Talk:Lanchester's laws

Relationship to other models?
Does anyone know whether Lanchester was influenced by Lotka and Volterra's 1910 work? It is not cited in his 1916 article. Colin Rowat (talk) 11:48, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Direct fire only
I don't think the article is quite right about application to modern warfare: the square law applies only to direct fire weapons engaging each other, and not to units or larger formations, nor to area fire weapons whose effectiveness depends on the density of targets in the target area. Specifically, it does not apply to field artillery (the example given in the article) except when engaged in targeted counter-battery fire.

I'll have a go at revising the article. Cyclopaedic (talk) 18:00, 18 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Done. Still not a great article, though. Perhaps an example? Not sure if that's encyclopaedic. Cyclopaedic (talk) 09:25, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
 * A few examples would be interesting and illuminating. If you have roughly three types of units (close combat, distance, aimed distance) you have six possible combinations... Hm. Do we have any data on the actual factors as measured in the field? Shinobu (talk) 08:54, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Tag & Assess 2008
Article reassessed and graded as start class. --dashiellx (talk) 18:41, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

"copied, with permission"?
I'm puzzled by the "copied with permission" notice: this article has been changed significantly over time, by multiple authors, and the IP that added the notice seems to have in fact added very little. Is it (still, or ever) an accurate description? And if so, can we factor it to make it less so? If it's simply being paraphrased in places, it seems to me to be unnecessary to have anything more than an acknowledgement by way of a reference. If there is wholesale copying, this makes it unsatisfactory as regards the GFDL requirement. Alai (talk) 16:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Dubious
The article states that as a compromise between the linear and square laws, "often a factor of 1.5 is used". An exponent of 1.5 might be a suitable compromise between linear and square laws, depending on the situation, but a factor of 1.5 makes no sense. Rather than changing this based on a conjecture, perhaps someone can check sources to see what formulas are actually used. And, while they're at it, perhaps they can substitute something more specific for that vague word "often".

--208.76.104.133 (talk) 15:54, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I have seen research that suggest a better approximation would be 1.34 however I have never seen this value used in practice. Generally they use a factor of 1.5.

I put in some references. 8digits (talk) 02:17, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Hello from a newbie contributor. This exponent (between 1 and 2) arises from attempts to fit historical data to Lanchester's Laws, as historical combat losses tend to fall between what would be expected from either the linear or square law. It is an approximation reflecting that portions of the armies involved may be subject to different laws depending on circumstances (terrain, cover, etc.). Most articles I've read give values for this in a range between 1.4-1.8. I'll get some citations to go with that. There are also applications of Lanchester's laws for military combat modeling. EastwoodDC (talk) 01:38, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Spelling
There seem to be several typos, including in the graph. 128.198.221.29 (talk) 15:59, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Predator-prey
The lead describes this as a model of a predator-prey relationship. That characterization is not supported by any text in the body, nor by any references. This is good, because it's facially ridiculous (the equations are of symmetric form, can only describe decreasing functions of time, etc.). I propose removing this and replacing it with something not wrong. --JBL (talk) 23:28, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow, this has been in the article since 2006. --JBL (talk) 23:33, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I have boldly removed the offending phrase. --JBL (talk) 23:35, 3 June 2019 (UTC)