Welcome to PHALANX Online, the electronic complement of the premier quarterly MORS Bulletin.
Before you leave, please enter your comments by clicking on the log out button. In addition to your crosstalk on any of the articles, the Society would like to hear your opinion on current issues. One of these, which was addressed at the last Board of Directors Meeting, is the establishment of local chapters. The Society is considering establishing four local chapters, one at each service academy and one at the Naval Postgraduate School. What do you think about local chapters? Do they have merit and will they add to the focus of Military Operations Research? Or will they detract too much from the National Society? What are the concerns which should be considered either in a change to our by-laws or in the local chapter charters? Thanks for taking the time to make a contribution to MORS today. L2D
If you are a "Subject Matter Expert" in some aspect of C4ISR or conduct C4ISR analysis of military operations, you may want to mark your calendar to attend MORS' next workshop in a long-term series on C4ISR assessment. The meeting, championed by RADM Robert Nutwell, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (C3I), is scheduled for 30 October 30 - 2 November 2000 at the Army War College in Carlisle Pennsylvania.
The MORS membership mailing list is used to notify the membership of important information. Has your email address changed lately? If you did not receive the notice that PHALANX Online was posted, you might want to check with the MORS Office to make sure your address is up to date. You do not have to be a card carrying MORS member to be on the list.
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2000 RIST PRIZE CALL FOR PAPERS |
MORS offers two prizes for best papers — the Barchi Prize and the Rist Prize. The Rist Prize will be awarded to the best paper in military operations research submitted in response to this Call for Papers. The Barchi Prize will be awarded to the best paper from the entire 68th MORS Symposium, including Working Groups, Composite Groups, and Special Sessions.
David Rist Prize: Papers submitted in response to this call will be eligible for consideration for the Rist Prize. The committee will select the prize-winning paper from those submitted and award the prize at the 69th MORSS. If selected, the author(s) will be invited to present the paper at the 69th MORSS and to prepare it for publication in the MORS journal, Military Operations Research. The cash prize is $1000. To be considered, the paper must be:
Please send the original, six copies and an electronic copy.
Richard H. Barchi Prize: Author(s) of those papers selected as the best from their respective Working Group or Composite Group, and those of the Special Sessions at the 68th MORSS will be invited to submit their paper for consideration for the Barchi Prize. The committee will select the prize-winning paper from among those presented, nominated and submitted. The prize will be presented at the 69th MORSS. The cash prize is $1000. To be considered, the paper must be mailed to the MORS office and postmarked no later than 24 November 2000, cannot be more than 10,000 words OR 40 pages (including graphics). Please send the original, six copies and an electronic copy.
Prize Criteria
The criteria for selection for both prizes are valuable guidelines for presentation and/or submission of any MORS paper. To be eligible for either award, a paper must, at a minimum:
Eligible papers are judged according to the following criteria:
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Military operations research contributes effectively to the nation’s security to the degree that it meets the evolving needs of defense and conforms to the highest standards of scientific quality and timeliness. To grant recognition to individual practitioners who have made outstanding contributions to the progress of this advancing profession. The Military Operations Research Society has established the Vance R. Wanner Memorial Award. The Directors of the MORS have selected, for this award in 2000:
Seymour J. Deitchman
Seymour J. Deitchman is one of the nation's most accomplished and well regarded analysts of defense issues. He is renowned for his ability to integrate the multiple dimensions of problems into a form that is readable, understandable, and actionable. In doing so, he exemplifies the highest standards of operations research, which include a passion for clear thinking, creative option development, objective assessment, sound analysis, integrity, and depiction of conclusions in a form that policy makers can use. He has served in private industry, in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Office of the Secretary of Defense, as vice president for programs at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and as a member of US Government and NATO advisory panels. Since 1982 he has served as a member and then as a Consultant and Special Advisor to the Naval Studies Board, National Research Council. During his career, Seymour Deitchman has conducted detailed technical analyses, managed research and development programs, been a corporate research officer, written distinguished books including one "On Being A Superpower: and not knowing what to do about it" published in January 2000, and he has been the synthesizer on many studies.
Dr Seymour Deitchman
Comments on receiving the Vance R. Wanner Award -- 6/20/00
Thank you very much. I must tell you that this award took me completely by surprise. After looking at the list of prior recipients, I must also say that I feel deeply honored to have been added to that list. And I have to add that all the things you heard in the citation couldn't have been done by one individual alone. So I must also express my gratitude to all the colleagues I have worked with through the years for helping in the achievements that led to this honor-- and for those who are here, you all know who you are, and I am happy to be able to thank you personally.
