RFI (Models and math of conflict and war)
I did a conference presentation on my cyber-warfare as a form of low intensity conflict research. Two interesting questions from people were where was the math and where was the model....oops.
What are the proper terms, concepts, key phrases for models of war? Any suggested readings? I'm looking for tactical to strategic models. The Center of Gravity (COG) model is a way of looking at larger conflict. I'm looking for other models of conflict.
It would be nice if they were mathmatical models too.
Interesting comment rather than question was that they hoped I didn't go to far into the weeds with actual discussion in my work. They are looking for operationalized frameworks to disseminate. Urp!
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
The Naval Postgraduate School
might be a good place to start. James Taylor (not THAT one) has done a lot of work on mathematical modeling of conventional war. I don't know if it can be applied to CNA/CND, but it is a place to start. NPS also does a lot of work in M&S, engineering, and sytems analysis so maybe Professor Taylor can point in you in the right direction if his work does not support your. Best of luck.
http://www.nps.navy.mil/orfacpag/resumePages/taylor.htm
"Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
Interesting
I should think that this would be a very interesting project. Possibly the Monte Carlo method would be applicable to certain aspects, but I have not thought clearly enough about it yet to weigh in. The whole issue of modeling sounds interesting, but very problematic in many areas. I would like to know how this proceeds even if I can't give any helpful suggestions at the moment.
You want numbers? We got numbers...
Check these guys out and browse around their site (particularly the Forum and the links). You can probably also Google around on Dupuy. If Dupuy wasn't into anything else, like any good Artillerist, he was into numbers...
The Dupuy Institute.
Models
There is the classic "Correlates of War" Project. There are also the Lancaster equations.
Finally, there is the model Max Manwaring and I have used for small wars. PM me with a snail mail address and I'll send you the original published article.
Cheers
JohnT
Sounds like you're looking for something a little bit more macro in orientation, but the microeconomic model of consumer choice would provide a theoretical model framework and the ability to demonstrate some math. Essentially, you'd present the model as terrorists/insurgents/bad guys as having a choice to consume two goods: cyber-warfare or a composite good which represents all other choices besides cyber-warfare.
Here are two papers that use the consumer choice framework (and one of them is from SWJ Magazine).
http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs...40-sautter.pdf
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~tsandler/substitution2ms.pdf
Another economic angle would be to talk about productivity functions; here's a paper that looks at the productivity of suicide bombers in Israel and finds that you want to assign your smarter terrorists to the more important topics (not a surprising conclusion, but a fascinating one in the sense that you can actually run the empirics to demonstrate this).
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/fac..._NBER_0207.pdf
Best,
Shek
Last edited by Shek; 03-19-2008 at 01:38 AM.
That's what a lot of Taylor's work employs.Originally Posted by John T. Fishel
"Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
There is a few behavioral economics models that look at judgment and decision making in uncertainty. Prospect theory by Tversky and Kahaman, Revealed Preferences by Starr, and Expressed Preferences by Fischhoff and Slovac are some of the models for risk perceptions and identifying how they are operationalized.
That research appears to help for the selection behaviors during conflict. I'll have to how others have tied these types of business models into the large idea of conflict and war.
I was quizzed quite extensively by an economist from Case Western about using game theory which had me smacking my forehead a few times. He is looking at economic models for anti-terrorism and anti-insurgency and is using game theory (I believe) for path/choice selection. I'm thinking about suggesting he join here his discussion on the topic was very interesting.
I spent about 20 minutes talking with Maj. Gen. Elder and I have to say I was quite impressed. He really seems to understand the issues and has a good grasp of the entirety of the cyber-warfare terrain/domain. We talked about my cyber-warfare research, and social network theory and it's applicability to analyzing attack vectors in cyber-warfare. On the drive home my spouse who is a professor too (and specializes in public policy and information security issues) smacked me upside the noggin when she realized that the risk perception model could be applied to the social networks to create something that very effectively identifies actors in an insurgency and their future choices. I told her "Hey I am asking for help!"
Sorry if I'm prattling on, been a heck of a day.
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
Hi Sam I don't know if this helps but there sure is a heap of numbers in this stuff. Some people believe Baysian analysis is some kind of holy grail. I have no what any of this stuff is but it seems to be something you are looking for, hope it helps.
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...4a01p_0001.htm
Sam,
Check out Adversarial Reasoning ed. Alexander Kott, for the red team perspective and computer modeling. Some great insights there.
This looks like a neat summation of
"Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
Heuristics
This looks interesting. As implied when I suggested the Monte Carlo approach, your suggestion of game theory and heuristics is essentially the same thing and might have many possibilities. Many things are modeled this way, from the market to engineering problems.
Darned site blew up my browser! Warning, do NOT access any of the sub-pages with Firefox unless you have an IE tab generator!
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Good warning for many of the .mil pages. I use IE Tab to access the majority of those sites, including CARL and other places of interest.
"On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War
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