The Guns Fall Silent: The End of the Cold War and the Future of Conventional Disarmament by Ian Cuthbertson & Peter M E Volten

Author:Ian Cuthbertson & Peter M E Volten [Cuthbertson, Ian & Volten, Peter M E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781000302103
Google: xkyfDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 51230451
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

Fig. 10—Sensitivity of simulated outcomes to flexibility in strategy and improved command-control

Figure 10 also shows results assuming a modestly improved Blue command-control system. Here we assumed that Blue observes and diagnoses Red's concentration efforts well enough to commit one additional division to the main-thrust corps sector before D-Day. The effects are dramatic. This may at first appear to be an artifact of the model, but a simple back-ofthe-envelope calculation reminds us that in these cases one ED is not a small increment, but rather a large one. It changes the defender's tactical density on D-Day from about one to two EDs per 80 km of geographic frontage (or about 50 km of militarily effective frontage). As discussed earlier in the paper, we should expect a defender to break at the lesser density and to hold at the higher density.

The bottom line in Figure 10 shows the consequences of assuming, in addition to modest counterconcentration, 20 km of prepared defenses at the IGB on D-Day. Here Blue is able to conduct a forward defense successfully by any standards. Many observers would argue that this is the most likely of the cases treated in Figure 10, since one might expect that neither side would be likely to suffer the complete failure of intelligence and command-control implied by the base case.

This deliberately simple analysis suggests that successful defense is quite possible at low force levels and parity, and that even a forward defense is possible in many cases (e.g., if the defender preferentially defends what turns out to be the mainthrust sectors, or if the defender is able to slow the attacker's initial movements long enough to counterconcentrate with ground forces). One the other hand, there are "bad cases," and one conclusion from exploring the low-force-level regime is that while best-estimate cases are probably defense favorable, the variance of results among plausible cases is larger than at higher force levels and parity, as one would expect intuitively.26 Because there are so many instances in history in which a defender with adequate capability and approximate parity has badly deployed his forces and lost quickly, it is important that the defender be capable, on short notice, of adopting a delay-and-withdrawal strategy or conducting other maneuvers.

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