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Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle

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According to Stephen Biddle force employment or the use of combined arms is the secret to military success not superior technology or overwhelming numbers. The first example that Biddle uses is the opening German offensive in 1918 against the British in which they succeded intially against the English army due to effective coordination of artillery and infantry. The second case that Biddle brings up is the British operation Goodwood against the Germans in 1944. The British failed, according to Biddle, due to the lack of cooperation between infantry and armor.Also Biddle dispels the myth that technology alone won Desert Storm because the Marines,equipped with only sixties era tanks, were able to defeat the Iraqis with superior tactics. The only weakness of Biddle's book is that he leaves out the two cases in which opponents with superior nummers defeated a force with effective force employment methods which is the defeat of the Germans to the Russians in the summer of 1944, and the rout of the Americans from North Korea by the Chinese in the winter of 1950. Otherwise, Biddle writes an effective case that force employment and not technology is the most important factor in military victory.

Stephen Biddle, a Professor at the US Army War College, has produced an important book on modern warfare. He shows how material forces, numbers and technology, only count if used in the modern system. Force deployment shapes the role of material forces. He analyses full data-sets of modern battles, proving that bigger is not always better.

The increasing lethality of firepower means that since 1914 exposed mass movement is suicidal. Only the modern system of using combined arms, cover and concealment enables the attackers' forces to survive the defence's response.

Biddle looks at three significant battles, firstly, the successful German attack of March 1918. For preponderance theorists, the Allies should have stopped this attack dead. The German/British force-to-force ratio was 1.5/1, among the least favourable of any major attack of the war. The British had a few more tanks, but the main weapons were still the infantry and guns of 1915-18, a defence-dominant technology. The British official history blamed the fog, as if there had been no fog until then.

The Germans won an unprecedented breakthrough, advancing 40 miles across a 50-mile front. The Germans implemented the modern system tactically and to some extent operationally; the British didn't. This broke the great stalemate, not new technology, US intervention or exhaustion.

Biddle's second example, Operation Goodwood in July 1944, was the failed Allied effort to break out of the Normandy beachhead. The British had more troops and weapons: 1,277 tanks, 4,500 aircraft and 118,000 troops against 319 tanks, several hundred aircraft and 29,000 troops. If preponderance theorists were right, the British would have won, but they tried an exposed mass tank charge, unsupported by infantry or suppressive artillery.

Biddle's third example is Operation Desert Storm of 1991, which US forces won with an unprecedentedly low loss rate. US forces used the modern system, the Iraqis did not. The superior US air technology did not eliminate the Iraqi resistance: 2,000 tanks still fought back after the air assault. US troops with or without advanced ground technology, and those fighting local engagements at better or worse odds, won equally convincingly.

This is an exceptional work of real empirical science. Steve Biddle has a hypothesis that "force employment" is a more important determinant of military success than either technology or preponderance of military forces. He subjects this hypothesis to a wide range of analytical and empirical tests, and the evidence in support of his argument is compelling. And the author has the foresight to raise many of the issues that occur to a skeptical reader, and to treat them with reasoned analysis and data. His prose is clear, and this is compelling reading even to one who is not an expert in this field.

Prof Terry Tucker, Senior Doctrine Developer, Saudi Arabian NG Modernization Program;

The author presents a balanced, provocative and well presented case for how victory or defeat occurs in battle. This book is designed for both the tecnical numbers kind of person and also the less technical. The chapters can be read as a stand alone or you can also go through the entire book. Either way it has immense value.

The thesis of this book is that force employment, or the doctrine and tactics by which forces are used in combat is centrally important. This book is great reading, is controversial in its presentation but clearly provides both empirical and quantitative analysis to support his position. THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ.

I'll begin by saying that this is an excellent book and highly recommended to anyone interested in the field. Well written and great to read even for a non-military reader.

Unfortunately, the case studies and battles are not really described, and if you were not already familiar with the battles before (as I was not in 2 of 3), the analyses will not help to gain any real understanding.

Second, the model presented is an excellent tool for "post mortem" analyses. However, since according to the model, the major factor that will decide the outcome of the battle is force emplacement, and since it cannot be known in advance what will the force emplacement be (neither for friendly nor for enemy forces), the model cannot really be used to predict outcomes of future battles. I see this as a major problem with the model.

Stephen Biddle attempts to make the case that force employment methods and associated human skills are a more important determinant of military success than high technology. Of course, this argument runs contrary to most thinking in the US military establishment, where a techno-centric viewpoint reigns supreme. As a 30-year participant in the military systems development process in a number of capacities, I happen to agree with most aspects of Biddle's argument. However, I don't think that reading his book necessarily would have made me a believer. Also, I think his argument is more applicable to ground warfare than to sea or air operations. The argument presented in Biddle's book is actually an expanded version of a similar position advanced in a Military Operations Research paper he co-authored in 2002 titled, The Interaction of Skill and Technology in Combat. For people interested in this subject and how future military capabilities should be structured, Biddle's book is well worth the read. However, making any headway against the conventional wisdom with respect to military concepts or the big bucks involved in weapons procurement is likely to be an uphill slog.

A rare work on force employment that is theoretically and empirically rigorous and doesn't just deduce from ancient strategic philosophers. Biddle questions why some militaries are dramatically better than others: in modern war, weapons are dramatically more lethal and militaries must learn to disperse and hide but concentrate and strike quickly when needed. They need strong organizational skills and weapon operation skills - put together superior technologies and superior skills and you get synergistic effects that dramatically jump one military's skills over another's. Few militaries manage it; when they do, history sees amazingly one-sided victories, such as the coalition against Iraq in 1991, or victories against the material balance, such as Germany's victories against the superior alliance in WW2. His theory still has not been surpassed and his combination of case studies and large datasets still is the best method out there, although unfortunately it has not yet set a standard for the thousands of fuzzy military philosophizers out there.