Tag Archives: Wargaming

Wargame, Red Dragon: Developer Interview

May 11, 2014 Guest Author Leave a comment

Eugen Systems released an heir to World In Conflict with their Real Time Strategy “Wargame” series. Their most recent edition, Red Dragon, occurs in Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and coastal Russian Far East. The reason we were intruiged is that this new version included naval battles. Now, turns out the naval battles are by no means anything you’d expect for 80’s warships… think more WWII with helicopters, F-18’s, and CIWS… but some of your dear CIMSEC editors and members played and had a pretty good time. It’s hard to argue naval realism when in ground combat you get to pick from several hundred units from 17 countries. Hell, one of the single player campaigns is you defending Hong Kong when Thatcher decides to push continued British presence. Capital!

As the last part of CIMSEC’s Wargames week, we decided that amongst our discussion of exercises and gaming that hone nations for war and war-fighters for survival, we would ask some question to the folks who build games and exercises for fun. The Eugen System team was kind enough to have a chat with us:

Q: What games inspired your team?

A: Our main inspiration for the Wargame series are old strategy games many of us at the studio used to play while younger: the Close Combat & Steel Panther series. One is real-time, the other turn-based, and our goal was to do as good a simulation and “easy to handle, hard to master” as the former, with the latter’s technical database, wide array of nations, huge number of scenarios, …

Q: Unlike many RTS games, Wargame has hundreds of different units–all asymmetric and unique. Through modeling and developing these, has your team come to any conclusions?

A: Well, by modeling so many units, we are highlighting the trend and doctrine of every nation: France’s “speed over armor” attitude, resulting from its tradition of military interventions in Africa ; Britain’s emphasis on armor and range, due to its Cold War allocated battlefield, the North German Plains …

Some of those are well-known to us from the start, but for some less known armies, such doctrine are only revealed after some time, while they are starting to build in our armory.

Q: What did you learn from your last game, Air Land Battle (ALB), that you applied to Red Dragon?

A: ALB’s main influence on RD can be found in map design. There had been some criticisms in the previous installment about maps that were considered too small or too “bottlenecked”. In RD, we have made sure to address this by making bigger and more open maps. Added to that the fact that river or sea and mountain are no longer impassable terrain, and you will see that RD’s maps are much more maneuver-friendly.

We have also taken into consideration many of the UI request to make the armory easier to use, and help new players and non-military buffs more at ease browsing among 1400+ units.
Artillery and air-defense balance were also deeply reworked using ALB’s lessons.

Q: Outside of Naval Warfare, what is the greatest difference between ALB and Red Dragon?

A: Maps. As said above, the new amphibious ability for many vehicles and the fact that mountain are no longer purely impassable gives the game a new feeling. You can maneuver on large scale, always try to outflank your opponent. No bottleneck will make a part of the battlefield secure because you’ve left a defensive force there. RD’s battlefields are much more open that ALB’s were.

Q: After Red Dragon, does the team have the desire to develop an expansion that really fleshes out more urban warfare?

A: We’re not there yet …

Q: What other conflicts have your team considered?

A: Wold War 2 of course …

But WW2 was already covered by many other games, including our own RUSE when we started thinking about Wargame, so we decided to go for something more original, less exploited. Hence why we chose “Cold War gone hot”, which offered the opportunity for many plausible scenarios and provided us with tons of combat vehicles to model and use in-game.

As for other possible Cold War conflicts, after European Escalation, we had considered several battlefields for the next installment: the two most logical were the Northern Front (Scandinavia, which we ended up covering in ALB) and the Southern Front (Mediterranean). We chose the former because Sweden offered a unique roaster of indigenous vehicles, bringing alone more new vehicles than the whole Mediterranean countries together would.

Q: What is your biggest regret with the games?

A: To have left some nations aside, although they could have been included in our previous installment. To make a nation viable, we have to model some 60-80 units, so we can’t add that many nations at a time.

In EE, Dutch and Belgian units had to be left aside, and Finland in ALB. That is not without regret that we have left those nations aside …

Q: What’s your biggest pride with the games?

A: Our biggest pride is when former (or even active!) military servicemen, especially those whom had served during the Cold War, are telling us they are playing our games and are enjoying the realistic feel of it. Then, we allow ourselves to think Wargame lives to what we wanted it to be when we stated the series.

Q: What’s your favorite unit?

A: Personally speaking, I’m fond of wheeled vehicles. I favor speed over armor. Call it national bias, but I think my very favorite one has to be found among the light wheeled tanks/tank destroyers, like the AMX-10 RC, the BTR-70 Z halo or the ERC-90 Sagaie. Had I to choose one, the latter one might be my favorite, for it emphasizes everything I like: speed, stealth, decent firepower, … and looks cool!

Q: What is the most interesting thing you learned from studying the historical background to the game?

A: ABLE ARCHER exercises, in November 1983.

Cold War is often taught or learned at school through different crisis (Cuban Missile Crisis, European Missile Crisis …) and “proxy wars” (Vietnam, Afghanistan, …) but never had we ever heard of how close the year 1983, and especially ABLE ARCHER, had brought us on the verge of WW3. This was completely new to us, and became the nucleus of Wargame: European Escalation’s “alternative scenarios” concept.

