Eli5 why are combat units “ineffective” after taking 15% losses?
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In part leaving soldiers to take care of the wounded and dead, but also once soldiers start to get very concerned that they are going to be killed in the next 15 mins they are more likely to run than fight.
A big part of this is how the command structure of a unit is impacted by the losses. You can only “next man up” for so long. Every killed or injured soldier has a job and an experience level that will be missed, leaving others to try to pick up the slack. Leaders that need to be replaced will lack experience and knowledge.
15% losses (deaths) typically means 2-3x injured. So this means essentially half the force might no longer be near peak performance. And many “troops” are not fighting, they’re support. Hospitals, doctors etc are overworked, logistics are at a standstill and essentially, nothing much works any more.
A combat group is more than 50% support units and less than 50% actual gun/tank toting fighters. The losses are almost entirely actual gun/tank toting fighters. So a 15% loss is more like a 30% loss in fighting soldiers.
Plus, there are usually more injured than killed and that takes way more support than healthy troops.
It does depend on what the 15% did and how well the unit trained.
If the 15% loss was all your gas tankers, then your armour isnt going any where. If the 15% was your radio/command control operation, your team wont know where to go.
Also did your unit train on what to do if your Sargent was killed? If 3 lieutenants were lost? Who gives the orders? No training means 10 critical people lost and the entire army doesnt know who is in charge or who to get orders from.
To damage 15% either 1 part took all the action, got hit so bad and was wiped out, so then what did it do and can you continue without it?
Or everyone took a bit of damage, that means everyone need to go back and rest, repair, rearm. And are the people/equipment needed to organize that still around?
Take a look at your workplace.
If roughly 1 in five were fired how well would it continue to operate?
How worried would you be that you’re the next to be fired?
Throw in the fact that the casualties often happen to front line fighters, that’s like having most of the people fired working in one department.
Your shipping department just had half it’s personnel fired… It wouldn’t operate very well, as the workload (fighting) would continue to be just as heavy and now there’s are far less people to shoulder the burden.
“Ineffective” here doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t do shit on the battlefield. Rather, it means that it probably can’t accomplish goals or missions that a full-strength unit could be expected to handle.
The purpose of a combat unit isn’t actually to engage in combat, that’s a means to an end. They’re given objectives that fit into a strategic objective. So things like “protect this convey,” or “defend this stretch of land,” or “neutralize that enemy unit of artillery.”
Many of these goals are quantitative, to an extent. Say you have a front line that extends for ten miles that you need to secure. You’ll assign different units to different pieces of that line. And a military planner has to be able to know what’s a “reasonable” length of front-line that can be held by a combat unit of a particular size.
So now in this sense, if a combat unit takes 15% losses then it can’t hold its stretch of front-line. It probably *could* hold a stretch of front-line that’s 15% smaller. It’s not like they’re totally useless. But if you assign them the goal of a full-strength unit, they’re going to be stretched too thin and not able to keep up.
Obviously combat effectiveness doesn’t stay flat at 14.9% casualties and then fall off a cliff at 15.00%. These are more like, rules of thumb for military planners. But they’re important ones, because they allow planners to manage resources *at scale*, and achieve reasonable effectiveness despite imperfect information.
It isn’t a hard and fast rule, but if you are a leader and a unit that specializes in *some thing* takes 15% losses, that is enough people that their ability to do *that one thing* might be completely compromised to the point of it being dangerous to use them.
Say you have a regimental combat team of 4,000 Marines and you lose 15% of them. So 600 Marines are gone. That might not seem so bad, but who were those Marines? Did you lose all of your medics? Did you lose all of your heavy machine gunners? If you don’t have enough heavy gunners you may not be able to protect Marines by keeping the enemy pinned down when they are taking position. If that RCT is operating in support of a wider objective, then you may not have the ability to perform your task without taking heavier losses or failing completely. That is when you need, you know, the leadership of field/company grade officers and above to figure out how the hell your RCT just lost 600 Marines and where you can horse trade from other units to maintain effectiveness.
The problem with the Russian Army is that second thing, their NCOs and mid level officers aren’t empowered to make decisions that the US military would certainly allow. They lose 15% and they crumble because they have to wait for some General to make a decision, except their generals can’t communicate with them effectively and they keep getting shot.
Combat units give out little jobs to each of their soldiers. In a platoon you might have like 4-8 heavy machine gunners, maybe 3 medics (if you’re very lucky), guys who’s job it is to be the primary and alternate casualty carrying guy if someone is wounded, only a few guys who know how to work and reset the radios…ect.
Now one guy is injured. Ok he has to be removed, and someone has to take his place. But shit he’s the radio guy so now there only like 4 left, and none had the crypto keys and also all that radio equipment has to be added to the new radio guys pack that’s already full.
Or maybe he was a machine Gunner, now the alternate gunner has to come from somewhere, but that same person has to also still do their other job of being alternate casualty evac. And carry the machine gunners personal ammo.
Now 5 of your thirty guys are injured or dead. 1 radio, 2 heavy machine gunners, 2 rifleman; but among those dudes was also the primary casualty evac guy, a team leader and a squad leader and also the guy who carries ammo for the heavy machine gunner. So now someone has to take the machine gunners ammo-carrying-guy’s ammo, a new radio guy has to add all the radio equipment to his pack, a soldier just became a team leader and a team leader just became a squad leader and also you still need like 2 guys per casualty to carry the dead or wounded back to a pickup point.
Meanwhile the mission you prepared for had roles each soldier played, but now like 40% of the roles have switched, and some people are playing two roles at once, and sometimes thats not possible to do.
Schmidt was the door breacher but now he’s also the radio guy. Or Jones was a rifleman but now he’s carrying machine gunner ammo while also needing to move up a steep hill for an observation point, but the machine gunner still needs his ammo.
It gets hard to keep up very quickly.
Have you ever watched a movie where one guy gets shot and then they save him but it takes two to three guys to bring him to an aid station? That’s how you become combat ineffective. Let’s say you start with ten guys two get shot and are wounded you assign four guys to take care of those two shot and wounded people. Now your sitting at 4 people left that can fight. It gets worse and worse the more casualties you start pouring on. The more men down and out in an aid station means more men in the aid station. With that said that doesn’t mean you can’t still be effective at still doing your job you’re just going to be less effective and or will need to change tactics and if you can’t evolve and change tactics on the fly you’re going to be fucked.
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