The Lethality of Warfare

[jimmy olsen]

Very interesting. I wonder if the Second Congo War or America's wars of the last decade would have any effect on those graphs?

Gulf War 1 probably caused a spike in the defeated's graph.
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gabrmetz/gabr0022.htm

Dupuy notes that when measured against the nongunpowder weapons of antiquity and the Middle Ages, modern weapons, excluding nuclear weapons of course, have increased in lethality by a factor of 2,000. But while lethality has increased by a factor of 2,000, the dispersion of forces on the battlefield made possible by mechanization and the ability of fewer soldiers to deliver exponentially more firepower has increased by a factor of 4,000! The result, as Figure 1 demonstrates, has been that wars since 1865 have killed fewer soldiers as a percentage of the deployed combat force than was the case in previous wars. Except for the Napoleonic wars which utilized the tactical field formation of the packed marching column, every war since 1600 (Table 1) has resulted in fewer and fewer casualties as a percentage of the committed forces for both the victor and defeated.

[Ideologue]

I dunno, the Germans committed the whole city of Dresden on the night of 2/13/1945, and lost practically all of them.

[Ed Anger]

Somebody discovered Dupuy!

[Razgovory]

Just out of curiosity are we taking in to consideration that in modern warfare more and more soldiers who are deployed take part in non-combat duties or combat duties with significantly less risk then say a line infantry man?  If we were to compare say, a WWII era rifle company to a Civil War era rifle company would we see the same trend over a similar period of time?

[Siege]

There is no way arabs only took 5% cassualties.

[HVC]

you can't really compare this way. in the past basically you sent your whole army(or a large chunk there of) into pitched battle. Now you have many soldiers deployed, but not necissarily attacking all at once.

[The Minsky Moment]

There is no way arabs only took 5% cassualties.

Their armies ran backwards really fast.

[The Brain]

So what's his solution?

[HVC]

So what's his solution?

more nukes

[Syt]

I keep reading the thread title as "The Lethality of Welfare".

[DGuller]

So what's his solution?