Opportunity costs and decision-making

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"On Violence" has linked to my text about the lifesaving argument, and this (together with a recent bout in the comments) gave me the final push to write a bit more in general about the importance of opportunity costs in correct decisionmaking.

Imagine you're a collector of nicely decorated coffee cups. You have an annual budget of 1,000 bucks for this hobby. You meet sellers on fairs and a total of 10,000 cups are on offer, with prices ranging from 0.05 bucks to 50 bucks per piece. Curiously, you like all cups on offer the exact same.

Which cups do you buy?

Educated guess: I suppose you buy the cheapest cups till your budget is exhausted. You would be stupid if you spent money on some expensive ones while there are exactly as beautiful cups still on offer at a lower price.

This is a very widely usable insight, and one usually utterly neglected. I admit it's tough to use in practice because of imperfect information, but one should at the very least not violate this principle of buying the most cost-efficient stuff first after being alerted.

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The Military spending and the lifesaving argument blog post applied this rather basic economics thing on the saving of lives: Save as many as possible with a given budget (maximised effect for a given budget), which means save the lives first which cost the least to save.

Another application relevant to this blog is about benevolent interventionism: In theory, an intervention in a civil war or (believed) genocide may save foreigner's lives. Is this a good idea?

It depends (and not only whether one's expectation of success is good enough).

Let's say a government expects no own troops to be killed and the fiscal expenses per foreign life saved are guesstimated at 1,000 bucks per soul.

The aforementioned principle means that you better not intervene unless you exhausted all methods of saving lives at a lower price tag than 1,000 bucks per soul. Immunisation programs, information campaigns, free condoms, subsidised drugs, subsidised water filtration sets, work safety campaigns etc.

This makes military fanboi interventionists weep, of course. That's because their real interest isn't on the lifesaving part, but on the blow up, maim, kill and boast part of the intervention.

Yet another application; egoistic interventions with economic interests. Does it make sense to spend ten billion bucks more per year on expeditionary military forces? There is the possibility that their existence and/or employment makes purchased resources cheaper (outright robbing is out of fashion), after all.

Let's ignore the difference between a benefit to an oil company shareholder and a benefit to the guy buying gasoline at a gas station for now. Shall the expeditionary forces be beefed up and sustained?

Well, it first needs to outperform all other capital investment options that are left to justify itself.

One such option would be to reduce the government debt instead, and we know the interest rates for this: A few per cent. The current interest rates are extraordinarily low, but typical nominal interest rate for German federal bonds during the 90's were around 7 % p.a., ~ 5 % p.a. real interest rate (without the inflation).

The ten billion bucks would need to yield an economic benefit of 500 million bucks a year to beat this alternative. Next year again. and again. And again. Till eternity (there's financial math to make this more handy). And next year's 10 billion bucks would need to do the same. And the 10 billion the year thereafter as well. Et cetera.

Are federal bonds a strong or a weak alternative? It depends on how well-governed the country is. Federal bonds would be a weak alternative if the country is well-run, and a very strong one if it's poorly run. The existence of a narrowly observed deficit limit would de-couple this and one would need to look at available alternatives directly.

Which is what a government should do anyway. It is actually quite easy to find options for spending public funds for higher benefit returns than 4%. After all, taxes often incur secondary effects (administration costs, distortions) well beyond 10% and are still being levied. Research has yielded up to about 30% such extra costs for especially poorly mutated tax laws, but 10-15% is a fine rule of thumb. So after spending ten billions p.a. for a decade, you better get 10 billions economic benefit out of it p.a..

That is, if you have an all-robotic military. Otherwise there would be troops which could increase economic output directly if they worked as civilians, this effect would be an additional approx. 10 billion p.a.. This is known as opportunity costs as well.

Even more: Four to six billion bucks of that economic activity would become government revenues. And these would create even more benefits. Et cetera. 

Interventionists really don't stand a chance once you crunch the numbers unless you buy into wild guesses about alleged and never proven benefits.

I doubt that the people who agitate for military interventions in economic self-interest have crunched the numbers or taken into account the actual poor success of such interventions during the 20th century.

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We can use the "artistic" approach of resource allocation and just guess what's a good use for money based on our feelings. Some people are convinced that a certain budget would be fine without even thinking about opportunity costs or total budgets.

