Confrontation Analysis and the Ukraine War

Confrontation Analysis is a method of analysing and gaming situations involving multiple stakeholders with competing aims and objectives. It has been used professionally by various organisations interested in modelling the options for all sides and obtaining clarity on who wants what to happen. The result is often a series of dilemmas and the method presents suggestions on how each type of dilemma can be potentially solved.

The method is documented in Curry J. and Young M. (2017) The Confrontation Analysis Handbook: How to Resolve Confrontations by Eliminating Dilemmas: Innovations in Wargaming Volume 3.

At the start of the Russian invasion I used the method to identify and analyse the strategic options available to each side. Imagine each side has cards (options) in their hand. Each card states what it does and summaries the other stake holder’s position on the card (i.e. they want it to happen, the don’t want it to happen, or they do not care). Cards can be held secretly in a player’s hands, put on the edge of the table as a threat (i.e. I will play this card if you do something I do not like) or be played (i.e. actioned). The method allowed me to largely model the strategic options that have since come into ‘play’ during the subsequent war. I wish I had documented these efforts to an academic standard at the time.

For example, Russia plays “Threaten Norwegian gas and oil installations” (they did this with drones and close target recces). NATO plays “Mobilise Norwegian military” card, and “Deploy Royal Marines and Royal Navy” cards to counter the Russian threat. Russia then has a belief dilemma, as NATO does not believe that Russia could cripple Norwegian production.

Another example is Russia plays “Threaten grain shipments by sea from Ukraine”. NATO plays “Deploy Turkish Navy to protect merchant shipping”. Again, Russia has a belief dilemma, as Turkey thinks it would sink Russia’s entire Black Sea Fleet with just three of its ships.

Nuclear weapons first use by Russia is an example of a threat card that is on the card table. Russia could do it (i.e. it has the delivery means), but just having the card as a threat does not commit Russia to use or non-use.

The USA also has many threat cards, largely centred around delivering weapons to Ukraine e.g. Training Ukraine pilots on F15/F16’s. Having trained pilots and ground staff just waiting for the aircraft to be delivered to Ukrainian airfields is a powerful threat card.

Having revisited Confrontation Analyse and used it for the Ukraine War, I am very impressed the way it helps encourage identifying strategic options available to all sides. As the cards are played onto the card table it dynamically inspires the creation of further cards (options). Unlike game theory that assumes a static state, Confrontation Analysis assumes the playing area changes as cards are played and discarded.

The card which most surprised me was created during the game, it was called “if you think your oil and gas industry will be working in the morning…” The card was generated by NATO and the aim was to shut down the Russian energy industry for the immediate future. It inspired an interesting discussion about the feasibility of cyber, special forces, hitting critical transport nodes(pipelines) etc. the only card the Russians could play to counter that particular threat was “go nuclear”. This was disturbing card to say the least to see on the card table at the end of the session.

Wargames are better predictive tools

 

On Dec 27^th 2022, the BBC published an article Ukraine war: Five ways conflict could go in 2023 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63987113). Five experts give completely different predictions.

1.       Michael Clarke, associate director of the Strategic Studies Institute, Exeter, UK says the war depends on the outcome of Russia’s spring offensive with its 250,000 mobilised troops.

2.       Andrei Piontkovsky, scientist and analyst based in Washington DC says Ukraine will win back its land due to “motivation, determination and courage of the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian nation as a whole, which is unprecedented in modern war history.”

3.       Barbara Zanchetta, Department of War Studies, King's College London says the war will grind on for years.

4.       Ben Hodges, former commanding general, United States Army Europe says Ukraine will win.

5.       David Gendelman, military expert based in Israel avoids saying how the war is going to end.

Five experts and five contrasting interpretations.

I have been wargaming the Ukraine War at an operational and sometimes tactical level since the war began. This was to develop my professional understanding. In November I published on my blog (http://wargamingco.blogspot.com/) my conclusion that the Russian army would rout by the end of the winter. I outlined my reasoning and said, of course, I could be wrong as leaders make decisions that influence future outcomes.

Models must be continually re-evaluated in the face of actual real-world data. My crude model is only a model and is not reality. I assumed Russia would keep 33% of their PGM as a strategic reserve v NATO or Chinese aggression. I was wrong, Russia has used almost everything they have (leaving them very vulnerable, especially to China if the latter decides to realign the international border in the Far East)

In the real world, leaders make decisions that may be different from those used in a wargame (even if those decisions are not rationale from our perspective). The Ukraine power system has been hit badly, but it is not to the extent that the country is moved back to the 19th century.

This is because:

•  Ukraine has a large repair capacity that is expanding (they have taken on 1000 more staff recently)
•  Europe is feeding in power directly to the Ukrainian grid (10% of what Ukraine needs)
• Power lines are hard to knock out
• Europe is sending staggering numbers of generators to the Ukraine. Ukr has spare truck capacity to move anything it needs, including fuel for generators.
• Spares for their grid are coming in from around Eastern Europe. They can use second hand and repair the broken.
• The Ukraine power grid was designed to stand up to NATO attack during the Cold War

The majority of Ukraine has had no interruption to its power supplies. This should not be seen as in any way mitigating the misery of those in the east facing regular power cuts every day.

The military and the state war machine are largely inoculated from civilian power shortages, as the former tends to have generators and fuel. Hitting the Ukraine power system may cause misery for some, but it does not impact Ukraine national combat power. So, in summary, Russia has used far more PGMs than I expected (I was wrong), but it would need many times more PGMs fired within a short period of time to create a lasting impact on the power grid of the Ukraine. To me Russia seems to be repeating Hitler’s terror bombing directive from World War II; historical hindsight shows Germany should have focussed on military targets with its limited airpower. Similarly Russia should use its dwindling stockpile to attempt to have a military impact.

