[War & Business] Russia Violated the "Lanchester's Law"

An image of Frederick Lanchester, a British aeronautical engineer and inventor who developed the Lanchester Laws, one of the modern military science principles established in 1916. [Image source= Birmingham Museum website, UK]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] One of the military science laws that has recently gained renewed attention due to the repeated ineffectiveness of the Russian military in the invasion of Ukraine is the "Lanchester's Law." Lanchester's Law was developed in 1916 during World War I by British aeronautical scientist Frederick Lanchester and is famous as one of the fundamental formulas of modern warfare.

The core of this law is a formula that calculates the power gap between two forces with no significant qualitative difference in weapons as the square of their numerical difference. Simply put, if 10 friendly fighter jets face off against 6 enemy fighter jets under equal conditions, instead of 4 jets remaining on the friendly side, 8 jets can survive, and the enemy is annihilated.

When news emerged that Russia had amassed a force of 150,000 troops near the border for the invasion of Ukraine last February, military experts pointed out that the Russian military violated Lanchester's Law by assembling too few troops. This was because the Ukrainian armed forces numbered 200,000, making Russia's 150,000 troops 50,000 fewer, and these forces were further divided into three fronts for the attack.

This confidence of the Russian military is presumed to have been based on their air force, which they pride as the world's second largest, but in reality, Russian fighter jets failed to perform effectively. The Ukrainian Air Force remains intact to this day, and the Russian military has been unable to destroy Ukraine's air defense network, failing to block the large-scale Western military supplies coming via rail from Poland.

The heavy weaponry of the Russian forces entering Ukraine was also unexpectedly poor. The tanks at the forefront of the Russian army were not the latest models but old Soviet-era tanks. They were vulnerable even to the American Javelin missile, an outdated anti-tank missile developed in the 1980s. As Western military aid to Ukraine continued, the equipment gap between the two countries became insignificant, and Lanchester's Law is considered to have been properly applied in this war.

Analyses suggest that the poor performance of the Russian military, which even violates basic common sense, is also influenced by the psychology of the Vladimir Putin regime, which seeks to keep the military in check. Putin, a former KGB officer?the Soviet-era military surveillance agency?harbors deep distrust toward the military. There is concern that if a war hero emerges from this conflict, the national popularity focused on the new hero could become a political burden for President Putin.

Interpretations also suggest that the reason Putin continues to appoint Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, a construction engineer with no military experience, lies here. Ultimately, in a dictator’s war where neither a crushing defeat nor a complete victory is acceptable, the blood of countless Ukrainian civilians and Russian soldiers is spilling profusely.