Category National Security Policy

On (Maneuver) War

Another blog post from William “Chip” Sayers. The opinions presented are his own, and he is not shy. My one editorial comment is in brackets.

The blog post and William F. Owen article he references is here: The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud ? – The Dupuy Institute and The Manoeuvre Warfare Fraud | Small Wars Journal by Arizona State University

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On (Maneuver) War

Recently, Chris brought up an article entitled, “The Maneuver Warfare Fraud” by William F. Owen. That took me back to a bright summer day in 1998 when I was walking through the Gray Research Center on my way to class at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (C&SC) in Quantico, Virginia. Imagine my surprise as a Department of Defense civilian and former Air Force officer when I ran across a shrine to USAF Colonel and fighter pilot John Boyd! It had a mannequin wearing his flight suit, sporting his Fighter Weapons School patch and his squadron scarf the Navy loves to laugh at (they have no room to boast with their mock turtlenecks). I was unaware that morning of the Marines’ obsession with Maneuver Warfare, but I was about to be indoctrinated. I not only attended C&SC, but I stayed to attend the second-year course, the School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW) and, risking questions about my judgment, I went back after a decade to finish my trifecta at Marine Corps War College (MCWAR). I have given my academic resumé to impress upon the reader that I was essentially raised in the belly of the beast, as it were.

While I was vaguely aware of the concept, its attachment to Bill Lind and the “Military Reform” movement of the 1970s and 80s put me off, so I hadn’t — until my arrival at Command & Staff — studied the concept. It would be fair to say that I was skeptical that Lind and Co. had come up with something new in the way of warfare. 

From its early days, the nascent Military Reform movement (or “Fighter Mafia” as they styled themselves, then) was mostly concerned with the disastrously wrong concepts of tactical aircraft procurement. In the wake of the Vietnam War — where sophisticated U.S. interceptors were perceived to have difficulty with basic MiGs — the Reformers believed implicitly that cheaper, simpler aircraft were better than more sophisticated and expensive aircraft. One of the Reformers went so far as to say that the Air Force could buy five 1950s-era F-5 day-fighters armed with basic weapons for the price of one F-15. He went on to project that the simple F-5 could fly twice as many sorties as the more complex aircraft, and therefore an F-5 force could be 10 times as effective as an F-15 based force — implying that buying a fleet of F-5s five times larger than the planned F-15 buy was a valid option. 

There were several things wrong with such simplistic thinking. First, by the time that the Reformers were making this argument in the late 1970s, the issues they had with the USAF’s fighter force were being solved by the F-15: the new aircraft had an effective radar that was simple to use, it had great visibility and the agility to match it, and it had weapons that proved to be far more reliable and deadly by a shift to solid-state electronics. It was as if the Reformers were stuck in the previous war, having failed to learn the lessons the USAF was rapidly integrating. 

The Reformers, overly proud of their USAF fighter community origins, seemingly failed to understand that the F-5 was a day fighter, unable to fight for air superiority in typical European weather.  As long as the Soviets intended to invade only on sunny days, we would be fine. Finally, we most certainly would not replace the intended F-15 fleet on a 5 to 1 basis. In fact, the infrastructure required to support such a large fleet of aircraft in an era of irresponsibly low defense spending strained credulity to the breaking point. It is virtually a given that their biggest fan, Senator Gary Hart [Hartpence] (no relation to B. H. Liddell Hart), and others like him would have made sure the exchange would have been 1 for 1, leaving the Soviets with an overwhelming advantage in numbers and at least parity in aircraft quality. Fortunately, clearer minds prevailed and the F-15 program went forward unchecked.

Two other programs were influenced by this group: The F-16 and the A-10. When the F-15 program got away from them, the Fighter Mafia claim to have “forced” the Air Force to hold a Light-Weight Fighter competition. The truth is that, after the Fighter Mafia successfully imposed their “Not a pound for air-to-ground!” policy on the F-15 program to ensure that it was a single-mission air superiority aircraft, the USAF was going to need somebody to haul its bombs. The winner of the LWF competition was going to be a multi-role fighter from the outset. The Fighter Mafia was overjoyed that the prototype YF-16 had a nose that was “too pointy” to house a radar. However, General Dynamics and Hughes conspired to dash their hopes when the F-16A appeared on the ramp with a slightly larger nose that housed a miniaturized, but very capable multi-mode radar.

Shattered by two losses in a row, the Fighter Mafia made sure that the A-10 program included none of the modern conveniences — no avionics, no laser-guided bombs, no hydraulics, and no hope on the modern battlefield. While the F-15 and F-16 defied the Military Reformers’ doomsaying throughout the 1990s, the A-10A proved unable to withstand a 1970s-era air defense system manned by Iraqis and its perceived success was due entirely to the AGM-65 Maverick missile. In the early 2000s, the Air Force finally admitted defeat and upgraded the entire fleet to A-10C standard by putting in all of the avionics that the Fighter Mafia so assiduously avoided in the 1970s.

With Senator Gary Hart and other acolytes on Capitol Hill joining the fight, Bill Lind — then a legislative aide for Hart — joined forces with the Fighter Mafia and transformed the crusade into the Military Reform movement. The movement now had clout, media attention and, briefly, the influence to take on not just major programs, but the institutions themselves. Make no mistake, once politicized, the movement was more about slashing the Defense budget than it was about improving the fighting capabilities of the U.S. Armed Forces.

The Reformers next took on the U.S. Army’s the M-247 Sgt York DIVAD Self-Propelled Antiaircraft Gun (SPAAG) and the M-2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) was established by Congress — largely through the influence of Sen. Hart and the Reformers — to test weapon systems under “combat” conditions including “live” fire against vehicles. In the past forty years, DOT&E has proven to be useful, but its first several projects were sketchy, at best.