There are big questions about what will happen next:

• Will Ukraine decide to advance during the winter? Ukr combat power is increasing in terms of troop numbers, armour and IDF. Russia is still waiting for the next batch of troops (though it did put perhaps 50,000 mercenaries, foreign troops, penal battalions and newly mobilised troops into the front line to replace the 100,000 casualties)
• Will Russia fall below the critical level of resupply (67% according to QJM) and have to fall back?
• Will the Russian army rout?

I think the answer is probably yes to all three questions, but probably is not 100% certainty. Of course, senior leaders may also make decisions that change future outcomes.

No wargame will tell us if Belarus will launch an invasion of the Ukraine (or whether Poland will then invade Belarus without NATO agreement). However, a wargame allows us to explore these possibilities.

As wargamers, we tend to overlook the value of the integration in our wargames of the inter-related factors of geography, time, space, ORBATs, logistics, etc. Personally, I have little interest in trying to determine the outcome of future wars just by talking about it.  I say let us get out a map, get some counters to show the military forces involves, label the military geography, talk through our underpinning assumptions, then discuss the future course of the conflict. If you want to understand something you have to do some analysis, game it, and then do more analysis

In the world of computing, we design IT systems, networks and software applications using a whole variety of models such as network diagrams, decision trees, data dictionaries, UML etc. If someone wanted to design a multimillion-pound system by just talking about it they would be seen as slightly detached from reality. So why do people think they can discuss one of the most complex intractable problems of all, war, without the mental tools imbedded in wargaming to analyse the situation?

 

If you want to know why the Ukrainian power system is still up see the Reuters article https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eastern-europe-holds-key-keeping-ukraines-power-2022-12-21/

My wargame says Ukraine is going to win as the Russian army collapses

I have been wargaming the Ukraine War since it began. To be clear this was for professional reasons, not for entertainment.

I believe, as of November 2022, the Russian army in the Ukraine is on the verge of collapse. Whether an army routs after it reaches its breakpoint in wargaming terms is a matter of chance, however, my prediction is the Russian army will rout by the end of the winter.

I have gamed the first start part of the war in 2015 and the cyber dimension many times, but in January 2022, I designed an operational level game set at brigade level to model the forthcoming Russian invasion.

The key features of the wargame were:

• 2 day turns
• Ukraine brigades largely had a combat strength of 4
• The Russian equivalents rolled a six sided combat strength to determine their initial combat strength (their tank units had a plus on the dice roll). The dice roll reflected my understanding about the wild variability in the combat effectiveness of their units. (We now know some of the initial wave of Russian forces included follow on forces, such as military police, rather than just front line combat units).
• Russian artillery was included in their units
• Ukraine had separate artillery units that could be switched from combat to combat to reflect their flexibility.
• In combat each side rolled their combat strength in dice. 5 or 6 caused a casualty, 6 if the enemy was dug in e.g. urban area, constricted terrain etc.
• Rates of advance were based on Depuy’s work (work was quoted by the UK staff college).
• Russia could supply less of its forces, the further it moved from its supporting railways.
• Separatist infantry would not fight outside their home territory
• Russian precision guided missiles (PGMs) were not that effective
•   Russian airpower made an impact until losses forced the Russians to reduce air attacks in order to keep their airforce ‘in being’. Soviet era air defence was effective at shooting down Soviet era aircraft.

My pre-war games predicted the actual outcome of the Russian advance grinding to a halt. Ukraine was just too large, with too large an army, with too few axis of advance. Russian logistics meant their axis of advance were rapidly reduced to just a few lines of assault along major roads. Russian airpower and PGMs started by hitting strategic targets, then was reallocated to tactical targets as the advance slowed down.

Since the initial games, I have continued to update the game as it moved into the static phase, then the Ukraine counter attack. I changed the game turns to represent 3 days, then a week, as both sides moved towards exhaustion. I play out the next 4 weeks, then review my model against the actual war. Logistics is a major part of the game, with each side getting a limited number of supply points per turn. Each supply point allows a unit to attack or defend at full strength.

Neither side has shown operational brilliance; the war is all about amassing sufficient supplies in order to launch an attack, as well as causing attrition on the other side with indirect fire.

My game included a Ukraine advance on the east front, until it ran out of supplies, followed by an advance on Kherson.

My wargame has also found that Russia no longer has the PGMs or airpower to cripple Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure. The Ukraine air defence works, the Russia does not work very well, the latter has exhausted most of its munition stock. Ukraine infrastructure is based on the Cold War and was designed to withstand NATO attack.

My model suggests both sides are near their breakpoint as they approach 50% losses, however Ukraine has a higher breakpoint that Russia. I based this rule on the fact that Ukraine has maintained a policy of individual troop rotation, for example giving leave for soldiers to attend weddings and funerals, as well as rotating units out of the front line. Ukraine is also defending its home territory.

There are important questions that will probably be only answered with post war analysis, such as how are the Russian casualties distributed between units of differing training, morale, capabilities and equipment? Or is the entire Russian Army riddled with incompetence due to decades of corruption? Do the Russians have some units in reserve that actually know how to fight?

Prediction is always hard, especially predictions about the future. However, my wargame-based analysis says the Russian army is going to collapse, Ukraine is going to retake most of its lost territory. Of course, I might be wrong, but is it better to base a prediction on a tried and tested wargame model or just a well written piece of narrative as appears in our national newspapers?