The Dynamics of Complex Conflict

摘要

During the Cold War (1945-1991) a key question was for how long an attack by the Soviet Union could be held, providing time for the political process to re-engage; thereby avoiding further escalation. To advise on this question, mathematical simulation modelling of a war in Central Europe between NATO and the Soviet Union was undertaken. This represented at its core the grinding process of attrition in which large blocks of armoured ground units interacted in order to force defeat by a process of wearing away the other. By making a number of reasonable assumptions it is possible to represent this process as a set of linked first-order diiferential equations. The systematic use of this approach was initiated by F.W. Lanchester and they are thus known as Lanchester equations. The following are a minimal set of assumptions which capture our core dynamic.