First, the Reformers set their sights on the Sgt York. The M-247 was the poster-child for off-the-shelf procurement: the hull and powertrain were repurposed from obsolete M-48 Patton tanks, the 40mm Bofors guns were 1950s-era upgrades of the famed WWII weapons, and the radar was from the F-16 fighter aircraft. Surely this was a weapon the Reformers would love. Not so. The stories of its test failures were the stuff of legends, almost too outlandish to be true — the gun locked on to latrine fans, slewed towards the grandstands, drones had to be equipped with radar reflectors to allow them to be tracked, etc., etc. As it happens, I had the opportunity to interview one of the test personnel and it turns out, the stories were too good to be true. None of the stories were true as related — most had the barest kernel of truth in them. Nevertheless, SECDEF Cap Weinberger was in trouble with Congress for “never having met a weapon he didn’t like,” so after all the bad press, he offered up the Sgt York as a sacrificial lamb.

The tests on the Bradley IFV were immortalized by the James G. Burton book and subsequent TV movie, The Pentagon Wars. Burton was a USAF Lieutenant Colonel at DOT&E and conducted the tests on the Bradley. While it may have been commendable that the test director was outside the Army’s chain of command in order to insure objectivity, Lt Col Burton displayed a distinct lack of understanding of the tactics associated with IFVs when he subjected the Bradley to live fire tests by Main Battle Tank (MBT) guns and Antitank Guided Missiles (ATGMs). The Bradley was not designed to stand up to rounds larger than 30mm, so when hit by rounds over three times that size, the results were predictable. Nevertheless, Burton recommended that the Bradley be better protected by rearranging ammunition and fuel stowage and adding armor. Of course, this led to an increase in weight which slowed the vehicle’s tactical mobility and led directly to its loss of amphibious capability and several infantrymen. In the desert against incompetent and demoralized Iraqi troops, this loss of capability went unnoticed. It can be imagined, however, that the inability to cross rivers or keep up with friendly tanks might have directly led to great deal more casualties in a war in Europe. Burton could have complained that the Army’s IFV should have had the same survivability as the M-1 tank and have had a legitimate point: Who came up with the idea that 10 Americans in an IFV deserved less protection than four Americans in a tank?

Operation DESERT STORM proved the Reform movement wrong about U.S. weapons on virtually every point. However, by this time, Bill Lind had put together his theory of Maneuver Warfare and captured the mind of the Marine Corps. One of the great issues I’ve always had with the Marines’ fascination was Lind’s promotion of the German concept of Auftragstaktik. This concept calls for the pushing decisions concerning the battle down to the lowest possible level and trusting the man at the leading edge to act not just autonomously, but even in defiance of orders based on his superior understanding of the battle. This requires a phenomenal amount of trust in one’s subordinates. The problem is that it is simply inconceivable that any U.S. military officer would actually give a subordinate that kind of freedom and responsibility.  Yet, my classmates at Quantico greatly admired the German system, seemingly unaware of the irony. 

Spencer Fitz-Gibbon, one time British Green Party shadow Defence Minister, wrote a masterful PhD thesis expounding the virtues of Maneuver Warfare and Auftragstaktik, published as Not Mentioned in Despatches…  Fitz-Gibbon made an incredibly detailed study of the Battle of Goose Green in the 1982 Falklands War, showing conclusively that LtCol. “H.” Jones, the commander of the British 2Paras, was a maniacally anal-retentive micro-manager who was actually losing the battle until he was killed — leaving his subordinates the freedom to wrest victory from the jaws of defeat. I’m afraid most U.S. officers are more likely to resemble H. Jones than a Rommel or Guderian. A brutal realization, but admitting the illness is halfway to the cure.

Suffice it to say, nothing the Marines taught or said changed my mind. I remain a skeptic for the exact reasons William Owen describes in his article. Essentially, Owen argues that “Maneuver Warfare” is not only nothing new, it’s not actually in automatic opposition to the Reformers’ construct of “Attrition Warfare.”  I always felt that no one in their right mind would choose a bloody frontal attack when a flanking or envelopment maneuver was available, i.e., no one chooses to be an attritionist. When my Marine buddies boasted that the USMC was a maneuver organization as opposed to the enemy — the U.S. Army — who were cast as slaves to attrition warfare. I retorted rather pointedly that in Vietnam, the Marines pummeled the Army for wanting to fix the enemy with infantry and destroy him with artillery and air strikes, as opposed to their doctrine of fixing bayonets and breaking out the grenades. Who was the maneuver force and who was the attritionist, then? In reply, I got a thoughtful “huh.”

In agreement with Owen, I believe the “Maneuver vs. Attritional Warfare” paradigm is a construct that commits the false dichotomy fallacy. The commander in the field does not necessarily need to decide between maneuver and firepower. In fact, the best outcomes happen when he uses both. It’s Tactics 101: one fireteam lays down a base of fire to suppress the enemy and keep their heads down. while the second uses that cover to maneuver to the enemy’s flank or rear and finish the job at close range. Of course, there’s more to Maneuver Warfare than this — I spent my year in SAW contemplating 2,000 years of dirty tricks to use in combat and trying to invent new ones to add to the catalog. While I’m not sure our Army School of Advanced Military Studies counterparts couldn’t keep up with us, this fits into the general maneuverist outlook.

The students in my C&SC class received, along with a small mountain of other volumes, the famous “box of books” which bundled together the slim Marine Corps Doctrinal Publications. I generally agree with Owen’s critique of Marine Corps doctrinal publications. While on the surface, they appear to be well written and clear overall, Owen points out points of weak logic in their doctrine and internal contradictions.

