Nemo121
Posts: 5821
Joined: 2/6/2004
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Ah, it may be an Irish thing then... It carries hints of British rule with it to my mind. They viewed us as peons so if I called anyone a peon it'd be tantamount to me saying I wanted to fight them. Interesting how the word travels differently.
Canoerebel, thanks for correcting me on what you meant. I utterly misinterpreted what you said. The fault was mine. Now, back to regular programming.
A contemplation on the Lanchester Laws as they relate to logistics and phasing.
Assume that an attacker has 10 divisions requiring 20,000 tons of supply per month to keep in fighting trim. The attacker wishes to subdue two regions, each of which is defended by 4 divisions worth of troops ( taking into account the multiplying effects of defences etc ). For this example we must assume that the two forces involved are "ordinary" and not extraordinary forces ( which, by Soviet definitions, act as force multipliers )
If one devotes less than 4 units to one invasion then one will be deadlocked on the beaches ( or driven back into the sea ). So, the minimum you can devote to a holding invasion is 4 divisions. This leaves 6 divisions to attack the second target ( we'll call this B ). let's assume each "round" of combat takes 1 week and then see where we are.
B: 6 divisions vs 4 divisions = 36 vs 16 ( as per Lanchester Squared Laws ). We'll assume each divisions deals out 1/10th of its combat power in damage per week.
Round 1: 36 vs 16 -> (36-1.6) vs ( 16 - 3.6) = 34.4 vs 12.4 ..... Supplies consumed = 3,000 tons ( 2,000 x 6 divided by 4 )
Round 2: 34.4 vs 12.4 -> (34.4 - 1.24 ) vs (12.4 - 3.44) = 33.2 vs 9 .... Supplies consumed 2866 tons
Round 3: 33.2 vs 9 -> 32.3 vs 5.8.... Supplies consumed 2692 tons.
This continues on for 2 more rounds. resulting in about 31.5 Japanese combat units remaining. This equates to 5.6 divisions. total consumption will fall just a bit short of 14,000 tons and take 5 weeks to conclude.
In the meantime the 4 divisions facing eachother on island B will batter eachother from a combined combat total of 16 to 9. Thus the 4 IJA and 4 Allied divisions will be reduced to 3 IJA and 3 Allied divisions.
When the 5.6 new IJA divisions land the 8.6 IJA divisions will quickly overmatch the 3 Allied divisions as follows:
74 vs 9. Combat should take no more than 10 days to resolve and result in the destruction of all Allied divisions and a further 10% of an IJA divisions.
In total 8 Allied divisions will be destroyed by 10 IJA divisions at a cost of 1.5 IJA divisions over the course of 6.5 weeks. Supply consumption during combat will be about 120,000 tons.
Going 5 vs 4 in each island results in marginally better results with about 1.4 divisions being destroyed but overall combat taking even a little longer ( although mostly in mopping up operations ). One can also expect that damage to infrastructure from two relatively evenly matched foes will be severe. The benefit of going in 5 vs 4 is that since you aren't accepting deadlock somewhere you don't HAVE to transfer in the forces from island A to take Island B and, as such, this sort of overmatch is useful if you expect to conduct a rolling campaign along two disparate axes.
Going in 10 divs vs 4 in island A and then 10 vs 4 in Island B yields the following results....
Island A falls in 10 days, Island B falls in just over 11. Total losses to the IJA in BOTH island campaigns is under 0.25 of a division. Total supplies consumed is barely 60,000 tons AND the infrastructure of Islands A and B are likely to be a LOT less damaged than when the force correlation is less favourable to the attacker.
Also of great importance IF you've got your sums wrong is the fact that by bringing 10 divs you so overmatch the enemy that even if he has 6 units per island they STILL fall easily.
So, the question of force correlation and phasing ( in parallel or in series ) is CRUCIAL to determining the strategic paradigm under which you are going to operate and I think often people wonder why their offensives stall when, by looking at the Lanchester Laws, their axes of advance, their phasing AND the implications of all of the above in terms of logistics they could keep things rolling. They key point is that by overmatching the enemy significantly and thus allowing you to run MORE operations in series in a given unit time than you can run operations in parallel you can actually either:
a) achieve the same objectives in a shorter time and at less cost in terms of supplies or
b) achieve more objectives within the same timeframe and supply cost.
c) or some variation thereof.
I think that when you look at a lot of AARs you can see that these interplays haven't been fully thought through.
I'll give an example of this with maskirovka....
Noumea vs 2nd ACR... By reinforcing a subsidiary axis such that it slightly overmatched the enemy ( a 5 vs 4 situation ) I was able to create a maskirovka in which that very slight overmatch drew more and more enemy forces into action ( since the 5 vs 4 nature of the combat promised a bloody deadlock if only it could be turned into a 5 vs 5 )... Of course I took a tithe of any enemy shipping which attempted to reinforce the island and as soon as a reinforcement landed to make it 5 vs 5 I landed another unit from my ready reserve to turn it into a 6 vs 5.
By not overmatching significantly the tantalising possibility of victory/deadlock was held out until such time as a significant enemy force was committed --- and that enemy committment made MY maskirovka convincing. In short the enemy did my own deception work for me by committing to the area ---- at which time I brought my main force to bear and quickly crushed the enemy base ( it took 3 days from the initial assault to its capture with tens of thousands of captives IIRC ).
So, my maskirovka involved phasing and strict adherence to the Lanchester Laws to create the appropriate force correlations at the appropriate times to both bolster my maskirovka and then deliver the killing blow so that operations against Nz could be commenced quickly. That, IMO, is a reasonable example of the interplay of phasing, Lanchester Laws and maskirovka.
Obviously I'm sure there are better examples out there but that's the best I can come up with right now 
< Message edited by Nemo121 -- 2/16/2009 9:51:05 PM >
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