Quantitative research on demographic measurables and combat effectiveness?

[TheMarcksPlan]

I thought this thread might have died but here it is again.

I have done some thinking about why I find it somehow unsatisfactory and have decided that it's probably because of what appears to be the misuse of the term effectiveness and the use of output measures (such as casualties)

I love it. We should all do some thinking and not let an over-scrupulous politeness get in the way of substance. Please take my comments in that spirit.

measures of effectiveness relate to outcomes and how measures of performance relate to outputs, this mixing of terms offends my professional sensibilities

At base you're (1) complaining that we're not using your specific jargon and/or (2) you don't understand the concept of combat effectiveness as generally used and as specifically used by me in this thread.

Your analytical confusion about combat effectiveness is best reflected in this quote:

In 1942, General Paget stated that a landing in France with the sole intention of killing lots of Germans would be a waste of time and British resources. A landing that resulted in the diversion of resources from the Russian front might be worth considering but intelligence suggested that any resources so diverted would make no difference to the outcome of military activities in Russia.

Here you fail to distinguish levels of description/activity, specifically the tactical and strategic. Quantitative measures of combat effectiveness, such as TDI's, focus on the tactical. That I'm using the tactical conception of combat effectiveness should be clear from, e.g.:

Combat effectiveness isn't even necessarily a measure of winning battles, let alone of winning wars.

Maybe you weren't reading the thread very closely, maybe this another instance of:

I am already getting bored.

...which is fine personal taste; it's just unproductive to interject when insufficiently engaged to track the logic a thread's ideas.

Inputs > military activity > outputs > outcomes
Psyops. Inputs (men, paper, printing presses, distribution vehicles > military activity (printing and distributing leaflets) > output (number of leaflets distributed, number of people that read a leaflet) > outcome (number of people whose behaviour changes in the desired manner)

Your analogy here is flawed or could at least use greater sophistication.

Unlike the leafletting --> behavior step, tactical casualty effectiveness is partially constitutive of strategic outcomes within the framework of attritional wars. A better analogy would be individual persuasion --> group behavior. Convincing one German to oppose the regime might in that case be an "output" that, successfully aggregated, is substantially constitutive of a strategic "outcome" (e.g. revolution, economic collapse from lower workforce participation). Likewise, tactical attrition is potentially constitutive of winning a strategic war of attrition.

That's not to deny the usefulness of conceptually differentiating the different levels of description, just to correct a superficial assumption that our abstractions (here perfectly distinct domains of analysis) perfectly track real world events.

So, how it improve things.
1) Stop using an out of date name and call it combat performance

As you can probably tell by now, my answer is no for the reasons stated above. I prefer the jargon already used in the field to standard management speak. Your output/outcome distinction adds nothing not already captured and ignores interactions between different levels of description. Conformity with management jargon is not an independent virtue.

A smart management professional should be able to recognize when he's offering substantive, analytical value and when he's merely invoking semantic convention. (though for a smart pro with a dumb client it might make no difference)

2) Define the military activity you are talking about, such as deliberate attack, deliberate, defence, or meeting engagement.

The studies I cited, especially those by TDI, include those distinctions. Read the literature on combat effectiveness, such as TDI reports. Don't make the elementary intellectual error of unthinkingly preferring lower to higher levels of description.

height an indicator of general fitness or of IQ or a parameter in its own right.

General fitness is the parameter, height the indicator. I've been explicit on this throughout, e.g.:

(2) height deficits are a proxy for nutritional deficits that also impact IQ.

-------------------------------------

As a final point on the importance of logistics.
Field Marshal Wavell said - "When amateurs get together they discuss tactics, when professionals get together they discuss logistics"

Anybody who has spent a moment online, regardless of their intellectual sophistication and military knowledge base, knows this aphorism (or one of its other versions).

It's more true today - on places like AHF - that amateurs talk logistics to affect military sophistication. They do so superficially and, when one posts a deeply-sourced discussion of logistics such as here, engagement from the "professionals talk logistics" crowd is miniscule.