I wondered if it would be appropriate, on receiving this award, to make a few comments pertinent to it. When I asked Bob Sheldon, he said yes, but keep it under 5 minutes. So I'll start by using the classic operations researcher's ploy when faced with an unruly problem, and redefine the problem into something I know I can do -- the 5 minutes starts now!
I thought it would be appropriate to give you four observations that emerged from all that past work, that, increasingly through the years, have seemed to me to be universal in our profession:
1. Never believe a single model. If we or our immediate community built it, it has all our unrecognized biases. To give you an example, I worked on a study in the NATO forum to see what it would take to stop the "canonical" Warsaw Pact attack in the Central Region. The U.S. and the U.K. each did a study with its own model, using the same inputs and parameters. The two studies led to results for force required that differed by an order of magnitude. When we dug into why, we found that the two models were implicitly based on totally different defense doctrines. The U.K. model had used its tanks, which had the new UK armor, as static defenders in hull defilade along all the approach routes, so they were essentially invulnerable; they lost very few tanks while taking a high toll of the attackers. The U.S., however, used its tanks in active defense -- i.e., attacking the attackers -- so their losses were much higher. When we reconciled the models' assumptions the results came into line, but we had learned an important lesson.
2. Things will always take longer than you think. because the bureaucratic world moves incredibly slowly in a democracy. In that same NATO forum we did a study of close air support in which the key issue was penetrating the dense Warsaw Pact air defenses without losing the whole NATO air force. We found that could be done by locating the defenses from standoff and attacking them with standoff weapons. In 1972, when the study was done, we projected that capability for 1980, but when 1980 rolled around there was no sign of the capability in any of the NATO forces. But it was used to good effect, as we all know, 10 years later, in the Gulf War -- for an elapsed time of 18 years to field a capability that was almost in hand at the time of the study. And I could give you many other, more contemporary examples, and I'm sure you can cite some as well.
The last two observations don't even need examples, because the phenomena they describe are so common:
3. Things will always cost more than people expect. because in the heat of "selling" a program they kid themselves into ignoring the cost consequences of the unk-unks -- the unknown unknowns -- that always appear when we are stretching the state of the art -- and what major program doesn't stretch the state of the art?
4. The heat will often be on to get the answers the sponsor wanted. because most of the time those are what started the study in the first place. This will not be news to you, but in all my years in the profession I have found it the single most difficult problem to overcome, and it has been a constantly recurring theme in every Operations Research forum I have participated in.
Well, that's all rather mundane. But perhaps, in a perverse sort of way, it's comforting to know that some things don't go away. The obverse of not going away is that someone, somewhere, is working those problems all the time, and that can only help the profession advance.
Well, I stayed within my 5 minutes -- I think! Again, my most heartfelt thanks for the honor of the Wanner Award and the privilege of addressing you today.
Clayton Thomas Award
Military operations research contributes effectively to the nation's security to the degree that it meets the evolving needs of defense and conforms to the highest standards of scientific quality and timeliness. To grant recognition to individual practitioners who have made consistent, sustained technical contributions to improve the analytical underpinnings of the profession, the Military Operations Research Society has established the Clayton J. Thomas Award. The Directors of the Military Operations Research Society have selected, for this award in 2000:
Alfred George Brandstein
ALfred GEorge BRAndstein, or Algebra, brings more than a clever signature to the practice of military operations research. His accomplishments in studying the MV-22, the creation of Project Albert, and the founding of the field of Operational Synthesis are evidence of his unsurpassed leadership and contributions to the field. But his real hallmarks are a troika of characteristics blended in a way that are legendary, at least within Marine Corps circles. The first is audacity: he strives to answer question others would not even dare to ask. The second is humility: his actions are a testament to the tenet that you can accomplish much if you don’t care who gets the credit. The third needs no example and indeed summarizes the man himself: integrity.
Dr ALfred GEorge
BRAndstein
Comments on receiving the Clayton Thomas Award
When I first heard of this award I was awed especially in light of Clayton’s recent passing. What best expresses my feeling is a paraphrase of a responsive reading you may be familiar with.
If I had had one-forth of his experience,
It would have been sufficient.
If I had had one-tenth of his knowledge,
It would have been sufficient.
If I had had one one-hundredth of his
wisdom,
It would have been sufficient.
Clayton Thomas, I will say Kaddish for you.
