Tag Archives: education

Wargaming the Future: Educating the Fleet in Multi-Dimensional Warfare

By LT Jack Tribolet

Educational wargaming is underutilized and possesses the potential to teach warfighters intricate modern doctrine and force capabilities. Historically, analytical wargaming has functioned as a critical tool for military leadership, offering insights into force capabilities and aiding decision-making through experiential learning. Yet, within the US Navy and Marine Corps, the potential of digital or electronic wargaming as an educational platform for junior officers and Midshipmen remains largely untapped. Traditional tabletop wargames, once favored by older generations, fail to engage the younger, digitally-raised cohort and instead cater to a niche community. Statistics speak volumes— about 80 percent of Generation Z and Millennials play video games and average around seven hours of weekly gametime—highlighting the opportunity for a new generation of wargames. This data underscores a missed opportunity in leveraging simulator-based educational wargaming for the 21st-century Navy and USMC. The capacity to craft a sophisticated, educational, and enjoyable physics-based simulator exists, and it is incumbent upon the Navy and USMC to embrace this modern technology for Professional Military Education (PME) and junior officer training.

In the Fall of 2023, the University of Southern California’s Naval ROTC program embarked on a year-long initiative to introduce Midshipmen to the complexities of the Taiwan problem set. This scenario-focused education requires a significant understanding of naval and amphibious operations and is ideal for incorporating wargames. USC’s educational program blends discussions, lectures, and essential reading materials, such as James R. Holmes’ Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (2018), which enabled the students to have an in-depth discussion with Dr. Holmes via Zoom regarding Taiwan. However, it is worth noting that this initiative provides only an introductory-level education for Midshipmen and would benefit immensely from the addition of fleet-integrated educational wargaming.

Historical instances, such as the development of War Plan Orange prior to the Second World War, demonstrate how effective analytical wargaming can be when mixed into scenario decision-making. Yet, no standardized efforts were made to prepare junior officers similarly. The Naval War College and officer training pipelines did not see the value in educating junior officers like senior officers. However, even though junior officers do not require the same analytical gaming experience as fleet commanders, they can benefit enormously from exposure to educational wargaming to introduce them to various topics. As a learning tool, wargames can train the participants in force capability and doctrine, provide terrain familiarization, and offer opportunities for decision-making development. Additionally, they challenge the participants mentally, stimulating and driving sophisticated problem-solving and decision-making. As a tool, variables can be added or subtracted to increase/decrease game complexity, allowing for infinite theoretical scenarios.

Updating the naval officer training curriculum should not be difficult. The United States Naval Academy (USNA) and Naval Service Training Command (NSTC) promulgate curriculum guiding Professional Core Competencies (PCCs) roughly every three years that govern “the foundational standards of ‘officership’ by delineating core competencies required of all officer accession programs.”1 Whispers of a new competency for basic instructional wargaming exist, but even if included in the 2024 PCCs, this will require significant time and resources to train unit Officer Instructors to run educational games proficiently. Additionally, few ROTC courses have extra time, and an already burdened weekly schedule leaves little for adding extra training on top of current requirements for Midshipmen. To the collective groan of students and instructors alike, adding wargaming to officer training will necessitate a standalone time slot in weekly schedules, rather than shoehorning wargaming into existing time. Furthermore, Officer Instructors will need professional training to standardize implementation and enable cross-unit competition.

The Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfighting at Marine Corps University (MCU), who are pioneering educational gaming for MCU students, example one potential source of training for Officer Instructors. MCU could integrate with the biannual three-week Teaching in Higher Education (TiHE) course for incoming NROTC instructors, and allow them to reach the hundreds of Sailors and Marines who commission through NROTC each year. Moreover, standardization of training and the games played across ROTC programs is paramount to enable cross-unit integration and competition. Competition in wargaming events would incentivize performance and further stimulate Midshipmen education. The Government Accountability Office recently recommended that the Navy and Marine Corps “evaluate the costs and benefits of developing standard wargaming education and qualifications for wargaming personnel.” Consequently, the services must establish wargaming as an Officer Instructor (OI) qualification to standardize and enhance training pipelines through educational gaming.2 This qualification could mimic the newly introduced Warrior Toughness program, which has gradually become part of the Fleet through accession pipelines. After rotating through ROTC the cadre returning to the Fleet could broaden wargaming initiatives at the unit level, gradually fostering a culture shift towards embracing wargaming more extensively across the services.

However, if the Navy and Marines want to capture the attention of a new generation, they must develop an educational but entertaining multi-dimensional physics-based simulator to maximize the application of 21st-century technology. Tabletop wargaming, while valuable, is not sufficient. Tabletop gaming offers an immediate but temporary avenue for educational learning at a remarkably affordable investment. Straightforward tabletop problem-solving games can be completed within a brief timeframe, ranging from twenty to thirty minutes. An illustrative example is the microgame “Call Sign,” which concentrates on carrier combat and introduces singular variables, showcasing how these games can efficiently impart knowledge and skills, but these games are insufficient to meet the needs of the ROTC curriculum and lack the potential of digital games.

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsored a study on the value of video games, which concluded that “people who play video games are quicker at processing information” and that only “ten hours of video games can change the structure and organization of a person’s brain,” therefore tying informational learning to entertainment has a remarkable potential to increase retention. Most importantly, education must be balanced with entertainment, meaning accurate force capabilities and doctrine must coincide with quality graphical rendering of the action and include regular updates. Simulating forced decision-making with minimal time and minimal information provides invaluable experience for future military decision-makers. Furthermore, an in-depth military simulator would require knowledge of blue force design and doctrine, cultivate warrior skillsets, and increase tactical acumen. A competitive gaming culture amongst recruits and service members will ensure the longevity of such a program.

Effective strategy games blend a minimal initial learning curve but increase in depth and complexity while remaining re-playable due to variety. Like traditional board wargames, turn-based games necessitate a fundamental understanding of force design and doctrine. Conversely, real-time strategy (RTS) games demand swift decision-making, compelling players to act within a restricted timeframe. Modern games often integrate these two approaches, allowing players to oversee larger forces strategically in a turn-based mode while enabling detailed control over individual units during confrontations. This amalgamation of turn-based and RTS elements harnesses the educational advantages of understanding force dynamics while providing experiential learning through decision-making, offering a holistic approach to strategic gaming.

One potential commercially available wargame is Command: Modern Operations. However, this game suffers from being overly complex, detracting from the entertainment value of the equation as it requires many hours of instruction to play. Unfortunately, no commercially available modern strategic video game fits this balanced role, and most avoid contemporary conflict scenarios and instead focus on fictional Cold War scenarios. For example, naval-centric Cold Waters (2017) and land-centric WARNO (2022) display well-researched military simulators exhibiting the capabilities of Cold War-era forces. The success of Cold War-era simulators remains undeniable, as the developers of Cold Waters have showcased an upcoming impressively modeled new game, Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age. The cost of developing a modern video game ranges from $10,000 to millions. However, the DoD could drastically cut this cost by leveraging an already created modern simulator, such as WARNO, funding this successful team and providing experts to modify a pre-created simulator to reflect modern force capabilities.

An LRASM salvo attack is launched against a PLA Navy Carrier Strike Group in the wargame Command: Modern Operations. (Video via Emerging Threats Group Youtube Channel)

Furthermore, the official Navy/USMC stamp on a military simulator would draw outsized attention from the private market, serve as a potent recruitment tool, and create a competitive outlet for Midshipmen and officers. The Navy has already worked to capitalize on the popularity of video games by creating an E-Sports team, which is run by the Navy Recruiting Command. Yet, an official strategy simulator would draw further interest through military recognition by connecting to modern youth in the popular video game dimension. In the US alone, the strategy game market revenue reached $14.88 billion in 2022, exhibiting a significant market share of overall games. Ultimately, the success of a military simulator hinges on player enjoyment and support; popular strategy games such as Starcraft II maintain over a five million monthly player count despite being a decade old. In comparison, WARNO only sold 213,000 copies so far, as it lacks competitive depth.