The result of such guessing would almost inevitably be utter wastefulness. It would be as handing the government's finances over to a six year old boy. Pet projects everywhere, but also people dying for want of a 10 cent screw or a 20 cent pill.

The competent way of allocating resources requires that you make an effort to expect the cost/benefit ratios somewhat accurately. You should then proceed to pay for the most cost-efficient options first. True "must-have" things can have an infinite value assigned in this method. The budget caps the allocation of resources at some point, and everything not afforded up to that point is simply wrong.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Expendable jammers, EW in general

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I meant to write about this electronic warfare topic for a long time, but now I suppose it's just as fine to just push readers towards looking it up:

HEXJAM

There are - and have been for a long time - expendable radio jammers which are very small (artillery grenade or 'much less than backpack' small) and relatively cheap. These jammers can be used to knock out radio comm in a radius of several hundred metres. Emplacement is typically by hand or howitzer.

Imagine a late 80's scenario for example: An armoured battalion battlegroup advances along a road in a South German landscape (woodland hills left and right, with only unpaved forestry roads - and a paved road in the valley where there are also buildings between the agricultural areas). The defenders activate several radio jammers near the company-sized vanguard and a tank platoon lying in a flanking ambush opens fire. Valuable seconds of return fire lag are gained and doom the vanguard.

The effect would have been complimentary in a similar way as the combination of HE/DPICM and scattered mines would be; the targets would be very much restricted in their ability to cope with the challenge.

Another example: An infantry platoon is meant to raid a picket and take prisoners and radio sets for intel. A few expendable jammers are used to isolate the picket and to keep it from calling for help.

Even some experienced and longtime-serving officers don't happen to know about this and EW is in general still a black box to many. This may be part of the reason for the excessive reliance on radio comm and electronics these days.

 

So here are a few links, just in case you're interested in peeking at the stuff a bit:

About the hand-emplaced HEXJAM
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/docs/960800-kornuta.htm

Russian 3RB30 (couldn't find worse link, obviously)
http://gespenst.egloos.com/5300756

About artillery-delivered SAMEL 90, Bulgarian version of Russian 2RB30
http://www.samel90.com/files/products_military/file_16_en.pdf



Electronic warfare in general:

For German, Austrian and Swiss readers:
http://www.bmlv.gv.at/truppendienst/td_liefertasch.shtml
(Band 17A; boring, but acceptable)

EW101
http://www.amazon.com/Ew-101-Electronic-Warfare-Library/dp/1580531695/

EW102
http://www.amazon.com/EW-102-Second-Electronic-Warfare/dp/1580536867/

EW103
http://www.amazon.com/Tactical-Battlefield-communications-Electronic-Warfare/dp/1596933879/

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de 

edit: http://www.splav.org/en/arms/grad/m519.asp

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Definition of 'shock'

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Would the real definition of "shock" in a military (not medical-military) context please stand up?

shock

[shok]   noun

1. a sudden and violent blow or impact; collision.

2. a sudden or violent disturbance or commotion: the shock of battle.

3. a sudden or violent disturbance of the mind, emotions, or sensibilities: The burglary was a shock to her sense of security. The book provided a shock, nothing more.

4. the cause of such a disturbance: The rebuke came as a shock.

5. Pathology . a collapse of circulatory function, caused by severe injury, blood loss, or disease, and characterized by pallor, sweating, weak pulse, and very low blood pressure. Compare anaphylactic shock, cardiogenic shock, hypovolemic shock.

6. the physiological effect produced by the passage of an electric current through the body.

7. shocks, Informal. shock absorbers, especially in the suspension of an automobile.

(dictionary.com)

So far I have found three interpretations of (and uses for) the word "shock" in a military context:

(1) An attack with the potential to dislodge defenders or to break a defending formation. Example melee attack in close order (musketeers with bayonets, typical late Republican Roman legionary, tanks, armoured horsemen with lances, Stoßtruppen)

(2) An attack / action which overwhelms the defending system's or troops' ability to cope with the stress (does not need to include the loss of ground). This is often associated with the words 'surprise' or 'saturation'.

(3) A dangerous attack which shatters the hostile leaders' perception of the situation (such as by sinking a capital ship or two).

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I suppose (2) is the most interesting version for a theorist. (1) appears to be the most widespread use. (3) - only saw this used once, but it's not uninteresting.

The problem is of course that these are three distinct meanings, and calling them all the same is no good idea. I suppose I'm not alone in wasting hours trying to find some authoritative definition of "shock" in military-related literature.

