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.histan wrote: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)
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.histan wrote:measures of effectiveness relate to outcomes and how measures of performance relate to outputs, this mixing of terms offends my professional sensibilities
Your analytical confusion about combat effectiveness is best reflected in this quote:
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.:histan wrote: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.
Maybe you weren't reading the thread very closely, maybe this another instance of:TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑23 Oct 2021 10:06Combat effectiveness isn't even necessarily a measure of winning battles, let alone of winning wars.
...which is fine personal taste; it's just unproductive to interject when insufficiently engaged to track the logic a thread's ideas.histan wrote:I am already getting bored.
Your analogy here is flawed or could at least use greater sophistication.histan wrote: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)
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.
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.histan wrote:So, how it improve things.
1) Stop using an out of date name and call it combat performance
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)
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.histan wrote:2) Define the military activity you are talking about, such as deliberate attack, deliberate, defence, or meeting engagement.
General fitness is the parameter, height the indicator. I've been explicit on this throughout, e.g.:histan wrote:height an indicator of general fitness or of IQ or a parameter in its own right.
-------------------------------------TheMarcksPlan wrote: ↑28 Dec 2020 04:18(2) height deficits are a proxy for nutritional deficits that also impact IQ.
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).histan wrote: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"
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).