Warsaw Pact and NATO forces compete in combined arms maneuver warfare in the wargame WARNO. (Video via VulcanHDGaming Youtube Channel)

Unfortunately, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has outpaced the US in competitive digital wargaming, recognizing its potential for education since the early 2000s. Notably, since 2017, the PLA has organized national wargaming competitions, boasting more than 20,000 participants in 2019 alone. Emphasizing the educational aspect, the PLA actively encourages military simulator usage to instruct on force design changes and to promote military affairs to the civilian population. Initially, the PLA benefitted enormously from mimicking US civilian market military simulators, but has since shifted to domestic-made strategy games, such as Mozi Joint Operations Deduction System, which enables military members to fight simulated battles with Chinese equipment. Additionally, the PLA copied popular US titles, such as Call of Duty, to create their own first-person shooter, Glorious Mission, to “improve combat skills and technological understanding” in military members.3 Wargaming has evolved into an integral part of PME for the PLA, gaining widespread popularity even amongst the civilian population. This exemplifies a dimension where the PLA initially imitated the US military, strategically leveraged the US private sector, and ultimately leapfrogged US capabilities to outperform the US military in PME.

A salvo of Soviet P-500 Bazalt anti-ship missiles (NATO reporting name: SS-N-12 Sandbox) is fired by a Slava-class cruiser against a U.S. Cold War-era surface action group in the upcoming wargame Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age. (Work-in-progress developer video via Not Sure Youtube Channel)

Damien O’Connell, the founder of the Warfighting Society, recently penned an article, “Progress and Perils: Educational Wargaming in the US Marine Corps,” on The Maneuverist blog, which delineated implementation issues for fleet-wide educational gaming. He outlines five obstacles to greater implementation of wargaming in the operating forces: “(1) confusion about what educational wargaming is and is not, (2) skepticism of its value, (3) ignorance of its successful use, (4) limited time, (5) aversion to nerd culture, and (6) ignorance of how to integrate wargames into training and education plans.”4 The Navy and USMC must not conflate educational gaming with analytical wargaming. Decision-making opportunities and force design instruction found in basic wargames will answer any confusion surrounding wargaming and its value and demonstrate its successful use to any observing critics. However, overcoming issues related to time and integration will demand a substantial initial investment and revised time requirements through curriculum standardization. Aversion to “nerd culture” stems from a historical stigma against board gaming, shared even by video gamers; this dislike can be easily solved by tapping into the voracious appetite for video games.

A secondary benefit of creating wargame literate junior officers would positively boost the ability of time-proven analytical gaming and thus improve force design and doctrine. The early introduction of wargames will create “a bigger pool of individuals who are exposed to the principles of wargaming, allowing the DOD to cast a wider net when looking for qualified individuals to build, run, and analyze games,” and in turn, increase the performance of future professional analytical wargaming.5 Furthermore, the over-reliance on civilian-run wargames has created a capability deficit among military personnel, because fewer are trained in how to run and manage wargames.6 This culture change could imitate the drastic success of the Prussian officer corps, which spawned avid wargamers such as General von Moltke—the Prussian army chief of staff—who expanded the use of wargaming under his leadership. As a result, the Prussian military dominated the European continent in the 19th century and forged a dominant military doctrine that lasted a century. Unsurprisingly, “many countries attributed the battlefield success of Moltke and the Prussians to the integration of wargaming in their army.”7

Junior officer education needn’t be limited to monotonous PowerPoint displays or exclusive to PME. Wargaming presents a straightforward remedy for a complex educational challenge and should not be dismissed as an after-school activity. If the US military aims to regain the edge against the PLA in critical thinking and education, it must create a finely tuned educational military simulation video game. Furthermore, the potential for training will exponentially grow as technology such as virtual reality becomes more readily available. The Navy and USMC must stay ahead of the educational curve, set the foundation for a future sophisticated Ender’s Game-like military simulation or Star Trek’s morality-testing unwinnable game, the Kobayashi Maru, and turn science fiction into reality. Existing tabletop games may temporarily suffice but must be formally integrated into the curriculum and eventually replaced by digital simulations. The value of multi-domain educational learning from wargaming cannot be overstated. Moreover, increased interaction with younger generations through a popular Navy-endorsed video game could help draw in technology-oriented recruits. The Navy and USMC must embrace 21st century technology and adapt it to benefit instruction for foreseeable near-peer threats. No military aviator argues against the extensive use of flight simulators in modern instruction; this attitude must be broadened to the entire Fleet.

LT Jack Tribolet flew the MH-60S Knighthawk with HSC-26 out of Norfolk. He currently serves as an Officer Instructor teaching at the University of Southern California and is the nationwide NROTC Course Coordinator for the class Seapower & Maritime Affairs.

References

1. Officer Professional Core Competencies, United States Naval Academy, Naval Service Training Command, April 2019, iv. https://www.netc.navy.mil/Portals/46/NSTC/cmd-docs/manuals/2019%20Officer%20Professional%20Core%20Competencies%20(PCC)%20Manual.pdf?ver=2020-08-06-111416-387#

2. Government Accountability Office, Defense Analysis:Additional Actions Could Enhance DOD’s Wargaming Efforts, April 24, 2023, 32. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105351.pdf

3. Kania, Elsa B. and McCaslin, Ian Burns. Learning Warfare From the Laboratory—China’s Progression in Wargaming and Opposing Force Training. Washington DC, MD: Institute For the Study of War, September 2021, 18. Learning Warfare from the Laboratory ISW September 2021 Report.pdf (understandingwar.org)

4. Damien O’Connell, “Progress and Perils: Educational Wargaming in the US Marine Corps,” The Warfighting Society, Updated 25 December 2023. Progress and Perils: Educational Wargaming in the US Marine Corps By Damien O’Connell (themaneuverist.org)

5. Hunter, “Immerse Early, Immerse Often,” 38.

6. Kyleanne Hunter, “Immerse Early, Immerse Often: Wargaming in Precommissioning Education,” in Forging Wargamers: A Framework for Professional Military Education, ed. Sebastian J. Bae (Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2022), 31.

7. Appleget, Jeff, et al. The Craft of Wargaming: A Detailed Planning Guide for Defense Planners and Analysts. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2020, 53.

Featured Image: A Soviet surface warship under attack from Harpoon missiles (Developer work-in-progress screenshot of wargame Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age, via 

What I Have Learned Teaching Ethics to Midshipmen

By Bill Bray

For nearly three years now, I have taught “Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader” to sophomore midshipmen (“youngsters”) at the U.S. Naval Academy, my alma mater. This is a core requirement for all midshipmen and course instruction is a collaborative effort. One of five philosophers on staff teach ethical theory on Mondays, and in the remaining two classes of each week active-duty or retired officers teach case studies and foster seminar-style discussions.

What I often wonder—and am often asked—is if this formal ethics course at least correlates to better ethical behavior and decision-making by midshipmen and Naval Academy graduates in the fleet. That is the Academy’s stated reason for the course: to “prepare future officers for the difficult moral decisions that they will have to make during their careers.” Otherwise, it would be hard to justify the course as core. Anyone can memorize ethical concepts and become casually familiar with the thinking of some of the greatest ethicists, ancient and modern. Just doing that will make one better at trivia, but it will not make him or her a more ethical leader.

The age-old question of whether virtue can be taught needs no reexamination here. Socrates believed as much, which is good enough for me. The more direct question concerns this course and if it, and similar college-level courses taught elsewhere, does, in the aggregate, produce more ethical leaders. This is not a question that can be definitively answered, given the multitude of factors for which any long-term analysis would have to control, never mind the challenges of collecting valid data. In fact, academic attempts to determine the efficacy of ethical instruction have not been encouraging, although some recent studies have shown some positive effect.

