in collaboration with

Institute for Joint Warfare Analysis

Naval Postgraduate School

Monterey, California 93943

The Naval Postgraduate School mission is to increase the combat effectiveness of U.S. and Allied armed forces and enhance the security of the USA through advanced education and research programs focused on the technical, analytical, and managerial tools needed to confront defense-related challenges.

The Institute for Joint Warfare Analysis was founded in 1994 with the mission of addressing the problems of the joint defense arena with the academic disciplines resident at NPS. It sponsors a wide-ranging research program, curriculum development focused on joint warfare, and interaction with numerous services and DoD organizations.

Second Printing, October 1998

List of Figures v

List of Tables vi

Preface to the Revised Edition vii

Introduction ix

Definitions xv

Chapter 1 An Overview of the Theory 1

Chapter 2 Axioms of Combat 12

Chapter 3 Military Combat in the Spectrum of Conflict 15

Chapter 4 Missions and Outcomes 23

Chapter 5 Components of Military Combat 28

Chapter 6 Structure of Combat 45

Chapter 7 Dynamics: The Concept of Combat Power 70

Chapter 8 Dynamics: Application of Combat Power 99

Chapter 9 Combat Theory and its Continuing Evolution 140

Biographical Sketches of the Authors 154

Index 155

The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI) is a non-profit, public service organization founded to foster a public understanding of the nature of military conflict to reduce the likelihood and dangers of warfare. TMCI members are a diverse group of professionals who have been involved with combat, wars, conflicts, and national security planning for many years.

TMCI holds that there is a general hierarchy of military conflict. First, there is combat with a direct focus on fighting; the thousands of pages produced by TMCI members over the years are synopsized in A Concise Theory of Combat by three erstwhile members of the institute. The second level relates to campaigns – a set of battles. The third level is war, and TMCI has begun work on A Philosophy of War that describes war in the context of military operations combined with human, economic, political, social, religious, and cultural factors. The overarching level is military conflict that encompasses a general field theory and is geo-strategic in nature.

TMCI’s intent is to describe these enduring phenomena in a universal manner that applies to all times, all geography, and all "nations," recognizing that this term does not apply to early clans, empires, tribes, and so forth that constituted the central political authority at different times in history. Examples from history are used to illustrate the general principles and activities, but this is not a history of combat or war. While historical works aid the understanding of combat and war, they tend to be isolated in time and context from the broader sweep of history and the fundamental "truths" about combat that apply over the ages. Some classics (e.g., Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Clausewitz’s On War) are well known and worth studying, but neither is a philosophy.

TMCI gratefully acknowledges the pioneer efforts of the founders of TMCI. In particular, the work and efforts of two people deserve special recognition. Those are Dr. Donald S. Marshall (COL, AUS, Ret.), President of TMCI, and Trevor Dupuy (COL, USA, Ret.), the inspiration for much of our work. There have been hundreds of contributions by the many members of TMCI in the form of papers, presentations, and suggestions. None of the TMCI products were developed without participation of the active members, including this excellent update of the initial version of A Concise Theory of Combat. BG Ted DuBois, Professor Wayne Hughes, and Mr. Larry Low are to be commended for condensing huge bales of material relevant to combat and concisely synthesizing the analysis, discussions, presentations, and studies of the institute.

TMCI is grateful to the Institute for Joint Combat Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School for their unstinting efforts to help TMCI provide analytic works to foster public understanding.

For further information about TMCI and its work, please contact:

A Concise Theory of Military Combat propounds a structure intended to relate comprehensively and consistently all elements and activities of every form of organized combat. Our goal is a unified description that is rigorous as to definitions, components, and the dynamics of all combat phenomena.

This theory is explanatory, not prescriptive. Its aim is to describe "what everyone knows is true" about combat. Military professionals and others knowledgeable about military affairs will find no parts of the theory that are new. Our objective is to integrate all parts into a unified whole. Our intention is to be scientific in the sense that art and practice must precede the codification of practice into an organized body of knowledge. The reader will find no attempt to say how to fight better and no recipes for victory. This (or any other) theory is practical only to the extent that knowledge of any subject has practical value. After all, one does not fight or even train with a book in hand.

