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Future War

Test, Adapt, & Retest: Approaches to Strategy and Tactics in Wargaming

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Commonly at U.S. Military Intermediate Level Education institutions, joint and international military students experience wargaming as only part of a linear planning process. The objective of this wargaming “step” is usually to 1) validate the Course of Action (COA), 2) evaluate each course of action’s (COA) strengths and weaknesses, and 3) allow the commander to gain an understanding of each COA prior to execution (MSTP, 59). Yet, all too often the student just experiences wargaming as a means to continue the mechanical aspect of the planning process and to not truly benefit from seeing the problem through the eyes of the commander and gain professional gems from the final objective. The visiting general / flag officer is usually the recipient of the outbrief and quickly fills the role of commander, as all eyes fixate on him/her to translate pure genius from their understanding of the problem. If this occurs, the future commanders of the naval service have lost an opportunity to develop cognitively and also are unable to put another tool in their professional toolbelt.

game

Test

There are varying types of war gaming events that focus on three primary focus areas: analytics, experiential, and educational (Burns, 4). In an analytic-focused game, the design of the problem is to provide results for current or new concepts, structures, or in response to unique scenarios. The student’s experience is dedicated to helping the analysis of the overall game. In an experiential-focused game the participants are given an opportunity to practice specific staff activities, while separated from the education benefits of the game. This final focus area, although in title, can be structured to provide a wide-range of benefits to the group, yet narrow confines of education objectives centered on strategic planning considerations, pulls the prospect of cognitive decision-making development out of the experience.

One way to encourage cognitive development is to address the participants role-playing decision making when confronted with an operation dilemma. Traditional ends, ways, and means framework provides decision makers with a focus on developing the ways. Each must be selected in regards to environments (ends, means), and is never blanket throughout all problem sets. The act of developing an initial strategy, no matter how fragmented, can have significant impact on the student “commander’s” cognitive development.

This active decision-making experience is not a new concept, but may have been lost in the continual drive for quantitative results and analytic modeling. In the U.S. Naval War College Operational Problem #4 (1945) the blue force student commander was initially required to publish doctrine to his subordinate commanders, providing his vision and expectations at the outset of the problem (Friedman, 122). Additionally, in Operational Problem #5 (1945) (which was designed to estimate a ‘strategic’ situation the student blue force commander briefed that “only by force of ships, can I force Orange to do that [move the enemy capital ships north for a fight]” (Friedman, 139, 146).

Committing to a strategy and addressing associated risk, ups the ante and sets the stage for a pass/fail when the game commences. Just as an elite football quarterback may prepare for an upcoming contest with planned strategies (of which were selected based on ends and means) he is ready to test the strategy when on the field. Although this may seem natural, approaches to other games may overlook this individual test that focused on self-awareness and preparing the leader for forthcoming adaptation. How often do players capture (in writing) their going-in strategy for chess? Next time your child is about to boot up a session of Minecraft, ask them to describe their strategy for success and what are their perceived consequences.

Adapt

Adaptability is a common term thrown about by military academic institutions to capture the essence of future leader competency, yet there is a hesitation to put wargaming participants in various situations to amplify their flexibility. The proposal to require participants to present an initial strategy will result in the group to experience a degree of (or possible complete) failure of strategy, and allow umpires and mentors to challenge the participants with an opportunity to adapt. The same blue force commander during Operational Problem #5 learned (through failure) that the essential mission for his force was to not to just destroy the enemy but to “wreak havoc” in order to draw more of the enemy out (Friedman, 146). This adaptation (and the awareness of it) enhances the “commander’s” reasoning and adds an additional and valuable aspect to problem solving during the wargame and abiding by Lieutenant McCarty Little’s condition to garner deeper insights (Brightman, 17). With an initial strategy defined, the student is thus given the chance to estimate the wargame situation and capture (verbal or written) the requirements for change.

The capturing of the changing cognitive decisions provides more than just an individual benefit. Group cohesion is viewed as important aspect of any wargaming event, by reinforcing the importance of the members becoming “personal involved in the group tasks” (Brightman, 24). As Brightman notes, “Players cannot be separated from the story of the game as it unfolds, and this shared experience provides them with a common bond” (Brightman, 24) and ultimately leads to military success.

The adaptable quarterback (with his coach on the sidelines) will identify the conflict between his current strategy and the opposing team’s actions. An ability to evaluate the environment, adjust the offensive approach, and execute the adapted strategy has the most benefit when the quarterback is aware of this change and why he chose it, building the confidence in his decision making ability. This not only provides the individual with repeated exposure to assessing the situation to adapt with, but it also builds the connectedness between the players and coaching staff, providing a shared experience that “provides them with a common bond” and “influences the degree that the group feels connected” (Brightman, 24).

Retest

The next time the quarterback prepares for an adversary or situation that has a comparable problem, he may be better prepared to either change the initial strategy or be more confident to quickly adapt the approach for a more effective result. If the wargaming decision maker has selected a new strategy, it is important to provide an opportunity to retest the new approach through the application of that decision. What were the final decisions made in the changed strategy? What are the strengths of the new option? Did it answer any weaknesses of the older approach or possibly the situation had changed significantly enough to warrant a new direction?

