The impact of delays in decision-making on combat forces

Timing of decision-making plays a crucial role in determining victory or defeat in war. Human decision-making cannot always be reasonable due to bounded rationality. This paper discusses the effects of decision-making delays by a commander on combat outcomes in military operations. We construct a simulation combat model based on the Lanchester model, system dynamics, and the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) doctrine to numerically verify and analyse this. As a result of the simulation, we learn three lessons. First, the longer the commander's decision-making delays, the lower the combat winning rate. Second, the larger the size of the reserve forces, the more sensitive the decision-making delays are to the battle outcome. Finally, it is practical to intensively operate reserve forces of the same size rather than sequentially. This paper contributes to the analysis of decision-making delays by the commander of military operations, which is referred to as a qualitative factor close to reality.