Confronting Entrenched Insurgents

During counterinsurgency operations, government forces with superior …repower confront weaker lowsignature insurgents. Under what conditions should government (Blue) forces attack insurgent (Red) strongholds? How should the government allocate its force across di¤erent strongholds when the insurgents’threat to the Blue civilian population must be taken into account? How should the government respond to “smart” insurgents who anticipate the government’s optimal plan of attack and prepare accordingly? How do the results change when the government takes Red civilian casualties resulting from attacks on insurgent strongholds into account? This article addresses these questions. Using Lanchester models modi…ed to account for imperfect intelligence, we formulate an optimal force allocation problem for the government and develop a knapsack approximation that has tight error bounds. We also model a sequential force allocation game between the insurgents and the government and sol...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: IOR
• Authors: Edward H. Kaplan, Moshe Kress, Roberto Szechtman
• Keywords: Force Allocation, IOR 2010, Red Civilian Casualties, Yale School