Category Dupuy’s Verities

Dupuy’s Verities: Offensive Action

Sheridan’s final charge at Winchester by Thune de Thulstrup (ca. 1886) [Library of Congress]

The first of Trevor Dupuy’s Timeless Verities of Combat is:

Offensive action is essential to positive combat results.

As he explained in Understanding War (1987):

This is like saying, “A team can’t score in football unless it has the ball.” Although subsequent verities stress the strength, value, and importance of defense, this should not obscure the essentiality of offensive action to ultimate combat success. Even in instances where a defensive strategy might conceivably assure a favorable war outcome—as was the case of the British against Napoleon, and as the Confederacy attempted in the American Civil War—selective employment of offensive tactics and operations is required if the strategic defender is to have any chance of final victory. [pp. 1-2]

The offensive has long been a staple element of the principles of war. From the 1954 edition of the U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-5, Field Service Regulations, Operations:

71. Offensive

Only offensive action achieves decisive results. Offensive action permits the commander to exploit the initiative and impose his will on the enemy. The defensive may be forced on the commander, but it should be deliberately adopted only as a temporary expedient while awaiting an opportunity for offensive action or for the purpose of economizing forces on a front where a decision is not sought. Even on the defensive the commander seeks every opportunity to seize the initiative and achieve decisive results by offensive action. [Original emphasis]

Interestingly enough, the offensive no longer retains its primary place in current Army doctrinal thought. The Army consigned its list of the principles of war to an appendix in the 2008 edition of FM 3-0 Operations and omitted them entirely from the 2017 revision. As the current edition of FM 3-0 Operations lays it out, the offensive is now placed on the same par as the defensive and stability operations:

Unified land operations are simultaneous offensive, defensive, and stability or defense support of civil authorities’ tasks to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative to shape the operational environment, prevent conflict, consolidate gains, and win our Nation’s wars as part of unified action (ADRP 3-0)…

At the heart of the Army’s operational concept is decisive action. Decisive action is the continuous, simultaneous combinations of offensive, defensive, and stability or defense support of civil authorities tasks (ADRP 3-0). During large-scale combat operations, commanders describe the combinations of offensive, defensive, and stability tasks in the concept of operations. As a single, unifying idea, decisive action provides direction for an entire operation. [p. I-16; original emphasis]

It is perhaps too easy to read too much into this change in emphasis. On the very next page, FM 3-0 describes offensive “tasks” thusly:

Offensive tasks are conducted to defeat and destroy enemy forces and seize terrain, resources, and population centers. Offensive tasks impose the commander’s will on the enemy. The offense is the most direct and sure means of seizing and exploiting the initiative to gain physical and cognitive advantages over an enemy. In the offense, the decisive operation is a sudden, shattering action that capitalizes on speed, surprise, and shock effect to achieve the operation’s purpose. If that operation does not destroy or defeat the enemy, operations continue until enemy forces disintegrate or retreat so they no longer pose a threat. Executing offensive tasks compels an enemy to react, creating or revealing additional weaknesses that an attacking force can exploit. [p. I-17]

The change in emphasis likely reflects recent U.S. military experience where decisive action has not yielded much in the way of decisive outcomes, as is mentioned in FM 3-0’s introduction. Joint force offensives in 2001 and 2003 “achieved rapid initial military success but no enduring political outcome, resulting in protracted counterinsurgency campaigns.” The Army now anticipates a future operating environment where joint forces can expect to “work together and with unified action partners to successfully prosecute operations short of conflict, prevail in large-scale combat operations, and consolidate gains to win enduring strategic outcomes” that are not necessarily predicated on offensive action alone. We may have to wait for the next edition of FM 3-0 to see if the Army has drawn valid conclusions from the recent past or not.

TDI Friday Read: Principles Of War & Verities Of Combat

[izquotes.com]

Trevor Dupuy distilled his research and analysis on combat into a series of verities, or what he believed were empirically-derived principles. He intended for his verities to complement the classic principles of war, a slightly variable list of maxims of unknown derivation and provenance, which describe the essence of warfare largely from the perspective of Western societies. These are summarized below.

What Is The Best List Of The Principles Of War?

The Timeless Verities of Combat

Trevor N. Dupuy’s Combat Attrition Verities

Trevor Dupuy’s Combat Advance Rate Verities

Trevor Dupuy’s Combat Advance Rate Verities

t-34_76_4One of the basic processes of combat is movement. According to Trevor Dupuy, one of the most important outcomes of ground combat is advance against opposition. He spent a good amount of time examining historical advance rates, seeking to determine if technological change had led to increases in advance rates over time. On the face of it, he determined that daily rates had increased by about one-half, from about 17 kilometers per day during the Napoleonic Era, to about 26 kilometers a day by the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. However, when calculated by the duration of a campaign, average daily advance rates did not appear to have changed much at all over 200 years, despite the advent of mechanization.

His research on the topic yielded another list of verities. He did not believe they accounted for every factor or influence on advance rates, but he did think they accounted for most of them. He was also reasonably confident that no weapons or means of conveyance then foreseen would alter the basic relationships in his list.[1]

  1. Advance against opposition requires local combat power preponderance.
  2. There is no direct relationship between advance rates and force strength ratios.
  3. Under comparable conditions, small forces advance faster than larger forces.
  4. Advance rates vary inversely with the strength of the defender’s fortifications.
  5. Advance rates are greater for a force that achieves surprise.
  6. Advance rates decline daily in sustained operations.
  7. Superior relative combat effectiveness increases an attacker’s advance rate.
  8. An “all-out” effort increases advance rates at a cost in higher casualties.
  9. Advance rates are reduced by difficult terrain.
  10. Advance rates are reduced by rivers and canals.
  11. Advance rates vary positively with the quality and density of roads.
  12. Advance rates are reduced by bad weather.
  13. Advance rates are lower at night than in daytime.
  14. Advance rates are reduced by inadequate supply.
  15. Advance rates reflect interactions with friendly and enemy missions.

