prokhorovka book — why?

My original contract back in 1999 to prepare the Kursk book was for a single book of 450 pages. During the writing process….the book grew. This is discussed in this article: http://www.aberdeenbookstore.com/the-largest-history-book-ever

When I realized how large the book was, I contacted the publisher and discussed the issue with him. I suggested that we go ahead and complete the large book I was writing and then go back and do an abridged version. He graciously agreed, but unfortunately I was unable to complete the original book in 2003/2004 (although it was mostly done) due to my work at The Dupuy Institute, magnified by a war or two going on.

So, when I was finally able to get back to this book (thanks to government budget cuts and sequestration), I was left with an original book of 1,662 pages. Clearly there was a need for a smaller book.

This is not that book. This book is the updated chapters of the original book that focus on the fighting by the SS Panzer Corps, III Panzer Corps, parts of the Sixth Guards Army, Sixty-Ninth Army, Fifth Guards Army, Fifth Guard Tank Army and parts of the Seventh Guards Army from 9 to 17 July 1943. As such, it is 40% of the original book sectioned off as a separate stand alone book.

I could do four such books from my original book. This is the first of these books. I am currently finishing up a second such book (Aces at Kursk: The Belgorod Offensive Air War). I could do two more books along that line (Battle of Tolstoye Woods and The Belgorod Offensive), although I am not sure that I ever will. It depends on demand, sales, the publisher’s interest, my time, and my mood.

I may also get around to writing a single 300-page book summarizing the offensive in the south. We shall see. There are a lot of other projects I am also considering.

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon

The Battle of Prokhorovka — what does the book consist of

The book consists of:

  1. 638 numbered pages (and 14 pages of front matter)
  2. 75 Listed illustrations and maps
  3. Four photo sections
    1. 15 terrain photos
    2. 12 recon photos
    3. 64 battlefield photos
    4. 70 commander photos
  4. One map section with 17 maps
  5. 18 numbered tables
  6. 21 graphs
  7. 44 sidebars
  8. 76 engagement sheets

Just for the record, my original mega-book consisted of 192 engagement sheets. So one could make the argument that this book covers 40% of the Belgorod offensive (at least compared to the original book).

The book was edited by the same editor of the original book, Ariane Smith of Capital A: http://www.capitala.net/. Therefore, it is of a very similar format and style.

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon

The Battle of Prokhorovka – 16 chapters

My new book The Battle of Prokhorovka consists of 16 chapters (the original mega-book had 27). The chapters are:

1. Preparing for the Showdown…..page 13
2. The Soviets Prepare…..page 35
3. The Belgorod Offensive: 4-8 July 1943…..page 51
4. The XLVIII Panzer Corps Heads West: 9 – 11 July 1943…..page 113
5. The Advance on Prokhorovka: 9-11 July…..page 133
6. The Advance on the Severnyii Donets: 9-11 July 1943…..page 203
7. The Situation as of 11 July 1943…..page 229
8. The Air War: 9-18 July 1943…..page 243
9. The Tank Fields of Prokhorovka, 12 July 1943…..page 291
10. SS Panzer Corps Attack Stalls, 13 July 1943…..page 359
11. Soviet Counterattacks against the III Panzer Corps: 12-13 July 1943…..page 375
12. Aftermath of Prokhorovka: 13 July 1943…..page 401
13. Cleaning Up the Donets Triangle: 14-15 July 1943…..page 475
14. The Battlefield is Quiet: 16-17 July 1943…..page 511
15. The German Withdrawal: 18-24 July 1943…..page 539
16. Post-Mortem…..page 559

There are only two short appendices in this book (the original book had 7 appendices totaling 342 pages):

Appendix I: German and Soviet Terminology…..page 615
Appendix II: The Engagements…..page 623

The book can obtained from Stackpole at: Stackpole Books

Or from Amazon.com at: Buy from Amazon

Million Dollar Books

Most of our work at The Dupuy Institute involved contracts from the U.S. Government. These were often six digit efforts. So for example, the Kursk Data Base was funded for three years (1993-1996) and involved a dozen people. The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) was actually a larger effort (1987-1990). Our various combat databases like DLEDB, BODB and BaDB were created by us independent of any contractual effort. They were originally based upon the LWDB (that became CHASE), the work we did on Kursk and Ardennes, the engagements we added because of our Urban Warfare studies, our Enemy Prisoner of War Capture Rates studies, our Situational Awareness study, our internal validation efforts, several modeling  related contracts from Boeing, etc. All of these were expanded and modified bit-by-bit as a result of a series of contracts from different sources. So, certainly over time, hundreds of thousands have been spent on each of these efforts, and involved the work of a half-dozen or more people.