It's also true that folks often invoke logistics in any tactically-focused discussion to claim that talking about one thing means ignoring another. That's an obvious intellectual error and one that, I suspect, underlies your entire post (i.e. you assume that because I'm talking about combat effectiveness I'm ignoring strategy or outcomes or whatever).

[TheMarcksPlan]

Counterpoint: Audie Murphy.

Muggsy Bogues is 5'3" so I guess height doesn't matter in basketball.

[stg 44]

Counterpoint: Audie Murphy.

Muggsy Bogues is 5'3" so I guess height doesn't matter in basketball.

Assuming you have some sort of compensatory skills, sure.
So what relatively malnourished country kids might have lacked in 'demographic measurables' they made up for endurance to hardship and ability to function better in nature than city kids. Incidentally the WW2 vets I've spoken with who were in or near the infantry universally said it was the country kids who were able to function best in combat among all US demographics from their experience. They said 'Southerners', but generally they described farm boys or poor country boys who lived off the land during the Depression regardless of what region they were really from.

[TheMarcksPlan]

what relatively malnourished country kids might have lacked in 'demographic measurables' they made up for endurance to hardship and ability to function better in nature than city kids

Yeah I get the reasoning and, viewed in isolation, it makes sense. But where's the evidence?

Note that's the same standard I'm applying to myself: it makes sense that healthier, smarter soldiers have, ceteris paribus and on average, higher TACTICAL combat effectiveness (is anyone doubting that except for the extremes of the IQ curve, btw?). Nonetheless I'm asking myself whether there's evidence and trying to conduct an open discussion about means of adducing evidence.

Returning to city/rural, there's an enormous evidentiary problem for you: US workforce was ~10% agricultural; Soviet was ~60%; Chinese was >90%. So if city/rural is the dominant factor then Soviet/Chinese infantry should have been immensely more combat-effective than American (and than British/German).

Obviously that's not true, hopefully everyone can at least concede the US/China comparison given their relative combat effectiveness against the Imperial Japanese Army.

So now what? IMO you have to admit that city/rural effects can be dominated by socioeconomic factors like nutrition/health/education, (of which height is an imperfect proxy). These are so dominant in the case of comparing rich with poor countries that I see no room for reasonable dispute. The trickier issue to suss out, the one I'm discussing, is when smaller socioeconomic differences exist - as with US vs. UK and Germany.

And I have to emphasize the distinction between intra- and intercountry comparisons.

[Michael Kenny]

Returning to city/rural, there's an enormous evidentiary problem for you: US workforce was ~10% agricultural; Soviet was ~60%; Chinese was >90%. So if city/rural is the dominant factor then Soviet/Chinese infantry should have been immensely more combat-effective than American (and than British/German).

He who makes the rules (generally) makes sure those same rules advantage him. US 'rules' usually end up with the US at the top of whatever is being measured. European rules the same for Europeans. Asian rules advantage Asians. Given the enormous amount of prestige nations invest on their own military there will never be a 'fair fight' over this issue.

[TheMarcksPlan]

Returning to city/rural, there's an enormous evidentiary problem for you: US workforce was ~10% agricultural; Soviet was ~60%; Chinese was >90%. So if city/rural is the dominant factor then Soviet/Chinese infantry should have been immensely more combat-effective than American (and than British/German).

He who makes the rules (generally) makes sure those same rules advantage him. US 'rules' usually end up with the US at the top of whatever is being measured. European rules the same for Europeans. Asian rules advantage Asians. Given the enormous amount of prestige nations invest on their own military there will never be a 'fair fight' over this issue.

No idea what you're on about. Who's making rules about this conversation? Is Putin or Xi gonna drone my house for suggesting lower Soviet/Chinese combat effectiveness in WW2? (I do find it feasible the mods will nuke my account for having suggested lower British combat effectiveness than American but hopefully that temptation can be resisted).

