Some simple victory-prediction conditions for lanchester-type combat between two homogeneous forces with supporting fires

This paper develops new “simple” victory-prediction conditions for a linear Lanchester-type model of combat between two homogeneous forces with superimposed effects of supporting fires not subject to attrition. These simple victory-prediction conditions involve only the initial conditions of battle and certain assumptions about the nature of temporal variations in the attrition-rate coefficients. They are developed for a fixed-force-ratio-breakpoint battle by studying the force-ratio equation for the linear combat model. An important consideration is shown to be required for developing such simple victory-prediction conditions: victory is not guaranteed in a fixed-force-ratio-breakpoint battle even when the force ratio is always changing to the advantage of one of the combatants. One must specify additional conditions to hold for the cumulative fire effectivenesses of the primary weapon systems in order to develop correct victory-prediction conditions. The inadequacy of previous victory-prediction results is explained by examining (for the linear combat model without the supporting fires) new “exact” victory-prediction conditions, which show that even the range of possible battle outcomes may be significantly different for variable-coefficient and constant-coefficients models.     

An examination of the effects of the criterion functional on optimal fire-support policies

This paper examines the dependence of the structure of optimal time-sequential fire-support policies on the quantification of military objectives by considering four specific problems, each corresponding to a different quantification of objectives (i.e. criterion functional). We consider the optimal time-sequential allocation of supporting fires during the “approach to contact” of friendly infantry against enemy defensive positions. The combat dynamics are modelled by deterministic Lanchester-type equations of warfare, and the optimal fire-support policy for each one-sided combat optimization problem is developed via optimal control theory. The problems are all nonconvex, and local optima are a particular difficulty in one of them. For the same combat dynamics, the splitting of supporting fires between two enemy forces in any optimal policy (i.e. the optimality of singular subarcs) is shown to depend only on whether the terminal payoff reflects the objective of attaining an “overall” military advantage or a “local” one. Additionally, switching times for changes in the ranking of target priorities are shown to be different (sometimes significantly) when the decision criterion is the difference and the ratio of the military worths (computed according to linear utilities) of total infantry survivors and also the difference and the ratio of the military worths (computed according to linear utilities) of total infantry survivors and also the difference and the ratio of the military worths of the combatants' total infantry losses. Thus, the optimal fire-support policy for this attack scenario is shown to be significantly influenced by the quantification of military objectives.     

Insurgency and Genocide: La Vendée

The struggle between the peasant population of the Vendee and the revolutionary government in Paris during the 1790s was perhaps the first, and certainly one of the earliest, of the modern ideological insurgencies. The conflict demonstrates the fatal weaknesses of a purely popular guerrilla movement deprived of sustained outside assistance. It also brings to the surface some less‐familiar aspects of the French Revolutionary regime. Most notably, that regime, determined to eradicate rather than conciliate the Vendean peasantry, employed methods that foreshadowed the techniques of National Socialism.