So, when I sit down to write a book like Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (based off of the Kursk Data Base) or America’s Modern Wars (based on our insurgency studies) or War by Numbers (which used our combat databases and significant parts of our various studies), these are books developed from an extensive collection of existing work. Certainly hundreds of thousands of dollars and the work of at least 6 to 12 people were involved in the studies and analysis that preceded these books. In some cases, like our insurgency studies, it was clearly more than a million dollars.

This is a unique situation, for me to be able to write a book based upon a million dollars of research and analysis. It is something that I could never have done as a single scholar or a professor or a teacher somewhere. It is not work I could of done working for the U.S. government. These are not books that I could have written based upon only my own work and research.

In many respects, this is what needs to be norm in the industry. Research and analysis efforts need to be properly funded and conducted by teams of people. There is a limit to what a single scholar, working in isolation, can do. Being with The Dupuy Institute allowed me to conduct research and analysis above and beyond anything I could have done on my own.

Summation of our Validation Posts

This extended series of posts about validation of combat models was originally started by Shawn Woodford’s post on future modeling efforts and the “Base of Sand” problem.

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

This post apparently irked some people at TRADOC and they wrote an article in the December issue of the Phalanx referencing his post and criticizing it. This resulted in the following seven responses from me:

Engaging the Phalanx

Validation

Validating Attrition

Physics-based Aspects of Combat

Historical Demonstrations?

SMEs

Engaging the Phalanx (part 7 of 7)

This was probably overkill…..but guys who write 1,662 page books sometimes tend to be a little wordy.

While it is very important to identify a problem, it is also helpful to show the way forward. Therefore, I decided to discuss what data bases were available for validation. After all, I would like to see the modeling and simulation efforts to move forward (and right now, they seem to be moving backward). This led to the following nine posts:

Validation Data Bases Available (Ardennes)

Validation Data Bases Available (Kursk)

The Use of the Two Campaign Data Bases

The Battle of Britain Data Base

Battles versus Campaigns (for Validation)

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

Battalion and Company Level Data Bases

Other TDI Data Bases

Other Validation Data Bases

There were also a few other validation issues that had come to mind while I was writing these blog posts, so this led to the following series of three posts:

Face Validation

Validation by Use

Do Training Models Need Validation?

Finally, there were a few other related posts that were scattered through this rather extended diatribe. It includes the following six posts:

Paul Davis (RAND) on Bugaboos

Diddlysquat

TDI Friday Read: Engaging The Phalanx

Combat Adjudication

China and Russia Defeats the USA

Building a Wargamer

That kind of ends this discussion on validation. It kept me busy for while. Not sure if you were entertained or informed by it. It is time for me to move onto another subject, not that I have figured out yet what that will be.

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?
…

Battles versus Campaigns (for Validation)

So we created three campaign databases. One of the strangest arguments I have heard against doing validations or testing combat models to historical data, is that this is only one outcome from history. So you don’t know if model is in error or if this was a unusual outcome to the historical event. Someone described it as the N=1 argument. There are lots of reasons why I am not too impressed with this argument that I may enumerate in a later blog post. It certainly might apply to testing the model to just one battle (like the Battle of 73 Easting in 1991), but these are weeks-long campaign databases with hundreds of battles. One can test the model to these hundreds of points in particular in addition to testing it to the overall result.

