by Jerry Hall and Ed McGrady, 22 May 2026
A May 2025 article in the PLA Navy’s Navy Today magazine examining U.S. military wargaming raised several familiar concerns: that wargames are manipulated, that simulation databases are engineered to produce preferred outcomes and that wargame results are used as instruments of propaganda.1 While the article reflects genuine interest in the role of wargaming within U.S. defense institutions, it also reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what professional wargaming is intended to accomplish and how it is practiced in the United States.
The following perspectives emerged from practitioner discussions regarding that article. While differing in emphasis, both authors share the view that the critique reflects a misunderstanding not merely of technology, but of the broader role of wargaming as a human, organizational and intellectual practice.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of SAIC, the Department of War, or the U.S. Government.
Part I — Wargaming as Practice
Jerry Hall
This misunderstanding is rooted largely in a categorization error. Much of the critique conflates fundamentally different activities into a single conceptual system of tabletop wargames, computer simulations, AI-enabled planning tools, cyber exercises, commercial entertainment products and public think-tank analyses. They are then treated as an interchangeable components of a unified “wargaming apparatus.” They are not. There is no such unified system.
These vastly different activities represent varying levels of abstraction and discrete purposes. Some are designed to explore human decision-making. Others are built to analyze physical systems and force-on-force interactions. Still others exist to train units or to inform policy discussions. Treating them as a single coherent and synchronized mechanism can only, and inevitably, lead to distorted conclusions.
Wargames, as defined in U.S. Joint Publication 5-0, are “representations of conflict or competition in a synthetic environment in which people make decisions and respond to the consequences of those decisions.”
At its core, this is where the critique goes wrong. Wargames, as defined in U.S. Joint Publication 5-0, are “representations of conflict or competition in a synthetic environment in which people make decisions and respond to the consequences of those decisions.” They can be analog (manual) or digital (model or simulation). Their primary value lies not in prediction, but in the exposure of assumptions, the forcing of decisions and the exploration of interactions between choices and consequences. After years of watching these games play out, one thing is clear: wargames do not generate certainty, nor are they intended to. Indeed, wargames are often most valuable when they produce uncomfortable or unexpected outcomes that challenge existing beliefs and plans.2
The claim that traditional wargames are “subject to human manipulation,” particularly through the use of dice, reflects a misunderstanding of their design. Randomization mechanisms such as dice are not a flaw, but a design feature. They introduce visible uncertainty and prevent deterministic outcomes, forcing participants to grapple with risk, friction, and variance. In professional practice, adjudication processes are typically transparent: dice rolls are observed, assumptions are recorded and outcomes are subject to discussion and critique. In fact, practitioners often joke that they need “loaded” dice for when distinguished visitors make guest appearance die rolls; but they never have, and never will. Failed “VIP” rolls are frequently used to reinforce the role of uncertainty in both wargaming and war. Far from concealing bias, manual wargames tend to expose the role of human judgment more clearly than simulations or models.3
Similarly, the suggestion that U.S. wargaming relies on manipulated databases designed to produce preferred outcomes does not align with practitioner experience. Where problems are reducible to physics, models generally begin with measurable parameters such as range, detection capabilities, speed, logistics consumption, and weapons effects. Most major simulation-supported exercises include lengthy database development processes in which weapons and systems performance characteristics are reviewed for accuracy and tested through verification, validation, and accreditation procedures. Where problems involve human, organizational, or political factors, designers rely on combinations of neutral assumptions, ranges of uncertainty, sensitivity analysis and expert judgment. These elements are typically documented and debated, not hidden. The challenge is not the intentional shaping of outcomes, but the inherent difficulty of representing complex, adaptive systems with incomplete information.4
…professional wargaming culture is not defined by unquestioned consensus, but by continual debate regarding methods, assumptions, and interpretation
More fundamentally, however, the critique reflects a deeper misunderstanding of what wargaming is intended to do. The article’s emphasis on technology, algorithms, and centralized analytical systems overlooks the human dimension of wargaming practice: the ability of games to challenge assumptions, expose institutional blind spots and generate insights that formal systems often suppress rather than encourage. Concerns regarding manipulation, sponsor influence, and adjudication bias in wargaming are not ignored within the U.S. practitioner community. The opposite is true; there is a large body of work on those subjects by scholars and practitioners such as Stephen-Downes Martin and others.5 The existence of these internal critiques reflects an important point: professional wargaming culture is not defined by unquestioned consensus, but by continual debate regarding methods, assumptions, and interpretation.