Many valid questions cannot be proven to empirical satisfaction. This is one of them, and merely claiming the course at least cannot hurt is insufficient. It should give these future officers some knowledge about the philosophical tradition of ethics and moral reasoning they did not already have and inspire reflection on how they would navigate ethically fraught situations—those in which the right decision is not immediately clear and require leaders to slow down and deliberately consider all aspects of the situation.

History of the Course

Ethics and Moral Reasoning for the Naval Leader was put into the service academies’ core curriculums following the December 1992 electrical engineering cheating scandal at the Naval Academy by members of the Class of 1994. West Point and the Air Force Academy teach the course to seniors, closer to their commissioning. The Naval Academy teaches it to sophomores on the premise that it is better for them to consider this material before they enter junior year and commit to the minimum service obligation after graduation (referred to as “two-for-seven night”, meaning they have served two years as midshipmen and are committing to seven more years of service—two more as midshipmen and at least five as a commissioned officer).

The 1992 cheating scandal forced some collective introspection among both Navy and Naval Academy military and civilian leaders. After several investigations, all outlined in a January 1994 Naval Inspector General report, ultimately 133 midshipmen were implicated (about 15 percent of the class). Nearly 30 were expelled. It remains the worst cheating scandal since the Academy adopted its Honor Code in 1951. In addition to implementing the Ethics course, following the scandal the Academy revised the Honor Code. Of note, in 2021 the Naval Academy experienced another cheating scandal, this time in Physics, that implicated 105 midshipmen, all sophomores (approximately half were taking the Ethics course at the time they cheated on the Physics final in December 2021; the other half took the course in spring 2022). Twenty-eight were separated.

While the 2021 scandal was disappointing, it did not receive the press coverage the 1994 scandal generated. Yet, it would be fair to ask how this could happen again, especially with midshipmen who were taking the Ethics course at the time. On the other hand, one of the biggest incongruities with the origin of the course and its stated goal (at least since I have taught it) is that it is not designed to prevent midshipmen from cheating on their exams. They should already know not to do this! While the course was borne of an academic cheating scandal, cheating is a clear right-vs.-wrong issue. As such, I do not think the 2021 Physics cheating scandal reflects directly on the course’s purpose or efficacy.

A better measure of the course would be how Naval Academy graduates since the late 1990s have fared in the complex and often ethical gray zones of military operations, particularly combat operations. To prepare midshipmen for the challenge of making the best ethical decisions in these situations, the course must assume midshipmen are not liars and cheaters. No such study exists, however, or probably could exist in the near future.

That leaves only the observations I and others who have taught the course can offer on how midshipmen perform in the course—how they receive and interact with the material, and what that may mean for their future as commissioned officers.

Course Structure

The course includes four blocks of instruction: Moral perception (two weeks), moral deliberation (five weeks), moral excellence (five weeks), and Just War Theory (three weeks). Moral perception concerns how to better recognize morally fraught situations, as they often are not clear initially. This section includes reading on how people from different cultures often view the same issue differently, as religion and culture shape moral perception differently.

During moral deliberation, midshipmen are instructed in a sequential process (roadmap) to navigate decision-making in morally complex situations, including those that include an ethical dilemma. They should consider the following factors in turn: moral constraints, consequences, character/virtue, and special obligations. They are introduced to, among other things, Immanuel Kant’s three formulations of the categorical imperative (moral laws or duties that bind all of us—the due respect, universalization, and mere means tests), common rationalization and socialization strategies people use to justify unethical behavior, Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of Double Effect to help determine if a decision with both good and bad consequences should be taken, the concepts of waiving and forfeiting rights, and justice and equity. Case studies include the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, collateral damage estimations in bombing missions, and considerations of justice and equity in administering nonjudicial punishment.

Consequential reasoning is introduced next, with some cautionary reminders that even the best consequential outcomes cannot override clear moral constraints. Among the cases studied, the midshipmen read commentary on the mid-2000s U.S. debate surrounding the use of enhanced interrogation (torture) techniques on unlawful combatants (today’s midshipmen had barely been born yet). The special obligations discussion includes voluntary and involuntary special obligations and a reading on Constitutional ethics—what the oath really requires in terms of balancing one’s duty with personal views and beliefs. Critically, how an officer should resolve a conflict between his or her deeply held personal belief (conscience) if they find it in conflict with the requirement to follow a legal order.

Character and virtue deserve their own four-week block. When the scope of the 1992 cheating scandal became apparent, some contended the root of the problem rests with American society—it was producing less ethical midshipmen. This claim is unprovable, and always struck me as reactionary and a version of buck-passing. The bulk of this block focuses on how to cultivate virtue (for Aristotle virtue [excellence] involved knowledge and habit, with a heavy emphasis on habit—virtuous people repeatedly do virtuous things). The midshipmen are reminded that in considering how to make the best ethical decision in a difficult situation, they should think beyond just what is technically acceptable to how the decision will reflect on their character in the long term. How do they want to be remembered? No one thinks of virtue as a transactional or transitory trait. When we think of virtuous people to emulate, we do not think they are virtuous at certain times but not others, or in certain situations and not in others.

Just War Theory—what is commonly referred to now as the traditional theory—include the principles of Jus ad Bellum (justice of war) and Jus in Bello (justice in war). The history of U.S. warfare presents countless case studies for this section, both good and bad. This may seem rather elementary to a college philosophy major, but hardly any midshipmen were introduced to just war concepts in high school and moreover will be far more likely to put philosophical theory into professional practice.

Three Types of Ethics Students

In addition to being asked about the course, Naval Academy graduates from my generation (around my 1988 class) often ask my general impression of the midshipmen today. The question is often, though not always, freighted with generational bias, the implication being that today’s midshipmen are not as tough, not as patriotic, etc. I find no evidence of this, however. On the contrary, I find the quality as high as ever. These are some of the best and brightest young men and women the nation has to offer.

That said, while most of my students have been excellent as far as completing the coursework and writing good exams, they vary when it comes to what they bring to the class in terms of genuine interest and engagement. To broadly frame this variety, I can identify each student I have taught into one of three types: a cynic, a calculator, or a seeker.

Cynics comprise, thankfully, a small group, but I have had at least one in each section. Cynics believes the Ethics course is largely a waste of time. Ethical decision-making is mostly common sense, and midshipmen either have that or they do not. Cynics do the minimum amount of course reading and only superficially participate in class discussions. Cynics do not seem to appreciate the fact, demonstrated repeatedly in case studies, that good officers regularly fail to recognize ethical blind spots in making weighty decisions. They are convinced that will never be them.

Calculators form the next biggest group, although still slightly in the minority (again, thankfully). Calculators are transactional students—what do I need to do to get an A in this course? Calculators do more of the reading and participate more regularly in class discussions. But they tend to do so less out of a genuine interest in the material, and more in the interest of checking the boxes needed to get the highest grade possible. They want the discussion to give them the “right” answers to ethical dilemmas, so they can deliver them back on tests and papers. The process of working out the best decision in ethical gray areas is far less important than knowing what the right answer is. Calculators occasionally ask for their papers to be reviewed in draft form, to see if they are indeed “on the right track.” They prefer short, discrete exam questions to long essays that are scored heavily on how they apply what they have learned in thinking through the problem. They often give feedback that the course is graded too harshly. If they can get an A in an engineering class, there is no way they should get anything less in an Ethics course.