[Michael Kenny]

I do find it feasible the mods will nuke my account.........................

Infamy, infamy, they have all got it in for me.............

[stg 44]

Yeah I get the reasoning and, viewed in isolation, it makes sense. But where's the evidence?

Where is your evidence that higher IQ increases combat effectiveness? AFAIK the studies don't exist either way. Also long as you aren't more than a standard deviation of IQ lower than average you're probably going to fine.

Note that's the same standard I'm applying to myself: it makes sense that healthier, smarter soldiers have, ceteris paribus and on average, higher TACTICAL combat effectiveness (is anyone doubting that except for the extremes of the IQ curve, btw?). Nonetheless I'm asking myself whether there's evidence and trying to conduct an open discussion about means of adducing evidence.

Maybe for SF, but for standard enlist infantry the benefits of higher IQ is probably blunted by the tactical organization/system since in combat it isn't the individual soldier who really matters, but the effectiveness of the unit. So outside leadership roles as long as you have enough IQ to do your job in combat higher individual IQ score probably matters little. The real answer you're seeking is going to be in military studies, not speculating with us on a forum.

Returning to city/rural, there's an enormous evidentiary problem for you: US workforce was ~10% agricultural; Soviet was ~60%; Chinese was >90%. So if city/rural is the dominant factor then Soviet/Chinese infantry should have been immensely more combat-effective than American (and than British/German).

Agricultural doesn't necessarily mean rural. Urbanization rates are more accurate. IIRC it was about 60% in 1940.
You're point though is confounded by things like how much industry and industrial output a nation has, what their military system is, supply, etc. So reducing this to a single variable isn't helpful to finding the answer.

Obviously that's not true, hopefully everyone can at least concede the US/China comparison given their relative combat effectiveness against the Imperial Japanese Army.

Can't really compare because the US and China fought Japan in VERY different situations/terrain/in different numbers and with very different equipment. Much like the US and USSR vs. Germany; could the US military really have done better against Germany in 1941 in similar circumstances? As it was the US never fought Germany near the peak of their effectiveness or on equal terms but for a very limited series of engagements in late 1942 that the US lost.

So now what? IMO you have to admit that city/rural effects can be dominated by socioeconomic factors like nutrition/health/education, (of which height is an imperfect proxy). These are so dominant in the case of comparing rich with poor countries that I see no room for reasonable dispute. The trickier issue to suss out, the one I'm discussing, is when smaller socioeconomic differences exist - as with US vs. UK and Germany.

The problem for your claims are confounding factors, since societies that have larger numbers of impoverished people usually have less production output, logistical support, ammo, training, etc. while the military systems they employ emphasize numbers over tactical finesse.

The differences between the US v UK v Germany come down to things like organization, technology, experience, etc. more than minor factors like nutrition and health. Education though might be a better proxy, but even then that still is wrapped up in all sorts of other factors.

And I have to emphasize the distinction between intra- and intercountry comparisons.

Intra comparisons might be more helpful since it is comparing more like-to-like.

[Yuri]

Counterpoint: Audie Murphy.

Muggsy Bogues is 5'3" so I guess height doesn't matter in basketball.

Assuming you have some sort of compensatory skills, sure.
So what relatively malnourished country kids might have lacked in 'demographic measurables' they made up for endurance to hardship and ability to function better in nature than city kids. Incidentally the WW2 vets I've spoken with who were in or near the infantry universally said it was the country kids who were able to function best in combat among all US demographics from their experience. They said 'Southerners', but generally they described farm boys or poor country boys who lived off the land during the Depression regardless of what region they were really from.

The life of a villager differs from the life of an infantryman in few details, of which only one is essential, namely. If the farmer is killed, the sheriff will open a criminal case and start searching for the killer. On the other hand, if an infantryman is killed, the regimental headquarters will limit itself to sending a notification to relatives about this sad event.

