Category Dupuy’s Theory of Combat

Their Wehrmacht was Better than our Army

Poking around the internet, I ran across an article from 1985 by the British journalist and historian Max Hastings, rather provocatively titled “Their Wehrmacht was Better than our Army.” It was published in the Washington Post. I had not seen it before (as I went to work for Trevor Dupuy in 1987):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1985/05/05/their-wehrmacht-was-better-than-our-army/0b2cfe73-68f4-4bc3-a62d-7626f6382dbd/

A few highlights:

  1. The language in the first couple of paragraphs is also pretty provocative. 
  2. The discussion then goes to Liddell Hart.
  3. The discussion then goes to Trevor Dupuy and Martin Van Creveld.
  4. From Dupuy: “On a man for man basis, German ground soldiers consistently inflicted casualties at about a 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances. This was true when they were attacking and when they were defending, when they had a local numerical superiority and when they did not, when they won and when they lost.”
  5. From Hastings: “A spirit of military narcissism, nourished by such films as “The Longest Day,” “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Battle of the Bulge,” was perpetuated mythical images of the Allied and German armies.”
  6. From Hastings: “Yet to be a soldier in America has never been the honorable calling, outside a few thousand Army families. It has traditionally been the route by which young men of modest origins…may aspire to build a career.”

It is worthwhile to read the entire article.

Now, these claims were controversial in the 1980s, and a number of U.S. Army officers and people out at Leavenworth personally and professionally went after Trevor Dupuy over this issue. There was a long unpleasant discussion of that story written up by the lawyer Thomas Nutter. He was going to turn into a book, but I gather that effort was never completed.

I do address the subject of the relative performance of armies in combat in Chapters 4 through 7 of my book War by Numbers. 

 

Attrition for $900

I was on the phone with someone earlier today and he told me that Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War was on sale on Amazon.com for only $900. I took a look, and sure enough, they have used one for $121.00 and a new one $890. That is it.

On the other hand, we still have new copies for sale for the list place of $19.95. See here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/booksfs.htm

I have not taken inventory in a while, but we still have 40 or so available.

Ordering information is here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/order.htm

Maybe I should start selling on Amazon.com and undercut them with an offer of $889.99.

Trevor Dupuy’s Definitions of Lethality

Two U.S. Marines with a M1919A4 machine gun on Roi-Namur Island in the Marshall Islands during World War II. [Wikimedia]

It appears that discussion of the meaning of lethality, as related to the use of the term in the 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy document, has sparked up again. It was kicked off by an interesting piece by Olivia Gerard in The Strategy Bridge last autumn, “Lethality: An Inquiry.”

Gerard credited Trevor Dupuy and his colleagues at the Historical Evaluation Research Organization (HERO) with codifying “the military appropriation of the concept” of lethality, which was defined as: “the inherent capability of a given weapon to kill personnel or make materiel ineffective in a given period, where capability includes the factors of weapon range, rate of fire, accuracy, radius of effects, and battlefield mobility.”

It is gratifying for Gerard to attribute this to Dupuy and HERO, but some clarification is needed. The definition she quoted was, in fact, one provided to HERO for the purposes of a study sponsored by the Advanced Tactics Project (AVTAC) of the U.S. Army Combat Developments Command. The 1964 study report, Historical Trends Related to Weapon Lethality, provided the starting point for Dupuy’s subsequent theorizing about combat.

In his own works, Dupuy used a simpler definition of lethality:

He also used the terms lethality and firepower interchangeably in his writings. The wording of the original 1964 AVTAC definition tracks closely with the lethality scoring methodology Dupuy and his HERO colleagues developed for the study, known as the Theoretical Lethality Index/Operational Lethality Index (TLI/OLI). The original purpose of this construct was to permit some measurement of lethality by which weapons could be compared to each other (TLI), and to each other through history (OLI). It worked well enough that he incorporated it into his combat models, the Quantified Judgement Model (QJM) and Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model (TNDM).

The Hierarchy of Combat

The second conceptual element in Trevor Dupuy’s theory of combat is his definition of the hierarchy of combat:

[F]ghting between armed forces—while always having the characteristics noted [in the definition of military combat], such as fear and planned violence—manifests itself in different fashions from different perspectives. In commonly accepted military terminology, there is a hierarchy of military combat, with war as its highest level, followed by campaign, battle, engagement, action, and duel.

A war is an armed conflict, or a state of belligerence, involving military combat between two factions, states, nations, or coalitions. Hostilities between the opponents may be initiated with or without a formal declaration by one or both parties that a state of war exists. A war is fought for particular political or economic purposes or reasons, or to resist an enemy’s efforts to impose domination. A war can be short, sometimes lasting a few days, but usually is lengthy, lasting for months, years, or even generations.

