AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary
← All conjectures · Conflict & collapse
Lanchester at Salamis
Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).
Claim (verbatim)
Lanchester at Salamis. Lanchester's attrition laws distinguish two regimes of combat: aimed fire, where any unit can concentrate on any enemy, yields the square law, in which numerical superiority compounds; frontage-limited melee, where only the front ranks engage, yields the linear law. This conjecture maps the two regimes onto ancient warfare across a shoreline. Ramming warfare between galleys concentrates force like aimed fire — any ship can run down any target on open water — so galley battles should obey the square law, while phalanx battles, fought rank against rank on a fixed frontage, should obey the linear law: two regimes of the same mathematics separated by the water's edge. In Greco-Roman engagements with recorded strengths and losses, the loss-exchange exponent for naval battles should therefore sit near 2, between roughly 1.6 and 2.4, while land battles from the same sources sit at or below about 1.3, with clearly separated confidence intervals.
Prediction clause (verbatim)
Compiling Greco-Roman naval engagements with recorded fleet strengths and ship losses (n >= 25), the regression of log loss-exchange ratio on log initial force ratio yields an exponent between 1.6 and 2.4, while the same regression on land battles from the same sources yields <= 1.3, with non-overlapping 90% confidence intervals; equal exponents, or naval below land, kill it.
Kill-dataset (verbatim)
Kill: digitized engagement tables from Kromayer-Veith's Antike Schlachtfelder and the Morrison-Coates trireme-battle compilations.
Nobody has run this test. The kill-data is named above. If you can run it — or you know the paper that already settles it — claim the kill or submit the prior scholarship. Kills and prior scholarship are credited here, by name, as they come in.
On Inferpedia
This conjecture has been linked to the following subject pages on Inferpedia — an encyclopedia of the missing, now in limited preview.
Provenance
Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5
Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo/web/DB access); titles-only knowledge of existing items, embedded in titles_supplied per the batch-2 lane rule; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH3_20260705.md (b043140). Novelty unverified by construction. titles_supplied stripped to the committed sidecar conjecture_fresh_fablemax_batch3_titles_supplied_20260705.md at import (schema additionalProperties:false; relaxation queued).
Novelty / leakage triage
anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run
Lanchester-on-historical-battles is an established (and contested) validation literature (Engel; Dupuy Institute), but no ancient-naval application or >=25-engagement dataset was located — and a contrary indication stands: standard treatments classify ancient naval BOARDING under the linear law, against the conjecture's ramming-square-law split. Any registration must confront that classification and the mixed validation record.
- Lanchester's laws (standard exposition) — Boarding classified linear — contrary indication
- Dupuy Institute, 'The Lanchester Equations and Historical Warfare' — Mixed validation even for modern battles
Predictions
No prediction registered yet.
Weigh in
No community feedback yet.
New here? Create an account first
Create an account or sign in and your feedback is tied to you — you can track it, get replies, and claim this conjecture so others know you’re working on it. Prefer not to? Just leave your take below as a guest — only the name you type is shown.
Add your take
Posted immediately (spam is removed). Community feedback is never an adjudicated verdict and never changes this conjecture's triage label or status above.