What Computer Models Say About Modern Warfare

The Economist: “Warfare is complex—and, as those who start wars often discover to their chagrin, unpredictable. Anything which promises to reduce that unpredictability is thus likely to attract both interest and money. Add the ability of modern computers to absorb and crunch unprecedented amounts of data, and throw in a live, data-generating war in the form of the conflict now being slugged out between Ukraine and Russia, not to mention the high level of tension across the Taiwan Strait, and you might assume that the business of trying to forecast the outcomes of conflicts is going into overdrive. Which it is.”

“One piece of software dedicated to this end is the Major Combat Operations Statistical Model… based on data about 96 battles and military campaigns fought between the closing year of the first world war and the present day. When fed information about Russia’s initial push to seize Kyiv and subjugate Ukraine, which began on February 24th, the model predicted, on a scale of one to seven, ‘operational success’ scores for the attacker and defender, respectively, of two and five.”

“That pretty much nailed it.”