Awareness of a need to adapt is important, but almost equally important is the opportunity to capture one’s cognitive perspective as a means to provide meaningful narrative during the game wrap-up. This allows the “commander” to reflect on the experience and will “improve self-confidence and awareness of one’s strength and weaknesses” (Berbick, 2). A nice side-benefit is that educational institutions will be able to “enhance understanding and retention of core course concepts” (Berbick, 2).

Wargaming will continue to be a staple activity in military and security organizations, providing valuable insight in various activities. The ironic piece is that although many of the wargaming departments are located within the confines of educational institutions, the opportunities to stress the personal development and take a critical look at the students own abilities, emotions, and personalities are overlooked.  Providing a structure for game participants to test, adapt and retest their own strategies; to face their own weaknesses; and “bear the fruit of improvement that comes from such personal pruning” (Crandall, 15) will only serve to produce exceptional senior military leaders.

 

Doug Crandall, “Leadership Lessons from West Point”, (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA), 2007

Hal M. Friedman, “Blue Versus Orange: The U.S. Naval War College, Japan, and the Old Enemy in the Pacific, 1945-46”, (Naval War College Press: Newport, RI), 2013

Hank Brightman and Melissa Dewey, “Trends in Modern Wargaming: The Art of Conversation,” Naval War College Review 67, no. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 17-31.

Shawn Burns, NWC “War Gamers’ Handbook”, (Defense Automated Printing Service: Newport, RI).

U.S. Marine Corps MAGTF Staff Training Program (MSTP) Pamphlet 5-0.2 “Operational Planning Team Leader’s Guide”, 2012.

Walter A. Berbick, “Enhancing Student Learning through Gaming at the Naval War College”, (Naval War College: Newport, RI).

 

A. J. Squared-Away is a career US Navy Surface Warfare Officer.  He is graduate of the Pennsylvania State University, Marine Corps University, and the School of Advanced Warfighting (SAW).  He is currently a joint operation planner at USEUCOMHQ.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

The Lighter Side

Gaming the Game: Fighting on the Playing Fields

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Written by Jonathon James Nicholas Edwards: a scholar ever loyal to the crown. He loves bees and Oxford.

Games are a natural educational tool. Crows can be seen tumbling with one another through the air, kittens play with dead mice before they hunt for live ones, and the Duke of Wellington is widely credited with saying that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

However they have their limitations. In reference to the Duke of Wellington’s quotation, the Victorian writer Matthew Arnold said “Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training – to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity.” One of the primary limitations of most games is the unavoidable way that a canny, unscrupulous player can use the rules to “game” the system.

I know this from experience, because I’ve done it. I used to fence and made it to some regional competitions. Given the sport’s provenance as an activity for gentlemen, and the risk of injury from flying metal, fencing has strict codes of conduct and penalties for breaking them. Any behaviour that endangers or disrespects another player can be penalised. Failure to correctly salute an opponent or referee causes a fencer to forfeit the match. In general fencers are expected to maintain composure at all times.

In one match I faced an opponent who was much faster, more skilled and more experienced. In any fair match he should have won. However he was known to have a short temper, and I reasoned that I could goad him into breaking the rules. I fenced to frustrate. I dodged his lunges, and attacked with small cuts to the arms that just caught. Although my opponent took an early lead, he was clearly annoyed. After I won a few points in this way, he flung his sword on the ground. Citing it as a safety violation, the referee gave him a red card, one step away from the black card that would cost him the match.

The fight continued in this way, until my opponent was one point from victory, but one temper tantrum from defeat. As he attempted to stay calm, he broke his concentration, and I took a few more points, which antagonized him further. Ultimately he won the match, but my manipulation of the rules meant it wasn’t the easy victory for him that it should have been.

Rules are necessary to implement any game, however sometimes they subvert the purpose of the exercise; rather than being a measure of the best fencer, our match turned on my opponent’s ability to keep calm. This is humorous in a high school fencing match (although not for my opponent) but in situations with a direct practical application like war games it can be a serious problem. It is therefore useful to remember that any game has inherent limitations. Organizers and players must set up the game as carefully as possible, but recognize their limits. In the end we hope that they produce more people like Wellington, and fewer people like me.

Future War

Send the Crowd to War

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Military planners have historically used wargames to influence future operations. The extensive wargaming conducted at the U.S. Naval War College during the interwar years is widely credited with preparing the Fleet to fight one of the greatest seaborne wars in history against Japan during World War II.

As Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz put it: “War with Japan had been reenacted in the game rooms at the Naval War College by so many people and in so many different ways, that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise…absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war; we had not visualized these.”