My Command and Staff thesis took the Marine Corps to task for the disconnects in the planning process — particularly when it came to wargaming Courses Of Action (COAs) in the face of doctrine that incessantly claimed that warfare was completely unpredictable. To this I replied that if warfare is so thoroughly chaotic, “who could say if a single elephant might not rout an entire phalanx, or a determined Cub Scout Pack might not be an appropriate weapon to stop an armored division?” Nevertheless, wargaming was an important step in the planning process. Most of my classmates got to that point, simply assumed success and drove on, thus obviating the reason for wargaming COAs in the first place. Apparently, no one ever assumed failure and its consequences. I had a sense of irony that we were attending a planning school that ultimately didn’t believe in planning.

In my two years of working with Marines solving planning problems, I learned that, despite their love affair with Maneuver Warfare, they tended to solve their problems in conventional ways, including some that simply required frontal attacks. As an outsider (civilian with an Air Force background), I threw out numerous solutions that would have caused the Marines to either make unconventional use of their own resources (making the Aviation Combat Element the main effort and using the Ground Combat Element to act in a support role), or to allow outside agencies (allowing Dept. of State and CIA psychological operations to take the lead and reinforcing their actions with maneuver driven by their narratives). The part of Maneuver Warfare that they did generally respect was a whole-of-government approach and at least a toleration of out-of-the-box thinking.

Owen’s reading of Sun-Tsu is interesting.  To say that “supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting” is really referring to diplomacy is, to put it charitably, a bit of a stretch.  On the other hand, after over 2,000 years, I find Sun Tzu more interesting as poetry than strategy. It may have been a revelation in his day (though I’ll bet it was not), but it’s already “baked in” to our current military culture.

Owen believes that some of the inspiration for Maneuver Warfare has been either misinterpreted or greatly overblown. Marshal Ferdinand Foch of WWI Western Front infamy serves as a whipping boy for the Maneuverists, but according to Owen, wrote military theory that clearly inspired — if not plagiarized by — Maneuverist hero B. H. Liddell Hart (no relation to U.S. Senator Gary Hart). Owen’s revelation about the Foch/Liddell Hart connection confirmed my belief that the latter’s work was derivative and self-aggrandizing. Given the number of times I’ve suffered through Strategy, it was nice to uncover this little gem. Our modern notions of how much we need someone to save us by pronouncing a new strategy largely comes from Liddell Hart and others like him who looked back to WWI’s Western front, when they might better have paid attention to the Eastern and Southern fronts that were far more mobile.

I was forced to endure Liddell Hart at least twice during my Marine Corps schooling and I will never forgive them for that. Like Lind, Liddell Hart passes off weak and obvious ideas as revolutionary principles. His “man in the dark” theory (Clausewitz beat him by 100 years with “the fog of war”) is about as sophisticated as a middle-school football game, while his “expanding torrent” is just embarrassing.

Owen is skeptical of John Boyd and his OODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) and this is where Owen and I part ways. I’m no fan of Boyd — he was a self-important blowhard — but he did have two excellent ideas, both relating to his background as a fighter pilot. He developed the theory of Energy Maneuverability, measuring the difference between two aircraft’s relative advantages in “dogfighting.” Contrary to claims by Maneuver Warfare advocates, Boyd didn’t invent EM — fighter pilots have always thought in those terms — rather, the engineer in him devised a way to define the differences more precisely and display them graphically in a reasonably easy to digest manner. To be perfectly honest, the EM diagrams his formulae generates are still too complex to be useful in the cockpit but rather must be studied as homework before the battle. And mostly, it comes down to a pilot planning to fight a given opponent above or below a certain airspeed.

One can imagine a time when EM diagrams are loaded into an aircraft’s fire-control computer and compared to data from its Non-Cooperative Target Recognition data to advise the pilot how to duel his opponent. In fact, this is probably the best way to have unmanned, AI-driven aircraft take on other aircraft in combat.

Undoubtedly, Boyd’s biggest contribution was his concept of the OODA loop. During his time as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, Boyd observed that he could out-maneuver enemy MiGs despite the fact that, on paper, the MiG-15 should have been superior to his F-86. He found that while the F-86 had hydraulically-boosted controls, the MiG did not. This allowed the F-86 pilot to roll more rapidly than the MiG, so while the MiG-15 should have been able to turn tighter, it could not keep up with the American fighter in rapid changes of direction. The F-86 could roll one way, and the MiG would be delayed in following due to the MiG pilot’s reaction time and not being able to roll as quickly. Then the USAF pilot would roll the opposite direction, putting the MiG pilot further behind in his reaction. After a few direction changes, the MiG would be so inappropriately positioned that he would pop out in front of the American fighter. This was described as a “scissors” maneuver. 

Boyd correctly deduced that, even without the advantage in hydraulically-boosted controls, the pilot who takes decisive action quickly can force his opponent into a reactive mode where his actions become increasingly inappropriate to the actual situation. The true genius was that Boyd recognized that this could be applied to other forms of warfare, and that the U.S. Marine Corps has applied it to its land warfare doctrine. The concept of momentum has always existed in military science — Clausewitz called it “surprise attack,” but in context, it clearly carried the idea of momentum. His famous dictum that “defense is the stronger form of warfare” was due in no small part to the defender’s diligent use of counterattacks.[1] His concept of the culmination of an attack is pinned to two things: inadequate logistics and counterattacks.[2] Put these two discussions together and you get the concept of momentum and its variability.

