Hierarchy of models of military actions and border conflicts

The substantive aspects of wars, battles, military and border conflicts and the views on them of military theorists are discussed. Three levels of models are highlighted. At the lower level, a probabilistic conflict function based on the definition of a battle (a set of coordinated targets, place and time of strikes, fire and maneuver of troops) is used to simulate the combat of subunits, which takes into account the numbers of combat units of the parties and the parameter of combat superiority. His statistical estimate was found by the maximum likelihood method. Military superiority is moral superiority (taken into account through the percentages of bloody losses sustained by the parties) and technological (superiority in the organization of interaction, in maneuver, reconnaissance and fire capabilities). The game-theoretic problem of 26 resource allocation among the objects of defense has been solved. Models of the middle level are extensions of the classical Osipov – Lanchester fight equations that take into account the moral potentials of the parties using the basic law of psychophysics. The results of the calculations do not contradict the provisions of the military science of the combat capabilities of the troops. In the top-level models, the social costs of the course and outcome of wars. In particular, the loss of the United States in the Vietnam War can be explained by the lack of readiness of American society to bear casualties in a war with unclear objectives.