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Subject: Killing vs Wounding - Military Casualty Theories
highlander999    1/27/2007 5:14:19 PM
Just wondering. I have always heard that it was more advantageous for a military to wound the enemy that kill them, as it took much more energy, support and supplies etc to care for the wounded than the dead. Does anyone have information on that? Thanks, Steve
 
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BadNews    Winning   1/30/2007 9:54:46 PM
The most advantageous way to win a war, is to manuever is such away that the enemy surrenders without the firing of a single shot.
 
Romanticism aside, war is bloody, messy and horrid beyond mere discription, wars are won simply by achieving goals with minimal loss to your own forces.
 
Just a note, wounded men have been known to keep shooting, so when shots are to fired, KILLING IS THE OBJECTIVE. Besides, all the resources in the world are useless, if those who are to use them no longer exist.
 
Interdiction, or removing the resources before they can be used is always the most advantageous.
 
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Ashley-the-man       1/31/2007 7:52:20 PM
I seem to remember reading that the German "Bouncy Better" mine was designed with that purpose in mind.
 
This question also got me thinking about the movie Saving Private Ryan.  As the German was digging a whole for his grave the squad had a discussion about killing him or letting him go.  He was let go only to come back and kill a squad member later.  A simple soultion would have been to take a field stone and break his right skin bone.  He would have been out of action and with no weapons he would have had to wait for a German or American patrol to pick him up.  Kind of carthesis for the Americans who saw one of their buddies killed and it would have prevented the German from joing up again with his fellows.  Even the liberal who lobbied for his release could have accepted the compromise.
 
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Ashley-the-man       1/31/2007 7:52:58 PM
Ahhhh 
"Bouncing Betty" mine.
 
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Ghost175       2/18/2007 10:49:51 PM
Remeber a kill means paperwork for a kill

But a wound requires, (imediate) transport form the field (2-3 people) Transport to the rear (1 person) treatement ~2-6 people and care until they can return to the battle. While the people that take care of the wounded only have to for a short amount of time the overal time wasted and expertise used to take care of a wounded is more than a dead one.

How ever some wounded return fire... thus either way is ok I suppose as long as you win.

Also remeber that sometimes wounded enemies have to be taken care of by your side and dead/injured people make for vastly different propoganda items.
 
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BadNews       2/19/2007 12:18:31 AM
I can assure you with great confidence and from personal experience, when in combat, when you pull the trigger, you want that sucker dead, you don't care about paperwork, propaganda tools, how many non combatants to care for someone, how many trucks it takes or any other off the wall concept, you want him gone so that he isn't shooting at you anymore. :)
 
As far as Saving Private Ryan goes, it was a great movie..
 
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Jeff_F_F       2/19/2007 8:34:47 PM
I'd say you go for what you can get, but in the end it usually doesn't matter much anyway unless you are in CQB where you need your target down and out right now, or if you are talking about a fairly modern western army with medivac assets, field hospitals, etc. A lot of militaries barely have the support structure needed to feed their armies let alone provide medical care, and some have a defacto policy that that is what officers carry pistols for.
 
My feeling is that the idea that wounding is the goal derives from two sources. The first is the use of the term casualty to describe the goal of most attacks, such as the casualty producing radius of a shell. I'd guess that this is because it is much easier to predict wounds than to predict outright fatalities. You put up human-sized targets at various distances from the device, and then detonate it and see which ones have holes in them. Predicting fatalities, or even incapacitation is a whole lot harder.
 
The second reason IMO is the standard assumption that 1/3 casualties renders a unit combat ineffective. This is usually rationalized that the unit is rendered ineffective because of the 2 soldiers needed to treat each wounded soldier. I tend to be skeptical of that assumption, and even more skeptical of the rationalization. It just doesn't match logic. What force of defenders is going to let themselves be wipped out because they are too busy bandaging their buddies to fight back. You finish the fight first, then take care of your buddies. My suspicion is that the magic of 1/3 casualties is that it is probably the point where a unit of average gunts starts to panic, when for most defending units basically every fire team has one or more soldiers wounded or killed and the reality of the mortality of the rest begins to sink in and they retreat. On the attack, I suspect that the phenomenon is more or less that the advance stops when basically every advancing soldier has seen at least one of the soldiers next to them go down. 
 
The 1/3 casualty effect doesn't match the descriptions of historical combat operations I've ever read about, and the rationalization doesn't match either. Of course, you mostly read about the elite units. If the bandaging casualties theory was correct, I'd think the units with the discipline to take care of their own in the face of enemy fire would be the elite ones, whereas the common conscripts would just cut and run. On the other hand, if the magic of 1/3 casualties was the psychological tipping point where discipline breaks down, then you wouldn't see it's effects represented in the stories you read because no one bothers to tell the stories of the avarage Joes and Ivans and Fritzes that cut and ran or whose attack broke down. Instead they tell about elite units that kept fighting with 50% casualties and more.
 
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BadNews       2/19/2007 8:44:13 PM

I'd say you go for what you can get, but in the end it usually doesn't matter much anyway unless you are in CQB where you need your target down and out right now, or if you are talking about a fairly modern western army with medivac assets, field hospitals, etc. A lot of militaries barely have the support structure needed to feed their armies let alone provide medical care, and some have a defacto policy that that is what officers carry pistols for.

 

My feeling is that the idea that wounding is the goal derives from two sources. The first is the use of the term casualty to describe the goal of most attacks, such as the casualty producing radius of a shell. I'd guess that this is because it is much easier to predict wounds than to predict outright fatalities. You put up human-sized targets at various distances from the device, and then detonate it and see which ones have holes in them. Predicting fatalities, or even incapacitation is a whole lot harder.

 

The second reason IMO is the standard assumption that 1/3 casualties renders a unit combat ineffective. This is usually rationalized that the unit is rendered ineffective because of the 2 soldiers needed to treat each wounded soldier. I tend to be skeptical of that assumption, and even more skeptical of the rationalization. It just doesn't match logic. What force of defenders is going to let themselves be wipped out because they are too busy bandaging their buddies to fight back. You finish the fight first, then take care of your buddies. My suspicion is that the magic of 1/3 casualties is that it is probably the point where a unit of average gunts starts to panic, when for most defending units basically every fire team has one or more soldiers wounded or killed and the reality of the mortality of the rest begins to sink in and they retreat. On the attack, I suspect that the phenomenon is more or less that the advance stops when basically every advancing soldier has seen at least one of the soldiers next to them go down. 

 

The 1/3 casualty effect doesn't match the descriptions of historical combat operations I've ever read about, and the rationalization doesn't match either. Of course, you mostly read about the elite units. If the bandaging casualties theory was correct, I'd think the units with the discipline to take care of their own in the face of enemy fire would be the elite ones, whereas the common conscripts would just cut and run. On the other hand, if the magic of 1/3 casualties was the psychological tipping point where discipline breaks down, then you wouldn't see it's effects represented in the stories you read because no one bothers to tell the stories of the avarage Joes and Ivans and Fritzes that cut and ran or whose attack broke down. Instead they tell about elite units that kept fighting with 50% casualties and more.


Well thought out, an right on point
 

 
 
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