Boyd believed that when a side built up sufficient momentum, the opponent would become so deeply reactive that it could do nothing to stave off defeat. The Marines believe this and depend on seizure of the initiative and rapid maneuver to win victories over opponents that aren’t mentally prepared to keep up. This is a good construct, particularly well suited to American visions of “hyperwar,” as waged in the 1990s. Now that the forever wars are over, the U.S. military is trying to remember how to do peer, or near-peer force-on-force combat. They would do well to concentrate on this legacy and recreate what we once had. This will not be an easy lift, however, as only a small percentage of active-duty military members were serving prior to the great switchover to a single-minded focus on counterinsurgency.

 

[1] Clausewitz, On War, Howard, Paret & Brodie, Book Six, Chapters 2 & 3, 360, 363 and 365-366.

[2] Ibid, Book Seven, Chapters 4 & 5, 527-528.

Modern Missiles – Russian, Chinese and American, Part 1

First of a series of blog posts from Geoffry Clark on modern missiles:

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Modern missiles – Russian, Chinese and American, Part 1

 

Mentioned in the previous post on the Zhuhai Air Show (see The Japanese Gifu and Chinese Zhuhai Airshows, 2024 – The Dupuy Institute), the Chinese PLA have revealed two new systems in 2024, the HQ-19 and DF-100. These systems are different types of missiles, generally known as Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM) and Surface-to-Surface Missiles (SSM), respectively.

Image Credit: truexanewsua/Telegram

 

There was also a very notable development regarding SSMs in Ukraine recently; on November 22, 2024, the Russian Federation tested a new missile named “Oreshnik” (meaning “hazel”, referring to the shape of the luminescence of the re-entry vehicles). As reported by Voice of America:

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate reported that the Oreshnik missile was launched from Russia’s Kapustin Yar 4th Missile Test Range in the Astrakhan region. The missile traveled for approximately 15 minutes before striking the city of Dnipro. The missile was equipped with six non-nuclear warheads, each containing six submunitions, and it achieved a speed of Mach 11 during its flight.

There is some confusion and debate about the classification of this missile, whether it was an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), or an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). This is just a matter of range category, which is just anachronistic jargon from the Soviet Cold War and arms control negotiations and treaties. Since that time, the U.S. has withdrawn from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) in October 2018, many claim since China is unbound by any arms control, and the U.S. saw a need to develop such mid-range ballistic missiles.

Then, in a video address by Russian President Vladimir Putin said:

There are “no means of countering such weapons today. Missiles attack targets at a speed of Mach 10, which is 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second. Air defense systems currently available in the world and missile defense systems being created by the Americans in Europe cannot intercept such missiles. It is impossible.”

This high mach number is really what sets this type of missile apart. By comparison, the Chinese DF-100 missile (also known as CJ-100, and also by NATO as CH-SSC-13 Splinter) has a similar range to the Oreshnik (also known as the RS-26 Rubezh – The War Zone has a good explanation for the lineage), but these two missiles have very different speeds; the DF-100 is supersonic at about mach 4. The speed of these missiles – subsonic, supersonic, hypersonic – is directly proportional to the difficulty of interception.

So, there is debate about whether many advanced systems such as the American THAAD and certain missiles (especially the Standard Missile 3) from the Aegis system may be able to intercept such missiles. One new contender for this category is the Chinese HQ-19 SAM, which was apparently derived from the HQ-9, which was itself derived from the S-300 SAM of Russian design and build, and also widely used in the Ukraine War by both sides.

Image credit: VLS_Appreciator via twitter: https://twitter.com/VLS_Appreciator/status/1844408468452802602

 

HQ-19 at Zhuhai airshow 2024. (Image Credit: Twitter/David Wang)

 

I’ll briefly mention a few more important recent events which shed light on the state-of-the-art of missile defense.

A USAF awards ceremony on November 12 provided a number of details about how USAF squadron of F-15Es that was forward deployed to Muwaffaq Salti air base in Jordan, in order to defend Israel.  Ward Carroll reports:

During the Iranian attack on Israel on April 13, 2024, the 494th Fighter Squadron launched 14 Strike Eagle sorties, including six aircraft scrambled at a moment’s notice, while base defenses simultaneously neutralized enemy threats overhead. Ultimately those F-15Es (along with those previously mentioned base defenses) successfully engaged and destroyed more than 80 kamikaze UAVs, out of more than 300 drone and missiles intended to strike Israel.

Apparently, this air defense effort included U.S., U.K., Israel and Jordan.  What was public knowledge was the success of the Iron Dome, but there were apparently many other assets operating together to attrit the drones and missiles in their trajectories from Iran to targets in Israel. 

And, finally, the statistics published by the Ukrainian Defense Forces about the Russian missiles used, and the rate at which they were intercepted.

Screen capture of video address by General Oleksandr Syrskyi via Odessa Journal.

 

Through the translation provided by the Odessa Journal, and through the identification of these missiles and the Harpoon V Admiralty Trilogy Annexes, I’ve attempted to describe these missiles in more detail.

Missile Name

Missile Code

NATO Code

GRAU Code

Type

Flight path

Range nmi

Speed kts

Weight kgm

Signature

Missiles

Intercepted

Rate %

Kinzhal

Kh-47M2

 

39K5

ASM

Ballistic

1080

4016

3800

Vsmall

       111

               28

25%

Kalibr

 

SS-N-27

3M14

SSM

Cruise

865

600

 

Vsmall

       894

             443

50%

X-555/101

Kh-555

AS-15

 

ASM

Cruise

1620

400

1700

Vsmall

    1,846

          1,441

78%

X-555/101

Kh-101

AS-23A

 

ASM

Cruise

2160

400

2500

Stealthy

Oniks

P-800

SS-N-26

3M55

SSM

Cruise

165

1650

 

Vsmall

       211

               12

6%

Zircon

 

SS-N-33

3M22

SSM

Cruise

187

3150

 

Stealthy

           6

                 2

33%

Iskander-K

 

 

9K720

SSM

Ballistic

500

5053

4615

Small?

