Mereja Forum

[Axumezana]

Abiy and his allies by now know very well that they do not have any competitive advantage compared to the war machine of Tigray. The only two comparative advantages they have are:

- Huge pool of manpower
- Bigger resources

Based on the above two advantages Abiy's strategy is to train and deploy hundred of thousands of combatants and shop more war equipment and bleed Tigray manpower to exhaustion. What it means is that Abiy war strategy is to kill as many Tigrayans until Tigray war machine manpower supply is depleted which could only be achieved through genocidal war. Abiy is also starving Tigray as part of his genocidal war against Tigray.

[Tog Wajale E.R.]

Isn't What The Dedebit Woorgach Erkhusan Zerr Tigrayian Agga*me Did The Last 28 Years Against Defenseless People Of Amara, Oromo, Ogaden Somali Giggiga And Southern. Why Is So Different Now Bissbiss Shettattam Agga*mes.

[Axumezana]

Ascaris slave mind your business!

[sebdoyeley]

killing by starving is ineffective, and it takes a lot of time, I prefer gas.

Ascaris slave mind your business!

[sarcasm]

Abiy and his allies by now know very well that they do not have any competitive advantage compared to the war machine of Tigray. The only two comparative advantages they have are:

- Huge pool of manpower
- Bigger resources

Based on the above two advantages Abiy's strategy is to train and deploy hundred of thousands of combatants and shop more war equipment and bleed Tigray manpower to exhaustion. What it means is that Abiy war strategy is to kill as many Tigrayans until Tigray war machine manpower supply is depleted which could only be achieved through genocidal war. Abiy is also starving Tigray as part of his genocidal war against Tigray.

The huge pool of manpower will actually stop being a comparative advantage when the military personnel number reaches the optimal level because of the "Law of Diminishing return". The principle applies to all areas of live.

The law of diminishing marginal returns is a theory in economics that predicts that after some optimal level of capacity is reached, adding an additional factor of production will actually result in smaller increases in output.

For example, a factory employs workers to manufacture its products, and, at some point, the company operates at an optimal level. Adding additional workers beyond this optimal level will result in less efficient operations.

In the classic example of the law, a farmer who owns a given acreage of land will find that a certain number of labourers will yield the maximum output per worker. If he should hire more workers, the combination of land and labour would be less efficient because the proportional increase in the overall output would be less than the expansion of the labour force. The output per worker would therefore fall. This rule holds in any process of production unless the technique of production also changes.

A couple months ago I heard Abiy saying he can have a 1 million army in weeks because Ethiopia has 110 million population. I felt sorry for the country as Abiy does not understand the idea of diminishing return. Please see the below blog on how the principle applies to military personnel numbers.



*************************

Human Factors In Warfare: Diminishing Returns In Combat

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Shawn Woodford

One of the basic problems facing military commanders at all levels is deciding how to allocate available forces to accomplish desired objectives. A guiding concept in this sort of decision-making is economy of force, one of the fundamental and enduring principles of war. As defined in the 1954 edition of U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-5, Field Service Regulations, Operations (which Trevor Dupuy believed contained the best listing of the principles):

Economy of Force

Minimum essential means must be employed at points other than that of decision. To devote means to unnecessary secondary efforts or to employ excessive means on required secondary efforts is to violate the principle of both mass and the objective. Limited attacks, the defensive, deception, or even retrograde action are used in noncritical areas to achieve mass in the critical area.

How do leaders determine the appropriate means for accomplishing a particular mission? The risk of failing to assign too few forces to a critical task is self-evident, but is it possible to allocate too many? Determining the appropriate means in battle has historically involved subjective calculations by commanders and their staff advisors of the relative combat power of friendly and enemy forces. Most often, it entails a rudimentary numerical comparison of numbers of troops and weapons and estimates of the influence of environmental and operational factors. An exemplar of this is the so-called “3-1 rule,” which holds that an attacking force must achieve a three to one superiority in order to defeat a defending force.

Through detailed analysis of combat data from World War II and the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, Dupuy determined that combat appears subject to a law of diminishing returns and that it is indeed possible to over-allocate forces to a mission.[1] By comparing the theoretical outcomes of combat engagements with the actual results, Dupuy discovered that a force with a combat power advantage greater than double that of its adversary seldom achieved proportionally better results than a 2-1 advantage. A combat power superiority of 3 or 4 to 1 rarely yielded additional benefit when measured in terms of casualty rates, ground gained or lost, and mission accomplishment.

Dupuy also found that attackers sometimes gained marginal benefits from combat power advantages greater than 2-1, though less proportionally and economically than the numbers of forces would suggest. Defenders, however, received no benefit at all from a combat power advantage beyond 2-1.

Two human factors contributed to this apparent force limitation, Dupuy believed, Clausewitzian friction and breakpoints. As described in a previous post, friction accumulates on the battlefield through the innumerable human interactions between soldiers, degrading combat performance. This phenomenon increases as the number of soldiers increases.

A breakpoint represents a change of combat posture by a unit on the battlefield, for example, from attack to defense, or from defense to withdrawal. A voluntary breakpoint occurs due to mission accomplishment or a commander’s order. An involuntary breakpoint happens when a unit spontaneously ceases an attack, withdraws without orders, or breaks and routs. Involuntary breakpoints occur for a variety of reasons (though contrary to popular wisdom, seldom due to casualties). Soldiers are not automatons and will rarely fight to the death.

As Dupuy summarized,

It is obvious that the law of diminishing returns applies to combat. The old military adage that the greater the superiority the better, is not necessarily true. In the interests of economy of force, it appears to be unnecessary, and not really cost-effective, to build up a combat power superiority greater than two-to-one. (Note that this is not the same as a numerical superiority of two-to-one.)[2] Of course, to take advantage of this phenomenon, it is essential that a commander be satisfied that he has a reliable basis for calculating relative combat power. This requires an ability to understand and use “combat multipliers” with greater precision than permitted by U.S. Army doctrine today.[3] [Emphasis added.]

About Shawn Woodford

Shawn Robert Woodford, Ph.D., is a military historian with over a decade of research, writing, and analytical experience on operations, strategy, and national security policy. His work has focused on special operations, unconventional and paramilitary warfare, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, quantitative historical analysis, nineteenth and twentieth century military history, and the history of nuclear weapon development.

Source http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/blog/2017 ... in-combat/

[Cigar]

Sarcasm, you shi*tting in your pants.
If you believe what you just said, why are you advising the ethio govt to have few troops to kick your a*ss unless you are cheering for the ethio govt to completely destroy the whole funfunat agames?
You low IQed agames are predictable. The troops are not going to tigray to make shoes or shirts you dumb a"ss. They are going to slit your cowards, unruly agames. The more the troops the faster the throats slitting.

[euroland]

አየ ነገር ዓጋመ

ክትዝበጣ ከለኽን ጥራይ’ዩ እዛ መሸቀጢት “genocidal” ትብል ቃል ትጥቀማላ

It was just a couple weeks ago that you were telling us, your Weyane is heading to Addis and to Asmara thereafter and the war will be soon after your enemies are crushed completely
Now that plan is crushed and burned and your junta is on its back heel, now you are crying “genocide” is coming to Tigray. Rest assured, no one would buy your crocodile tear. The Ethiopian and Eritrean forces are now ready to finish the unfinished business. No more second chances will be given to you.

[Axumezana]

Ascari slaves you have been on the wrong side of history for the last 23 years and you have been paying the price and you will contuinue to do so!