In the case of the Kursk Data Base (KDB), we have actually gone through the data base and created from it 192 division-level engagements. This covers every single combat action by every single division during the two week offensive around Belgorod. Furthermore, I have listed each and every one of these as an “engagement sheet’ in my book on Kursk. The 192 engagement sheets are a half-page or page-long tabulation of the strengths and losses for each engagement for all units involved. Most sheets cover one day of battle. It took considerable work to assemble these. First one had to figure out who was opposing whom (especially as unit boundaries never match) and then work from there. So, if someone wants to test a model or model combat or do historical analysis, one could simply assemble a database from these 192 engagements. If one wanted more details on the engagements, there are detailed breakdowns of the equipment in the Kursk Data Base and detailed descriptions of the engagements in my Kursk book. My new Prokhorovka book (release date 1 June), which only covers the part of the southern offensive around Prokhorovka from the 9th of July, has 76 of those engagements sheets. Needless to say, these Kursk engagements also make up 192 of the 752 engagements in our DLEDB (Division Level Engagement Data Base).  A picture of that database is shown at the top of this post.

So, if you are conducting a validation to the campaign, take a moment and check the results to each division to each day. In the KDB there were 17 divisions on the German side, and 37 rifle divisions and 10 tank and mechanized corps (a division-sized unit) on the Soviet side. The data base covers 15 days of fighting. So….there are around 900 points of daily division level results to check the results to. I drawn your attention to this graph:

There are a number of these charts in Chapter 19 of my book War by Numbers. Also see:

Validating Attrition

The Ardennes database is even bigger. There was one validation done by CAA (Center for Army Analysis) of its CEM model (Concepts Evaluation Model) using the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Bases (ACSDB). They did this as an overall comparison to the campaign. So they tracked the front line trace at the end of the battle, and the total tank losses during the battle, ammunition consumption and other events like that. They got a fairly good result. What they did not do was go into the weeds and compare the results of the engagements. CEM relies on inputs from ATCAL (Attrition Calculator) which are created from COSAGE model runs. So while they tested the overall top-level model, they really did not test ATCAL or COSAGE, the models that feed into it. ATCAL and COSAGE I gather are still in use. In the case of Ardennes you have 36 U.S. and UK divisions and 32 German divisions and brigades over 32 days, so over 2,000 division days of combat. That is a lot of data points to test to.

Now we have not systematically gone through the ACSDB and assembled a record for every single engagement there. There would probably be more than 400 such engagements. We have assembled 57 engagements from the Battle of the Bulge for our division-level database (DLEDB). More could be done.

Finally, during our Battle of Britain Data Base effort, we recommended developing an air combat engagement database of 120 air-to-air engagements from the Battle of Britain. We did examine some additional mission specific data for the British side derived from the “Form F” Combat Reports for the period 8-12 August 1940. This was to demonstrate the viability of developing an engagement database from the dataset. So we wanted to do something similar for the air combat that we had done with division-level combat. An air-to-air engagement database would be very useful if you are developing any air campaign wargame. This unfortunately was never done by us as the project (read: funding) ended.

As it is we actually have three air campaign databases to work from, the Battle of Britain data base, the air component of the Kursk Data Base, and the air component of the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base. There is a lot of material to work from. All it takes it a little time and effort.

I will discuss the division-level data base in more depth in my next post.

The Use of the Two Campaign Data Bases

The two large campaign data bases, the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) and the Kursk Data Base (KDB) were designed to use for validation. Some of the data requirements, like mix of personnel in each division and the types of ammunition used, were set up to match exactly the categories used in the Center for Army Analysis’s (CAA) FORCEM campaign combat model. Dr. Ralph E. Johnson, the program manager for FORCEM was also the initial contract manager for the ACSDB.

FORCEM was never completed. It was intended to be an improvement to CAA’s Concepts Evaluation Model (CEM) which dated back to the early 1970s. So far back that my father had worked with it. CAA ended up reverting back to CEM in the 1990s.

They did validate the CEM using the ACSDB. Some of their reports are here (I do not have the link to the initial report by the industrious Walt Bauman):

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a320463.pdf

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a489349.pdf

It is one of the few actual validations ever done, outside of TDI’s (The Dupuy Institute) work. CEM is no longer used by CAA. The Kursk Data Base has never used for validation. Instead they tested Lanchester equations to the ACSDB and KDB. They failed.

Lanchester equations have been weighed….

