Empirical Analysis for Meeting Great Power Challenges

Research Problem: The new NDS shifts the emphasis in U.S. defense policy back to great-power threats, especially those posed by China and Russia. This poses important challenges of assessment. Sound strategy and policy require a clear understanding of enemy capabilities, and an ability to anticipate how U.S. strategy and operations will interact with enemy capabilities to produce combat outcomes. New technology, however, and especially anti-access, area-denial (A2/AD) systems and cyber warfare, are changing Chinese and Russian capabilities in ways that may require new approaches to evaluate properly. The primary objective of this research is to support this new strategic focus by identifying factors that will shape the ability of great powers such as China or Russia to use new technology and new strategies effectively. We will do this by exploiting new data and novel research methodologies to build stronger theories of combat outcomes in modern great power warfare. From these findings, we will draw implications for U.S. policies to deter such rivals, and to project power successfully if deterrence fails. In particular, we propose two interrelated projects: (1) an empirical analysis of the determinants of state success in using complex naval technology via the new NAVBATTLE dataset, with an associated series of in-depth case studies of battles carefully selected for maximum theoretical leverage; and (2) a pilot study on the potential of text analysis to expand the data available for study via machine coding of archival combat records.Proposed Methods: We will combine quantitative statistical modeling with qualitative, in-depth historical case studies and new techniques for machine coding of text records to harvest from archival records new data on the ~soft,~ non-material contributors to combat outcomes.Anticipated Outcome of the Research: This work will produce a body of research comprising three scholarly journal articles (one presenting the findings of statistical modeling using NAVBATTLE; one presenting the findings of the in-depth case studies; and one presenting the results of our pilot study of machine coding for archival combat records); one or more essay-length and/or oped-length articles summarizing the results for a policy audience; a series of policy-oriented briefings for audiences in DoD and elsewhere in the policy community; and a series of scholarly presentations for academic audiences.Impact on DoD Capabilities and Implications for National Defense: The study team has an established track record of policy-relevant national security research. We believe our findings will have important implications for threat assessment, defense budgeting and force design, development of joint operational concepts and doctrine, and campaign planning, inter alia. A central issue in threat assessment, for example, is the degree to which Russia and China can exploit the technical potential of their equipment ~ the projects we propose are designed to shed light on the determinants of military organizations~ ability to cope with complexity and use advanced military technologies to their full potential. Defense budgeting and force design both require DoD to allocate resources between the training, readiness, military pay, and quality-of-life accounts that promote skilled human performance, and the modernization and force structure accounts that provide more and better weapons and equipment. Both projects proposed above focus on assessing the relative contribution of human and material variables for military outcomes. A major challenge for developing operational concepts, doctrine, and campaign plans is to understand the enemy~s strengths and weaknesses; our analysis of the determinants of states~ ability to use technology to its full potential should help illuminate these strengths and weaknesses for Russia and China, and for their use of new A2/AD and cyber technologies in particular.