Seekers are the best students, although they do not always get the best grade. They are less concerned with their grade-point average and class standing and far more with the immense leadership challenges they will face in just a few short years. They read well. They bring great energy and curiosity to the class discussions. They are not afraid to speak their minds on sensitive topics. They are humble before the awesome responsibility that awaits them. They appreciate that Ethics is not a science. There is rarely certainty. There is almost always complexity and ambiguity. They recognize their chosen profession will demand nothing less than their best judgment.

I have enjoyed the privilege of teaching and knowing all my students, but the seekers keep me coming back. I cannot wait to get to class to hear their thoughts on a reading assignment or a video shown in class. Their papers are not pro forma—they often read as if the student is bearing the burden of the choice herself. Seekers are reflective and thoughtful. Many are deeply faithful. All respect different viewpoints and backgrounds, religious and secular. Much more than wanting to avoid mistakes, seekers want to be better.

This three-tiered classification is hardly rigorous and certainly not set in cement. Some students display characteristics of a seeker and a calculator. Many will (hopefully) grow, and with maturity become seekers. Some will experience an ethical “close call” as a young officer and find in it an epiphany they take to heart in becoming seekers. Regardless of the journeys these midshipmen take, all will face difficult ethical choices as officers. Some will be of the life-and-death variety. Many will be immensely consequential, especially for those who choose to make the Navy or Marine Corps a career and ascend to command.

Whether better studies someday shed more light on the efficacy of ethics instruction, I believe the Naval Academy’s Ethics course reinforces the seekers and plants seeds for growth in the other students. Someday, in the crucible, these future officers will have to rely on their knowledge and character to make the best decision in an agonizing situation. When that moment comes, they are on their own.

Bill Bray is a retired Navy captain. He is an adjunct professor at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Featured Image: ANNAPOLIS, Md. (May 18, 2020) The United States Naval Academy holds the fourth swearing-in event for the Class of 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Kenneth D. Aston Jr/Released)

Revamping Wargaming Education for the U.S. Department of Defense

By Jeff Appleget, Jeff Kline, and Rob Burks

Introduction

The U.S. Department of Defense has failed to educate generations of military officers on the skills of wargaming. Wargaming creates the environment in which uniformed leaders practice decision-making against an active, thinking adversary. Wargaming is also required by the Department of Defense’s planning process to create sound and executable plans, is inherent to designing new doctrine and operational concepts, and is a vital element in the cycle of research.1

For these reasons, military leaders must have the ability to create and conduct wargames. However, the current military education process does not impart this critical knowledge.

Background

Ed McGrady, distinguished Center for Naval Analyses wargamer, opened a recent commentary on wargaming by saying, “There is a widespread misunderstanding of what wargaming is…” and we agree wholeheartedly. Too many in the Department of Defense believe wargames are computer-based combat simulations used to produce quantitative analyses, but they are not. Wargaming is about human decision-making. Joint Publication 5-0 Joint Operation Planning’s wargaming definition makes this clear: “Wargames are representations of conflict or competition in a synthetic environment, in which people make decisions and respond to the consequences of those decisions” (emphasis added).

Most defense wargaming practitioners recognize three purposes for wargames: educational, experiential, and analytic. Educational and experiential wargames are focused on the player. The primary output of these types of wargames is a better educated or experienced player. For example, success might lead to an officer who now knows how a new weapon system is employed or has experienced fighting against a threat in a different region of the world. There are usually no other ‘results’ to demonstrate the wargame’s value.

On the other hand, analytic wargames focus on producing findings and recommendations in response to a sponsor’s tasking. Therefore the product of these wargames is not player-focused but sponsor-focused. Planning wargames, as outlined in Joint Publication 5-0 (Step 4: Course of Action analysis and wargaming), are specific analytic wargames with the task of analyzing courses of action, which then inform the development of a plan. Other analytic wargaming activities include developing new concepts of operations, doctrine, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) for emerging and future technologies, and front-end wargaming for experimentation and exercises to ensure that these expensive endeavors are properly focused and can achieve a high return on investment. We can learn much about new technologies and concepts through wargaming without burning a penny’s worth of fuel.

Current Status

Department of Defense wargaming is at a crossroads. It seems self-evident that the Department of Defense should own the responsibility to improve its wargaming. While Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), educational institutions, and defense contractors may have roles to play in wargame improvement, only the Department of Defense can choose to lead and embrace a comprehensive end-to-end cycle of research construct. This construct includes wargaming, computer-based combat simulations, and other quantitative and qualitative analytic techniques that, when properly leveraged, provide quality decision support to the department’s leadership. It must begin by addressing the shortcomings in wargaming education.

The 2015 call to reinvigorate wargaming has inspired the reintroduction of wargaming into some service school classrooms. Hence, a portion of uniformed field grade officers have an appreciation for, and may have actually played, wargames. However, the inability of the Department of Defense’s uniformed members to design and conduct their own wargames still has not been addressed in professional military education. Today, the Department of Defense relies on FFRDCs, educational institutions, and defense contractors to design and conduct wargames on their behalf. While these organizations produce useful wargames, the sheer number of wargames that should be executed across the department cannot all be performed by these organizations—they simply do not have the capacity, nor does the department have the budget.

However, there is a far more fundamental problem on the department’s reliance on these organizations. This reliance is, in effect, outsourcing the intellectual underpinnings of the nation’s defense strategy, officer professional development, and the department’s acquisition process.

Wargaming should become an integral part of the military officer corps’ professional education. The skills required to design and conduct wargames go hand-in-hand with the skills required to plan and execute military operations. 

The lack of wargaming skills and experience in our field grade and senior officers should be a warning to the department’s leadership. Wargaming was once the primary venue for the exchange of ideas, debates on tactics and doctrine, the sharing of lessons learned from previous operations and experiences, and the operational and doctrinal education of junior officers.2 Now it has largely disappeared from officers’ professional development. The 38th Commandant of the Marine Corps’ Commandant’s Planning Guidance states this concern very succinctly:

“In the context of training, wargaming needs to be used more broadly to fill what is arguably our greatest deficiency in the training and education of leaders: practice in decision-making against a thinking enemy. Again, this requirement is inherent in the nature of war. In modern military organizations, it is, along with the fear of violent death, precisely the element of real war that is hardest to replicate under peacetime conditions. Wargaming historically was invented to fill this gap, and we need to make far more aggressive use of it at all levels of training and education to give leaders the necessary ‘reps and sets’ in realistic combat decision-making.”

Phil Pournelle, Senior Operations Analyst and Game Designer at Group W, points out a 2018 National Defense Strategy Commission finding that the military struggles to “link objectives to operational concepts to capabilities to programs.” Linking of objectives to operational concepts to capabilities is basic military planning. Yet our combatant commands and joint task forces struggle to conduct the planning wargames that Joint Publication 5-0 requires.

According to Joint Publication 5-0, each course of action should be wargamed against the enemy’s most likely and most dangerous course of action for a given plan. Assuming a modest number of three friendly courses of action to analyze, that is a requirement for six wargames per plan. And every plan that has sat on a digital shelf for more than a year needs to be dusted off and wargamed again, as the facts and assumptions that underpinned the plan’s development 12-plus months ago have undoubtedly changed, often significantly.

Unfortunately, due to time, staff capability, and capacity constraints, at best there may be one wargame conducted per combatant commander’s plan: the commander’s favorite Course of Action against the enemy’s most likely Course of Action. Insufficient time is allotted to conduct the wargame, resulting in poor design, less thorough execution, and results that fail to illuminate the plan’s operational risks or propose contingencies. This lack of time inspires the quick application of seminar games that devolve into BOGGSATS – a Bunch of Guys and Gals Sitting Around a Table.