A campaign is a phase of a war involving a series of operations related in time and space and aimed toward achieving a single, specific, strategic objective or result in the war. A campaign may include a single battle, but more often it comprises a number of battles over a protracted period of time or a considerable distance, but within a single theater of operations or delimited area. A campaign may last only a few weeks, but usually lasts several months or even a year.

A battle is combat between major forces, each having opposing assigned or perceived operational missions, in which each side seeks to impose its will on the opponent by accomplishing its own mission, while preventing the opponent from achieving his. A battle starts when one side initiates mission-directed combat and ends when one side accomplishes its mission or when one or both sides fail to accomplish the mission(s). Battles are often parts of campaigns. Battles between large forces usually are made up of several engagements, and can last from a few days to several weeks. Naval battles tend to be short and—in modern times—decisive.

An engagement is combat between two forces, neither larger than a division nor smaller than a company, in which each has an assigned or perceived mission. An engagement begins when the attacking force initiates combat in pursuit of its mission and ends when the attacker has accomplished the mission, or ceases to try to accomplish the mission, or when one or both sides receive significant reinforcements, thus initiating a new engagement. An engagement is often part of a battle. An engagement normally lasts one or two days; it may be as brief as a few hours and is rarely longer than five days.

An action is combat between two forces, neither larger than a battalion nor smaller than a squad, in which each side has a tactical objective. An action begins when the attacking force initiates combat to gain its objective, and ends when the attacker wins the objective, or one or both forces withdraw, or both forces terminate combat. An action often is part of an engagement and sometimes is part of a battle. An action lasts for a few minutes or a few hours and never lasts more than one day.

A duel is combat between two individuals or between two mobile fighting machines, such as combat vehicles, combat helicopters, or combat aircraft, or between a mobile fighting machine and a counter-weapon. A duel begins when one side opens fire and ends when one side or both are unable to continue firing, or stop firing voluntarily. A duel is almost always part of an action. A duel lasts only a few minutes. [Dupuy, Understanding War, 64-66]

Trevor Dupuy’s Definition of Military Combat

Ernst Zimmer: “Das Lauenburgische Jäger-Bataillon Nr. 9 bei Gravelotte” [Wikipedia]
The first element in Trevor Dupuy’s theory of combat is his definition of military combat:

I define military combat as a violent, planned form of physical interaction (fighting) between two hostile opponents, where at least one party is an organized force, recognized by governmental or de facto authority, and one or both opposing parties hold one or more of the follow-on objectives: to seize control of territory or people; to prevent the opponent from seizing or controlling territory or people; to protect one’s own territory or people; to dominate, destroy, or incapacitate the opponent.

The impact of weapons creates an environment of lethality, danger, and fear in which achievement of the objectives by one party may require the opponent to choose among: continued resistance and resultant destruction; retreat and loss of territory, facilities, and people; surrender. Military combat begins in any interaction, or at any level of combat from duel to full-scale war, when weapons are first employed with hostile intent by one or both opponents.  Military combat ends for any interaction or level of combat when both sides have stopped fighting.

There are two key points in this definition that I wish to emphasize. Though there may be much in common between military combat and a brawl in a barroom, there are important differences. The opponents in military combat are to some degree organized, and both represent a government or quasi-governmental authority. There is one other essential difference: the all-pervasive influence of fear in a lethal environment. People have been killed in barroom brawls, but this is exceptional. In military combat there is the constant danger of death from lethal weapons employed by opponents with deadly intent. Fear is without question the most important characteristic of combat. [Dupuy, Understanding War, 63-64]

The Elements of Trevor Dupuy’s Theory of Combat

Trevor Dupuy’s combat models (the Quantified Judgement Model (QJM) and the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model (TNDM)) are formal expressions of his theory of combat. Dupuy provided an extensive discussion of the basis for his theory in his books, particularly Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (NOVA Publications, 1987). While many are familiar with his models, fewer are aware of the concepts that he based it upon. This will be the first in a series of posts looking at those elements.

As Dupuy explained,

As a starting point for an explanation of a scientific theory, it is useful to define fundamental terms, to state and explain critical assumptions, and to establish—or limit—the scope of the discussion that follows. The definitions and explanations that follow are generally consistent with usage in the military and analytical communities, and with definitions that have been formulated for its work by The Military Conflict Institute. However, I have in some instances modified or restated these to conform to my own ideas and usage. [Dupuy, Understanding Combat, 63]

The basic elements of his theory of combat are:

Definition of Military Combat
The Hierarchy of Combat
The Conceptual Components of Combat
The Scope of Theory
Definition of a Theory of Combat

These will each be discussed in future posts.