Body Counts and Metrics

[JMA]

The latest posts by JMA & Wilf on kill ratios in ambushes and "sweeps" refer to the military search for simply being better. I am sure this issue has appeared on SWC before, although not so directly IMHO.

I am sure that some scientific research and output was present in Rhodesia and other earlier conflicts, notably WW2, on improving the kill (accuracy) ratio. There is one current thread that comes to mind: Increasing Small Arms lethality in Afg http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=9942

It maybe needs clarification that it is not an issue of seeking out the enemy and having more contacts but rather making each contact more telling in terms of the ratio of kills to the number of enemy contacted.

In Rhodesia the average kill rate among the security forces was 18.5% as compared to the fire force kill rate of 80-odd-% (this compared to the Brit SAS kill rate in Malaya of 13%)

I don't know what the kill rate in Afghanistan is but probably under 15%.

So the answer is not (IMHO) to seek out more 15% kill rate contacts with the TB but rather to figure out how to up the kill rate by a factor of at least 5.

I suggest that to achieve this the military returns to the Principles of War and instead of just paying lip service to them... applies them in a war situation!