Category Modeling, Simulation & Wargaming

China and Russia Defeats the USA

A couple of recent articles on that latest wargaming effort done by RAND:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/rand_corp_wargames_us_loses_to_combined_russiachina_forces.html

The opening line states: “The RAND Corporation’s annual ‘Red on Blue’ wargame simulation found that the United States would be a loser in a conventional confrontation with Russia and China.”

A few other quotes:

  1. “Blue gets its ass handed to it.”
  2. “…the U.S. forces ‘suffer heavy losses in one scenario after another and still can’t stop Russia or China from overrunning U.S. allies in the Baltics or Taiwan:”

Also see: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/03/article/did-rand-get-it-right-in-its-war-game-exercise/

A few quotes from that article:

  1. “The US and NATO are unable to stop an attack in the Balkans by the Russians,….
  2. “…and the United States and its allies are unable to prevent the takeover of Taiwan by China.

The articles do not state what simulations were used to wargame this. The second article references this RAND study (RAND Report) but my quick perusal of it did not identify what simulations were used. A search on the words “model” and “wargame” produced nothing. The words “simulation” and “gaming” leads to the following:

  1.  “It draws on research, analysis, and gaming that the RAND Corporation has done in recent years, incorporating the efforts of strategists, regional specialists, experts in both conventional and irregular military operations, and those skilled in the use of combat simulation tools.”
  2. “Money, time, and talent must therefore be allocated not only to the development and procurement of new equipment and infrastructure, but also to concept development, gaming and analysis, field experimentation, and exploratory joint force exercises.”

Anyhow, curious as to what wargames they were using (JICM – Joint Integrated Contingency Model?). I was not able to find out with a cursory search.

Face Validation

The phrase “face validation” shows up in our blog post earlier this week on Combat Adjudication. It is a phrase I have heard many times over the decades, sometimes by very established Operation Researchers (OR). So what does it mean?

Well, it is discussed in the Department of the Army Pamphlet 5-11: Verification, Validation and Accreditation of Army Models and Simulations: Pamphlet 5-11

Their first mention of it is on page 34: “SMEs [Subject Matter Experts] or other recognized individuals in the field of inquiry. The process by which experts compare M&S [Modeling and Simulation] structure and M&S output to their estimation of the real world is called face validation, peer review, or independent review.”

On page 35 they go on to state: “RDA [Research, Development, and Acquisition]….The validation method typically chosen for this category of M&S is face validation.”

And on page 36 under Technical Methods: “Face validation. This is the process of determining whether an M&S, on the surface, seems reasonable to personnel who are knowledgeable about the system or phenomena under study. This method applies the knowledge and understanding of experts in the field and is subject to their biases. It can produce a consensus of the community if the number of breadth of experience of the experts represent the key commands and agencies. Face validation is a point of departure to determine courses of action for more comprehensive validation efforts.” [I put the last part in bold]

Page 36: “Functional decomposition (sometimes known as piecewise validation)….When used in conjunction with face validation of the overall M&S results, functional decomposition is extremely useful in reconfirming previous validation of a recently modified portions of the M&S.”

I have not done a survey of all army, air force, navy, marine, coast guard or Department of Defense (DOD) regulations. This one is enough.

So, “face validation” is asking one or more knowledgeable (or more senior) people if the model looks good. I guess it really depends on whose the expert is and to what depth they look into it. I have never seen a “face validation” report (validation reports are also pretty rare).

Who’s “faces” do they use? Are they outside independent people or people inside the organization (or the model designer himself)? I am kind of an expert, yet, I have never been asked. I do happen to be one of the more experienced model validation people out there, having managed or directly created six+ validation databases and having conducted five validation-like exercises. When you consider that most people have not done one, should I be a “face” they contact? Or is this process often just to “sprinkle holy water” on the model and be done?

In the end, I gather for practical purposes the process of face validation is that if a group of people think it is good, then it is good. In my opinion, “face validation” is often just an argument that allows people to explain away or simply dismiss the need for any rigorous analysis of the model. The pamphlet does note that “Face validation is a point of departure to determine courses of action for more comprehensive validation efforts.” How often have we’ve seen the subsequent comprehensive validation effort? Very, very rarely. It appears that “face validation” is the end point.
…
Is this really part of the scientific method?
…

Combat Adjudication

As I stated in a previous post, I am not aware of any other major validation efforts done in the last 25 years other than what we have done. Still, there is one other effort that needs to be mentioned. This is described in a 2017 report: Using Combat Adjudication to Aid in Training for Campaign Planning.pdf

