Lanchester's Equations and Cyberwarfare

In his classic book Aircraft in Warfare, F. W. Lanchester discussed different types of warfare and presented equations, called the Lanchester equations, that can be used to model the results of battles between two forces of different sizes or capabilities. This paper introduces the Lanchester equations and provides a theoretical discussion leading to an analysis of the relative value of increasing the effectiveness of military assets vs. increasing the quantity of those assets. In particular, we show that increasing the effectiveness contributes only linearly to the power of a combatant, but increasing the quantity contributes quadratically. This paper also presents a Python script that models the Lanchester equations, together with a visualization demonstrating the effect of force concentration. The paper concludes with a discussion of the equations' relevance to cyberwarfare, specifically to drone warfare and DDoS attacks.