MORS 2000 RIST Prize Winners
Why Skill Matters in Combat Outcomes and
How to Include It in Combat Modeling
Michael Fischerkeller, Wade Hinkle and Stephen
Biddle
Institute for Defense Analyses
1801 N. Beauregard St
Alexandria VA 22311
Combat assessment and force balance methodologies will play important roles during the next Quadrennial Defense Review in analyzing the capabilities of postulated forces, in planning scenarios, and in determining the proper balance between readiness and modernization. Research at IDA suggests that the analytic tools currently used for these purposes may substantially undervalue the contributions of military skill and advanced operational concepts. Our work in this area has won two awards: the MORS 1997 Barchi Prize and a 1999 MORSS Medal for Excellence in Operations Research. This project used a combination of statistical analysis of historical data, combat simulation experimentation, and close examination of critical historical cases to develop and initially test a formal set of hypotheses about how technology, skill, and operational concepts interact to produce combat outcomes. This presentation to the MORS community will offer a summary of the research-to-date and a discussion of whether and how the resulting mathematical model ought to be included in QDR-related efforts to improve existing analytic tools.
Mr Walter W. Hollis, FS, Deputy Under Secretary of the Army (Operations Research) and Army Sponsor of MORS, presented the 1999 Dr. Wilbur B. Payne Memorial Award for Excellence in Analysis during the 38th Army Operations Research Symposium held at Fort Lee, VA last October.
Mr Hollis presented the 1999 Individual Award to MAJ Robert Kewley, United States Military Academy, for his work on "Life or Death in a Second: A Bayesian Decision Model for Aggregation of Combat Identification Evidence." MAJ Kewley’s work brought to the award panel reviewers a novel analysis technique to the uncertain firing decision in modern combat. Instead of modeling this decision with descriptive rules of engagement, MAJ Kewley represented the decision as a Bayesian probability problem with a firing threshold. Based upon a request of the Joint Staff J-8, this desktop model is used in quantifying the effects of situational awareness, combat ID equipment and rules of engagement on fratricide and combat effectiveness.
Winners of the 1999 Group Award were Mr Danny Champion, Mr Louis Fatale, and Dr Paul Krause for the Topographic Engineering Center’s work on "Effects of Vegetation on Line-of-Sight (LOS) for Dismounted Infantry Operations." Their work provided both algorithms and data that have been incorporated into CASTFOREM. This new methodology allows the modelers to compute line-of-sight in vegetated areas as a function of vegetation type, distance between sensor and target, posture of target (i.e., prone or standing) and posture of sensor. This provides a more realistic depiction of LOS in vegetation.
The Dr Wilbur B. Payne Memorial Award for Excellence in Analysis is presented each year in two categories: one to acknowledge the best individual analysis done during the past 12 months; and, one to acknowledge the best group analysis during the same period.
Mr Hollis established the Payne Award in 1981 as a way to recognize both individual and group analysis by selecting the best analysis work conducted by Army personnel (military and civilian) during the preceding year. Originally established as the Department of the Army Systems Analysis Award, Dr Wilbur Payne served on several review panels for candidate papers, where he contributed greatly to the criteria still used today to judge papers for the award. Dr Payne was also the first to hold the position of Deputy Under Secretary of the Army (Operations Research), as only one of many distinguished positions in his career as an Army operations analyst. To many he has been referred to as the "founding father of the Army Operations Research analysis community." Following Dr Payne’s death the Secretary of the Army, following a recommendation made by Mr Hollis, approved changing the name of the award to the Dr Wilbur B. Payne Memorial Award for Excellence in Analysis. In suggesting the name change for the award, Mr Hollis stated: "During his career [Dr Payne] played a major role in developing what the Army Analysis community is today. Because of his extensive contributions to the Army, renaming this award in his honor would be a particularly appropriate means of memorializing his accomplishments. An award so named would specially recognize the recipients for the effort and dedication that typify what Dr Payne represented."
The 2000 Wilbur B. Payne Award for Excellence in Analysis Call for Nominations has been released and will be awarded during the 39th AORS scheduled at Fort Lee, VA this October.
This past spring our community lost one of the pioneers of Military Operations Research, Mr Abraham Golub, whose career began at the beginning of World War II and ended over a decade after the end of the Cold War.
Abe Golub got his BA in Mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1941 and shortly thereafter went to work as a Production Engineer for the US Army Ordnance Corps in Washington, D.C. as one of the original inhabitants of the Pentagon even while it was still under construction. He entered active service with the Army in 1943 serving at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland until 1946.
After the war he joined the Civil Service as a mathematician with the Ballistics Team at Aberdeen Proving Ground. He resumed his studies and in 1949 was awarded an MA in Mathematics by the University of Delaware. Afterwards, he continued his graduate studies in mathematics at the George Washington University.