I gather this was work by J-7 of the Joint Staff to develop Joint Training Tools (JTT) using the Combat Adjudication Service (CAS) model. There are a few lines in the report that warm my heart:

  1. “It [JTT] is based on and expanded from Dupuy’s Quantified Judgement Method of Analysis (QJMA) and Tactical Deterministic Model.”
  2. “The CAS design used Dupuy’s data tables in whole or in part (e.g. terrain, weather, water obstacles, and advance rates).”
  3. “Non-combat power variables describing the combat environment and other situational information are listed in Table 1, and are a subset of variables (Dupuy, 1985).”
  4. “The authors would like to acknowledge COL Trevor N. Dupuy for getting Michael Robel interested in combat modeling in 1979.”

Now, there is a section labeled verification and validation. Let me quote from that:

CAS results have been “Face validated” against the following use cases:

    1. The 3:1 rules. The rule of thumb postulating an attacking force must have at least three times the combat power of the defending force to be successful.
    2. 1st (US) Infantry Divison vers 26th (IQ) Infantry Division during Desert Storm
    3. The Battle of 73 Easting: 2nd ACR versus elements of the Iraqi Republican Guards
    4. 3rd (US) Infantry Division’s first five days of combat during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF)

Each engagement is conducted with several different terrain and weather conditions, varying strength percentages and progresses from a ground only engagement to multi-service engagements to test the effect of CASP [Close Air Support] and interdiction on the ground campaign. Several shortcomings have been detected, but thus far ground and CASP match historical results. However, modeling of air interdiction could not be validated.

So, this is a face validation based upon three cases. This is more than what I have seen anyone else do in the last 25 years.

Other Validation Data Bases

There have been (only) three other major historical validations done that I am aware of that we were not involved in. They are 1) the validation of the Atlas model to the France 1940 campaign done in the 1970s, 2) the validation of the Vector model using the Golan Heights campaign of 1973, and 3) the validation of SIMNET/JANUS using 73 Easting Data from the 1991 Gulf War. I am not aware of any other major validation efforts done in the last 25 years other than what we have done (there is one face validation done in 2017 that I will discuss in a later post).

I have never seen a validation report for the ATLAS model and never seen a reference to any of its research or data from the France 1940 campaign. I suspect it does not exist. The validation of Vector was only done for unit movement. They did not validate the attrition or combat functions. These were inserted from the actual battle. The validation was done in-house by Vector, Inc. I have seen the reports from that effort but am not aware of any databases or special research used. See Chapter 18 of War by Numbers for more details and also our newsletter in 1996 on the subject: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/v1n4.pdf

So, I know of only one useful validation database out there that is not created by us. This is the Battle of 73 Easting. It was created under contract and used for validation of the JTLS (Joint Theater-Level Simulation).

But, the Battle of 73 Easting is a strange one-sided affair. First, it was fought in a sandstorm. Visibility was severely limited. Our modern systems allowed us to see the Iraqis. The Iraqis could not see us. Therefore, it is a very one-sided affair where the U.S. had maybe 6 soldiers killed, 19 wounded ant lost one Bradley fighting vehicle. The Iraqi had been 600-1,000 casualties and dozens of tanks lost to combat (and dozens more lost to aerial bombardment in the days and weeks before the battle). According to Wikipedia they lost 160 tanks and 180 armored personnel carriers. It was a shooting gallery. I did have a phone conversation with some of the people who did the veteran interviews for this effort. They said that this fight devolved to the point that the U.S. troops were trying to fire in front of the Iraqi soldiers to encourage them to surrender. Over 1,300 Iraqis were taken prisoner.

This battle is discussed in the Wikipedia article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting

I did get the validation report on this and it is somewhere in our files (although I have not seen it for years). I do remember one significant aspect of the validation effort, which is that while it indeed got the correct result (all the Iraqi’s were destroyed), it did so having the Americans use four times as much ammunition as they did historically. Does this mean that the models attrition calculation was off by a factor of four?

Anyhow, I gather the database and the validation report are available from the U.S. government. Of course, it is a very odd battle and doing a validation to just one odd one-sided battle runs the danger of the “N=1” problem. Probably best to do validations to multiple battles.

A more recent effort (2017) that included some validation effort is discussed in a report called “Using Combat Adjudication to Aid in Training for Campaign Planning.” I will discuss this in a later blog post.