(2) would probably be better described as "saturation", if this hadn't such a bias for quantity. Maybe "threshold attack"?

S O
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East European military technology

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Some reports about Russian arms industries are quite dismissive, and indeed, the ambitions of the political leadership appear to go beyond the competences shown by the Russian arms industry so far.

They may still lag in a couple of areas, have a reliability problem in systems such as the Bulava missile and are generally selling what mostly looks like refurbished versions of 1980's equipment.

Still, they have a couple specific strengths, and these should be respected.

The Western arms industries aren't exactly exemplary either with their excessive gold plating and living off "cost plus" development contracts more than off actual production, much less production for export.

One of the strengths of the Russian, Ukrainian and coincidentally also the Finnish arms industries is that they develop their stuff for cold temperatures, too.

Germany discovered the significance of this in 1941/42, when lubricants in German machineguns froze them into repeating rifles, tank gearboxes became inoperative and many other kinds of technical problems appeared at -20°C to -40°C.

The new and quite interesting (and cheap) Ukrainian anti-tank missile system "Korsar" or "Corsar" (105 mm calibre, laser beam rider, impressive "behind ERA" penetration claims) is an example for a system developed for low temperatures:

"Korsar" ATGM: laser beam rider, 105 mm tandem HEAT, man-portable

The missile can be launched at temperatures ranging from minus 40 to plus 60 degrees Celsius, whereas U.S. and Israeli systems are not designed to operate at temperatures lower than minus 20 degrees Celsius. (...) The anti-tank missile system costs only about $130,000, and missiles - $20,000, which is three or four times cheaper than their foreign analogues.

source

Civilian hardware has similar problems. Stories about Lada Niva 4x4 cars driving through snow in Arctic temperatures when import cars are dead already are widespread.

This chart shows the problem with mobile phones:

click on it for larger size, source

You don't learn about this relative problem during great power games in the Mid East.

Russian-equipped military forces could - if this low temperature issue is widespread enough - easily shatter Western military forces during winter time, which is an unacceptable scenario for the national security of the Easternmost NATO members.

But our attention is on great power games in the Mid East, of course. And of course the Russian arms industries are crumbling, produce obsolete products which are to be judged by the quality of exported monkey models and their missiles fly in circles anyway.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

Edit: Another example - look at this Finnish machinegun's trigger guard. Looks funny and crude, doesn't it?

It's meant to allow use of the weapon with thick mittens.

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Sicherheitspolitik oder mehr?

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Security policy or more?

The accuracy of language is important, and even slight changes in how people call something may create a completely different narrative and change the support an idea receives profoundly.

That's why sometimes political advisors test different names in order to determine how to call a political proposal or program in a way that mobilises the most support or the most aversion.

I contend that the inflated use of the word "Sicherheitspolitik" = (national) security policy is such a manipulative word.

The word implies that the policy is about providing security, which is no doubt an easily justified and important function of a government.

The actual use of the word nowadays isn't about providing security, though: That's what the old word "Verteidigungspolitik" = defence policy was and is about.

So all the talk about Sicherheitspolitik is misleading at best, clearly manipulative and I actually think an outright lie. The difference between Sicherheitspolitik and Verteidigungspolitik is not about any activities which create security for us. In fact, plenty activities included provoke hostility and thus reduce our security.

The confusion is noticeable. I've seen written works arguing for intervention capabilities and mistakenly believing these would increase our nation's national security. We should return to a greater clarity of language in order to achieve a greater clarity of the thinking.

It makes no sense to throw the intervention stuff into the same basket as the actual defence stuff, as it clearly serves different purposes (if any legitimate ones at all) even though some tools are dual use tools.

Let's be honest and call it Interventionspolitik - intervention policy.

This won't happen, of course.The interventionists couldn't make the case for the budgets they want if they couldn't siphon legitimacy from actual defence policy. They enter the debate with the unfair advantage of having manipulated the narrative in their favour.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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In Soviet Russia ...

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Camouflage extremists

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[Deutsch] Kein Koalitionsvertrag ohne JA zum Volksentscheid

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Für Interessierte:

Es gibt eine Petition auf change.org zum Thema Volksentscheid auf Bundesebene.

(About an ongoing petition for direct democracy on the federal level in Germany.)

