The Mathematics of War

In the clip below, physicist Sean Gourley breaks anthropology's grip on irregular warfare's strategic evolution and introduces the mathematical contribution to winning -and preventing- 21st century conflicts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emn28FrJ6CI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Edefensetech%2Eorg%2Farchives%2Fcat%5Fstrategery%2Ehtml&feature=player_embedded

Dr. Gourley and his team demonstrate the existence of a power law, indicating that the process in question (war in this case) is not random. But, then again, War as Organized Violence cannot be random - human minds are organizing it.

This type of power law shows up in many physical systems: distribution of galaxies and second order phase transitions are instances that come to my mind.

That the power law has the same exponent across multiple wars is more interesting since it indicates that war has got its own universality class.

The new question is to extend this analysis backwards in time to historical wars and see how the exponent has changed during human history (if at all).

Moreover, one could try to calculate the same exponent for non-human species that practice organized violence such as certain species of ants. It would be interesting to find out if the exponent is species-specific or not; i.e. if non-human and human species organize violence in the same manner.

Of course, in the coming wars against extra-terrestrials, this type of knowledge would be quite helpful.