What follows is grounded in the proposition that a theory of combat must be an extension of physical and biological science. When the human factor is excised, the components must behave like physical systems. Our approach is to describe what is added by the presence of human combatants. Definitions and descriptors should link the familiar terms of physical theory to combat theory and vice versa. Here is an example. Combat force, meaning a compulsion imposed on an enemy, has been said by some writers to be an analogy to physical force. The theory presented here asserts that combat force is not an analogy but a real phenomenon. We know it is real because, like physical force, its effects can be observed. But its effects are richer than physical force because they act on humans as well as machines. The force imposed by one side upon the other in a battle has not only physical but also mental and spiritual consequences. We know this because we observe not only casualties but fear and demoralization in soldiers subject to intense fire.

To label the compulsion "force," however, would perpetuate a longstanding problem of the terminology of warfare. This theory reserves the term force to mean an organized body capable of fighting an enemy. Compulsion, says this theory, derives from combat energy. The energy is converted into combat power which in turn produces observable results. The results are the measure of combat power achieved.

The term combat power has itself been used ambiguously to mean both the latent combat energy embodied in a military force and the rate at which the energy is exerted on the battlefield. To make the distinction clear, the theory refers to the latent energy as combat potential and says that combat power occurs only during combat. Thus, in a campaign a commander deals with the development, deployment, and sustainment of his force’s combat potential. Only when the force engages in combat does he transform potential into combat power that is felt by the enemy.

The authors wish to credit the work of The Military Conflict Institute (TMCI) as the basis of this Concise Theory of Combat. For more than a decade TMCI’s objective has been to advance an understanding of organized warfare in all its aspects. TMCI was founded in 1979 by Dr. Donald S. Marshall, General George Blanchard, and the late Trevor Dupuy. From the outset TMCI has guarded its independence from the armed forces and private institutions alike. TMCI is incorporated as a nonprofit organization, international in scope and open to all points of view.

But the roots of this document lie deeper than TMCI. On 27 September 1977, the Office of Naval Research of the Department of Defense sponsored a conference at Leesburg, Virginia, which expressed the need for a theory of combat to guide and undergird models, simulations, and analyses of warfare. Subsequently, a small group of operations analysts held several meetings in 1979 and 1980 at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, at the behest of Professor Michael Sovereign who was then Chairman of the Department of Operations Research. The hope of these gatherings was for a more solid foundation of theory to guide operations analysts in the development of models of combat, including computer simulations and war games. Attendees were operations analysts experienced in quantitative historical study and military operations research, including Herbert Weiss, Lawrence Low, Robert Helmbold, Paul Moose, John Wozencraft, Wayne Hughes, James Taylor and several others from on and off campus.

After the first Working Meeting of TMCI at the Army War College in June 1982, these efforts fused, combining those who emphasized quantitative methods with those who emphasized descriptive methodology. The result is this document, a coalescence of both points of view that can serve as a basis and reference point for combat modeling and as a description of combat for officers who believe that art and practice will be stronger when based on a foundation of theory.

The early meetings of TMCI comprised a diverse set of attendees and presentations. Nineteen working meetings have been recorded and archived by Doctor Marshall, who maintains TMCI’s files and library at his home in Salem, Massachusetts. At the meetings many points of view were represented, discussions were spirited, and cohesion sometimes resulted, but was always ephemeral. A large number of people looked in on TMCI’s meetings. Many who did so made valuable contributions but most were impatient to get to their own favorite issues and fell away after a few sessions, especially since TMCI was unfunded and most attendees bore their own expenses. The corporate Army lost interest when it became apparent that TMCI’s aims would not solve immediate problems confronting decision makers. To the extent that the other Services were aware of the effort at all, they were similarly indifferent toward work that offered no immediate payoff. Nevertheless, the Army War College and Naval Postgraduate School continued generously to provide space for meetings, as did several other organizations, notably SAIC, Institute for Defense Analysis, SRI International, and Center for Naval Analyses.

By the mid-1980s, it was clear that biannual sessions of a few days could not be sufficiently focused, and so two six-week retreats were arranged, at the Naval Postgraduate School and the University of California at Berkeley. Those sessions were attended by a hard core of TMCI working members. By 1990, the essential material was more or less in hand for this theory, but other sections planned to cover practical applications and modeling were far from complete. The larger work seemed still some years off, so the present authors undertook to assemble the document you are reading. Progress was slow because all of the work was volunteer and in large part unfunded.

Meanwhile, the Naval Postgraduate School had established an Institute for Joint Warfare Analysis to foster independent, scholarly, but utilitarian basic military research and defense analysis. A Concise Theory of Combat is one of its first publications.