Wargaming at the U.S. Naval War College in Pringle Hall, circa 1947
Wargaming at the U.S. Naval War College in Pringle Hall, circa 1947

The iconic images of War College students maneuvering model fleets across the wargaming floor of Pringle Hall as the players experimented with scenario after scenario are staples for any student of naval history. Since then, technology and computers have greatly improved the process, and the War College is arguably still the world’s premier wargaming organization, providing key insights to fuel operational planning and acquisition. Unfortunately, as extensive and sophisticated as its program is, it can only perform about 50 events each year. Facility space, equipment availability, and personnel to actually play the games will always constrain the robustness of on-site wargaming programs…at least for now.

What if all resource constraints were removed from our wargaming activities? What if an infinite amount of space was available – only limited by the surface of the Earth? What if the potential participants were only limited by a population willing and able to participate? What if they were equipped with the resources necessary to execute a war game? These questions might seem absurd at first, but a new and powerful concept known as crowdsourcing could be the answer to solve these resource issues.

No longer a notional concept, crowdsourcing is becoming more widespread. The basic idea is to leverage the collective intelligence and creativity of the “crowd” – a large, virtually limitless population. Advances in collaborative technologies have helped commercial entities leverage this concept and vastly increase productivity. One of the more well-known is the Amazon Mechanical Turk which, at last count, had more than 500,000 participants in more than 190 countries all simultaneously completing simple tasks. Another is CrowdFollower, which claims to be able to access more than 2 million participants across the globe. Even complex strategic analysis from a crowdsourcing consultancy like Wikistrat is being done today.

The basic idea is to leverage the collective intelligence and creativity of the “crowd”
The basic idea is to leverage the collective intelligence and creativity of the “crowd”

How can this be applied to wargaming though? Given current processing power and infrastructure, it is not feasible for the crowd to submit traditional wargaming moves to a central hub (such as the War College) for adjudication.  Instead, this broadening of the talent pool enables more ideas to effectively put the crowd to work. A starting point has been established by the U.S. Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), where they have conducted Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) sessions that seek creative ideas to mission requirements across the active, reserve and civilian forces.  

Crowdsourcing traditional wargames (such as those at NWC) in this way, would seek solutions to strategic, operational, and tactical problems while coupling realistic analysis with user-friendly interface necessary to enable an end-to-end scenario played by participants. The balance between the level of fidelity required to provide meaningful data, with the level of abstraction necessary to enable experimentation would be a key attribute. After processing of the information, these game results could reveal meaningful insights for tactical development.

As demonstrated in the interwar period, iteration after iteration of experimentation in wargaming can help predict possibilities in war and then provide at least a starting point to begin to prepare. Today, technology is advancing at rates never dreamed of prior to WWII, while geopolitical shifts are much more rapid and pronounced. The necessity for speed of iteration and experimentation has never been greater, and the crowd has the potential to help address this. Instead of roughly 50 war games each year, imagine hundreds – even thousands – played daily. The crowd can win and lose wargame scenarios over and over, rapidly resetting and fighting again. Combined with near-instant social media exchange of ideas, innovative solutions can emerge through pure trial and error from a group almost unimaginably large.

The world will always lean on experts. The crowd will most likely never replace the great wargaming work conducted at war colleges and throughout the military, but it has the potential to be a powerful source of rich data. The crowd is moving into formation, preparing to sail into war. Will we use the crowd or waste this virtually untapped resource? The time is coming to send the crowd to war.

LT Jason H. Chuma is a U.S. Navy submarine officer who has deployed to the U.S. 4th Fleet and U.S. 6th Fleet areas of responsibility. He is a graduate of the Citadel, holds a master’s degree from Old Dominion University, and has completed the Intermediate Command and Staff Course from the U.S. Naval War College. He can be followed on Twitter @Jason_Chuma.

The opinions and views expressed in this post are his alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense or the U.S. Navy.

Capability Analysis, Future War

Welcome to Wargaming Week

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wargames

Checkers, Risk, Command & Conquer, and Fencing…since childhood, humans are exposed to games in various forms. From basic to advanced and from purely fun to cut-throat poker matches – we are continuously given opportunities to challenge ourselves and compete against fellow man in the arena (or on the screen).

The United States military has numerous, robust and mature wargaming departments that have been developing complex scenarios for more than 75 years. It is not just recreating history merely for recreational purposes, but instead it captures the vast capabilities of Naval Fleets of today, placed at the hands of military professionals to face wicked problems and thinking enemies. This week CIMSEC will explore how wargaming specifically has been used by military and security professionals for gaming’s intrinsic conflict qualities and also why Wargaming is still relevant. This week we will ask readers to consider the strengths and weaknesses of current wargaming endeavors and to propose games that we are not playing, but are inherently part of maritime security.

As we look to the future, how shall we best capture the gaming process and synchronize the structure with technology? During peacetime, gaming is one effective tool for testing the commander for the friction of combat (See Sumida on Clausewitz). This week we ask what else can and should be considered in future wargames to fully challenge the commander-of-tomorrow and to prepare the forces for the demands of confrontation in the maritime domain. What can future technology bring to further enhance our cognitive ability and challenge the profession of arms?

We look forward to your comments, critiques, and discourse.