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Industrial warfare and elusive enemies

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I'd like to elaborate on and generalise something I wrote earlier:

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"Overpower for victory, reduction of enemies as a mere finisher

The German military forces were ultimately defeated (depending on how to determine it they had effectively lost sometime between late '41 and mid-'43). Yet, the German military had more (and more powerful) combat aircraft, tanks, AAA and more troops and field artillery pieces in in early winter of 1944/45 than in 1939/40!* It had sustained huge losses for years, but it did NOT shrink materially. Its material reduction was NOT the key to Allied victory!"

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The usual idea of industrialised warfare is about the sheer quantities produced, such as the insane-looking ship, tank and combat aircraft output of the Second World War.

My view is actually a bit different; I emphasize that industrial warfare allowed for a great increase in quantity of the arsenals up until a collapse. Germany experienced this collapse in early 1945 and Japan in summer of 1945 (earlier in regard to ships). The war did turn against both in the time frame of late '41 till summer '43 and mid-'42 till late '42, respectively. The exact turning points are up for debate; I personally like to point at the never replaced severe losses of motor vehicles in fall '41 as the turning point for Germany.

I suppose the relative capabilities on the battlefield forced withdrawals, and this included especially the availability of young men for combat units. The absolute capabilities were irrelevant in comparison to the relative capabilities.

The idea that superior industrial output gives one's troops an advantage is very wide-spread, the fact that vastly superior output could help to overpower opposition that grows stronger as well is not so wide-spread.

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There's more to it, and it points at the military value of elusiveness beyond survivability:

Somehow the victorious powers appear to have quickly revived in '50 the WW2 approach of overpowering the enemy with production even while he grows stronger. 

The industrial overpowering recipe never seemed to work so well on elusive opponents such as guerrillas, though. They can withdraw without losing much.

For comparison: The classic withdrawal of an inferior conventional military unit means to sacrifice ground and likely being unable to re-occupy it afterwards. Elusive forces have no such restriction; they withdraw in a situation of relative combat inferiority, and later they simply return and re-occupy the ground (physically and politically).

Finally, the icing on the cake: The answer to such elusive hostile forces may be to REDUCE one's relative combat superiority in order to entice them into accepting decisive combat. This, of course, was mentioned by me in another shape years ago already.

S O
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Unconventional weapons and deterrence

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Hat tip to "Dayuhan", ripped from a forum:

CW haven't deterred the Israelis from attacking Syria whenever they like, and they won't deter an American attack. They didn't deter the Syrians from rebelling. On the evidence of Syria, the track record of CW as a deterrent is pretty poor.

Indeed. Chemical warfare Armageddon scenarios didn't deter the Second World War either. The People's Republic of China even dared to intervene in the Korean War, opposing multiple nuclear powers in the process.

Maybe it is exactly the tabooing of chemical weapons which made them an ineffective deterrent (albeit CW usage was expected for WW2 in the 30's and WW2 still happened)?

Maybe nuclear weapons will sooner or later fail to deter war and nuclear powers will sooner or later fight each other on proxy terrain or on oceans because they won't think nukes would be used in such conflicts?

I hope to never learn the answer (and still hope for a long life, of course). Potential proxy conflicts should be taken seriously, as conflicts in need of defusing before the s**t hits the fan.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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Revisiting the ACRA

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Finally, a visitor magnet again: Hardware-centric milporn.

Maybe you (the reader / visitor) remember the almost one-of-a-kind Shillelagh missile. The designation was probably meant to drive Soviet spies crazy, but it kind of works on me, too.

The concept was to use a very large calibre stub gun in a tank turret which could both launch a rather low velocity large calibre shell and a long-ranged anti-tank guided missile with a large calibre shaped charge.

The concept had some support in the United States which experimented with it on main battle tanks (M-60A2) and on light tanks (M551 Sheridan).

The missile was a kind of white elephant, since it wasn't used on any other platforms unlike the rather versatile TOW missile. Its range was disappointing and its penetration apparently very much below potential.

The M81E1 gun proved to be a corrosion nightmare (at least in Vietnam) and there were issues with the cartridge design. Finally, the recoil impulse was troublesome not the least for the fire control electronics. The gun was very lightweight and short itself, though.

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The key problem of this concept was the same as with all anti-tank missiles of the era; operations research showed a distinct advantage of tank guns over missiles up to about 2,000 metres distance. The missile accuracy was an advantage beyond 2,000 metres, but the shorter time of flight and higher rate of fire was a key advantage of the gun below that range.