As recent commentary from Peter Perla, author of the seminal book The Art of Wargaming, and Phil Pournelle3 have pointed out, wargaming should also be an integral part of analysis, experimentation, exercises, and the broader cycle of research. Far too often this is not the case. Instead, the department relies on analysis methods such as cost-benefit analysis, capabilities-based assessments, and analysis of alternatives that provide technical rationales for procurement decisions. However, in the Department of Defense, these analyses must be tempered with a thinking adversary in mind. Our potential adversaries in the future are concurrently developing new doctrine and concepts, fielding new technologies and force structures, and procuring new systems that increase our risk or limit our military options. Wargaming is necessary to gain an appreciation for our competitors’ capabilities, options, and objectives.

Wargaming has always been an integral part of the Army’s analysis to support their department’s acquisition of new technology and weapons systems. Army analytic organizations, such as the Center for Army Analysis and the Training and Doctrine Command’s Analysis Center, integrated wargaming with their computer-based combat simulations to provide comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis to support key acquisition programs several decades ago. Both tools are still used together, productively, today.

This approach’s benefit is two-fold. First, the warfighters brought into the wargame’s concepts of operations (CONOPS) that employs units equipped with new technologies provide input into the analysis process and gain a better appreciation for the quantitative analysis products that the combat simulations could provide. Second, the analysts gain a better understanding of how a new force would fight differently and use that knowledge to inform the instantiation of the schemes of maneuver required by their combat simulations, which in turn improves their quantitative analysis products. To do this properly, operations research analysts must create the wargaming environment, conduct the wargames, and determine how to best integrate the wargame’s qualitative output into the computer-based combat simulations so that the study produces both qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Unfortunately, some of the department’s more senior analysts that cut their analytical teeth using computer-based combat simulations believe that wargames provide little or no analytic value. This view completely misses the fact that counterinsurgency, hybrid warfare, the gray zone of conflict, and competition short of war are not well addressed by the millions of dollars the department invests in the maintenance, staffing, and running of kinetic-focused combat simulations and the organizations that support them.

In a recent Naval War College Review article, Capt. Robert Rubel (ret.), professor emeritus of the U.S. Naval War College and former chair of its Wargaming Department, stated, “Two-sided gaming should be a widespread and essential part of the professional education process from pre-commissioning through senior service colleges and even flag level courses.” He went on to describe several virtues of wargaming:

  • “A routine diet of two-sided gaming can generate and hone the ability to reason competitively.”
  • “Making two-sided gaming the default PME vehicle will help to re-create a sandbox in which innovative reflexes can be developed.”
  • “Repeated struggling in competitive situations is more likely to produce new ideas and insights, especially if such experience is widespread in the officer corps.”

Rubel also goes on to caution: “Two-sided gaming is not easy. The design of such games must take care to channel competitive instincts properly.”

In summary, the Department of Defense’s need for increased capacity to conduct quality wargaming starts by educating its officer corps on how to design, conduct, and assess analytical, educational, and experiential wargames.

The Way Ahead

We propose jumpstarting wargaming education in the Department of Defense with a two-pronged approach. First, the Department of Defense needs wargame designers at an apprentice level. Any officer who is a candidate to serve on a general or flag staff (most field grade line officers) should complete a basic analytic wargaming course to enable them to bring value to a wargaming design team. We do not advocate for a specialty track for wargamers. Instead, all military leaders should be wargamers (such as the Navy’s flag ranks at the onset of WWII). The Army and Marine Corps do a decent job of introducing their young officers to some of the building blocks of wargaming. While sand table discussions, table-top exercises, and rehearsal of concept drills incorporate several of the elements of wargaming, they are typically missing the conflict or competition that a thinking adversary produces. These events provide a wargaming-like basis from which to build. A logical place for such a course is in the command and general staff college level of Joint Professional Military Education. 

Second, there needs to be an executive-level wargaming course for senior leaders. Senior officers who supervise and consume the results of wargaming today, such as primary staff officers on Combatant Command or other flag officer commanded staffs, need to understand what wargames are, how they are different from computer-based combat simulations, what to expect from well-designed wargames, and the level of resource investment required from them and their staff to obtain quality wargaming results. They also need to realize that their younger charges must couple their wargaming education with playing and designing wargames to become proficient wargamers. They must give their subordinates enough time to game. Moreover, senior leaders should lead by example, participating in and encouraging wargaming activities in their commands.

Over time, the wargaming apprentices, through playing, designing, and conducting wargames, will mature in their wargaming skills and take on wargaming leadership roles. Note that the goal is not to identify a pipeline to create wargaming masters. Such masters are rare individuals, and some may emerge from the ranks of military wargamers produced. But, just as most officers will never achieve flag rank, most uniformed wargamers will never become wargaming masters. The FFRDCs, educational institutions, and Department of Defense contractors have wargaming masters, and their expertise will still be needed to support the department. However, many good wargames can be designed without requiring the supervision of a wargaming master.

Since 2009, the Naval Postgraduate School’s Operations Research Department has offered an 11-week Wargaming Applications course to its resident students that focuses on the design, conduct, and analysis of wargames for Department of Defense, allied, and partner sponsors.4 The faculty designed the course recognizing that the Naval Postgraduate School’s Operations Research graduates – our military’s newest Operations Research analysts–needed to be able to design, conduct, and analyze a wargame. Acquiring these skills enables them to participate in, lead, and eventually supervise the end-to-end campaign analysis that incorporates wargaming, computer simulations, and other qualitative and quantitative analytic tools as future analytic assignments will require. The course organizers did not fully recognize the added benefit of this education until some of the Operations Research graduates started serving at Combatant Commands. These graduates, now staff officers, reached back to the Naval Postgraduate School to report how useful their wargaming design skills were in helping the Combatant Command staffs design and conduct useful planning wargames. They asked if the Wargaming Applications instructors could come to their location and teach a cadre of the Combatant Command personnel the same basic wargaming design skills they had internalized at the Naval Postgraduate School.

In response, NPS developed the week-long Mobile Education Team Basic Analytic Wargaming Course around the same philosophy as our resident wargaming course: learn by doing. The objectives for this course were two-fold.

First, it builds a cadre of personnel who can initiate, design, develop, conduct, and analyze a wargame. Unified Combatant Commands have leveraged this opportunity by having personnel from their operational planning teams and staff sections attend the course and work in teams to learn how to design, develop, and execute a wargame.

Second, since the sponsoring organization chooses the wargaming topic used in the course’s practical exercises, the organization can have the core foundation of a wargame created and demonstrated that can then be further built out and used by the organization to meet other organizational wargaming requirements. NPS has conducted over 20 week-long Mobile Education Team Basic Analytic Wargaming Courses around the world, including five at Combatant Commands. Today, NPS conducts 6-8 Mobile Education Team events annually, and demand remains high.

The philosophy in teaching wargaming is that it requires a hands-on, learn-by-doing approach. Both the resident and Mobile Education Team courses are over 70 percent practical exercises, where the students are applying the techniques that we illustrate in the lectures. In both courses, a Department of Defense, ally, or partner sponsor provides the wargaming topic that serves as the impetus behind the practical exercises. Student groups design, conduct, and then analyze wargames for their sponsors as the course’s graduation exercise. Since 2009, the Naval Postgraduate School resident student wargaming teams have conducted over 70 wargames for 35 Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Joint, International, and Industry sponsors. NPS views the wargaming course graduates as wargaming apprentices. They have enough knowledge and experience to make useful, often significant, contributions to any wargaming effort required in the department. Several recent graduates have actually led wargaming design initiatives at their respective organizations soon after graduation.

Conclusion

If the Department of Defense is serious about improving its wargaming capability, it needs to invest in its people through wargaming education. That education needs to be practical and applied at the company and field grade level, preferably as part of their Joint Professional Military Education or graduate school opportunities. If it is a priority to emphasize wargaming’s role in Department of Defense decision-making, simply “doing more wargames” is insufficient. Preparing warfighters to employ wargaming to the full extent of their purposes must be a necessary element.

