A New Formulation of Lanchester Combat Theory,

Abstract

Lanchester's differential equations of combat are inherently deterministic in nature, although considerable effort has been devoted in recent years to introducing stochastic type treatment into the theory by dealing with transition probabilities and variable attrition coefficients, for example. The authors advance the advantageous idea here that the time-to-kill or time-to-neutralize key opposing targets would seem to be the more logical random variable which should be treated on a probabilistic basis, and hence that the fraction of remaining combatants on each side should properly be estimated from the time-to-kill probability distributions sampled, or in other words from principles of the statistical theory of reliability and life-testing. (Modified author abstract)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1973
Accession Number
AD0761081

Entities

People

  • Frank E. Grubbs
  • John H. Shuford

Organizations

  • Ballistic Research Laboratory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Attrition
  • Coefficients
  • Differential Equations
  • Equations
  • Kill Probabilities
  • Mathematics
  • Probability
  • Probability Distributions
  • Random Variables
  • Reliability
  • Transitions

Readers

  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.
  • Military History / Militaries and War Studies
  • Regression Analysis.