War by Numbers

The post-Cold War world appears to be a world of many smaller conflicts. We are no longer facing mutual assured destruction, although both the U.S. and Russia maintain the capability. There is no longer the fear that our civilization will be exterminated in some massive nuclear World War III. That being said, as proven by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States is not immune to attack, and we do have a need to remain engaged with the rest of the world to some degree. Certainly American armed forces will be part of that engagement, and they will be called upon to fight a range of wars, from drone strikes and special operations, to full-scale guerilla wars to conventional operations. In War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat, Christopher A. Lawrence uses quantitative analysis of historical combat to show how much of an impact various factors, such as force rations and human factors, have on conventional warfare. By expanding on the original work by theorists such as Clausewitz and Trevor N. Dupuy, Lawrence's research, based upon the statistics from a large number of cases, reinterates the result that defense is the stronger form of combat. Lawrence uses his vast experience of conventional warfare to assess what work still needs to be done to be prepared for any conflicts in the future such as the value of contribution of combat models, lower levels of combat, and integrating new weapons and technologies. With the current development of ISIS and the threats in Eastern Europe, War by Numbers gives us a timely analysis and understanding of conventional warfare.