An Artificial-Life CA Model of Combat

In this section we introduce a mobile CA model of land combat called EINSTein, developed at the Center for Naviil Analyses for the US Marine Corps. We include a discussion of this model here becau.se it is an interesting blend of CA-like local dynamics and agent-based modeling techniques. 

In 1914, F. W. Lanchester introduced a set of coupled ordinary differential equations-now commonly called the Lanchester Equationsl (LEs)-as models of attrition in modern warfare. Similar ideas were proposed around that time by [chaseSS] and [osip95]. These equations are formally equivalent to the Lotka-Volterra equations used for modeling the dynamics of interacting predator-prey populations [hof98]. The LEs have since served as the fundamental mathematical models upon which most modern theories of combat attrition are based, and are to this day embedded in many state-of-the-art military models of combat. [Taylor] provides a thorough mathematical discussion. 

LEs are very intuitive and therefore easy to apply. For the simplest case of directed fire, for example, they embody the idea that one side s attrition rate is proportional to the opposing side s size. However, LEs are applicable only under a 

While the LEs are particularly relevant for the kind of static trench warfare and artillery duels that characterized most of World War I, they are too simple and lack the spatial degrees of freedom to realistically model modern combat. The fundamental problem is that they idealize combat much in the same way as Newton s laws idealize physics. 

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