Yes, I was born in a village and led an exclusively rural lifestyle until I was fifteen. In our collective farm there were two cars - "GAZ-51" and "Studebaker" (yes, yes, we had a Lend-Lease Studebaker until 1962) and a herd of horses (about 30). Then I lived for three years in a large city - the capital of the Uzbek SSR, the city of Tashkent (2.5 million inhabitants).
At the age of eighteen, I was drafted into the army and got into the pure infantry, that is, an infantry company - as a senior rifleman. The senior shooter because, in addition to the Kalashnikov assault rifle (more precisely, 7.62 mm AKM-2M), I had to fire from an easel machine gun (more precisely, 7.62 mm SGMB), which was on our armored personnel carrier, and also served as the deputy commander of the department.

I was drafted into the army when I was finishing the first year of the Engineering physics Faculty of the Polytechnic Institute. It was in time for President Nixon's first term and at the height of the Vietnam War, as well as the height of the bloody conflicts on the Soviet-Chinese border. There was a military department at our institute, where young men studied military affairs one day a week, in particular, we studied medium-caliber artillery - 76-152 mm. After five years of study at the institute, after graduation, the young men had to serve in an artillery unit for one month, after which they received the rank of lieutenant - commander of a medium-caliber artillery firing platoon. Therefore, those who studied at the institute were not drafted into the army, respectively, I had the right not to be called up for military service in the army.



However, I was invited by the military commissar of the Kirov district of Tashkent, Colonel Lesich, and asked me very much to give my consent to be called up for service. According to him, soon the US president will pay a visit to the USSR and that, allegedly, Brezhnev and Nixon will sign several agreements, including:

- on the limitation of missile defense;

- about the joint space flight of Soviet and American ships;

and also that one American division and one Soviet division located in Europe will be relocated to the Suez Canal zone. The Soviet division will take up positions on the western (Egyptian) bank, and the American division on the eastern (Israeli) bank of the canal. The smell of another Arab-Israeli war hung in the air, to prevent it, Soviet and American divisions would be placed between Israeli and Egyptian troops. These will be the start of the beginning of a reduction in the level of military confrontation in Europe between the NATO bloc and the Warsaw Pact states. Since Egypt is a Muslim country, the military commissariats of the city of Tashkent received tasks to recruit intelligent (intellectually highly developed) young people into the army (Americans call it with a high IQ level), who are familiar with the way of life of Muslims.

I asked for time to think, thought for two weeks and agreed.
I can add to this that I passed the exams after the end of the first session the best of all in the group.

As a result, the following turned out, US President Richard Nixon visited Moscow when I was already in Czechoslovakia and fully mastered the skills of an infantryman:

The Soviet leaders signed agreements on the limitation of missile defense and on the joint flight of Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts into space (the Soyuz-Apollo program), but not a word was said about the relocation of Soviet and American divisions to the Suez Canal zone.

About a month after Nixon left Moscow, we handed over special uniforms (black overalls and a helmet with a white stripe and the letter "P") and did not remember more about it for two years of service.

By the way, a lot of time later I watched Stanley Kubrick's movie "Full Metal Jacket". If we compare the severity of training in the US Marine Corps and the Soviet regular infantry, then I must tell you directly: according to physical exertion, service in the US army is a rest home. What is similar in my service to the Spielberg film is that after three months of service, one guy shot himself with a machine gun in the heart area, and, just like in the film, it happened in the toilet. But, unlike the movie, our guy was alive, the bullet went through two centimeters from the heart.

As for the behavior of the American sergeant, as it is shown in the film, it is impossible to imagine such behavior in our regiment. At least during my service it was absolutely unacceptable. Thus, from the point of view of physical activity in the Soviet Army were higher, and psychological stress is higher among Americans.

