Category War by Numbers

Bibliography on Clausewitz

This bibliography on Carl von Clausewitz, a name that I assume is known to most of our readers, was just brought to my attention. It was assembled by Christopher Bassford, who is not known to me.

Clausewitz Bibliography (English) (clausewitzstudies.org)

A few comments:

He does not list Understanding War by Trevor N. Dupuy. That is kind of big shortfall, especially I think it was the best book of the 90+ that Trevor Dupuy authored or co-authored.
He does not list my War by Numbers, which is built upon Trevor Dupuy’s work and of course, a little of Clausewitz’s.
There are a number of other articles and books by Trevor Dupuy that reference Clausewitz and it applications. Some of these should probably also be picked up, depending on what his standards are for inclusion in his listing.

More Combat Results Tables from War by Numbers

Now, the purpose of War by Numbers was not to create Combat Results Tables (CRT) for wargames. Its real purpose was to test the theoretical ideas of Clausewitz, and more particularly, Trevor N. Dupuy to actual real-world data. Not as case studies, but as statistical compilations that would show what the norms are. Unfortunately, military history is often the study of exceptions, or exceptional events, and what is often lost to the casual reader it what the norms are. Properly developed statistical database will clearly show what the norms are and how frequent or infrequent these exceptions are. People tend to remember the exceptional cases, they tend to forget the norms, if they even knew what they were to start with.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 of War by Numbers is primarily focused on measuring human factors (which some people in the U.S. DOD analytical community seem to think are unmeasurable, even though we are measuring them). As part of that effort I ended up assemble a set of force ratios tables based upon theater and nationality. The first of these, on page 10, was in my previous blog post. Here are a few others, from page 11 of War by Numbers.

Germans attacking Soviets (Battles of Kharkov and Kursk), 1943

Force Ratio Result Percent Failure Number of cases

0.63 to 1.06-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 20% 5

1.18 to 1.87-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 6% 17

1.91-to-1.00 and higher Attacker Advances 0% 21

Soviets attacking Germans (Battles of Kharkov and Kursk), 1943

Force Ratio Result Percent Failure Number of cases

0.40 to 1.05-to-1 Attack usually fails 70% 10

1.20 to 1.65-to-1.00 Attack often fails 50% 11

1.91 to 2.89-to-1.00 Attack sometimes fails 44% 9

Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) Data, U.S. attacking Japanese, 1945

Force Ratio Result Percent Failure Number of cases

1.40 to 2.89-to-1.00 Attack succeeds 0% 20

2.92 to 3.89-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 21% 14

4.35-to-1.00 and higher Attack usually succeeds 4% 26

Force Ratios and CRTs

Page 10 for War by Numbers includes the following table:

European Theater of Operations (ETO) Data, 1944

Force Ratio Result Percent Failure Number of cases

0.55 to 1.01-to-1.00 Attack Fails 100% 5

1.15 to 1.88-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 21% 48

1.95 to 2.56-to-1.00 Attack usually succeeds 10% 21

2.71-to-1.00 and higher Attacker Advances 0% 42

Many commercial wargames have something called a CRT or Combat Results Table. It is based upon force ratios. For example, this was one of the earliest CRTs used on Avalon Hill Games in the 1960s.

As can been seen from this Combat Results Table, at 1-to-1 the chances of an attack winning is one-in-three. At 2-to-1 odds the chances of the attacker winning is either the same as the defender winning or is a two-thirds chance of winning. At 3-to-1 odds, the attacker will always win.

Now the variable factor is the exchange result, which is defined that the defender removed everyone and the attacker removes as much as the defender. This usually results in an attacker win, if the attack has the right “spare change.” If the attacker was attacking with a single 7 strength unit against a 3 strength defender and they roll and exchange, then both units are eliminated.

Compare that to the table from my book based upon 116 division-level engagements from the European Theater of Operations (1944-145).

Needless to say, some elements of my book War by Numbers are of interest to the commercial wargaming community.

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:

The language in the first couple of paragraphs is also pretty provocative.
The discussion then goes to Liddell Hart.
The discussion then goes to Trevor Dupuy and Martin Van Creveld.
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.”
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.”
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.

TDI and the TNDM

Christopher A. Lawrence
October 19, 2020

The Dupuy Institute does occasionally make use of a combat model developed by Trevor Dupuy called the Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model (TNDM). That model is a development of his older model the Quantified Judgment Model (QJM).

There is an impression, because the QJM is widely known, that the TNDM is heavily involved in our work. In fact, over 90% of our work has not involved the TNDM. Here a list of major projects/publications that we done since 1993.

Based upon TNDM:

Artillery Suppression Study – study never completed (1993-1995)

Air Model Historical Data feasibility study (1995)

Support contract for South African TNDM (1996?)

International TNDM Newsletter (1996-1998, 2009-2010)

TNDM sale to Finland (2002?)

FCS Study – 2 studies (2006)

TNDM sale to Singapore (2009)

Small-Unit Engagement Database (2011)

Addressed the TNDM:

Bosnia Casualty Estimate (1995) – used the TNDM to evaluate one possible scenario

Casualty Estimation Methodologies Study (2005) – was two of the six methodologies tested

Data for Wargames training course (2016)

War by Numbers (2017) – addressed in two chapters out of 20

Did not use the TNDM:

Kursk Data Base (1993-1996)

Landmine Study for JCS (1996)

Combat Mortality Study (1998)

Record Keeping Survey (1998-2000)

Capture Rate Studies – 3 studies (1998-2001)

Other Landmine Studies – 6 studies (2000-2001)

Lighter Weight Armor Study (2001)

Urban Warfare – 3 studies (2002-2004)

Base Realignment studies for PA – 3 studies (2003-2005)

Chinese Doctrine Study (2003)

Situational Awareness Study (2004)

Iraq Casualty Estimate (2004-2005)

The use of chemical warfare in WWI – feasibility study (2005?)

