Using Mathematical Models in Event Analysis from Military History

One of the ways of knowing the events of military history is to reproduce them using mathematical models. Based on the analysis of the fighting operations of the 4th Panzer Brigade of the Red Army in the vicinity of the city of Mtsensk in early October 1941, the capability to provide mathematical modeling of the fragments of these combat operations and the application of the apparatus of Markov random processes for these purposes is substantiated.The effectiveness of tanks depends not only on their technical properties, but also on the ways they are used on the battlefield. At the same time, combat effectiveness of tanks is commonly understood as their effectiveness in conditions when the methods of conducting combat operations by each of the opposing sides are the best.The battle outcome is probabilistic. It has certain regularity, depending on the combat tactics. The battle can be imagined as a multitude of randomly dueling fights between tanks, differing in their location and range of fire. A study of the probability of a system transition from each transient state to the next leads to the construction of mathematical models that allow calculating the ratio of losses of opposing sides.Based on the facts of military history and discovered regularities, the mathematical models are constructed to allow reproducing various fragments of combat according to the scheme of the Markov random process, and on their basis calculations are performed. The dependence of the ratio of the losses of the opposing sides depending on the number of firing positions used by the ambush tanks was established, provided that the change of these positions was made imperceptibly for the enemy.The obtained results can be used to develop tactical methods of using tanks in antiterrorist operations.