Future Tech, Future War

Technology, Simulations, and Wargames: What Lies Ahead

May 10, 2014 Guest Author Leave a comment

Computer wargames cannot be fully analyzed without scrutinizing the video game systems that power them. The technology that drives these video game systems has transformed dramatically over the past 10-15 years. Initially, leaps in computational power allowed players to control and manipulate hundreds of units and perform an array of functions, as demonstrated in the earliest versions of the Harpoon computer simulation. Subsequently, the graphics behind these games experienced multiple breakthroughs that range from three dimensional features to advanced motion capture systems capable of detecting even the slightest facial animations. Eventually, game consoles and PCs reached the point where they could combine this computational complexity with stunning visuals into a single, effective simulation. Simply, these systems have evolved at a rapid rate.

Yet, as we near the midpoint of the second decade of the 21st century, it is important to ask “What’s next?” What future technologies will impact the design of military simulations? After reaching out to a variety of gamers, there are two technologies that CIMSEC readers should look forward to: 1) virtual reality (VR) headsets, and 2) comprehensive scenario design tools with better artificial intelligence (AI).

Virtual Reality Headsets—A Gamer’s Toy or Useful Tool?

VR headsets are by far one of the most anticipated innovations of the next few years. Gamers are not the only individuals excited for this development; Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of VR developer of Oculus VR and Sony’s Project Morpheus demonstrate how VR is a potential revolution. For those unfamiliar with a VR headset, it is a device mounted on the head that features a high definition display and positional tracking (if you turn your head right, your in-game character will turn his head right simultaneously). When worn with headphones, users claim that these headsets give them an immersive, virtual reality experience. One user describes the integration of a space dogfighting game with a Oculus Rift VR headset below:

The imagery is photorealistic to a point that is difficult to describe in text, as VR is a sensory experience beyond just the visual. Being able to lean forward and look up and under your cockpit dashboard due to the new DK2 technology tracking your head movements adds yet another layer of immersion…I often found myself wheeling right while scanning up and down with my head to search for targets like a World War II pilot scanning the sky…The level of detail in the cockpit, the weave of the insulation on the pipes, the frost on the cockpit windows, the gut-punch sound of the autocannons firing, every aspect has been developed with an attention to detail and an intentionality which is often missing in other titles.

Even though VR headsets strictly provide a first-person experience, they can still play a serious role in military simulations and wargames. At the tactical level, VR headsets can supplement training by simulating different environments custom built from the ground up. For example, imagine a team Visit, board, search, and seizure (VBSS) team training for a situation on an oil rig. Developers can create and render a digital model of an oil rig that members of the VBSS team could explore with the assistance of VR headsets in order to better understand the environment. In addition to supplementing training, VR headset technology could potentially be manipulated to enhance battlefield helmets. Although this concept is many years away (at least 15), readers should think of the F-35’s Distributed Aperture System for pilot helmets; even though this helmet currently faces development challenges, it demonstrates how a VR system can track and synthesize information for the operator. Essentially, the first-person nature of VR headsets restricts their application to the technical and tactical levels.

Better Tools: Enabling the Construction of Realistic Simulations

Although not as visually impressive as VR headsets, the ability to design complex military scenarios that will run on even the simplest laptops is an exciting feature that many spectators disregard. Many wargames are often judged by their complexity. When crafting scenarios, designers ask “Does the simulation take account for _______, what would ________ action trigger,” and other similar questions that try to factor in as many variables as possible. Their answers to these questions are programmed into the simulation with the assistance of a variety of development tools. Within the next decade, the capabilities of these tools will increase significantly and ultimately provide developers the ability to craft more comprehensive military simulations.

Since these technical tools can be confusing, I am going to use a personal example to demonstrate their abilities. In a game called Arma 2, a retail version built off the Virtual Battlespace 2 engine, I designed a scenario inspired by Frederick Forseyth’s famous novel, Dogs of War. Human players would assault an African dictator’s palace defended by units commanded by AI. Using the game’s mission editor, I inserted multiple layers of defense each programmed to respond differently. The AI had multiple contingency plans for different scenarios. If the force was observed in the open, aircraft would be mobilized. If certain defending units did not report in every 15 minutes, then the AI would dispatch a quick reaction force (QRF) to investigate. If the dictator’s palace was assaulted, his nearby loyal armor company would immediately mobilize to rescue him. These are just a few examples but illustrate how I was able to detail multiple different scenarios for the AI. Yet, the mission was not completely scripted. When the AI came into contact, it would respond differently based on the attacking force’s actions; during testing, I witnessed the dictator’s armor company conduct a variety of actions ranging from simply surrounding the city to conducting a full assault on the palace using multiple avenues of approach.

When considering the complexity of the above scenario, it may appear that extensive programming knowledge and experience were required. The astounding fact is that this is not the case because of the system’s mission editor (I do not know how to program). Yet, after spending one weekend building this scenario with the system’s editor, I was able to craft this comprehensive scenario. In the future, we will witness the development of tools and AI systems that allow for the construction of more detailed military simulations.

Conclusion

We have identified two technologies—VR headsets and more comprehensive simulation design tools—that will rapidly evolve throughout the next several years. Yet, the challenge is not the development of these technologies, but determining how to effectively harness their power and integrate them into meaningful, military simulations that go beyond ‘pilot programs.’ Even as these two technologies improve, they will not substitute for real-world experience; for instance, VR headset users cannot feel the sweat after a long hike and scenarios cannot to be customized to fully depict the active populations in counterinsurgency simulations. Nevertheless, as technology improves and is better leveraged, the utility of military simulations will only increase.

Bret Perry is a student at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The views expressed are solely those of the author.

Future War

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

May 9, 2014 Guest Author Leave a comment

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.

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.

Future War

Send the Crowd to War

May 7, 2014 Guest Author 5 Comments

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

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.

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.