In the foregoing chapters of this document, we have presented a military combat theory. We have defined the role of combat within the spectrum of conflict and then developed a comprehensive description of combat in the form of a metamodel. The development relates combat to broader sociological variables. It ties combat to mission. It addresses the components of combat as elements, attributes, and actions, which combine into activities, and which in turn form the processes of combat. It describes the dynamic nature of combat structure and the complexity of component interactions within the structure. The results of these interactions are described in operational terms such as combat power, friction, surprise and uncertainty.

Nineteen years ago at this writing, in a meeting at Leesburg, Virginia, the need was stressed for stronger scientific underpinnings to ongoing work in warfare modeling and simulation. That meeting and the chain of events that followed have resulted in the present concise theory. While the Leesburg conference focused on modeling at the theater level, the meeting’s proceedings and summary volumes called for theory development more appropriate to a broader context of war in general, and modeling in particular.

Careful, disciplined investigation of the problem over the intervening years has led us to define combat as the kernel of all manner and means of war. In detail and in depth, the description of combat in the concise theory goes well beyond existing modeling. Thus, the theory exposes modeling problems related to the analysis of real warfare that are even more difficult to deal with than anyone suspected at the time of the Leesburg meeting and which remain with us to this day.

There may be other ways of portraying combat in all its complexity. Regardless of the form taken by such alternative views of combat, it is important that they accommodate all observable aspects of its phenomena. Therefore, they should demonstrate some measure of feature-by-feature conformance with the steps identified in the methodology of this document.

Clearly, significant tasks lie ahead if we are eventually to claim useful, "proven" theoretical constructs in keeping with the aspirations of the Leesburg conference and The Military Conflict Institute charter. These tasks can be characterized by their orientation toward theory application, validation, or theory extension, recognizing that these factors are somewhat interdependent. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to discussion of the role each plays in the refinement and evolution of the combat theory.

The purpose of a theory of any complex phenomenon is to gain the most complete and clearest understanding of its processes, while striving to collect and present the information in a structured way. The understanding of a phenomenon as complicated as military combat leads to an ability to identify and measure the results of interactions among its internal workings. Theory maintains a broad, all-encompassing (and hence higher) position on the hierarchical ladder of knowledge, and it is the existence of theory that guides the scientific development of models. There are variables and processes identified in combat theory that defy modeling efforts. The very existence of theory, extending beyond the narrower scope of modeling, provides a clearer picture of how well the problem is understood.

No such comprehensive understanding of combat has existed. From very early days, military theorists such as Sun Tzu, von Clausewitz, Jomini, and Mahan have contributed essays to the large body of knowledge concerning armed conflict. Their efforts created the foundation for combat theory. The present effort attempts to address a part of the problem through application of the scientific method that has the rigor and consistency to afford a more comprehensive view of the entire process. Most particularly, it sheds light on the simultaneity of all combat activities, and the role of combat within the total conflict spectrum.

Combat theory should be of prime importance to several classes of military and civilian users. These would include military practitioners (operational commanders, staffs, planners); training professionals (basic and advanced training, unit training, exercises, special schools); and military thinkers (developers of tactics and doctrine, designers of operational tests, faculties and staffs at military academies, universities and war colleges, military research institutes, developmental activities). Other users should include the civilian defense analysis community (academic institutions, contract researchers, think-tanks, historians, military buffs); and the modeling community (military modelers, civilian modelers, entertainment modelers and game developers).

Several military tasks can be well served by applications of combat theory:

Reliable theory offers advantages that extend well beyond the focus on particular aspects of combat and the ability to quantify. Theory that provides extensive mapping of all of combat’s parts into its whole affords an overview for military commanders, planners, students and historians alike of combat’s unusual structural and dynamic complexity.

When interest centers on processes that are more cognitive, such as command-control, motivation, and information acquisition, the utility of sound theory increases. Such processes are difficult to study and model explicitly, even though they pervade combat. Knowledge of how and where they enter the picture can be useful even when their full effects are not understood. Theory that establishes patterns of influence and dependence among the combat processes would give military thinkers a deeper understanding. As a result, it plays a subliminal but important role in matters of tactics and doctrine, force structuring, and designing field exercises and tests. When attention shifts to actual military operations, combat theory becomes a source of foundational knowledge. In these latter instances, ties between theory and the real world are largely non-explicit and subtle. Nevertheless, the deeper understanding of combat provided by theory can contribute to military thought and practice.

