[Poohbah]

What he's really referring to are Lanchester's equations. Basically, Lanchester observed that as ranged fires replaced close combat as the primary casualty generator, the nature of warfare changed, and gave a great deal more emphasis on numeric superiority.

For example, in a battle between 1000 men on side A and 750 men on side B in the era of close combat (sword and shield), you'd wind up with 250 men on Side A and 0 on Side B after an engagement to the finish. That's a 75% loss rate for the superior force.

With ranged fire, you have a more complex situation. The following example ignores terrain and morale for the purposes of illustrating the basic principle.

Suppose that Side A has 1,000 soldiers engaged, against 750 for Side B. Casualty rates are identical: 10% per volley of fire (1000 soldiers firing = 100 hits). Volleys are assumed to occur simultaneously.

We come up with the following table:

Time Increment	Side A Force	Side B Force	Ratio A:B
0	1,000	750	1.33
1	925	650	1.42
2	860	558	1.54
3	804	472	1.70
4	757	392	1.93
5	718	316	2.27
6	686	244	2.81
7	662	175	3.78
8	644	109	5.91
9	633	45	14.07
10	628	0	Infinite

As you can see, the side with superior numbers gains an ever-widening level of superiority over the enemy, taking less than 40% losses in exchange for annihilating the enemy.

[Squantos]

Thanks Pooh for taking the time to put that togeather for me. I think some of Lancasters books I have located (aside from this theory) look interesting also.

Stay Safe !

[ScholarWarrior]

FYI Sun Tzu is a primary text at the Army War College and West Point.

[LibKill]

Dang! You're really good at this stuff.

[Clive]

Fine, so far as it goes.

But agressiveness and technical superiority also play a part.

The Romans relied on technical superiority (ballistae, better order of battle , better discipline, etc.) which prevailed everywhere except in the barbarian north where superior aggressiveness came into play.

So if technical superiority was not offset by aggressiveness, the legions won when they had equal or superior numbers and often when they had inferior numbers.

As citizens, the legions did not have the aggressiveness of the German tribesmen, so when they came to battle against equal numbers, the odds of winning were even because the German aggressiveness counterbalanced the Roman technology and discipline.

Caesar won in Gaul by always ensuring that the superior numbers of tribal warriors were never concentrated against him, while his legions always kept their cohesion and therefore always kept superiority in numbers in the places where he chose to fight. His facility with logistics, movements and communications allowed him to choose the battle ground.

When the Germans were able to bring equal numbers to bear, the results were often quite different.

[I got the rope]

Did this guy get fragged? Because he sure does look like fragging material from here.