Tag surprise

A Comment On The Importance Of Reserves In Combat

An German Army A7V near the Somme on March 26, 1918 [forces.net] Operation Michael was the first of a series of German Army offensives on the Western Front in the spring of 1918. In late March, 74 German divisions employing infiltration tactics created a breach in a sector of the line held by the British Army. The Germans advanced up to 40 miles and captured over 75,000 British soldiers, but the ability of the British and French to redeploy reserves via rail halted the offensive in early April short of strategic success.

In response to my previous post on Trevor Dupuy’s verity regarding the importance of depth and reserves for successful defense, a commenter posed the following question: “Is the importance of reserves mainly in its own right, or to mitigate the advantages of attacker surprise?”

The importance of reserves to both attacker and defender is as a hedge against the circumstantial uncertainties of combat. Reserves allow attacking and defending commanders the chance to maintain or regain initiative in response to the outcomes of battle. The side that commits its last reserves before its opponent does concedes the initiative to the enemy, probably irrevocably.

In Trevor Dupuy’s theory of combat, the intrinsic superiority of the defensive posture (as per Clausewitz) is the corollary to the attacker’s inherent advantage in initiative. When combined with the combat multipliers of favorable terrain and prepared positions or fortifications, the combat power of a defending force is greatly enhanced. This permits a defending commander to reap the benefit of economy of force to create reserves. When arrayed in sufficient depth to prevent an attacker from engaging them, reserves grant flexibility of response to the defender. A linear defense or improperly placed reserves concede this benefit to the attacker at the outset, permitting the attacking commander to exploit initiative to mass superior combat power at a decisive point without reserves to interfere.

A defender’s reserves are certainly useful in mitigating attacker surprise, but in Dupuy’s theories and models, surprise is a combat multiplier available to both attacker and defender. As perhaps the most powerful combat multiplier available on the battlefield, surprise in the form of a well-timed counterattack by a defender can devastate an attacking force. Even an unexpected tactical wrinkle by a defender can yield effective surprise.

The Combat Value of Surprise

American soldiers being marched down a road after capture by German troops in the Ardennes, December 1944.
American soldiers being marched down a road after capture by German troops in the Ardennes, December 1944.

[This article was originally posted on 1 December 2016]

In his recent analysis of the role of conventional armored forces in Russian hybrid warfare, U.S. Army Major Amos Fox noted an emphasis on tactical surprise.

Changes to Russian tactics typify the manner in which Russia now employs its ground force. Borrowing from the pages of military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who stated, “It is still more important to remember that almost the only advantage of the attack rests on its initial surprise,” Russia’s contemporary operations embody the characteristic of surprise. Russian operations in Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate a rapid, decentralized attack seeking to temporally dislocate the enemy, triggering the opposing forces’ defeat.

Tactical surprise enabled by electronic, cyber, information and unconventional warfare capabilities, combined with mobile and powerful combined arms brigade tactical groups, and massive and lethal long-range fires provide Russian Army ground forces with formidable combat power.

Trevor Dupuy considered the combat value of surprise to be important enough to cite it as one of his “timeless verities of combat.”

Surprise substantially enhances combat power. Achieving surprise in combat has always been important. It is perhaps more important today than ever. Quantitative analysis of historical combat shows that surprise has increased the combat power of military forces in those engagements in which it was achieved. Surprise has proven to be the greatest of all combat multipliers. It may be the most important of the Principles of War; it is at least as important as Mass and Maneuver.

In addition to acting as combat power multiplier, Dupuy observed that surprise decreases the casualties of a surprising force and increases those of a surprised one. Surprise also enhances advance rates for forces that achieve it.

In his combat models, Dupuy categorized tactical surprise as complete, substantial, and minor; defining the level achieved was a matter of analyst judgement. The combat effects of surprise in battle would last for three days, declining by one-third each day.

He developed two methods for applying the effects of surprise in calculating combat power, each yielding the same general overall influence. In his original Quantified Judgement Model (QJM) detailed in Numbers, Predictions and War: The Use of History to Evaluate and Predict the Outcome of Armed Conflict (1977), factors for surprise were applied to calculations for vulnerability and mobility, which in turn were applied to the calculation of overall combat power. The net value of surprise on combat power ranged from a factor of about 2.24 for complete surprise to 1.10 for minor surprise.

For a simplified version of his combat power calculation detailed in Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War (1990), Dupuy applied a surprise combat multiplier value directly to the calculation of combat power. These figures also ranged between 2.20 for complete surprise and 1.10 for minor surprise.

Dupuy established these values for surprise based on his judgement of the difference between the calculated outcome of combat engagements in his data and theoretical outcomes based on his models. He never validated them back to his data himself. However, TDI President Chris Lawrence recently did conduct substantial tests on TDI’s expanded combat databases in the context of analyzing the combat value of situational awareness. The results are described in detail in his forthcoming book, War By Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat.

Spotted In The New Books Section Of The U.S. Naval Academy Library…

Christopher A. Lawrence, War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2017) 390 pages, $39.95

War by Numbers assesses the nature of conventional warfare through the analysis of historical combat. Christopher A. Lawrence (President and Executive Director of The Dupuy Institute) establishes what we know about conventional combat and why we know it. By demonstrating the impact a variety of factors have on combat he moves such analysis beyond the work of Carl von Clausewitz and into modern data and interpretation.

Using vast data sets, Lawrence examines force ratios, the human factor in case studies from World War II and beyond, the combat value of superior situational awareness, and the effects of dispersion, among other elements. Lawrence challenges existing interpretations of conventional warfare and shows how such combat should be conducted in the future, simultaneously broadening our understanding of what it means to fight wars by the numbers.

The book is available in paperback directly from Potomac Books and in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.

War By Numbers Published

Christopher A. Lawrence, War by Numbers Understanding Conventional Combat (Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2017) 390 pages, $39.95

War by Numbers assesses the nature of conventional warfare through the analysis of historical combat. Christopher A. Lawrence (President and Executive Director of The Dupuy Institute) establishes what we know about conventional combat and why we know it. By demonstrating the impact a variety of factors have on combat he moves such analysis beyond the work of Carl von Clausewitz and into modern data and interpretation.

Using vast data sets, Lawrence examines force ratios, the human factor in case studies from World War II and beyond, the combat value of superior situational awareness, and the effects of dispersion, among other elements. Lawrence challenges existing interpretations of conventional warfare and shows how such combat should be conducted in the future, simultaneously broadening our understanding of what it means to fight wars by the numbers.

The book is available in paperback directly from Potomac Books and in paperback and Kindle from Amazon.