What is of greatest significance for the Leesburg meeting is that its primary recommendation has finally been addressed. A theory of combat has been developed for testing, modification, and improvement through widespread application to military problems, general validation using a variety of schemes, and further extension through research into broader areas of conflict such as campaigns and wars.

In testing combat theory, we must compare key aspects of the theory against evidence from the real world. Our theory comes almost entirely from a distillate of human experience over much of recorded history. However, since World War II, the subject has taken on a more scientific cast that reflects attempts to apply mathematical and computational techniques to the study of combat.

The present theory undertakes the task of describing all facets of combat in their interactive intricacy. Models address the degree of this interactivity over some restricted region of the theory domain. They generally strive to attain a higher level of information but over some narrower band of interest. While our theory is descriptive, a shift to modeling introduces possibilities of predictive investigation. Yet the validation requirements for models with prescriptive and predictive power are far more formidable than those for the descriptive theory we have presented here.

Existing data for theory validation is abundant but is hardly ever in a form that is immediately and directly useful. Generally, we must ferret out the information we need in a process that is both protracted and difficult. There are experiments and exercises that can be performed in direct response to a need for specific data and information, but relatively little of this form of activity has been undertaken to date in keeping with the general lack of attention to anything like combat theory and its validation.

Because combat theory comes from combat experience, validation consists of comparing theory against instances of combat drawn from military literature, history, and experiment. Evidence likely to be useful for theory validation includes:

We find that the natural experiments offer the most prevalent and voluminous material, generally in narrative form as books, journals, articles, and professional papers. These provide data for what might be termed "soft validation," a process that aims to corroborate the universality of our theory’s structural boundaries. Included under such efforts are the following postulated characteristics of theory to be checked:

Additional aspects of theory that may be amenable to soft validation are:

Soft validation might proceed from an extensive sampling of accounts of historical military actions that involve land, sea, air or combined arms combat. The sampling should also extend over time from antiquity to the present and should vary in combat scope from limited to large scale activity. Working with a rich enough set of historical evidence will permit partial corroboration or modification of the theory aspects listed above. To do so will first require that we attempt to trace function and process flows defined by theory through the historical accounts of combat. The entire structure of combat postulated in the theory should be carefully analyzed for satisfactory piece-by-piece fit with historical accounts that have been selected.

When steps in theory development are so basic or abstract as to fall outside the purview of historical narrative, we can make use of "nonfalsification" principles in seeking a form of soft validation. This means that instead of seeking evidence of a match between theory and reality, we content ourselves with an apparent absence of any evidence that such a match does not exist. This is an even softer approach to validation, but at times it may be the only option.

As we take our theory through combat structure (Chapter 6) and into dynamics (Chapters 7 and 8), we close in on the need for hard validation to couple theory to reality. Hard validation will demand models, exercises and experiments. As we push more deeply into the dynamic interactivity of combat variables, qualitative descriptions of the phenomena are no longer adequate. Instead, we are driven to measuring degrees of interaction in some way. This enables us to confirm meaningful theoretical relationships as, for example, between combat power and its sources. Samples of such relationships are hypothesized in Chapter 8 in figures and plots that should be exposed to testing. However, hard validation exercises cannot be based on historical material or essays. Instead, special experiments must be designed and the use of mathematical and computational models explored. Data gathering must be tailored to validation needs in specific yet complex areas of combat theory.

Hard validation will be difficult, and a long, complex, multifaceted effort. It appears that the best chance for success is afforded by iterative, adaptive, self-correcting interplay among the key factors as stated in other combat theories, historical data, military thought, models and experiments, whether exercised sequentially or in parallel. There is a paradox, however. We must use models to help us validate theory, but we must have theory to help us construct proper models. An iterative procedure cycling between better theory and better validation techniques may well provide the interplay for theory evolution. An ultimate aim would be to take theory from its descriptive state through to prescription and prediction while at the same time providing for improvements in modeling. When we consider the combat dynamics of the theory we must start thinking in quantitative terms (hence modeling) in order to couple theory with the evidence of real world behavior.