       202

               76

38%

Iskander-M

KN-23

 

9K720

SSM

Ballistic

500

5053

4615

Small?

    1,300

               56

4%

X-22/32

Kh-22

Burya

 

ASM

Cruise

~200

2003

5900

Small

       362

                 2

1%

Kh-32

 

 

ASM

Cruise

485

2160

5800

Vsmall

X-35

Uran

SS-N-25

3M24

SSM

Cruise

65

580

 

Vsmall

         15

                 1

7%

Tochka-U

 

SS-21

9K79

SSM

Ballistic

~120

3500

2000

Small?

         68

                 6

9%

X-25/29/31/35/58/59/60

Kh-25

AS-10

 

ASM

Direct

5

1360

295

Vsmall

    1,547

             343

22%

Kh-29

AS-14B

 

ASM

Direct

8

792

690

Vsmall

Kh-31

AS-17

 

ASM

Cruise ?

86

1690

~700

Vsmall

Kh-35

AS-20

 

ASM

Cruise

71.5

560

520

Vsmall

Kh-58

AS-11

 

ASM

Direct

66

2065

650

Vsmall

Kh-59

AS-18

 

ASM

Cruise

~150

~550

930

Vsmall

Kh-60

AS-?

 

ASM

 

 

 

 

 

S-300/400

SA-N-6a/b

 

 

SAM

Ballistic ?

~50

3885

 

Vsmall

    3,008

               19

1%

Other

?

 

?

 

 

 

 

 

 

         57

                 –

0%

 

There are reports that Russian Armed Forces are amassing large stockpiles of these missiles for future strikes.

In Part 2 of this analysis, I plan to give a few examples of these types of intercepts and illustrate the odds using the Harpoon V game system.

Thanks for reading, and for your comments!

Dueling Defense Budgets

The cold hard reality is that in the long run $$$ = combat power. This is a obvious little relationship that is often ignored. This was demonstrated in spades when Japan attacked a country in 1941 that had an economy more than ten times their size. Good luck with that one. It was also ignored by the leader of Germany, who somehow or the other believed that superior willpower go overcome the overwhelming coalition arrayed against them. He could not. In the long run, warfare is decided by the golden rule: he who has the gold – rules. So, let us take a moment and look at the defense budget of Russia vs Ukraine. 

Russia defense budget in 2023, according to Wikipedia, was $86.4B. Source was the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), from back in the days when Sweden was neutral. Now maybe this should be adjusted by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) to account for lower labor costs, lower food costs, etc.  The PPP multiplier for the GDP is 2.66. Meaning that their real value of the budget is somewhere between 86.4 to 229.8. Hard to say how much of military expenditures should be under PPP, especially when one is talking about all the high-tech equipment that makes up a modern army. The 2024 budget is higher, that is discussed below. Their 2023 budget only make of 4.1% of the GDP, so there is room to grow. Russia is receiving no significant outside aid to support this war (they have to pay for the material from Iran, China and North Korea). 

Ukraine on the other hand is receiving lots of outside aid. At least $110B a year. This includes over $50 billion from the EU & UK, and at least $61B from the U.S. Much of this is spent in their home countries for equipment, so is not directly comparable to the PPP adjusted Russian figures. On the other hand, in 2024 Ukraine is spending $66.2 billion of its own money on the war (source: Ministry of Finance of Ukraine). This is 18% of their GDP. Sort of gives you some idea of what Russia might be capable of if the political will was there (so I guess willpower does matter). One of course, has to ask, why is the political will not there? What is the dynamics where Ukraine has spent 18% of their national income on the war while Russia, which initiated this war, is only spending 4%. What is the Kremlin afraid of? Their own people?

Anyhow, $66B that Ukraine is spending also needs to be adjusted by PPP. Their multiplier is 2.73. So that $66B turns into $180.2. So 180 vs 230. 1-to-1.28 ratio of expenditures. But to that Ukraine adds a least $111B in Western money. So, 181 + 111 vs 230 or a 1.27-to-1. This is of course assuming that PPP is a fully valid measurement and none of the western aid is influenced by PPP. Neither of these are quite the case. If it was a simple nominal expense comparison it would be 66 + 111 vs 86 or a ratio of 2.06-to-1.

From a practical point of view, it appears that Ukraine with western aid is outspending Russian by at least 50%. Of course, I am comparing here Ukrainian 2024 figures to Russian 2023 figures. In the long run, that means that Ukraine will win. More than likely, it will force Russia to increase it defenses expenditures by at least 50%, up to 6% or more of GDP. This is sustainable. 

Now, the linked article below shows that Russia’s 2024 defense expenditure is 40% (or 39% in another article) of their national budget, which 391.2 x .4 = 156.48. They say it is a 70% increase from 2023 (86.4 x 1.7 = 146.88). Anyhow, they are having to increase their budget significantly. See: Putin approves big military spending hikes for Russia’s budget | Reuters

So, 146.88 x 2.66 (PPP multiplier) = 391. So 181 + 111 vs 391 is a 1-to1.34 ratio based upon PPP for both Russia and Ukraine. Or… 66 + 111 vs 147 is a 1.20-to-1 ratio in favor of Ukraine based upon nominal costs. So it does appear that for 2024 the two sides expenditures appear to be roughly equal. This would imply that a rough stalemate is going to be the outcome in 2024.

Now, this is a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation banged out this morning. Something more rigorous could be developed by someone. I am not sure it would tell a different story.