From 1950-1955, a period encompassing all of the Korean War, he served as the Deputy Chief of the Surveillance Branch of the Ballistics Research Laboratories (BRL). During this time he developed statistical sampling techniques for evaluating the reliability of ammunition stockpiles. He then became the Chief of the Artillery Branch of the Weapon Systems Laboratory of the BRL. During this time, his branch established from first principles optimum ammunition fragment size and assisted in the development of casualty criteria for use in weapon effectiveness evaluations.
In the late 1950's, Abe Golub became Chief of the Support Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Weapon Systems Laboratory, where he pioneered cost-effectiveness studies in the Army before they were made fashionable by Mr Robert McNamara — the Secretary of Defense for President Kennedy. Some of the early studies were aimed at evaluating families of tactical nuclear weapons for employment by the Army in the field. He generated methodology for developing weapons as systems, and established criteria for defining weapon characteristics.
In November 1962, he became an Assistant Director of BRL for Weapon Systems Analysis. In this role, he also served as the US representative to the NATO Scientific and Technical Subgroup on Artillery Weapons.
In 1964 the Army created the first high-level Military Operations Research position in the Headquarters, Department of the Army. It was originally designated the Deputy Special Assistant for Operations Research in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management, but in 1966 it was elevated to the Deputy Under Secretary of the Army for Operations Research (DUSA(OR)), a position that continues to this day. Dr Wilbur B. Payne was brought from OSD Systems Analysis to be the first head of the office and within a year he appointed Abe Golub as his Principal Assistant.
Seeing the need for a high-level Military Operations Research position on the Army Staff, Dr Payne persuaded the Chief of Staff to create the position of the Scientific Advisor to the Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development. Abe Golub was selected to be the first such Scientific Advisor and held the position until it was redesignated the Technical Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans (DCSOPS) during the HQDA Reorganization of 1974. This position also continues to this day.
During his years with DUSA(OR) and DCSOPS, Abe Golub was a tireless advocate for the application of quantitative techniques to developing military requirements and to selecting amongst competing alternatives. He was an early advocate of cost effectiveness analysis and the study of families of weapons systems. He initiated the Army's quantitative analyses of wartime munition requirements (which continue to this day) as well as the Army's quantitative analyses of wartime force requirements (which also continues to this day as the Total Army Analysis). He was a firm supporter of the Army's operational testing program and never lost sight of the need to base analysis on real data about real world systems and operations.
Abe Golub retired in 1976 after thirty-five years of Federal Service. During that time he was awarded the Department of the Army Research and Development Award, the Department of the Army Exceptional Civilian Service Award and the highest civilian award of the Department of Defense, the Distinguished Civilian Service Award.
After leaving federal service Abe Golub continued working as a private consultant for both the Government and the private sector. His government clients included the US Army, in which he served two tours on the Army Science Board, the US Navy and the Tennessee Valley Authority. His commercial clients included Honeywell, Chrysler, the Battelle Institute, BDM and SAIC.
There was no Military Operations Research as such in the US Army when Abe Golub began his career. By the time of his retirement from Federal Service there was a flourishing Army analysis community with analysts in influential positions in HQDA, and a robust set of in-house Army analysis and operational activities that continues to this day. All of this owes a great deal to Abe Golub's tireless efforts in the furtherance of quantitative analysis. He was one of the pioneers in our field and we are all in his debt.
On 26 June 2000 the Center for Army Analysis (CAA) dedicated it's conference room to the memory of Colonel James T. Baird who passed away on 22 January 1995 while serving at the US Army Concepts Analysis Agency, now the Center for Army Analysis, as the Deputy Director for Resource and Sustainability Analysis.
James T. Baird was born 21 August 1945 in Toledo, Ohio. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in the Class of 1968 and was commissioned in the infantry. As a Lieutenant he served two years in the Republic of Vietnam earning the Silver Star for heroism in action. As an infantry officer he served with the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, 1/30 Infantry Battalion in Sweinfurt, Germany and commanded 3/27 Infantry Battalion of the 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord, California. He was a graduate of the Command and General Staff College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces.
COL Baird became a member of the Army Operations Research/Systems Analysis Functional Area Specialty upon graduation from the Georgia Institute of Technology with the MS OR degree in 1976. His initial analyst assignment was with Combat Developments at the Infantry School. In subsequent assignments he served as a force structure analyst in the Office of the Technical Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans; as a theater warfare analyst in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; as a regional analyst in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation; and finally with the US Army Concepts Analysis Agency.
