Research for Land Warfare

In the USMC Ground Combat Study we are focused on small unit (squad and fire team) size and organization. Our goal is to use an analysis of historical changes in squads together with an analytic tool to provide the Marine Corps with an assessment of the relevance of these units on the future battlefield. Using CNA-initiated funding, we plan to demonstrate the utility of analyses in one of the USMC's core warfighting areas. We also plan for this study to be the first in our program of research into ground combat and, at a more general level, MAGTF operations,

This study is a follow-on effort to a recently completed project, sponsored by the Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, that assessed the general applicability of the new sciences to land warfare. 'New Sciences' is a catch-all phrase that refers to the tools and methodologies used in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems theory to study physical systems that exhibit a 'complicated dynamics.' CNA is currently developing a multiagent-based simulation of notional combat called ISAAC (Irreducible Semi-Autonomous Adaptive Combat), a preliminary version of which is described in this report. ISAAC takes a bottom-up, synthesist approach to the modeling of combat, vice the more traditional top-down, or reductionist approach.

The Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command (MCCDC) asked the Center for Naval Analyses to assess the general applicability of the new science to land warfare. 'New Sciences' is a catch-all phrase that refers to the tools and methodologies used in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems theory to study physical dynamical systems exhibiting a 'complicated dynamics.' This report concludes that the concepts, ideas, theories, tools and general methodologies of nonlinear dynamics and complex systems theory show enormous, almost unlimited, potential for not just providing better solutions for certain existing problems of land combat, but for fundamentally altering our general understanding of the basic processes of war, at all levels. Indeed, the new sciences' greatest legacy may, in the end, prove to be not just a set of creative answers to old questions but and entirely new set of questions to be asked of what really happens on the battlefield. The central thesis of this paper is that land combat is a complex adaptive system. That is to say, that land combat is essentially a nonlinear dynamical system composed of many interacting semi-autonomous and hierarchically organized agents continuously adapting to a changing environment. See also CIM 461.10.