The House passed the aid bill for Ukraine

The House passed the aid bill for Ukraine. This was the hold up. It will now go to the Senate, which will approve and then to the President who will sign it. I assume it will be a done deal next week.

The final vote was 311-112 (7 not voting and five unfilled seats). So ,72% voted for it. Of those 210 were Democrats and 112 were Republicans. The House current sits 217 Republicans and 213 Democrats. So, this ends up being a bi-partisan foreign aid bill.

So, 99% of the House Democrats and 52% of the House Republicans voted for it. Note that the foreign aid bill advanced yesterday with 165 Democratic votes and 151 Republican votes. That is 70% of the House Republicans advancing the bill. 

The total bill was for $95.3 Billion, or which $61 billion was for Ukraine. Around $16 B was aid to Israel and over $9 B was humanitarian assistance for Gaza. Another $8 B was for the Indo-Pacific region.

Related post: Size of aid bill versus Russian defense budget | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)

 

Size of aid bill versus Russian defense budget

The military aid bill currently languishing in the House is $61 billion for Ukraine.

It is reported (via Wikipedia) that the Russian defense budget in 2023 was only $86.4 billion. Now, I am not sure how accurate that figure is and whether it has gone up in 2024 (I assume it has). Also Russian labor costs are lower, so it is hard to directly compare with western defense budgets. The 2024 Military Balance puts the Russian budget at $294.6 billion based upon PPP (Purchasing Power Parity).

Still, the Russian “defense” budget only makes up 4.1% of its GDP in 2023. This is surprisingly low for a country at war. In comparison, the U.S. defense budget as a percent of GDP was 3.47%. in 2022. The budget was $816.7 billion in 2023.

In contrast, Ukraine is spending 18% of its GDP on defense in 2024 with a budget of $45 billion (based on nominal figures… PPP figures will be higher as their labor costs are lower than Russia’s).

It is clear that the western power needs to provide at least 100-120 billion a year in military aid to Ukraine. Our European partners are providing half of that.

Updated calendar for the Republican nomination

The calendar for the Republican Party nomination:

1) Four Republican primary debates have been completed, the field is pretty settled now (Trump, Haley and Desantis). Three more debates are scheduled for 10, 18 and 21 January. Trump has yet to attend one.
2) Donald Trump currently leads the polling for the Republican Party presidential nomination by significant margins.
3) He is currently in a civil trial in New York concerning his businesses. A summary judgment was issued on 26 September that his companies had committed fraud. We expect the final verdicts related to results and penalties to be completed by the end of January.
4) the Iowa caucuses will be on 15 January 2024,
5) the New Hampshire primary will be on 23 January 2024,
6) the Nevada primary will be on 6 February 2024,
7) 24 February is SC primary, then MI,
8.) The date for the DOJ Special Council criminal trial for charges related to the 6 January incidents in now scheduled for 4 March. We gather Trump’s former chief of staff has taken a partial immunity deal with the government and will be providing testimony,
9) on 5 March 14 states will hold their primaries and between 9 – 23 March another 15 states/territories will hold their primaries. The Republican nominee could be decided by then,
10) 25 March is the trial date for Donald Trump’s New York Stormy Daniel’s related case,
11) 20 May is the trial date for Donald Trump’s classified documents case. This one is kind of a guaranteed conviction.
12) last Republican primary is 4 June 2024. I actually do think this is war related news as the currently three of the five leading Republican presidential candidates do not support Ukraine.
13) 15-18 July: Republican National Convention held in Milwaukee
14) 5 August is the start date for the Fulton County Georgia case. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty under a plea agreement. The other 15 defendants, including Donald Trump, will be going to trial.
15) The U.S. presidential, senate and congressional election is on Tuesday, 5 November, 2024.

So, there seems to be a race between whether Trump can get the Republican nomination before he gets too tangled up in his legal troubles.
 

The U.S. Defense Budget for FY 2024 has passed

By the way, on 14 December, the U.S. Congress did pass the defense budget for FY 2024. Fiscal Year 2024 begins in October 2023. It is expected to be signed by the president.

The total budget was $886.3 Billion. The Senate voted 87-13 for it and the House voted 310-118. The majority of the opposing votes were from the Republican Party. In the Senate opposed were 6 Republicans, 6 Democrats and one Independent (Bernie Sanders). In the House opposed 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats. It did include a provision that would require an act of Congress or 2/3rds Senate approval if the president wanted to leave NATO. This provision appeared to be in response to previous comments made by Donald Trump. The bill also extended a military aid program to Ukraine, allowing for the gradual release of $300 million to Kyiv. 

The previous year’s defense budget (FY2023) was 813.3 billion. Back for FY 2016 the defense budget was 580.3. There has been a steady increase in the annual defense appropriations since then. In FY 2022, the U.S. defense budget made up 3.47% of the GDP. 

In contrast, the defense budget of Russia for 2023 is $86.4 billion making up 4.1% of GDP. I gather it will be higher now for 2024. The defense budget of China for 2022 was $293 billion, making up 1.7% of GDP. The defense budget of Ukraine for 2023 was $46.8 billion making up 18.2% of GDP. They also received over $100 billion in foreign military aid.

There is also a combined bill in development of $105 billion for aid to Israel and Ukraine. This currently includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine. It also includes $14.3 billion for Israel, $10 billion for humanitarian assistance (including Gaza), 7.4 billion for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region and 13.6 billion for border security. This may not be the final figures. It has not been passed and is currently being negotiated in the Senate in exchange for tighter U.S. border controls. The House has already gone home for Christmas. I believe a version of this bill will pass in early January.