Colonel (Retired) Jeff Appleget, Ph.D., spent 20 of his 30 years in the U.S. Army as an Operations Research/Systems analyst where he participated in and supervised acquisition and analysis studies using wargaming and computer-based combat simulations. Since 2009, Jeff has been a Senior Lecturer in the Operations Research Department at the Naval Postgraduate School where he teaches wargaming and combat modeling courses. Jeff has mentored over 70 wargames that have been created, conducted, and analyzed by NPS resident Operations Research and Defense Analysis student teams for DoD, Defense partner and allied nation sponsors, and the defense industry. He has led 20 NPS Mobile Education Teams to teach his week-long Basic Analytic Wargaming course in DoD and around the world, to include STRATCOM, CENTCOM, AFRICOM, MARFORPAC, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (two courses), NATO Special Operations Forces, the Australian Defence Force (four courses), the Canadian Air Force, the Indonesian Navy, the Taiwan Armed Forces, and a Tri-lateral course for the Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish Defence Research Agencies. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School, an M.S. in Operations Research and Statistics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a B.S. from the United States Military Academy. His major awards include the 2016 Richard W. Hamming Faculty Award for Interdisciplinary Achievement, the 2011 Army Modeling and Simulation Team Award (Analysis), 2003 Dr. Wilbur B. Payne Memorial Award for Excellence in Analysis, 2003 Simulation and Modeling for Acquisition, Requirements, and Training (SMART) Award, 2001 SMART Award, 1993 Instructor of the Year (At Large), Department of Mathematical Sciences,  U.S. Air Force Academy, 1991 Dr. Wilbur B. Payne Memorial Award for Excellence in Analysis, and 1990 Concepts Analysis Agency Director’s Award for Excellence. Along with Dr. Rob Burks, Jeff directs the activities of the NPS Naval Warfare Studies Institute Wargaming Center.

Colonel (Retired) Robert E. Burks, Jr., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Defense Analysis of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and with Jeff Appleget, directs the activities of the NPS Naval Warfare Studies Institute Wargaming Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Air Force Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Operations Research from the Florida Institute of Technology. Rob is a retired Army Colonel with more than thirty years of military experience in leadership, advanced analytics, decision modeling, and logistics operations. He spent 17 years in the U.S. Army as an Operations Research/Systems analyst and has led multiple analytical study teams responsible for Army Transformation and organizational restructuring and design efforts using wargaming and computer-based combat simulations. Since 2015, Rob has taught multiple educational, historical, and analytical wargaming courses at NPS. He has taught the NPS week-long Basic Analytic Wargaming Course 14 times to the Department of Defense and other organizations around the world, to include CENTCOM, AFRICOM, MARFORPAC, Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (two courses), NATO Special Operations Forces, the Australian Defence Force (four courses), and the Taiwan Armed Forces.

Captain Jeffrey E. Kline (ret.) served 26 years as a naval officer, including two sea commands. Jeff is currently a Professor of Practice in the Naval Postgraduate School Operations Research department. He directs the NPS Naval Warfare Studies Institute. He teaches campaign analysis, systems analysis, and executive programs in strategic planning and risk assessment. Jeff supports applied analytical research in maritime operations and security, tactical analysis, and future force composition studies. He has served on the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations’ Fleet Design Advisory Board and several Naval Study Board Committees of the National Academies. His faculty awards include the Superior Civilian Service Medal, 2019 J. Steinhardt Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Operations Research, 2011 Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) Award for Teaching of OR Practice, 2009 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Homeland Security Award, 2007 Hamming Award for interdisciplinary research, 2007 Wayne E. Meyers Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering Research, and the 2005 Northrop Grumman Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering. He is a member of the Military Operations Research Society and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from the University of Missouri, a Master of Science in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Master of Science in National Security Studies from the National Defense University’s National War College.

References

1. Peter Perla et. al, “Rolling the Iron Dice: From Analytical Wargaming to the Cycle of Research” October 21, 2019; https://warontherocks.com/2019/10/rolling-the-iron-dice-from-analytical-wargaming-to-the-cycle-of-research/

2. Matthew B. Caffrey, Jr., “On Wargaming” (2019). The Newport Papers. 43. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/43

3. Phil Pournelle, “Can the Cycle of Research Save American Military Strategy?” October 18, 2019, WOTR, https://warontherocks.com/2019/10/can-the-cycle-of-research-save-american-military-strategy/

4. Jeffrey Appleget, Robert Burks and Frederick Cameron, “The Craft of Wargaming: A Detailed Planning Guide for Defense Planners and Analysts,” Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2020.

Featured Image: EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (Oct. 22, 2020) – A U.S. Army M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) launches ordnance during RED FLAG-Alaska 21-1 at Fort Greely, Alaska, Oct. 22, 2020 (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Beaux Hebert)

Sustaining an Intellectual Overmatch: Management Education for Our Naval Warfighters

By Dr. Mie Augier, Major Sean F. X. Barrett, Dr. Nick Dew, and Dr. Gail Fann Thomas

“The 21st Century demands American officers be far better educated and more capable of directing and integrating the Nation’s military instrument.” –Developing Today’s Joint Officer for Tomorrow’s Ways of War1

“The challenges of the twenty first century require holistic approaches to the changing character of conflict.” –Education for Seapower2

Introduction

The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s May 2020 vision and guidance for Professional Military Education (PME) and talent management states, “There is more to sustaining a competitive advantage than acquiring hardware; we must gain and sustain an intellectual overmatch as well.”3 Developing flexible, agile minds was also a major theme a century ago in the Knox-King-Pye report, which helped the Navy steer away from an earlier technical education focus and toward broader skills that helped produce the ideas and leaders that proved critical in WWII.

Fast forward 100 years, and we have reached another inflection point. Numerous studies point to a geostrategic environment that has shifted radically in the past decade toward a future that is filled with uncertainty. The Navy and Marine Corps have realized that key aspects of our institutions, war planning, training, education, and resource management are inadequate to deter and, if necessary, win against our adversaries when the situation arises.

We should look at how management education, with its interdisciplinary and integrative focus, is an essential tool for developing future naval warfighters who have the skills to draw out peak performance from personnel and maximize the effectiveness of a wide range of naval organizations.4 Most people know from personal experience the difference that excellent management makes to organizational performance. A recent study shows that workers who moved from an average boss to a high-quality boss improved their productivity by 50 percent.5 Leaders with high-quality management skills can really make an impact. And while the context of management varies, the practice of management across a broad range of situations fundamentally requires a similar set of core skills.6 Given the need for the Navy team to perform at its peak under challenging circumstances, the Navy would be well-served by incorporating more management education into PME for both officers and enlisted sailors.

The Human Element in High-Performance Organizations

Our naval forces do not operate in a vacuum and are oftentimes nudged by larger economic and societal trends. Therefore, it is worth looking briefly at some general trends in U.S. management before turning to what specifically might be relevant to defense management.

Industries throughout the U.S. have been grappling with issues similar to those facing the naval services. Technology is changing faster and faster. Attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is an unrelenting task. In response to these challenges, corporations have recognized the need to create learning organizations that support high performance. Evidence of these issues in the Navy is apparent in recently retired Vice Admiral Luke McCollum’s 2018 report in response to the 2017 U.S. Navy ship collisions. The report, Industry Best Practices & Learning Culture – The Competitive Advantage of a Learning Culture, provided a series of findings after surveying 30 Navy-relevant corporations to learn how they build and sustain high-performing organizations. Human factors topped the list. 

