J.P. Ballanger,
Raytheon Company, JP_Ballenger@res.Raytheon.com
Are you familiar with the
terms, "LFORRAT" and "LHELMRAT?" If not, what do these terms bring to
mind? You might guess that these are
ancient elf or dwarf words taken from the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, however,
you would be incorrect. You might also guess that these are technical vector
control terms used in conjunction with the eradication of vermin, but again,
you would be incorrect. Rather than keep
you guessing, let me solve the mystery.
These are terms taken from the new book, Predicting Combat Effects, authored by my good friend, colleague,
and a past president of MAS, Dr. Dean S. Hartley, III.
Dean's book was published in
2001 by INFORMS as part of the Military Applications Society's Topics in
Operations Research. The book debuted at
the INFORMS national meeting in
In his search for a theory of
combat, Dean's research examined 600 battles in the Land Warfare Database
(LWDB) produced by the United States Army Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA) and
additional data from 200 battles from other sources. The book is an excellent treatise on combat
theory and combat attrition corroborated by actual battlefield data. In the introduction, Dean states,
"War represents a large number of
experimental situations in which external influences are minimized. The participants within each experiment are
relatively strongly focused on common objectives as compared to the
participants in other experimental situations, thus reducing the need to
consider the behavioral impact of extraneous variables, such as the number of
children and the economic status of the participants. Further, when battles, the smallest units of
war, are considered, the conduct of each experiment is confined to certain
modalities of combat. Another way of
saying this is that battles are simple enough and represent, nearly enough,
discrete events that they can be recognized, compared and contrasted. Such examples are lacking in most areas of
human behavior. Thus if any
scientifically verified principles of human behavior may be discovered, those
applying to warfare should be easiest to discover."
Additionally, each copy of Predicting Combat Effects comes with a
CD that contains Dean's data and analysis programs. As Dean states in the appendix,
"The entire set of data used in this research is
included because the significance of the results is so great. The availability of the data will allow
independent confirmation of these results."
Now, I return back to my
original question regarding the terms, "LFORRAT" AND
"LHELMRAT." These terms are
central to Dean's analysis throughout the book, and I leave their meanings for
you to discover as you enjoy reading and studying Dean's book.
Land warfare battles of the
past century have been mostly linear and symmetric. Attrition in such previous conflicts derived
from a sort of "kinetic friction" as two large masses met with the
"larger mass" normally having the advantage. As we begin the 21st Century, land warfare to
date has been mostly nonlinear and asymmetric.
This new complexion of land warfare does not imply that combat attrition
study is an artifact of the past, as some have been inclined to think. Quite the contrary, this new complexion of
land warfare beckons military OR professionals to develop new attrition models
applicable to nonlinear and asymmetric battles. These new models may or may not
be Lanchester theory based. Just as
there is non-Euclidean geometry and non-Newtonian physics, there will most likely be
new non-Lanchestrian attrition models. I
am not aware of any non-Euclidean mathematician who first did not study
Our current focus is on
attriting terrorists. Our battles
against terrorists are more nonlinear than linear, and our enemy poses more
asymmetric threats than symmetric.
Nonetheless, there is attrition.
This new warfare produces casualties just like the old warfare of the
past. Many publicized predictions of
large numbers of