was that there is no perfect TOE, no perfect piece of equipment, no perfectly trained forces and no way to determine what the effects of Mission, Enemy, Time, Terrain, Troops available and local population and infrastructure will have on ones organization and plans. That's a long way of saying that any attempt to 'study' or rationalize the question(s) at hand is going to fail because the parameters are entirely too many and varied.

So Armies blunder around and sustain some losses and achieve some successes and the key parameter is generally competent leadership and good, smart and intuitive commanders.

As I've grown older, I've watched literally dozens of pseudo scientific approaches to the amelioration of those problems and virtually all have seemed at least somewhat successful in the laboratory, testing ground or conference room while foundering badly when exposed to actual combat.

Penalty of trying to turn an art in to a science, I suspect.