It is just as well that some twenty years have transpired since the Leesburg Conference. The manifold changes that have occurred since then have provided a breadth of perspective against which to test the robustness of the theory. We have seen:

Over the same 20 years, changes in military operations research have been nearly as extensive. Analysts now lean more heavily on computer simulations that aim to enhance battlefield realism. War games span the possibilities from simple seminar games to computer-assisted games and distributed interactive simulations. Field exercises using instrumented ranges have expanded in territory covered and number of forces in play. Computer-based virtual reality reaches far beyond the realism of early aircraft simulators. The mathematics of chaos, complexity, fractals, self-organizing systems, and other new explanations of phenomena may open other doors to understanding warfare.

Yet the changes in military affairs, in science, and in computer technology have required no substantive changes to the theory. In fact, this theory has anticipated many of them:

In addition, the theory frames other concepts recognized in a general way but seldom incorporated in specific terms by the operating and analytical worlds:

The theory parallels current thought, which treats command as both a function and a process, and carries the notion further by specifying command-control to be the process that transforms combat potential into combat power vectored toward the objective, whether that be enemy forces or another focus specified in the mission statement.

There will be readers who say the theory is neither clear nor concise. Can’t it be reduced to something more easily grasped? Something brief? For the individual who wants an extreme distillation, the six axioms and associated definitions found in Chapter 1 are a minimal expression of the necessary basis for a general theory. How well the axioms will serve by themselves is another question. Newton’s three laws of motion may have been sufficient for several centuries of progress, but scientists and engineers spent lifetimes understanding their implications and applying them usefully. Living-systems theory says that the whole hierarchy of plant and animal life can be described as matter, energy, and information and the transformation of one into another. To apply that theory to living systems in a useful way is something else again.

As for brevity, are you really surprised that a description of combat cannot fit on a one-page executive briefing? War is a highly complicated human endeavor, and combat is its pinnacle. It should be no surprise that a description of combat takes more than a few pages, and that understanding it entails close study.

Finally, the reader should bear three things in mind: first, comprehension comes from grasping the theory all of a piece. If it doesn’t all hang together, then it has failed. Second, if this work has merit, then testing, rework, and extension are to be expected. Third, an understanding of the theory will allow the reader to know combat only in the way a spectator in the stands knows football. To play in a position on the team requires more than understanding the theory.

The ideas of those who contributed in TMCI meetings and retreats are so intermingled through these pages that it is impossible to credit them adequately. It is similarly impossible to acknowledge original sources, or write a bibliography that does not omit significant authors; there are simply too many authors and sources. In military affairs it is hard to say who "discovered" anything. F.W. Lanchester did not invent Lanchester equations (J.V. Chase anticipated him by 13 years). The principle of concentration is discovered by boys on a playground long before they become acquainted with lethal conflict. The principles of war have evolved over centuries. All propositions in military theory come from military practice because, in the most fundamental sense, science follows and conceptualizes art. The pedigrees of most ideas herein are mongrel-like because, as we said at the outset, they are "what everyone knows."

Only the synthesis of the ideas breaks new ground, and here we cannot overstate the role of TMCI, the dedication of its core membership, and the persistence of its co-founder, leader and mentor, Dr. Donald S. Marshall. We must thank those people who were generous in their support, most notably Donald Nielson of SRI International and Peter Purdue and Paul Moose of the Naval Postgraduate School, who helped Low and Hughes abandon themselves to this project, often for weeks at a time. Michael Sovereign contributed liberally over many years both as active participant and in lending research support. We are also grateful to Shirley Hentzel for tough-minded editing; Therese Bilodeau for preparation of text, figures, and index; and Annie Howard who worked magic in combining three nearly obsolete computer formats into one modern language. Danielle Kuska, Martha Wring, and Tracy Snell of the Naval Postgraduate School staff were indispensable in the process of publishing by the Institute for Joint Warfare Analysis.

Lawrence J. Low Edmund L. DuBois Wayne P. Hughes, Jr.

Listed below are definitions of terms as they are used in this document.

Action - an act performed by a single or aggregated element to change the state of one or more other elements, its own state, or both.

Activity - see combat activity.

Agent element - see element.

Attribute - a qualitative or quantitative modifier of a combat element. Attributes are of three kinds:

Available combat potential - the latent capacity of a force to achieve useful results in combat with its existing organization, training, equipment, support, motivation, and leadership.

