I am a graduate student in public policy, and I have recently been exposed to Col. Dupuy’s work through his book “Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War” which was assigned for one of my courses. I have two questions for TDI:

1) My copy includes a projection exercise applying the attrition formulas to the then impending Gulf War. I was wondering if Col Dupuy ever computed a relative CEV for US forces v. Iraq after the conflict? Was there even enough data to do so?

2) In “Understanding War” Col Dupuy uses a version of the “Attrition” model in examining the Israeli operations in the Bekka Valley on June 8-11 1982. In his calculation of the two sides personnel strength he factors each solider as 1, each tank as 100, and each Israeli fighter as 250. Syrian fighters are rated at 200, as are Syrian air defenses. This illustration provides more info on the weighting of forces in combined arms operations, which “Attrition” seems to lack.

I would like to make use of the forecasting methodology used in “Attrition” in my own future research, unfortunately, as a student I think a subscription to the TNDM is a little out of my reach. Is there any documentation available from TDI that would provide appropriate values for tanks, artillery, armored fighting vehicles, anti-tank weapons, etc. that could be used with the “Attrition” model to generate force strength measures for combined arms units?

Best regards,

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Originally posted by wladwig:
I am a graduate student in public policy...

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Good luck! I always strongly recommend that social science majors get a dual major, computer science and whatever floats their boat.

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I have recently been exposed to Col. Dupuy’s work through his book “Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War” which was assigned for one of my courses.

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I am surprised that this is required reading. What college and what professor?

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I was wondering if Col Dupuy ever computed a relative CEV for US forces v. Iraq after the conflict?

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No, but I suspect is was some number between 4 and 6 (we really don't consider CEVs below 6).

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Was there even enough data to do so?

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There probably is now, as long as you are comfortable with a lot of guestimation for the red side. We have assembled about 20 engagements for the Gulf War for our DLEDB (division-level) and BLODB (battalion-level) data bases, but we've never run them through the TNDM.

Just for your information, the full discussion of his test on the Gulf War was provided in testimony to the House on 12 December 1990 and in his book "If War Comes...How to Defeat Saddam Hussien." published in January 1991.

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Is there any documentation available from TDI that would provide appropriate values for tanks, artillery, armored fighting vehicles, anti-tank weapons, etc. that could be used with the “Attrition” model to generate force strength measures for combined arms units?

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The QJM has been published in the book "Numbers, Predictions and War". The QJM is the predecessor to the TNDM and used OLIs (Operational Lethality Indices) to score the weapon values of each weapon. As such, it serves as a systematically derived set of weighting factors. The TNDM also uses the same OLI system, except we have changed the formula for armor. This is discussed in some depth in earlier threads.

There is also an analysis of the Beka Valley in "Numbers, Predictions and War" using the QJM.

I am in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. Mike O'Hanlon, who is a senior fellow at Brookings, makes use of Attrition as part of his syllabus for "Analytical Techniques in Military Policy." I believe that he teaches at similar course at Columbia that also uses attrition as a text.

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Originally posted by wladwig:
Mike O'Hanlon, who is a senior fellow at Brookings, makes use of Attrition as part of his syllabus for "Analytical Techniques in Military Policy."

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