The most important component of building a learning culture is inculcating these “human factors” into the organization. High-performance and mission effectiveness are dependent on the humanistic aspects of employees, teams, and leaders. This people-centric perspective dominates high-performing organizations.7

This human-oriented theme has long been recognized by our naval leaders. Admiral Arleigh Burke clearly understood the importance of developing the Navy’s leaders:

“There is one element in the profession of arms that transcends all others in importance; this is the human element. No matter what the weapons of the future may be, no matter how they are to be employed in war or international diplomacy, man will still be the most important factor in naval operations.”8

More recently, the Joint Chiefs emphasized the human factor in their May 2020 report:

“All graduates must possess critical and creative thinking skills, emotional intelligence, and effective written, verbal and visual communication skills to support the development and implementation of strategies and complex operations.”9

Given the centrality of the human element to our naval success, we must understand how to manage it well. This involves a shift in the kinds of skills, capabilities, attitudes, and values at the center of PME. Two central issues stand out.

An increasing need for generalist skills in an uncertain world. In his book, Range, David Epstein claims that cognitive flexibility is increasingly important in today’s world. Training in specific tools and techniques is efficient for mastering repetitive, well-structured problems. However, a world full of uncertainty, ambiguity, and ill-structured problems requires more diverse skills and knowledge (i.e., range and flexibility). Cognitive flexibility manifests in the ability to transfer knowledge between domains and apply knowledge to new situations, which is increasingly important in today’s specialized world. Teaching broad concepts rather than specific information is more advantageous to developing this ability, as well as instilling a broad intellectual preparedness and the ability for ongoing learning. Warfighters need to learn how to think rather than what to think about. As the Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon cautioned, “What we must avoid above all is designing technologically sophisticated hammers and then wandering around to find nails that we can hit with them.”10 An ability to think abstractly can be capitalized on across a range of problems as opposed to specific skills that are limited to particular types of problems. Thus, instruction focused on helping students make connections is more conducive to learning and later achievement than focusing on formulas and procedures.11 Such skills are very relevant to warfighters where there is a high need for flexibility and taking initiative in executing operational orders.

An explicit focus on soft skills. Operating effectively in a world in which technology has connected individuals and organizations more than ever requires warfighters with sophisticated soft skills in addition to technological expertise. The President of the Naval Postgraduate School, Vice Admiral Ann E. Rondeau, USN (ret.), explains, “Employers today require the whole package when looking for people to hire and join their teams… They want individuals who have developed intangible skills not necessarily listed as part of a certificate or degree.”12 Today’s reality requires warfighters to have the soft skills necessary to manage organizational ecosystems where leaders do not necessarily wield formal authority but instead must build mutually aligned communities. As Richard Straub writes in the June 2019 Harvard Business Review, “To succeed in the era of platforms and partnerships, managers will need to change practice on many levels…Both practitioners and scholars can begin by dispensing with mechanistic, industrial-age models of inputs, processes, and outputs. They will have to take a more dynamic, organic, and evolutionary view of how organizations’ capacities grow and can be cultivated.”13 Soft skills have thus emerged as a key requirement for managing the performance of ecosystems of organizations.”14

By identifying the Navy’s requirements for high-quality management skills among its warfighters, we can invest in PME that equips naval warfighters with the skills they really need to lead a wide range of naval organizations to high performance.

Management Education for Seapower

Given the need for superior generalist and soft skills to match the challenges of the strategic environment the Navy faces, management education provides many key opportunities for warfighters to develop the right intellectual abilities. Some of the most relevant themes and approaches include the following:

Educating minds to be prepared for the unexpected. Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, who spoke at the Naval Postgraduate School’s first virtual SECNAV Guest Lecture, stated, “We live now in a tremendous time of great uncertainty and even greater ambiguity. We’re facing and will face a completely new, and in many ways unknown, reality where nothing will be the same in the future.”15 Management approaches and education can help in this instance. Management education is centrally concerned with anticipating and adapting to change. It develops proactive problem-solving skills. While the ability to analyze known problems using optimizing techniques has a place, it is important for the Navy also to focus on developing warfighters with skills in thinking through ambiguous and changing situations.16

Leading warfighting organizations to become more agile through change and transformation. In their May 2020 report, the Joint Chiefs observed, “We cannot simply rely upon mass or the best technology…Our job is to learn how to apply our capabilities better and more creatively.”17 Admiral Mullen similarly emphasized the importance of leading change.18 However, change is not easy. For example, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates noted in his memoir, Duty, that the greatest challenge he faced was changing organizations. Any change, to be effective, must be understood and communicated by people to be implemented in our organizations. In the DoD, this becomes even more complicated because it involves government civilians, military personnel, and contractors, and requires leading across generational divides and a diverse workforce. Given these complexities, warfighters need to use evidence-based approaches on how to best lead change.19

Excelling in communication skills. An intelligent workforce knows how to communicate clearly. Kline’s “Owl Speaks to Lion” humorously describes the detrimental results when an analyst does not know how to translate his findings adequately for the vice admiral who requires the results to make an important decision. Such skills are taught and honed over time and experience. One critical communication skill that must be fostered is writing. The writing process hones one’s thinking and helps one discover the real problem, define the root causes of the problem, and describe the costs and benefits of various courses of action.20

Building exemplary people skills. As the Department of the Navy’s Education for Seapower report explains, “[N]aval leaders must be just as ready to…solve a social problem below decks or in the platoon” as they are “to move against the enemy.”21 Research shows that emotional intelligence, coaching, and feedback upward, downward, and horizontally are key to high performing organizations. And these skills are not “one and done.” Each level of leadership presents new challenges concerning the types and complexity of the problems encountered and the number of people one leads. Social skills are developmental and change over the life of the leader. Additionally, there is evidence that leaders’ skills are directly related to retention. Most have heard the adage, “Employees don’t leave their organization; they leave their managers.”22 Good bosses not only contribute to the high performance of their employees but also increase employee retention because workers quit bad bosses.23

Understanding the influence of cultures. Complementary to (but different from) traditional international relations approaches, management and leadership education emphasize understanding how culture influences decision-making and how it affects collaboration. This is increasingly important to warfighters in an era featuring more and more “shared responsibility for security with other nations,” wherein “[s]trong global relationships and defense partnerships help mitigate the risks of…unpredictability.”24 Greater mutual understanding and mutual trust has enormous practical value in operational environments.

Developing meaningful organizational leadership skills. Vice Admiral Rondeau notes the essential connection between leaders and their organizations: “Leaders set the tone for the culture of their organizations. Meaning of the community, no matter how defined, becomes essential for interconnectedness, for bonding, and for understanding. It all has to do with the relationship between the organization and the individual.”25 The Navy’s PME institutions are uniquely positioned to develop warfighter skills in how to communicate and build essential interconnections using best practices from both civilian and military approaches to leadership development.

Building historical understanding to be decisive in the future. In an operational environment featuring a lack of combat deployments, we must increasingly turn to history to learn vicariously through others. The first President of Marine Corps University, Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (ret.), reflected, “I wanted to impart a simple lesson: a properly schooled officer never arrives on a battlefield for the first time, even if he has never actually trod the ground, if that officer has read wisely to acquire the wisdom of those who have experienced war in times past.”26 A champion of PME throughout his career in Congress, Representative Ike Skelton also recognized the importance of an appreciation for history: “I cannot stress this enough because a solid foundation in history gives perspective to the problems of the present. And a solid appreciation of history…will prepare students for the future.”27 Management education has long championed these kinds of vicarious learning through the extensive use of case studies. The case study approach heightens students’ sensitivity to history, context, and the particulars of a wide variety of situations. It gives warfighters a reservoir of examples to draw on as they face an unpredictable future.28

These elements of management education can help naval warfighters improve their personal performance and create a higher-performing Navy team that is better positioned to cope with the unpredictability of the future operating environment. In an era when investment dollars are at a premium, these management skills should be emphasized to a greater extent in PME because they provide high return on the Navy’s investments. Management skills can be applied across a wide range of situations and roles, and they typically stay relevant longer than technical skills. Management skills are particularly valuable for warfighters that advance into higher-level positions that usually involve more complex organizational and leadership challenges, and less technical know-how.29 A recent study by Harvard economists David Deming and Kadeem Noray puts it this way:

“[High]-ability workers choose STEM careers initially, but exit them over time…[This] is explained by differences across fields in the relative return to on-the-job learning. High ability workers are faster learners in all jobs. However, the relative return to ability is higher in careers that change less because learning gains accumulate”(emphasis added).30

Return on investment explains why management degrees (principally MBAs) dominate lists of the most popular graduate degrees, since individuals know that as their careers advance, the returns on graduate education favor developing strong management skills.31 Investing in management know-how is also less risky than investing in technical knowledge because the general applicability of management skills means they never abruptly go out of fashion.