Battle of Britain Data Base (2005)

1969 Sino-Soviet Conflict (2006)

MISS – Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets (2006-2009)

Insurgency Studies – 11 studies/reports (2007-2009)

America’s Modern Wars (2015)

Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (2015)

The Battle of Prokhorovka (2019)

Aces at Kursk (2021)

More War by Numbers (2022?)

Our bread and butter was all the studies that “did not use the TNDM.” Basically the capture rate studies, the urban warfare studies and the insurgencies studies kept us steadily funded for year after year. We would have not been able to maintain TDI on the TNDM. We had one contract in excess of $100K in 1994-95 (the Artillery Suppression study) and our next TNDM related contract that was over $100K was in 2005.

Take a look at: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub3.htm

Battle of Britain Casualty estimation Conventional warfare Insurgency & Counterinsurgency Kursk Data Bases Modeling, Simulation & Wargaming Research & Analysis TNDM War by Numbers

War by Numbers on JSTOR

Christopher A. Lawrence
October 17, 2020

I really have no idea who JSTOR is or what they do, but I stumbled across my book War by Numbers listed on JSTOR along with a quote taken from each chapter. Not sure who picked these quotes or why. I had nothing to do with this. The link is here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1wvwdp8

War by Numbers

The Three TMCI Reports

Christopher A. Lawrence
March 23, 2020

The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI) decided after a decade of existence that maybe the best use of their time was to write some papers and reports. So this they did over the years, all volunteer (unfunded) work done by some of the “graybeards” of the operations research and combat analysis community.

These three reports are provided here and will be available for as long as this blog exists:

First is called Anatomy of a Combat Model and was written in May 1995 by Lawrence J. Low. It was “prepared as part of a long-term contribution to the field.” It is 81 pages.:

Anatomy of a Combat Model (TMCI)

The second paper was from 1997 and is called A Concise Theory of Combat. It was written by Edmund L. DuBois, Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., and Lawrence J. Low “…in collaboration with The Military Conflict Institute.” It is 172 pages.

A Concise Theory of Combat (TMCI)

The third paper was from 2013 and is called A Philosophy of War Its primary authors were Frank Benedict, Rosser Bobbitt, Ted DuBois, Chuck Hawkins, John Honig, Wayne Hughes, John McIver, Roger Mickelson, Clayton Newell, Itzhak Ravid, Russ Vane, Gene Visco and Greg Wilcox. It is 245 pages.

A Philosophy of War (TMCI)

I would also argue that the books Understanding War and Attrition by Trevor Dupuy and my books America’s Modern Wars and War by Numbers are also very much in line with the original mission of TMCI , which Trevor Dupuy co-founded.

Lessons of History Theory War by Numbers

Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness

Niklas Zetterling’s revised and update version of his excellent book Normandy 1944 is being re-issued. According to Amazon.com it will be available January 10, 2020. The link is here: Normandy 1944

It is set up to “look inside” so you can get some idea what is in there. It is of course, not another war story but a two part discussion on “Campaign Analysis” and “German Combat Formations.”

The “look inside” feature did not include an ability to search the text, so I was not able to check the really important stuff, like how many times Trevor Dupuy and I are mentioned in the book. I am graciously acknowledged in the introduction (as is Richard Anderson). Now, I did write an appendix for the original book. Always the gentleman, Niklas did ask my permission to remove it from this edition.

The book does include a discussion of the relative combat efficiency of the German forces compared to British and U.S. units, always a sensitive subject. We have never invested a lot of time in analyzing Normandy. Most of our analysis of this subject is from Italy 1943-44, Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge) 1944-45 and Kharkov and Kursk 1943 (and shown in War by Numbers). So this is a nice independent look at the subject using additional data from a different campaign by a different scholar.

Summation of Human Factors and Force Ratio posts

The following five posts make up our discussion of the impact of Human Factors on Force Ratios.

Force Ratios at Kharkov and Kursk, 1943

Force Ratios in the Arab-Israeli Wars (1956-1973)

Measuring Human Factors based upon Casualty Effectiveness

Measuring Human Factors based on Casualty Effectiveness in Italy 1943-1944

The Performance of Armies in Italy, 1943-44

As a result of a comment by Tom from Cornwall, we ended up adding three posts to this discussion that looked at terrain and amphibious operations and river crossings in Italy:

German attacks in Italy by Terrain (1943-44)

Amphibious and River Crossing attacks in Italy 1943-44

Amphibious and River Crossing Engagements in the Italian Campaign 1943-44

The previous posts on this discussion on force ratios are presented here. These were the posts examining the erroneous interpretation of the three-to-one rule as presented in Army FM 6-0 and other publications:

Summation of Force Ratio Posts

We are going to end this discussion for now. There is some additional data from the European Theater of Operations (ETO) and Ardennes that we have assembled, but it presents a confusing picture. This is discussed in depth in War by Numbers (pages 32-48).

I am assembling these discussions on force ratios and terrain into the opening chapters for a follow-on book to War by Numbers.