This tradition of critique extends far beyond any single event or institution. Early Prussian Kriegsspiel relied heavily on umpire judgment, with outcomes determined through professional assessment rather than rigid rule systems. Officers routinely debated adjudications, and the system evolved through refinement driven by umpire and participant feedback.6 During the Cold War, RAND wargames exploring nuclear strategy frequently produced deeply unsettling conclusions regarding escalation dynamics, miscalculation risks, and the fragility of deterrence. These results were not crafted to reassure; they were intended to inform and warn.7
Contemporary public wargames continue this pattern. Analyses of potential conflicts in the Indo-Pacific region conducted by organizations such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies often highlight severe operational challenges, including high losses, logistical strain and uncertain outcomes. These findings are widely disseminated and debated. They do not reinforce narratives of inevitable success; they complicate them.8
The claim that wargames function as instruments of propaganda, engineering favorable outcomes to influence domestic and international audiences, rests on a conflation of analysis with communication. Wargame findings can and do inform policy debates, force design decisions, and alliance considerations. That influence is not evidence of manipulation; it is the purpose of strategic analysis. Importantly, different wargames frequently produce divergent or even contradictory results. In practice, results rarely line up cleanly enough to support a single narrative. Different assumptions, design choices and player behavior produce different outcomes, sometimes dramatically so. There is not, nor can there be, a single controlled narrative emerging from a unified system. There is instead a body of work characterized by diversity, disagreement and ongoing debate.9
Where the critique is most persuasive is in its caution against overreliance on technology. The increasing integration of artificial intelligence, large datasets, and computational models into wargaming and simulation carries real risks. These include the illusion of precision, the obscuring of underlying assumptions and the potential erosion of human judgment if outputs are treated as authoritative rather than exploratory. These concerns are well recognized within the wargaming practitioner community and are the subject of active discussion and refinement of best practices.10
The appropriate response to these risks is not to dismiss wargaming, but to practice it with greater rigor
The appropriate response to these risks is not to dismiss wargaming, but to practice it with greater rigor. This includes maintaining transparency in assumptions, employing red-teaming and adversarial perspectives, combining multiple methods (manual and simulation) and clearly distinguishing between exploratory insights and predictive claims. Wargaming is most effective when integrated into a broader analytical system or campaign of learning that acknowledges both its strengths and limitations.
Ultimately, the critique’s most significant omission is its focus on technology at the expense of human practice. The value of wargaming does not reside in dice, databases or algorithms alone. It resides in the structured interaction of human decision-makers confronting uncertainty and time pressure. Wargames compel participants to make choices with incomplete information, to consider adversary perspectives and to experience the consequences of those choices in a simulated environment rather than in the real world.
One final possibility is worth considering. The critique assumes a tightly integrated system in which analysis, decision-making and strategic messaging are closely aligned and mutually reinforcing. From that perspective, it is logical to view wargaming as a tool for shaping narratives and influencing outcomes.
The flaw in the “tightly integrated system” assumption is that it does not accurately describe how U.S. wargaming is conducted in practice. The American system is more fragmented, more iterative and often more internally contested than the critique assumes. Wargames do not produce a single authoritative narrative; they generate competing insights that are debated across institutions with different incentives and perspectives. In that sense, the critique may tell us as much about the analytical framework being applied as it does about U.S. wargaming itself.
In practice, however, there is no “tightly integrated” U.S. military system of wargaming. Wargaming institutions often do not know what others are doing or even have access to reports on other wargames addressing the same topic. The Defense Wargaming Alignment Group (DWAG) was created following Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work’s 2015 memorandum warning that “wargaming has atrophied” to address this fragmentation, although the problem persists, albeit to a lesser extent.
If wargaming were truly a tool for engineered outcomes and strategic deception, it would produce clarity and consensus. In practice, it produces disagreement, friction, and debate. That is precisely its value.
Part II — The Ultimate Value of Wargaming
Ed McGrady
Recently there was a May 2025 article in the PLA Navy’s Navy Today magazine that discussed wargaming.11 While the article is internally inconsistent in several places, it does exhibit some revealing assumptions regarding what wargaming is believed to be and what it is intended to accomplish. It is those assumptions, and the worldview beneath them, that are worth examining.
The article begins with an example from 440 BC in which two individuals used a belt and pieces of wood to conduct a “paper confrontation” that neutralized enemy siege ladders while also “revealing the ultimate value of wargaming: utilizing simulated combat to anticipate the realities of the battlefield and employing logical deductions to avert the calamities of war.”
Two things immediately stand out in this passage: the quotation marks surrounding the phrase “paper confrontation,” and the claim regarding the “ultimate value of wargaming.”