Conclusion

“Whoever can make and implement his decisions consistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive advantage. Decision making thus becomes a time-competitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes essential to generating tempo. Timely decisions demand rapid thinking, with consideration limited to essential factors. We should spare no effort to accelerate our decision-making ability.” –FMFM 132

The changing geostrategic landscape demands changes in the skillsets of our naval leaders. Because of rapid advancements in technology, the human element will play an increasingly important factor in future operating environments. While tactical naval warfighters need to be technically savvy, operational-level warfighters must excel in the managerial skills needed to get peak performance out of the human element. Fundamentally, this is a general management challenge that applies across a wide range of Navy organizations. The Education for Seapower study and strategy, and the remarks of our naval leaders highlight that this entails a paradigm shift in our approach to PME. The Navy should invest more in management education to develop the intellectual and practical competencies required for excellence in naval warfighting.

Dr. Mie Augier is a professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School and a Founding Member of the Naval Warfare Studies Institute (NWSI). She is interested in strategy, organizations, innovation, leadership, and how to educate strategic and innovative thinkers.

Major Sean F. X. Barrett is an active duty Marine Corps intelligence officer. He is currently the operations officer for the Headquarters Marine Corps Directorate of Analytics & Performance Optimization.

Dr. Nick Dew is a professor at the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research is focused on entrepreneurial thinking and innovation in defense organizations.

Dr. Gail Fann Thomas is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research focus is strategic communication and interorganizational collaboration.

References

1. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers for Tomorrow’s Ways of War: The Joint Chiefs of Staff Vision and Guidance for Professional Military Education & Talent Management, (Washington, DC: 2020), 2.

2. Department of the Navy, Education for Seapower (Washington, DC: 2019), 37.

3. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 2.

4. We acknowledge the difference between management and leadership. Both can be learned and contribute to peak performance for naval officers. See, for example, Bernard Bass, The Bass Handbook of Leadership:  Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010); John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” Harvard Business Review (Dec. 2001): 2; Abraham Zaleznik, “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” Harvard Business Review (Jan. 2004): 1.

5. Kathryn L. Shaw, Bosses Matter: The Effects of Managers on Workers’ Performance: What Evidence Exists on Whether Bad Bosses Damage Workers’ Performance, Issue 456 (Bonn, Germany: IZA World of Labor, 2019).

6. Shaw, Bosses Matter.

7. Luke M. McCollum, Chief of Naval Reserve, Report on Engagement With Industry and the Competitive Advantage of Learning Culture, submitted to Secretary of the Navy, December 26, 2018.

8. As quoted in Rear Admiral P. Gardner Howe III, “Professionalism, Leader Development Key to Future,” Navy News Service, May 26, 2015, https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=87319.

9. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 4.

10. Herbert A. Simon, “What We Know About Learning,” Journal of Engineering Education 87, no. 4 (Oct. 1998): 346.

11. David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2019).

12. Anne Rondeau, “Gen Eds – Are They Worth It?” HuffPost, March 29, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gen-eds-are-they-worth-it_b_58dbc980e4b0f087a3041ea4.

13. Richard Straub, “What Management Needs to Become in an Era of Ecosystems,” Harvard Business Review, June 5, 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/06/what-management-needs-to-become-in-an-era-of-ecosystems.

14. Such soft skills include communication, teamwork and interpersonal skills, critical thinking, and problem-solving capability in complex, multidisciplinary situations. Casciaro, Edmondson, and Jang note that “the vast majority of innovation and business development opportunities lie in the interfaces between functions, offices, or organizations.” Similarly, Hagel and Brown observe the “productive friction” that results from transactions between companies. Strong interpersonal skills are needed for these results to manifest themselves. See Tiziana Casciaro, Amy C. Edmondson, and Sujin Jang, “Cross-Silo Leadership: How to Create More Value by Connecting Experts from Inside and Outside the Organization,” Harvard Business Review (May-June 2019): 132; John Hagel III and John Seely Brown, “Difficult Business Partnerships Can Accelerate Innovation,” Harvard Business Review (Feb. 2005), https://hbr.org/2005/02/productive-friction-how-difficult-business-partnerships-can-accelerate-innovation.

15. Admiral Mike Mullen, USN(ret.), “SECNAV Guest Lecture” (lecture, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, May 19, 2020).

16. In the context of business, Jeff Bezos notes, “For every leader in the company, not just for me, there are decisions that can be made by analysis…These are the best kinds of decisions! They’re fact-based decisions. The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy. The most junior person in the company can win an argument with the most senior person with a fact-based decision. Unfortunately, there’s this whole other set of decisions that you can’t ultimately boil down to a math problem.” As quoted in Bernard Girard, The Google Way: how One Company Is Revolutionizing Management As We Know It (San Francisco, CA: No Starch Press, Inc., 2009), 118.

17. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Developing Today’s Joint Officers, 3.

18. Michael Mullen, “Admiral Michael Mullen: Wharton Leadership Lecture,” October 27, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD7AfDQhZbw.

19. Jeroen Stouten, Denise M. Rousseau, and David De Cremer, “Successful Organizational Change: Integrating the Management Practices and Scholarly Literatures,” Academy of Management Annals 12, no. 2 (2018): 752-788.

20. Carol Bekenkotter, “Writing and Problem Solving,” in Language Connections: Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, eds. T. Fulwiler and A. Young (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1982), 33-44.

21. Education for Seapower, 15.

22. Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington, and Adam Grant, “Why People Really Quit Their Jobs,” Harvard Business Review, January 11, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/01/why-people-really-quit-their-jobs.

23. Shaw, Bosses Matter.

24. Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly, “SECNAV VECTOR 8,” January 24, 2020.

25. Ann E. Rondeau, “Identity in the Profession of Arms,” Joint Force Quarterly, no. 62 (3rd Quarter 2011): 11.

26. Paul K. Van Riper, “The Relevance of History to the Military Profession: An American Marine’s View,” in The Past As Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession, eds. Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 53.

27. Ike Skelton, “JPME: Are We There Yet?” Military Review 72, no. 5 (May 1992): 2-9.

28. This is complementary to a pure war college perspective in that it blends history with organizations and a strategic lens and is thus more broadly applicable and provides greater understanding for students who can learn from the process of developing and applying analogies to different contexts.

29. See, for example, a survey of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni, in National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Integration of the Humanities and Arts with Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in Higher Education: Branches from the Same Tree (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2018), 44-45.

30. David J. Deming and Kadeem Noray, “STEM Careers and the Changing Skill Requirements of Work,” Working Paper (June 2019), 3, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/ddeming/files/dn_stem_june2019.pdf.

31. For example, see “Most Popular Graduate Degrees,” Master’s Programs Guide, accessed May 26, 2020, https://www.mastersprogramsguide.com/rankings/popular-masters-degrees/.

32. U.S. Marine Corps, FMFM 1: Warfighting (Washington, DC: 1989), 69.

Featured Image: Facilities of the U.S. Naval War College (U.S. Navy Photo by Jaima Fogg/Released)