Chance event - an event that occurs without discernible human intention or cause.

Cognitive element - see element.

Cognitive entropy - the ratio of what is not known about the combat situation to complete knowledge of the combat situation; the measure of unknown relative to knowable, hence a measure of confusion, disorder, and uncertainty in the combat arena.

Combat activity - one or more combat elements each taking an action that impacts one or more other combat elements, themselves, or both, thereby producing a result that changes the attributes of the impacted elements. The term "combat activity" is synonymous with the term "combat process" except that in the process, results are expressed in terms of the primary combat processes rather than in general terms. See also combat process, primary combat process, and element.

Combat arena - the three-dimensional location where combat takes place, including locations remote from the main combat action from which actions are carried out that directly affect combat.

Combat environment - the geophysical space and features of the combat arena.

Combat friction - unproductive energy expended on any wasteful result that occurs in a force when an agent element carries out an action impacting an object element. In the aggregate, combat friction at any time is the summation of wasteful results occurring at that time from many elemental actions at the lowest level of combat.

Combat function - an action taken by one or more elements of either side in combat to achieve an intended result. See primary combat function.

Combat mission - an objective to be achieved or a task to be performed in combat, together with the purpose of achieving the objective or performing the task. The objective or task is stated explicitly, but the purpose is sometimes implied.

Combat outcome - the actual end results that accrue as the final states of all elements of all parties in combat when combat has been concluded.

Combat output - the cumulative results (measured as the new states of elements of both sides and the combat environment) of combat power acting over time on the combat situation. Combat output is the time integral of combat power. At the end of combat, combat output equates to combat outcome.

Combat power - the realized capability of a force at any instant of time to achieve results in combat in furtherance of a particular mission against a specific enemy force in a specific combat environment.

Combat process - one or more combat elements each taking an action that impacts one or more other combat elements, themselves, or both, thereby producing a result that changes the attributes of the impacted elements. Each element taking its action is an "agent element" and each element being impacted is an "object element," including the agent element if it impacts itself. Both the agent elements and the object elements may be from either or both sides in combat and/or from the combat environment. The only difference between the terms "combat process" and "combat activity" is that the results from activity are expressed in general terms, whereas the results of process are expressed in terms of the primary combat processes. See also combat activity, primary combat process, and element.

Combat result - the changed state that occurs in a single or aggregated element from an elemental or aggregated combat activity.

Combat situation - the totality of the states of both sides and of the combat environment at any point of time during combat.

Designed combat potential - the precombat, latent designed capacity of a force to achieve useful results in combat when organized, trained, equipped, supported, and led according to the force design against a design threat. See also available combat potential.

Element - a material or intangible thing of any kind, whether animate or inanimate, that exists in combat and can change the state of another element or itself. The following are subordinate categories of elements:

External context of combat - everything outside the combat arena that has any influence whatsoever, no matter how indirectly, on what is done by either side during combat; this includes all manner of persons, material things, documents, communication sources, political activity, strategic directives, military forces, and the like.

Internal context of combat - the military forces of the two adversarial parties in combat, together with their mental and physical states, and the combat environment.

Military combat - purposeful, controlled violence carried out by direct means of deadly force between opponents, each attempting to carry out a mission, the achievement of which has value to that side and the achievement of which is opposed in some degree by the other side.

Military conflict - an antagonistic state between two or more parties in which military forces and weaponry of each of the parties are used or are available for use and use is intended if needed.

Military force - any body of persons that combines for the purpose of waging or threatening to wage aggressive or defensive military conflict with respect to any other body of persons.

Object element - see element.

Physical element - see element.

Primary combat function - a generic category of like actions taken by elements of either adversary in combat to achieve an intended result. The complete set of primary combat functions is defined to encompass all functions occurring in combat, so that any single combat function will fall under one or another of the primary combat functions.

Primary combat process - combat activity of any kind that produces a common generic result. The complete set of primary combat processes is defined to encompass all combat activity, and thus all combat results, so that any single combat activity will produce results that fit under one or more of the primary combat processes.

Result - see combat result.

State - the condition of existence at a point in time of a single or aggregated element, as determined by its cognitive and physical attributes, including its spatial condition.

Uncertainty - a state of doubt about the combat situation, including the outcome of combat.

Vector - used as a verb: to direct the actions of a force toward a specified mission or goal.

- used as a noun: directed actions that are in accord with a specified mission or goal.