A challenge to common assumptions about the future of land warfare
Ground Combat reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges today's overly subjective and often inaccurate approaches to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to offer an evidence-based approach to examining the future of war.
Connable created and analyzed an original dataset of more than four hundred global ground combat cases, showing that there was an evolutionary rather than revolutionary shift in the characteristics of ground combat from World War II through the early 2020s. Despite advances in military technology, tanks, artillery, and infantry remain central to how war is waged on land. This book asks readers to stop and think about the implications of these findings for force planning and future predictions about military-technical revolutions.
This book sets an essential evidentiary baseline for military officers, policymakers, and scholars who think about the future of modern war.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: American Forecasts of War and Ground Combat
Chapter 3: World War II Ground Combat Case Examples
Chapter 4: World War II Ground Combat Characteristics
Chapter 5: Interval Cases—1945-2002
Chapter 6: Interval Period Ground Combat Characteristics
Chapter 7: Modern Ground Combat from 2003 through 2012
Chapter 8: Modern Ground Combat from 2013 through 2022
Chapter 9: Observed Characteristics of Modern Ground Combat
Chapter 10: Conclusions on Ground Combat and on War
Appendix: Methodology and Source Insights
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
About the Author :
Ben Connable, PhD, is an award-winning research leader, a retired US Marine Corps intelligence and foreign area officer, a former senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an adjunct professor in Georgetown University's Security Studies program.
Review :
Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War is an original, seminal, and groundbreaking study of extensive and meticulous scholarship.
Ground Combat will fill a void in any collection of essential books on warfare....[Connable's] study and understanding of ground combat aligns with the study and understanding of so many retired senior Marines.
Connable adeptly blends qualitative historical case analysis, coded data from 423 modern ground combat incidents, and critiques of doctrine, modeling, and strategic discourse....[He] gives us the intellectual vocabulary to process this moment.
Ground Combat sets an evidentiary baseline and a new, detail-oriented standard for conflict research and policymaking.
Connable, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer, provides a comprehensive and meticulous analysis of ground force combat that shows how war has—and hasn't—changed.
The case studies and data analysis showing elements of modern ground combat over the last 70 years are the most important part of the text....Connable explains in detail how he collected and coded his data, and the dataset is available to all.
Connable looks beyond the usual case-studies, integrating our past, present and future into an empirically grounded and rational perspective that is insulated from hyperinflated proclamations about our technologically determined present or future....[He] is a rare voice for continuity in military affairs.
This publication seamlessly integrates qualitative and historical data into an insightful narrative, resulting in an engaging and valuable read.