The Director of CAA, Mr E. B. Vandiver III, FS, conducted the ceremony that was attended by members of Colonel Baird's family and numerous friends and former colleagues. LTG(Ret.) Harold T. Fields, Jr., Mr Frank A. Tapparo and Dr Robert Sheldon all spoke of their experiences working with Jim Baird. Dr Sheldon presented to Colonel Baird's daughters, Ashley and Alexandra, MORS coins at the conclusion of his remarks. A portrait and plaque were unveiled following the speakers and refreshments were served thereafter.
Colonel Baird was a distinguished American soldier, and accomplished military operations research analyst, and an active member of MORS.
A bit of PHALANX history: PHALANX will celebrate its 35th anniversary with the first edition in 2001. Starting as the MAS Newsletter, the name PHALANX was adapted in the first edition of the second year. Below are extracts which explains the meaning of PHALANX.
A Historical Note on the Phalanx*
John S. Rountzounis
The Spartan phalanx was a solid line of "hoplites" I (infantrymen) marshalled in eight to ten ranks heavily armed with a short sword, large round shields, and long, spears which were not hurled but were used as pikes to thrust with as the line advanced. The exposed right side of each hoplite was protected by the shield of the man next to him and, so long as the phalanx maintained its alignment, it was, to quote Polvbius,"irresistible in face-to-face combat." Indeed, in more than five centuries, the Spartan phalanx was never routed in the field-not even by Alexander or, later, the Romans. Spartan power simply faded away through constant attrition in blood through the centuries. It was based on a psychological concept of purity of blood and race, primarily, and when there were no men to replenish the ranks of the Phalanx the Spartans withdrew behind the Laconian mountains and became farmers, to this day.
The only man who came close to defeating the phalanx was Epaminondas, the Theban. He was a tactician of genius; he was the first historical figure to o-rasp the importance of concentrating superiority of force against a selected point in the enemy's front. In his early youth he had been held hostage in the court of Sparta and knew the Spartans well-too well. He knew, for instance, that they were too conservative to change their traditional tactics which had made Sparta the foremost military power in Hellas since the dawn of the 8th century B.C. Those tactics depended on an advance in parallel order, all spears of the phalanx striking) the enemy's front simultaneously. Epaminondas devised away designed to prevent this and throw the Phalanx into confusion.
In command of the Theban Army, Epaminondas met the Spartans at Leuctra in July, 371 B.C. Instead of drawing up his troops in a line parallel to the Spartan Phalanx he formed them into oblique order to it with his left leading while his right gave way. On his left he massed a deep column of troops which could meet shock by super-shock and used his reserves to loop around the advancing Spartan right wing, driving it onto his center. It was a brilliant maneuver; the Spartans were not routed, but neither were they victorious, and their commander in chief, King Cleombrotus, was killed.
The battle was a draw, with tremendous casualties on either side, but it broke the charm of Spartan prestige: for the first time in over five centuries an army had met the awesome, implacable, mechanical charge of the Spartan Phalanx and had not been defeated; much Spartan blood was shed which could not be replaced; and the many enemies of Sparta took heart. Sparta was never the same after Leuctra and, even though they succeeded in lolling Epaminondas at the battle of Mantinea in 362 B.C., they were never again the major power in Greece.
*John Rountzounis, a friend of mine and a Spartan by birth and by temperament, is an editor for IDA. He noted some inadequacies in the brief historical note about the phalanx that accompanied the first edition of the newsletter published under that name. Our invitation to set the record straight resulted in this more complete, if somewhat partisan, account. -C.S.L.
The lead article for the September printed
edition sets the stage for the upcoming C4ISR Workshop. Cy
Staniec, Stu Starr, FS, and Chuck Taylor
collaborated on the article.
What is Excursionism? In his article
LtCol Kirk Yost, Joint Staff J8, defines it as is the
process of partitioning a study into a set of ineffectual and
frequently conflicting results. Read the article to see how it
applies to Military Operations Research.
Dr James P. Ignizio provides his
insights on US Army Brigade Modernization: The model, solution
and analysis.
Larry Rieger and Emmitt Beeker
collaborate on Achieving Multi-Resolution Modeling Through
Aggregation-Disaggregation.
LCDR Tim Anderson,
USN, reviews Paul Garvey's book, Probability
Methods for Cost Uncertainty Analysis: A Systems Engineering
Perspective, Marcel Dekker, New York
In Veeps Peeps our new Vice President for
Meeting Operations Col Mike McGinnis forges the road ahead
for the upcoming year, which is bound to be a great one for MORS
as we enter the new millennium.
