Some Recent Contributions to the Lanchester Theory of Combat

Since the original formulation of Lanchester's equations pertaining to the combat of two opposing forces, the theory has been extended, organized and applied by many writers, including R. H. Brown, J. H. Engel, R. N. Snow, and H. K. Weiss. Certain more recent extensions of this theory, which have been developed under Project NUMERICS (Northeastern University Mathematical and Engineering Research in Complex Systems) will be described in this paper. The model considered is limited to only one kind of combat unit on each side, but operational losses, in general different for each of the two sides, are also included. Under these conditions, certain results were obtained in the following problems. (a) the total losses of the victor as a function of varying amounts of forces included, (b) prediction of outcome from initial performance, when the values of the various attrition rates are not known, (c) analog circuits simulating the performance of the model.