The American Political Scene and Aid to Ukraine

My bias on this blog is to stay away from politics, but sometimes it can’t be helped. The U..S. is providing about half the international aid to Ukraine. I have not done the exact math on this comparing U.S. military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine as compared to our NATO allies, plus the EU aid (which is sometimes left out of people’s calculations), plus aid outside of NATO/EU (like Japan, South Korea and Australia). So, haven’t done the exact math in a while, but I gather the U.S, portion is around half. Therefore, what is going on in the House of Representatives and the 2024 U.S. presidential election is worth noting. If Ukraine losses half of its military and humanitarian aid, this does affect its ability to conduct on this war.

First, while the current president supports aid to Ukraine, as do the leaders of both parties in the Senate, the current Republican Speaker of the House does not (although he does support aid for Israel). His latest statement on the subject was that it was not an “urgent need” compared to aid for Israel. Furthermore, three of the top four Republican candidates for President do not support additional aid to Ukraine.

It is uncertain to what extent the Republican controlled House opposes aid to Ukraine. There are currently 212 seats held by Democrats (who mostly support aid to Ukraine) and 221 seats held by the Republicans (and 2 vacant). The total amount of support committed by the U.S. to Ukraine is at least $133 Billion. 

In January the Gallup poll (3-22 January) says that 65% of Americans support the war in Ukraine. 31% clearly do not. This is pretty much the same figures as in August 2022 (66% vs 31%). Among self-identified Democrats the split was 81% to 16%, among independents it was 59% to 38% and among Republicans it was 53% to 41%. So, according to the Gallup poll, the majority of Republicans support Ukraine. On the other hand, 47% of the Republicans polled said that the U.S. is doing too much to help UkrainePrevious polling from Washington Post shows that 52% of Republicans want to reduce aid to Ukraine or “…want their member of congress to opposed additional funding.” 

The leading two contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are both opposed to extensive aid for Ukraine. Ron Desantis said that it was a not a “vital” U.S. interest. He got immediate pushback from six U.S. Republican senators, but it is clear that there is a very definite split in the Republican Party on this issue. It is a long way until November 2024. We will have to see how this develops.

Eleven Republican members of the House did propose in February a resolution (“Ukraine Fatigue Resolution”) to cut aid to Ukraine. There is a clearly a vocal minority that is opposed to supporting Ukraine, along with both leading Republican presidential candidates. The “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” is worth a read. It is here: Text – H.Res.113 – 118th Congress (2023-2024): Ukraine Fatigue Resolution | Congress.gov | Library of Congress.

A letter was issued on 20 April (Hitler’s birthday) calling for an end to unrestrained U.S. aid to Ukraine. It was signed by three senators (out of 100) and 16 members of the house (out of 435). There is a vocal minority opposed to this war, but it is clearly a minority. 

Meanwhile, a Republican House member submitted a resolution in April recognizing the borders of Ukraine as being the 1991 borders. This was supported by 13 Democrats and 5 other Republicans. 

On 13 July, the House took a vote on cutting off aid to Ukraine. The vote was 358-70 rejecting the amendment. All 70 opposed votes were Republican. See: Here are the 70 House Republicans who voted to cut off all US military aid to Ukraine (msn.com).

The U.S. resolved its “debt crisis” in June with the debt limit being suspended until 2025. Defense spending is capped at $886 billion, or 3.5% increase over the previous year. This matches the current administrations budget request. Spending on defense is limited to a 1% growth in 2025, or up to $895 billion. 

In September, a shutdown of U.S. government was delayed for 45 days (until mid-November), then the Republican Speaker of the House was thrown out of office for the first time in the U.S. history and a new speaker has finally been appointed, although house business was shut down for three weeks (did anyone actually miss them?). New additional aid for Ukraine has not been passed.

The second Republican primary debate occurred on 27 September. Four candidates clearly and strongly indicated that they support Ukraine (Christie, Haley, Pence and Scott). The Republican Party seems to split on this issue. Recent polling shows the majority of Americans still support Ukraine.

A few dates to keep in mind for the American political campaigns: 1) the third Republican primary debate is scheduled for 8 November, 2) Donald Trump currently leads the polling for the Republican Party presidential nomination by significant margins. He is currently in a civil trial in New York concerning his businesses. A summary judgment was issued on 26 September that his companies had committed fraud, 3) no start date has been set for the Fulton County Georgia case, but four of the defendants have pleaded guilty under a plea agreement. The other 15 defendants, including Donald Trump, will be going to trial soon, 4) the Iowa caucuses will be on 15 January 2024, 5) the Nevada primary will be on 6 February 2024, 6) the New Hampshire primary is scheduled for 13 February 2024, 7) 24 February is SC primary, then MI, 8) The date for the DOJ Special Council criminal trial for charges related to the 6 January incidents in now scheduled for 4 March. We gather Trump’s former chief of staff has taken a partial immunity deal with the government and will be providing testimony, 9) on 5 March 14 states will hold their primaries and between 9 – 23 March another 15 states/territories will hold their primaries. The Republican nominee could be decided by then, 10) 25 March is the trial date for Donald Trump’s New York Stormy Daniel’s related case, 11) 20 May is the trial date for Donald Trump’s classified documents case, 12) last Republican primary is 4 June 2024. I actually do think this is war related news as the currently the three of the four leading Republican presidential candidates do not support Ukraine.

Former VP and Republican presidential candidate Mike Pence was in Ukraine in July. He fully supports the war effort. A couple of days ago, he suspended his campaign. There are for practical purposes, only 6 real contenders are left, and two of them may not yet make the stage in Florida come 8 November.