Now, there are a number of other database out there addressing warfare. For example the Correlates of War (COW) databases (see: COW), databases maintained by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (see: SIPRI) and other such efforts. We have never used these but do not think by their nature that they are useful for validating combat models at division, battalion or company level.

Other TDI Data Bases

What we have listed in the previous articles is what we consider the six best databases to use for validation. The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB) was used for a validation effort by CAA (Center for Army Analysis). The Kursk Data Base (KDB) was never used for a validation effort but was used, along with Ardennes, to test Lanchester equations (they failed).

The Use of the Two Campaign Data Bases

The Battle of Britain Data Base to date has not been used for anything that we are aware of. As the program we were supporting was classified, then they may have done some work with it that we are not aware of, but I do not think that is the case.

The Battle of Britain Data Base

Our three battles databases, the division-level data base, the battalion-level data base and the company-level data base, have all be used for validating our own TNDM (Tactical Numerical Deterministic Model). These efforts have been written up in our newsletters (here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub4.htm) and briefly discussed in Chapter 19 of War by Numbers. These are very good databases to use for validation of a combat model or testing a casualty estimation methodology. We have also used them for a number of other studies (Capture Rate, Urban Warfare, Lighter-Weight Armor, Situational Awareness, Casualty Estimation Methodologies, etc.). They are extremely useful tools analyzing the nature of conflict and how it impacts certain aspects. They are, of course, unique to The Dupuy Institute and for obvious business reasons, we do keep them close hold.

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

Battalion and Company Level Data Bases

We do have a number of other database that have not been used as much. There is a list of 793 conflicts from 1898-1998 that we have yet to use for anything (the WACCO – Warfare, Armed Conflict and Contingency Operations database). There is the Campaign Data Base (CaDB) of 196 cases from 1904 to 1991, which was used for the Lighter Weight Armor study. There are three databases that are mostly made of cases from the original Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB) that did not fit into our division-level, battalion-level, and company-level data bases. They are the Large Action Data Base (LADB) of 55 cases from 1912-1973, the Small Action Data Base (SADB) of 5 cases and the Battles Data Base (BaDB) of 243 cases from 1600-1900. We have not used these three database for any studies, although the BaDB is used for analysis in War by Numbers.

Finally, there are three databases on insurgencies, interventions and peacekeeping operations that we have developed. This first was the Modern Contingency Operations Data Base (MCODB) that we developed to use for Bosnia estimate that we did for the Joint Staff in 1995. This is discussed in Appendix II of America’s Modern Wars. It then morphed into the Small Scale Contingency Operations (SSCO) database which we used for the Lighter Weight Army study. We then did the Iraq Casualty Estimate in 2004 and significant part of the SSCO database was then used to create the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets (MISS). This is all discussed in some depth in my book America’s Modern Wars.

None of these, except the Campaign Data Base and the Battles Data Base (1600-1900), are good for use in a model validation effort. The use of the Campaign Data Base should be supplementary to validation by another database, much like we used it in the Lighter Weight Armor study.

Now, there have been three other major historical validation efforts done that we were not involved in. I will discuss their supporting data on my next post on this subject.

Battalion and Company Level Data Bases

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the need and desire to model combat at the division-level has declined. The focus has shifted to lower levels of combat. As such, we have created the Battalion-Level Operations Data Base (BLODB) and the Company-Level Actions Data Base (CLADB).

The challenge for both of these databases is to find actions that have good data for both sides. It is the nature of military organizations that divisions have the staff and record keeping that allows one to model them. These records are often (but not always !!!) preserved. So, it is possible to assemble the data for both sides for an engagement at division level. This is true through at least World War II (up through 1945). After that, getting unit records from both sides is difficult. Usually one or both of the opponents are still keeping their records classified or close hold. This is why we ended up posting on this subject:

The Sad Story Of The Captured Iraqi DESERT STORM Documents

And:

So Why Are Iraqi Records Important?

 

Just to give an example of the difficulty of creating battalion-level engagements, for the southern offensive around Belgorod (Battle of Kursk) from 4-18 July 1943 I was able to created 192 engagements using the unit records for both sides. I have yet to create a single battalion-level engagement from those records. The only detailed description of a battalion-level action offered in the German records are of a mop-up operation done by the 74th Engineer Battalion. We have no idea of who they were facing or what their strength was. We do have strengths at times of various German battalions and we sometimes have strength and losses for some of the Soviet infantry and tank regiments, so it might be possible to work something up with a little estimation, but it certainly can not be done systematically like we have for division-level engagements. As U.S. and British armies (and USMC) tend to have better battalion-level record keeping than most other armies, it is possible to work something up from their records, if you can put together anything on their opponents. So far, our work on battalion-level and company-level combat has been more of a grab-bag and catch-and-catch-can effort that we had done over time.