Before the start of the thirty-kilometer march with a full load (that is, 32.5 kg behind our backs), the deputy commander of the regiment for the political part, Lieutenant Colonel Viktorov (a veteran of the Great Patriotic War), said this to us: "If someone dies during the march, then parents will be notified that their son has deserted. Hack on your nose: You have no right to die anywhere except on the battlefield from an enemy bullet. Everything else is desertion."

Of course, I can't judge how much Kubrick's film reflects what really happened.


After two years of service in the army as an infantryman, I continued my studies at the institute and upon graduation received the rank of reserve lieutenant - commander of an artillery platoon.
And at the end of President Carter's first and last term, the leaders of the Soviet Union found nothing better than to send troops into Afghanistan. I was drafted from the reserve and sent to the reserve artillery regiment in Kyzyl-Arvat, Turkmenistan, the Karakum Desert (which means Black Sand). An infantry regiment was deployed next to us. So I have some experience that allows me to draw some conclusions.

I will express my opinion about what qualities an infantryman should have and what kind of IQ an infantryman should have, if he should have such a thing at all, next time.

Now I will only repeat briefly, the work of an infantryman is
hard work on an agricultural farm, equally in an agricultural collective farm /state farm.

[Terry Duncan]

I thought this thread might have died but here it is again.

I have done some thinking about why I find it somehow unsatisfactory and have decided that it's probably because of what appears to be the misuse of the term effectiveness and the use of output measures (such as casualties)

I love it. We should all do some thinking and not let an over-scrupulous politeness get in the way of substance. Please take my comments in that spirit. Please do some more thinking before getting back to me.

measures of effectiveness relate to outcomes and how measures of performance relate to outputs, this mixing of terms offends my professional sensibilities

At base you're (1) complaining that we're not using your specific jargon and/or (2) you don't understand the concept of combat effectiveness as generally used and as specifically used by me in this thread.

Your analytical confusion about combat effectiveness is best reflected in this quote:

In 1942, General Paget stated that a landing in France with the sole intention of killing lots of Germans would be a waste of time and British resources. A landing that resulted in the diversion of resources from the Russian front might be worth considering but intelligence suggested that any resources so diverted would make no difference to the outcome of military activities in Russia.

Here you fail to distinguish levels of description/activity, specifically the tactical and strategic. Quantitative measures of combat effectiveness, such as TDI's, focus on the tactical. That I'm using the tactical conception of combat effectiveness should be clear from, e.g.:

Combat effectiveness isn't even necessarily a measure of winning battles, let alone of winning wars.

Maybe you weren't reading the thread very closely, maybe this another instance of:

I am already getting bored.

...which is fine personal taste; it's just unproductive to interject when insufficiently engaged to track the logic a thread's ideas.

Inputs > military activity > outputs > outcomes
Psyops. Inputs (men, paper, printing presses, distribution vehicles > military activity (printing and distributing leaflets) > output (number of leaflets distributed, number of people that read a leaflet) > outcome (number of people whose behaviour changes in the desired manner)

Your analogy here is flawed or could at least use greater sophistication.

Unlike the leafletting --> behavior step, tactical casualty effectiveness is partially constitutive of strategic outcomes within the framework of attritional wars. A better analogy would be individual persuasion --> group behavior. Convincing one German to oppose the regime might in that case be an "output" that, successfully aggregated, is substantially constitutive of a strategic "outcome" (e.g. revolution, economic collapse from lower workforce participation). Likewise, tactical attrition is potentially constitutive of winning a strategic war of attrition.

That's not to deny the usefulness of conceptually differentiating the different levels of description, just to correct a superficial assumption that our abstractions (here perfectly distinct domains of analysis) perfectly track real world events.

So, how it improve things.
1) Stop using an out of date name and call it combat performance

As you can probably tell by now, my answer is no for the reasons stated above. I prefer the jargon already used in the field to standard management speak. Your output/outcome distinction adds nothing not already captured and ignores interactions between different levels of description. Conformity with management jargon is not an independent virtue.