NOTES

[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (New York: Paragon House, 1987), pp. 158–163.

Trevor N. Dupuy’s Combat Attrition Verities

Operating room setup, 3d Surgical Hospital (Mobile Army), Fort George G. Meade, MD. Office of Medical History, U.S. Army Medical Department
Office of Medical History, U.S. Army Medical Department

Trevor N. Dupuy developed some hypotheses about casualty rates in combat in the process of quantifying the effects of surprise and relative combat effectiveness.[1] After testing these hypotheses against historical combat data, Col. Dupuy believed them valid enough to be considered verities. His confidence in them ranged from absolute for most to reasonable certainty for a few. The first two points are statements of combat experience, but they are directly relevant to the nature of battle attrition. As with his verities of combat, these will be discussed in more detail in subsequent posts.

Personnel Attrition Verities

  1. In the average battle, the attack’s numerical strength is about double the defender’s.
  2. In the average modern battle the attacker is more often successful than the defender.
  3. Casualty rates of winners are lower than those of losers.
  4. Small forces casualty rates are higher than those of large forces.
  5. More effective forces inflict casualties at a higher rate than less effective opponents.
  6. There is no direct relationship between force ratios and casualty rates.
  7. In most modern battles, the numerical losses of attacker and defender are often similar.
  8. Casualty rates for defenders vary inversely with strength of fortifications.
  9. Casualty rates of a surprising force are lower than those of a surprised force.
  10. In the average modern battle, attacker casualty rates are somewhat lower than defender casualty rates.
  11. In bad weather, casualty rates for both sides decline markedly.
  12. In difficult terrain, casualty rates for both sides decline markedly.
  13. The casualty-inflicting capability of a force declines after each successive day in combat.
  14. Casualty rates are lower at night than in daytime.
  15. Casualty rates are higher in summer than in winter.
  16. The faster the front line moves, the lower the casualty rates for both sides.
  17. Casualty rates seem to decline during river crossings.
  18. An “all-out” effort by one side raises loss rates for both sides.
  19. A force with greater overall combat power inflicts casualties at a greater rate than the opponent.
  20. The killed-to-wounded distribution of personnel casualties in twentieth century warfare is consistent.
  21. Average World War II division engagement casualty rates in Western Europe were 1% to 3% per day.
  22. Attrition rates in the 1973 October War were comparable to World War II.
  23. Casualty rates for major power forces in minor hostilities after 1945 are about half those experienced in World War II.

Material Attrition Verities

  1. Material loss rates are related to personnel casualty rates.
  2. Tank loss rates are five to seven times higher than personnel casualty rates.
  3. Attacker tank loss rates are generally higher than defender tank loss rates.
  4. Artillery material loss rates are generally about one-tenth personnel casualty rates.
  5. Self-propelled artillery loss rates are two-to-three times greater than for towed guns.
  6. The loss rates of light, to medium, to heavy artillery weapons are in the proportion: 2.2/1.8/1.0.

NOTES

[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War (Falls Church, VA: NOVA Publications, 1995), pp. 98-103. A slightly different version of this list was originally published in Trevor N. Dupuy, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (New York: Paragon House, 1987), pp. 174–180.

The Timeless Verities of Combat

Understanding WarJames Jay Carafano, historian and Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy at the Heritage Foundation, recently issued a call for the U.S. defense community to back off debates over “the latest doctrinal flavor of the month” and return to a focus on the classic principles of war. “Most modern military doctrine should be scrapped,” Carafano wrote. “The Pentagon would be far better served if our military thinkers got back to the basics and taught the principles of war—and little more.”

The principles of war are a list of basic concepts of warfare distilled from the writings of mostly Western military leaders and theorists that had become commonly accepted by the late 18th century, more or less. They vary in number depending on who’s list is consulted, but U.S. Army doctrine currently recognizes nine: Objective, Offensive, Mass, Economy of Force, Maneuver, Unity of Command, Security, Surprise, and Simplicity.

In 1987, Trevor N. Dupuy published what he termed “the timeless verities of combat.” These were a list of thirteen “unchanging operational features or concepts” based upon his previous twenty-five years of empirical research into a fundamental aspect of warfare, the nature of combat. He did not intend for these verities to substitute for the principles of war, but did believe that they were related to them. Dupuy asserted that the verities “describe certain fundamental and important aspects of warfare, which, despite constant changes in the implements of war, are almost unchanging because of war’s human component.”[1]

Trevor N. Dupuy’s Timeless Verities of Combat

  1. Offensive action is essential to positive combat results.
  2. Defensive strength is greater than offensive strength.
  3. Defensive posture is necessary when successful offense is impossible.
  4. Flank and rear attack is more likely to succeed than frontal attack.
  5. Initiative permits application of preponderant combat power.
  6. Defender’s chances of success are directly proportional to fortification strength.
  7. An attacker willing to pay the price can always penetrate the strongest defenses.
  8. Successful defense requires depth and reserves.
  9. Superior Combat Power Always Wins.
  10. Surprise substantially enhances combat power.
  11. Firepower kills, disrupts, suppresses, and causes dispersion.
  12. Combat activities are always slower, less productive, and less efficient than anticipated.
  13. Combat is too complex to be described in a single, simple aphorism.

Each of these concepts will be explored further in future posts.

NOTES

[1] Trevor N. Dupuy, Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat (New York : Paragon House, 1987), pp. 1-8.