Our battalion-level data base consists of 127 cases. They cover from 1918 to 1991. It is described here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/blodb.htm The blurry photo at the start of this blog if from that database.

Our company-level data base is more recent. It has not been set up yet as an Access data base. It consists of 98 cases from 1914 to 2000.

The BLODB was used for the battalion-level validation of the TNDM. This is discussed briefly in Chapter 19 of War by Numbers. These engagements are discussed in depth in four issues of  our International TNDM Newsletter (see Vol. 1, Numbers 2, 4, 5, 6 here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/tdipub4.htm )

The CLADB was used for a study done for Boeing on casualty rates compared to unit sizes in combat. This is discussed in depth in Chapter 12: The Nature of Lower Levels of Combat in War by Numbers.

Both databases are in need to expansion. To date, we have not found anyone willing to fund such an effort.

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB)

The Division Level Engagement Data Base (DLEDB) is one of eight data bases that make up our DuWar suite of databases: See http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/dbases.htm This data base, of 752 engagements, is described in depth at: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/dledb.htm

It now consists of 752 engagements from 1904 to 1991. It was originally created in 2000-2001 by us independent of any government contracts (so as to ensure it was corporate proprietary). We then used it as an instrumental part of the our Enemy Prisoner of War studies and then our three Urban Warfare studies.

Below is a list of wars/campaigns the engagements are pulled from:

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905): 3 engagements

Balkan Wars (1912-1913): 1 engagement

World War I (1914-1918): 25 engagements

…East Prussia (1914): 1

…Gallipoli (1915): 2

…Mesopotamia (1915): 2

…1st & 2nd Artois (1915): 7

…Loos (1915): 2

…Somme (1916): 2

…Mesopotamia (1917): 1

…Palestine (1917): 2

…Palestine (1918): 1

…US engagements (1918): 5

World War II (1939-1945): 657 engagements

…Western Front: 295

……France (1940): 2

……North Africa (1941): 5

……Crete (1941): 1

……Tunisia (1943): 5

……Italian Campaign (1943-1944): 141

……France (1944): 61

…,,,Aachen (1944): 23

……Ardennes (1944-1945): 57

…Eastern Front: 267

……Eastern Front (1943-1945): 11

…….Kursk (1943): 192

……Kharkov (1943): 64

…Pacific Campaign: 95

…….Manchuria (1938): 1

…….Malayan Campaign (1941): 1

…….Phillipines (1942): 1

…….Islands (1944-1945): 4

…….Okinawa (1945): 27

…….Manila (1945): 61

Arab-Israeli Wars (1956-1973): 51 engagements

…1956: 2

…1967: 16

…1968: 1

…1973: 32

Gulf War (1991): 15 engagements

 

Now our revised version of the earlier Land Warfare Data Base (LWDB) of 605 engagements had more World War I engagements. But some of these engagements had over a hundred of thousand men on a side and some lasted for months. It was based upon how the battles were defined at the time; but was really not relevant for use in a division-level database. So, we shuffled them off to something called the Large Action Data Base (LADB), were 55 engagements have sat, unused, since then. Some actions in the original LWDB were smaller than division-level. These made up the core of our battalion-level and company-level data bases.

The Italian Campaign Engagements were the original core of this database. An earlier version of the data base has only 76 engagements from Italy in them (around year 2000). We then expanded, corrected and revised them. So the database still has 40 of the original engagements, 22 were revised, and the rest (79) are new.

The original LWDB was used for parts of Trevor Dupuy’s book Understanding War. The DLEDB was a major component of my book War by Numbers.

As can be seen, it is possible to use this database for model development and/or validation. One could start by developing/testing the model to the 141 Italian Campaign engagements, and then further develop it by testing it to the 141 campaigns from France and the Battle of the Bulge. And then, to test the human factors elements of your models (which if you are modeling warfare I would hope you would have), one could then test it to the 267 division-level engagements on the Eastern Front. Then move forward in time with the 51 engagements from the Arab-Israeli Wars and the 15 engagements from the Gulf War. There is not a lack of data available for model development or model testing. It is, of course, a lot of work; and lately it seems that the  industry has been more concerned about making sure their models have good graphics.