A smart management professional should be able to recognize when he's offering substantive, analytical value and when he's merely invoking semantic convention. (though for a smart pro with a dumb client it might make no difference)

2) Define the military activity you are talking about, such as deliberate attack, deliberate, defence, or meeting engagement.

The studies I cited, especially those by TDI, include those distinctions. Read the literature on combat effectiveness, such as TDI reports. Don't make the elementary intellectual error of unthinkingly preferring lower to higher levels of description.

height an indicator of general fitness or of IQ or a parameter in its own right.

General fitness is the parameter, height the indicator. I've been explicit on this throughout, e.g.:

(2) height deficits are a proxy for nutritional deficits that also impact IQ.

-------------------------------------

As a final point on the importance of logistics.
Field Marshal Wavell said - "When amateurs get together they discuss tactics, when professionals get together they discuss logistics"

Anybody who has spent a moment online, regardless of their intellectual sophistication and military knowledge base, knows this aphorism (or one of its other versions).

It's more true today - on places like AHF - that amateurs talk logistics to affect military sophistication. They do so superficially and, when one posts a deeply-sourced discussion of logistics such as here, engagement from the "professionals talk logistics" crowd is miniscule.

It's also true that folks often invoke logistics in any tactically-focused discussion to claim that talking about one thing means ignoring another. That's an obvious intellectual error and one that, I suspect, underlies your entire post (i.e. you assume that because I'm talking about combat effectiveness I'm ignoring strategy or outcomes or whatever).

The 'We should all do some thinking and not let an over-scrupulous politeness get in the way of substance' needs to be within the rules of the site and not some whimsical individual decision as to what is appropriate.

viewtopic.php?p=2370747#p2370747

viewtopic.php?p=2370758#p2370758

The moderators would be rather less inclined to 'nuke' your account if you did not talk down to others so constantly. I am sure everyone here knows your profession and your interests, but it would be nice if you at least tried to talk to other members as equals. The site is read by far more people than just those who post here, and certain attitudes create a bad impression.

We can all swap IQ stories and estimates, but overall it means little as it is an indication only of a certain sample group at a specific time.

[TheMarcksPlan]

The real answer you're seeking is going to be in military studies, not speculating with us on a forum.

Pretty clearly yes, if there's any available answer at all.

What I was trying to do here is discuss an analytical approach to frame subsequent research. Sometimes it's helpful to discuss ideas before diving into research.

[stg 44]

The real answer you're seeking is going to be in military studies, not speculating with us on a forum.

Pretty clearly yes, if there's any available answer at all.

What I was trying to do here is discuss an analytical approach to frame subsequent research. Sometimes it's helpful to discuss ideas before diving into research.

Fair enough, but good luck, trying to control for that many variables is going to be tough.

[histan]

Hi Terry

I don't envy you your role as a moderator these days.
There was a time when it was possible to regard these forums as communities of inquiry that worked together to build understanding. People agreed and disagreed politely and the discussion centred on the ideas and concepts under discussion. A kind of Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis process.

These days we seem to be seeing more of a social media approach. This is an idea or concept - it is the truth - if you disagree with it you are wrong and there is no merit in your comments. Plus, if you disagree with an idea that I have put forward you are insulting me and I will counter with insults against you.

Regards

John
PS
I can tolerate being talked down to by someone who has demonstrated that they have a sound knowledge of the subject and only find it difficult when being talked down to by someone who seems to have little or no actual knowledge of the subject matter I am talking about!

[Michael Kenny]

I can tolerate being talked down to by someone who has demonstrated that they have a sound knowledge of the subject and only find it difficult when being talked down to by someone who seems to have little or no actual knowledge of the subject matter I am talking about!

Nailed it.

[Richard Anderson]

I can tolerate being talked down to by someone who has demonstrated that they have a sound knowledge of the subject and only find it difficult when being talked down to by someone who seems to have little or no actual knowledge of the subject matter I am talking about!

Nailed it.

Yep.