When Lanchester met Richardson, the outcome was stalemate: A parable for mathematical models of insurgency

Niall J MacKay
Additional contact information
Niall J MacKay: University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2015, vol. 66, issue 2, 191-201

Abstract: Many authors have used dynamical systems to model asymmetric war. We explore this approach more broadly, first returning to the prototypical models such as Richardson’s arms race, Lanchester’s attrition models and Deitchman’s guerrilla model. We investigate combinations of these and their generalizations, understanding how they relate to assumptions about asymmetric conflict. Our main result is that the typical long-term outcome is neither annihilation nor escalation but a stable fixed point, a stalemate. The state cannot defeat the insurgency by force alone, but must alter the underlying parameters. We show how our models relate to or subsume other recent models. This paper is a self-contained introduction to 2D continuous dynamical models of war, and we intend that, by laying bare their assumptions, it should enable the reader to critically evaluate such models and serve as a reminder of their limitations.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v66/n2/pdf/jors2013178a.pdf Link to full text PDF (application/pdf)
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v66/n2/full/jors2013178a.html Link to full text HTML (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:66:y:2015:i:2:p:191-201

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... search/journal/41274

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Operational Research Society is currently edited by Tom Archibald and Jonathan Crook

More articles in Journal of the Operational Research Society from Palgrave Macmillan, The OR Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().