THE IDEAL BATTLE MODEL
The ideal battle model completely, accurately, quickly, and easily predicts the results of any postulated battle from the initial conditions. Several factors prevent the existence of an ideal battle model.
One factor is computational complexity. For example, medical planners could use such a battle model to determine the size of treatment facilities, the breakdown of physician skills needed, and the medical supply inventory requirements. It is reasonable to suppose a battle model would track individuals and their separate wounds for engagements of a dozen participants on a side; however, maintaining that level of detail for engagements of tens of thousands of people would be prohibitively expensive in time and hardware requirements. Thus the requirement for complete predictions competes with the requirements for generality and speed of computation.
The second factor preventing the existence of an ideal battle model is the fact that we do not know enough about...
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Hartley, D.S. (2001). BATTLE MODELING . In: Gass, S.I., Harris, C.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_65
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