Most terrains in Central Europe justified the expectation that most combat would happen at the same ranges as known from WW2; usually below 2,000 metres, possibly a majority at less than 500 metres. Experiences from Israel's conflicts pointed at relatively short effective lines of sight even in rather open terrain because of intended and unintended dust and smoke effects.

The title here is "Revisiting the ACRA", not "Revisiting the M81" for a reason. Unknown to many who know about the M81 and the Shilellagh, the French pursued a vastly superior concept at about the same time: ACRA.

French AMX-30 test vehicle with 142 mm ACRA gun

ACRA used a much superior muzzle velocity and its missile had a much shorter time of flight, extending the superiority of the missile approach over the gun approach to well below 2,000 metres. This 142 mm gun was not without troubles either (reliability), and the missile approach was still very expensive.

Good French source on ACRA

 

APFSDS projectiles gave conventional guns an improvement in time of flight, ease of aiming and armour penetration which made gun/missile launcher combos unnecessary. The Russians introduced some missiles for long-range fire with normal long-barrelled guns, and the Israelis did so as well, but overall the ammunition of choice against heavy armour is APFSDS.

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So why revisit this seeming dead-end? 

Simple: Stuff happened, and it did so for three decades.

The high/hyper velocity missile approach - mating a APFSDS-like long rod penetrator with a missile flying as fast as a APFSDS projectile and guided by an inertial navigation autopilot - could be applied to this kind of combo gun.

Combustible cartridges have long since proved their concept in the German 120 mm tank gun design, so one problem of M81 is solved now. A Mach 6 missile with long rod penetrator is about 1.2 to 1.5 metres long and happens to have a similar calibre as ACRA and M81. The length is a huge problem, of course: Current APFSDS cartridges are 'only' about 0.8 metres long. The use of CKEM-like missiles in a tank turrent would require a dedicated internal layout and ammunition storage in the turret bustle. Reloading would likely be restricted to a certain gun elevation as it was in old large calibre naval guns. ACRA's missile ammunition was 1.22 metres long as well, though.

Still, the combination of a APFSDS-like missile and a versatile squash head shell in a 140-155 mm rifled gun would be interesting. One advantage over MBTs such as Leopard 2A6 would be the negligible restrictions for turret movements in restrictive terrain with the same long rod penetrator power. You could easily traverse the turret even on woodland roads and on not very wide streets. The extremely long 120 mm L/55 guns (1.3 metres longer than the original Leo2 gun) are probably well past the optimum compromise.

A squash head (HESH, HEP) shell of such a large calibre would demolish almost all obstacles and many buildings in one shot and be terminally effective against armoured fighting vehicles within its effective range (which would be less than 1,000 metres against moving targets because of the modest muzzle velocity of both stub guns and the HESH concept each). A HESH / HEP warhead of such a calibre would possess such a quantity of plastics explosives that penetration isn't required to mess up a MBT: The shock itself would all but guarantee a mission kill even in hit locations which would be harmless with APFSDS.

The British army liked demolition guns of 165 mm calibre on dedicated combat engineer vehicles.  A combo gun would give about the same 'blow up' capability to regular MBTs.

This blog post should be seen in context to my other pet idea, the medium calibre (~76 mm) rapid fire gun option. A tank battalion with many such 76 mm / 30+ rpm guns would mostly lack raw power of 120 mm guns. A mix of 76 mm / 30+ rpm guns with 140+ mm stub guns on the company level would as a whole possess both specialisation advantages and much greater versatility than a 120 mm-only  MBT force.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

edit: Obviously, a disadvantage of the concept would be the inability of ripple fire, which is otherwise a possibility with HVM. That's a trade-off. To launch a HVM with a gun adds initial velocity and allows for a delayed ignition of the missile ('cold launch'), potentially avoiding that it blocks the line of sight with hot gasses (if launch elevation is high). A stub gun is also much less prone to being damaged than exposed missile launchers and a cold launch may be less hazardous to exposed sensors and possibly crew heads or dismounted personnel than a launch from a normal missile launcher. It's still not good for a higher rate of fire than to be expected from comparable APFSDS gun ammunition. HVMs are powerful, so a 135-152 mm tank gun's APFSDS would be the equivalent.

edit again: I forgot to link to a related earlier blog post, Low signature propellants

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