The attainment of such coupling evades our grasp because of the inability to model all the combat processes that are involved. Military and operations analysts must carefully study the form of recent investigations undertaken in the physical, biological and social sciences that come under umbrella terms such as chaos theory, catastrophe theory, complex adaptive systems, fuzzy logic, neural nets and artificial intelligence. These new arrivals augment earlier investigations, such as those from game theory. At the outset, the adaptation of some of these for the study of military affairs may be as analogies or metaphors. Yet one would hope that when applied to analogous problems, these new scientific tools will provide us with useful descriptions of military phenomena. There is no strong convergence of opinion as to the military applicability of these new techniques, even among the small body of experts in the field. It is quite possible that some or all of the new tools now being investigated may someday provide important advances to the theory of combat. At least these tools may aid in understanding combat through new relationships. For instance, the conclusion of complexity theory that progress and growth are most likely to occur at the boundary between a tightly ordered system and a chaotic, disordered system seems an insight full of meaning for military organization, doctrine and tactics.

Combat exercises and experiments as sources of validation data are generally activities conducted in a mock-warfare environment expressly to train troops, to develop tactics and doctrine, or to learn more about the technical and operational characteristics of combat systems hardware. Precious few experiments have ever been conducted for the purpose of validating models or theories. If validation needs are to be met, they must be piggy-backed onto exercises and experiments designed for other purposes. Since exercises are relatively elaborate undertakings, they would be considered very costly and cumbersome were they to be used only for theory and model validation or accreditation. Since they involve range facilities with special measuring equipment and employ a variety of personnel, sensors, weapons and other military hardware representing both friendly and enemy forces, it is not surprising that experiment reproducibility and control of combat variables would be considered poor for validation. Yet there are recent trends toward the selective conduct of experiments that are designed for, and can be run in parallel with, certain model constructs and abstractions. Such efforts could contribute to validation.

A special class of experimental activity is laboratory and combat experiments designed to measure human performance under battle stress. This form of experimentation is a recent development that will play forces up to division and corps size, as well as joint task forces. It is too early to predict the degree of assistance these efforts will provide in testing combat theory. That they are being planned, however, is an indication of the importance attached to behavioral research in furthering a basic understanding of warfare.

On-going warfare as "the laboratory" is not a new idea. The scientific study of war began during World War II and eventually provided impetus to the establishment of operations research as a formal discipline. The early emphasis was on evaluation of system concepts and tactical hypotheses. Subsequent wars (including Desert Storm) have seen more elaborate and extensive analytical testing during the conduct of military operations. Yet actual warfare presents only fleeting opportunity for scientific observations and collection of data. Combat events are not under the control of the experimenters. Nonetheless, war provides an environment that cannot be surpassed for realism of battle data.

In summarizing the problems of theory validation, it is clear that uncovering data for hard validation will be more difficult than for soft validation. This condition is partially offset by the time-consuming process of sifting through mountains of soft data to find the right kind in the right form. Hard validation will become increasingly important as we become more concerned with measurement of cause and effect relationships. An adaptive procedure iteratively testing theory against varied sources of soft historical and hard experimental data appears to offer the most promising approach to theory validation. With little doubt, the road to validation will be long and difficult.

We believe that the concise theory of combat presented in this document satisfies the most urgent requirements. Beyond providing a comprehensive picture of combat, the present theory affords the means to examine both operations and analytical techniques as to their adequacy.

We recognize that there appears to be heavy emphasis on land warfare in the discussion and examples presented in this document. This is predicated on the belief that the complexity of land warfare exceeds that of other warfare domains and therefore warrants closer attention. While applicability of the theory to these other domains should not be in doubt, it nevertheless is fitting to look more closely into sea and air combat and to confirm their conformance to the theory as presented.

What has been presented in this document is only a beginning. Much remains to be done to broaden the present work by extending its scope throughout the conflict spectrum and furthering its depth of penetration into cause and effect relationships. Meanwhile work continues at The Military Conflict Institute on other forms of military conflict and we anticipate additional discussion from Institute members and from the public at large in response to this document. The theory of combat will evolve. At its best, this is only one step in a protracted process.