Re: [DS2] Defender/Attacker ratios and fixed defenses

--- Allan Goodall <agoodall@att.net> wrote:

> The historically given ratio is 3:1. This is
> outlined rather well in
> _Understanding War: A History and Theory of Combat_
> by Col. Trevor N. Dupuy,
> US Army (ret.). Funny enough, I've been reading
> _Understanding War_ recently.

Side note:  I've always been curious how a former line
officer could get so disconnected from reality.

Remember, he was leading the charge on the 1990 "US
will suffer massive casualties from the Iraqi Army"
front.

At least one of his books has the Israelis getting
decisively defeated by the Syrians and Egyptians. 
Feh.

He has a serious ossifer-style tendency to want to
reduce everything to a simple numerical formula.  If
life were that simple we'd never need to actually
fight.

> Personnel	   Attacker		      Defender
> Strength	    Success	 Outcome       Success
> Ratio 	    Certain	Uncertain      Certain
> ---------	   --------	---------     --------
> 
> Attacker to	      300%	   200% 	150%
> Defender	    or more		       or less
> Strength Ratio

Really?  You want a list of circumstances where that
has not proven true?

Oh, of course, he makes every example fit the above
case by selectively picking his "quality" and
"Variable" multipliers so that they work out neatly.

But then again, he only considers Israelis twice as
effective as Arabs.  Considering that in deliberate
defense 2 Israeli brigades stopped and chewed up 5
Syrian divisions in '73, I don't think his numbers
work out.
 
And he didn't (prior to 1990) consider US troops any
more effective than Iraqi ones.  Operating under the
well-known retiree principle that the military can't
function without their very indispensable self.

John

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