But the KDB became the darling for people working on their master’s thesis for the Naval Post-Graduate School. Much of this was under the direction of Dr. Tom Lucas. Some of their reports are listed here:

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

Both the ACSDB and KDB had a significant air component. The air battle over the just the German offensive around Belgorod to the south of Kursk was larger than the Battle of Britain. The Ardennes data base had 1,705 air files. The Kursk data base had 753. One record, from the old Dbase IV version of the Kursk data base, is the picture that starts this blog post. These files basically track every mission for every day, to whatever level of detail the unit records allowed (which were lacking). The air campaign part of these data bases have never been used for any analytical purpose except our preliminary work on creating the Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM).

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM)

This, of course, leads into our next blog post on the Battle of Britain data base.

Validation Data Bases Available (Kursk)

The second large campaign validation database created was the Kursk Data Base (KDB), done 1993-1996. I was also the program manager for this one and it ran a lot smoother than the first database. There was something learned in the process. This database involved about a dozen people, including a Russian research team led by Col. (Dr.) Fyodor Sverdlov, WWII veteran, author and Frunze Military academy; and ably assisted by Col. (Dr.) Anatoli Vainer, ditto. It also involved was the author Dr. Richard Harrison, and of course, Richard Anderson and Jay Karamales. Col. David Glantz helped with the initial order of battle as a consultant.

The unique aspect of the database is that we obtained access to the Soviet archives and was able to pull from it the unit records at the division, corps and army-level for every Soviet unit involved. This was a degree of access and research never done before for an Eastern Front battle. We were not able to access the Voronezh Front files and other higher command files as they were still classified.

The KDB tracked the actions of all divisions and division-sized units on both sides for every day of the German offensive in the south for 4 July 1943 to 18 July 1943. Kursk is a huge battle (largest battle of WWII) and consists of four separate portions. This database covered only one of the four parts, and that part was similar in size to the Battle of the Bulge and the air battle was larger than the Battle of Britain. On the German side were 17 panzer, panzer grenadier and infantry divisions while on the Soviet side were 37 rifle divisions and 10 tank and mechanized corps. There were 9 attacking German armored divisions versus 10 Soviet tank and mechanized corps at the Belgorod Offensive at Kursk. At the Battle of the Bulge there were 8 attacking (engaged) German armored divisions versus 9 U.S. armored divisions. The database design and what data was tracked was almost the same as the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB). The stats on the data are here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/kursk.htm

The database was programmed in Dbase IV and is DOS based. Dbase IV has the advantage that it allowed text fields. Dbase III did not, so we were limited to something like 256 characters for our remarks fields. With Dbase IV, the remarks fields sometimes grew to a page or two as we explained what data was available and how they were used to assemble daily counts of strengths and losses. Sometimes they were periodic (vice daily) reports and sometimes contradictory reports. It was nice to be able to fully explain for each and every case how we analyzed the data. The Dbase IV version of the KDB is publicly available through NTIS (National  Technical Information Service). The pictures in this blog post are screen shots from the Dbase IV version.

We also re-programmed the data base into Access and rather extensively and systematically updated it. This was in part because we took every single unit for every single day of the battle and assembled it into 192 different division-on-division engagements for use in our Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB). This was done over a period of 11 years. We did the first 49 engagements in 1998-99 to support the Enemy Prisoner of War (EPW) Capture Rate Study for CAA (Center for Army Analysis), report E-4 (see http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub3.htm). Some of the other engagements were done later to support the study on Measuring the Value of Situational Awareness for OSD Net Assessment (Andy Marshall’s shop), reports SA-1. We (meaning me) then finished up the rest of the engagements in 2004 and 2009. In the end we had assembled an engagement record for every single division-on-division level engagement for the Belgorod Offensive. Added to that, in 1999 I began working on my Kursk book, which I had mostly finished in 2003 (but was not published until 2015). So over time, we rather systematically reviewed and revised the data in the database. This is not something we were able to do to the same extent for the ACSDB. The 192 engagements in DLEDB were then summarized as 192 separate “engagement sheets” in my Kursk book. There are also 76 of these engagement sheets available in my new Kursk book coming out in June: The Battle of Prokhorovka. This new book covers the part of the Belgorod offensive centered around the Battle of Prokhorovka.