“The Games the Marine Corps Plays”

An associate strongly recommended I look at this article. I would recommend the same to our readership: The Games the Marine Corps Plays | Military.com

It is written by Gary Anderson of GWU, who I do not know. But, to quote a few lines from the article:

  1. “You do not want prying eyes on your work that might question its rigor or validity.”
  2. “Since the Marines would be hundreds of miles away and irrelevant, they could be safely ignored.”
  3. “First, the Corps hired the most incompetent red team in the history of war-gaming, or their analysts cooked the books” (this sounds like a familiar problem, see:  Wargaming 101 – Sayers vs. The U.S. Navy | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org)).

Anyhow, it is not a long article. Recommend reading it.

A story about planning for Desert Storm (1991)

In an email exchange with retired DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) analyst, William (Chip) Sayers, he sent me this account. I asked him if we could publish it, as I think it is a wonderfully unfiltered account. He agreed, although pointed out that he would also be covering some of this in his presentation this fall. It is on Day 2 of HAAC and is on “The Combat Assessment Technique.” See: Schedule for the Historical Analysis Annual Conference (HAAC), 27-29 September 2022 – update 4 | Mystics & Statistics (dupuyinstitute.org).

In early 1989, I went to work at an office at DIA that specialized at looking at the world through the eyes of the Soviet General Staff. In particular, we used the Soviet’s Correlation of Forces Methodology. However, we only partially understood it and needed some data to close gaps for us. I cast around for something that would plug these holes and settled on the QJM as the best candidate. It was my belief that both models had approached the subject from the same standpoint and therefore the one could help inform the other.

This paid off — to an extent — in the run up to the ground campaign of Operation DESERT STORM. Gen. Schwarzkopf desperately wanted to know at what point he should let loose his ground forces and so had his staff casting about for a methodology that would give him a way to measure the success of the air campaign in softening up the Iraqis. You would think that after the years we put into WEI/WUVs and all the various models that J-8 and others used, we would have had a good basis for solving his problem. Well, you’d be wrong. Very wrong. As an illustration, Schwarzkopf claimed after the war that, in the summer of 1990, CENTCOM had gamed out the exact scenario that actually occurred and got the exact same results. Schwarzkopf was channeling his inner Nimitz, but I guarantee you that was impossible. I spent several years in the bowels of the Pentagon gaming the Soviet problem with J-8 using the same model and I can truly say that the model itself was geared toward making it absolutely impossible for the attacker to win. I promise you, there was no possible way that Schwarzkopf’s troops got the results he claimed unless he disregarded the output and simply directed the outcomes, himself.

In any event, in the weeks running up to the ground campaign, he didn’t have anything — much less a full-scale model — that could answer his question. I saw a bunch of Majors and LTCOLs running around like chickens with their heads cut off, without coming to any useful conclusions. We ran through exceptionally complex pseudo-science formulae and we saw some so simplistic, my third-grader grandson could have done better. None of it, however, satisfied Schwarzkopf because no one could agree on an approach. In the end, Schwarzkopf threw up his hands and directed that we simply let him know when the air forces had attritted the Iraqis by 50%, and then he’d send in the ground troops. My job at that moment, was to pretty much figure this out for DIA, and given my possession of the QJM and my hybrid methodology, I felt I could be very confident in making the call that CINCCENT needed. Unfortunately, we were on opposite sides of the impenetrable G2/G3 no-go zone, so they weren’t interested in listening to my opinions.

I knew from my historical studies that 50% attrition was massive overkill and that we could go long before we reached that lofty — and probably unobtainable — goal. What Schwarzkopf didn’t know, and I did, was that the agreements set out to decide who did what to whom did not allow DIA access to the data collected by our tactical recce jets. In other words, DIA was going to have to do all its BDA analysis using less useful means. There was simply no way our guys could see a small hole punched through the top armor of a tank from the means we had at hand. Thus began the great BDA war between CENTCOM and Washington. We knew that we didn’t have the proper resources to do the job right, but were told to get on with it, anyway. On the other hand, CENTCOM had a formula of how many “kills” to award according to the in-flight pilot reports given the type of airframe flown. F-16s were heavily discounted, while A-10s were believed as though their claims were coming down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. I’m a former USAF pilot and I know that the last guy to ask is the one who just came through the gauntlet.

I vividly remember running my final calculations on Friday night before the attack kicked off the next day (Washington time) and being very satisfied that Schwarzkopf could go at any time he wanted. Interestingly enough, none of this had any input into his decision to go. Few people remember it, but Gorbachev was negotiating with Saddam and had successfully convinced him to pull out of Kuwait. The agreement they came up with would give the Iraqis three weeks to pull out. At this point, it had become a major goal to eliminate the Republican Guard and we didn’t want them to pull their head out of the noose, so President Bush turned down the compromise and ordered the ground forces in.

Ok, so here’s the point: Despite all the big talk and incredible claims, when push came to shove, the Army had nothing/NOTHING to use as a basis for planning. Lord knows we threw enough time and money at the problem, but in the end, Schwarzkopf just had to pray that we had enough combat power when our troops rolled across the line. He would have given anything up to half his kingdom for the QJM at that moment. He had a lot of opinions to choose from, but nothing solidly based on history. And frankly, I don’t think the situation has changed in the intervening 30 years. Now that the chips are down, people aren’t likely to care WEI/WUVs were developed by the opinions of various branch influence groups. But a model with an historical basis would be worth its weight in gold.

Glossary:

QJM = Quantified Judgment Model, Trevor Dupuy’s earlier combat model. The TNDM (Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model) is Trevor Dupuy’s update of the QJM.

WEI/WUVs = a weapon scoring system developed by CAA and used by RAND.

This email exchange was part of a discussion of what TDI could be doing, if properly budgeted.