Just to beat a dead horse, we remind you of this post that annoyed several people over at TRADOC (the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command):

Wargaming Multi-Domain Battle: The Base Of Sand Problem

Finally, it is possible to examine changes in warfare over time. This is useful to understand it one is looking at changes in warfare in the future. The DLEDB covers 88 years of warfare. We also have the Battles Data Base (BaDB) of 243 battles from 1600-1900. It is described here: http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/data/badb.htm

Next I will describe our battalion-level and company-level databases.

Battles versus Campaigns (for Validation)

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

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

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

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

Validating Attrition

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

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

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

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

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

Reviews of NPW

I was just surfing Amazon.com yesterday and noticed that Trevor Dupuy’s book Numbers, Predictions and Wars had 8 reviews. This is odd as I think the book went out of print before Amazon.com existed. The version they were reviewing was the hardcover from 1979. All the reviews were from 2012-2018, all four and five stars. Interesting. Even I don’t have a copy of the hardback version.

Numbers, Predictions & War

Now, if only people would pay more attention to his greatest work, Understanding War. It only has two reviews.

Understanding War

The Battle of Britain Data Base

The Battle of Britain data base came into existence at the request of OSD PA&E (Office of the Secretary of Defense, Program Analysis and Evaluation). They contacted us. They were working with LMI (Logistics Management Institute, on of a dozen FFRDCs) to develop an air combat model. They felt that the Battle of Britain would be perfect for helping to develop, test and validate their model. The effort was led by a retired Air Force colonel who had the misfortune of spending part of his career in North Vietnam.

The problem with developing any air campaign database is that, unlike the German army, the Luftwaffe actually followed their orders late in the war to destroy their records. I understand from conversations with Trevor Dupuy that Luftwaffe records were stored in a train and had been moved to the German countryside (to get them away from the bombing and/or advancing armies). They then burned all the records there at the rail siding.

So, when HERO (Trevor Dupuy’s Historical Evaluation Research Organization) did their work on the Italian Campaign (which was funded by the Air Force), they had to find records on the German air activity with the Luftwaffe liaison officers of the German armies involved. The same with Kursk, where one of the few air records we had was with the air liaison officer to the German Second Army. This was the army on the tip of the bulge that was simply holding in place during the battle. It was the only source that gave us a daily count of sorties, German losses, etc. Of the eight or so full wings that were involved in the battle from the VIII Air Corps, we had records for one group of He-111s (there were usually three groups to a wing). We did have good records from the Soviet archives. But it hard to assemble a good picture of the German side of the battle with records from only 1/24th of the units involved. So the very limited surviving files of the Luftwaffe air liaison officers was all we had to work with for Italy and Kursk. We did not even have that for the Ardennes. Luckily the German air force simplified things by flying almost no missions until the disastrous Operation Bodenplatte on 1 January 1945. Of course, we had great records from the U.S. and the UK, but….hard to develop a good database without records from both sides. Therefore, one is left with few well-documented air battles anywhere for use in developing, evaluating and validating an air campaign model.

The exception is the Battle of Britain, which has been so well researched, and extensively written about, that it is possible to assemble an accurate and detailed daily account for both sides for every day of the battle. There are also a few surviving records that can be tapped, including the personal kill records of the pilots, the aircraft loss reports of the quartermaster, and the ULTRA reports of intercepted German radio messages. Therefore, we (mostly Richard Anderson) assembled the Battle of Britain data base from British unit records and the surviving records and the extensive secondary sources for the German side. We have already done considerable preliminary research covering 15 August to 19 September 1940 as a result of our work on DACM (Dupuy Air Combat Model)

The Dupuy Air Campaign Model (DACM)

The database covered the period from 8 August to 30 September 1940. It was programmed in Access by Jay Karamales.  From April to July 2004 we did a feasibility study for LMI. We were awarded a contract from OSD PA&E on 1 September to start work on the database. We sent a two-person research team to the British National Archives in Kew Gardens, London. There we examined 249 document files and copied 4,443 pages. The completed database and supporting documentation was delivered to OSD PA&E in August 2005. It was certainly the easiest of our campaign databases to do.

We do not know if OSD PA&E or LMI ever used the data base, but we think not. The database was ordered while they were still working on the model. After we delivered the database to them, we do not know what happened. We suspect the model was never completed and the effort was halted. The database has never been publically available. PA&E became defunct in 2009 and was replaced by CAPE (Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation). We may be the only people who still have (or can find) a copy of this database.

I will provide a more detailed description of this database in a later post.