The use of quotation marks appears to suggest a certain dismissiveness toward manual wargaming, a theme that continues throughout the article and, arguably, appears in some modern discussions of wargaming in the United States as well. This emphasis builds into repeated references to supercomputers, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and technological integration as the primary drivers of American wargaming success.
The article consistently frames technological sophistication as the defining feature of effective wargaming
One particularly revealing passage describes how the United States has supposedly “broken through the boundaries between traditional sand tables and commercial games by evolving into ‘war laboratories’ that integrate artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cross-domain collaboration.” While hyperbolic, the passage is still revealing. The article consistently frames technological sophistication as the defining feature of effective wargaming.
That emphasis itself is revealing because it suggests a fundamentally different understanding of what wargaming is intended to accomplish.
Manual wargaming is the practice of bringing people together to engage in mimetic play in order to explore one or more problems. Those problems may involve how to defend Taiwan, how to disengage from a regional conflict, or how an adversary might respond to unexpected political or military developments. Manual games can incorporate technology, including AI-assisted tools, but the essential focus remains on people: the players, their judgments, and the interactions between them.
One of the most important things games teach us is that we do not know as much as we think we know. Junior officers, senior leaders, civilians, and analysts all bring different lived experiences into games. They possess assumptions, instincts, and ideas that are often not fully reflected within formal organizational processes.
Humans participating in games differ from AI systems in at least two important ways. First, humans exist in a world where outcomes and possibilities are often distributed according to power laws rather than smooth statistical averages. In practice, this means rare and unexpected events occur far more frequently in human systems than statistical averages would suggest. Weird things happen. Given the number of decisions and interactions involved in conflict, something unexpected usually does happen. AI systems, by contrast, tend to operate closer to statistical means, predicting likely next actions based on existing patterns. Real conflict is often far stranger than its averages.
The second issue is perhaps more important. AI systems are organizationally constrained. They exist within institutional rules, assumptions, doctrines, and acceptable parameters. Organizations generally do not build AI systems to challenge foundational assumptions or violate accepted doctrine. Indeed, if an AI system consistently contradicted organizational expectations, leaders would likely view that as a flaw requiring correction.
Games, however, allow humans to challenge assumptions across echelons, organizations, and hierarchies. Participants can raise ideas that differ sharply from accepted institutional thinking. This is a form of productive misrule: a process that asks whether doctrine is logical, whether assumptions remain valid, and whether entirely different approaches might succeed where accepted methods fail. It is not algorithmic. It is profoundly human.
That questioning process is one of the principal ways organizations adapt and evolve beyond the limitations of bureaucratic peacetime thinking
When technology dominates games, this misrule risks being lost. Few analysts or programmers are eager to design systems that intentionally violate doctrine or institutional assumptions. Yet manual games routinely question those assumptions. That questioning process is one of the principal ways organizations adapt and evolve beyond the limitations of bureaucratic peacetime thinking.
The emphasis on technology, algorithms, and “scientific” approaches toward warfare can therefore miss the point of gaming entirely. The value of games often lies precisely in the messy, uncomfortable, cynical, and unexpected insights they generate. It is a strategic advantage that American political and military culture has historically shown a willingness, however imperfectly, to sponsor games that challenge assumptions rather than simply reinforce them.
The second part of the original quotation, the idea that games rely primarily on “logical deductions” to avoid calamities, also deserves scrutiny. Tactical and operational mistakes are not always where strategic failure occurs. Military organizations spend enormous amounts of time training, planning, exercising, and refining operational procedures. The more difficult challenge is often imagining how adversaries might respond to our actions or how the broader strategic environment might evolve in reaction to those actions.
Manual wargaming allows participants to explore those second- and third-order effects. It provides a mechanism not only for examining tactical and operational questions, but for understanding the broader political and strategic “surround” within which those actions occur. This creates opportunities to ask questions that are often awkward, uncomfortable, or institutionally inconvenient.
For example, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, games exploring the possibility that Russian integrated air defense systems might fail catastrophically could have generated useful questions regarding Russian operational assumptions and institutional weaknesses. Likewise, games involving China routinely encourage participants to explore alternatives to straightforward cross-strait invasion scenarios, including approaches that exploit political ambiguity, strategic surprise, or Western assumptions.
These kinds of arguments in favor of manual games over purely technological approaches are sometimes dismissed as resistance to AI or technological change more broadly. But when the objective is understanding rather than optimization, manual games retain a significant and intrinsic advantage because they force participants to confront political assumptions, organizational blind spots, and deeply embedded worldviews.
By placing participants into roles through mimesis, games allow them to see problems from unfamiliar perspectives—not from technologically enhanced heights, but from the deeply human perspective of realizing: “wow, we never thought of that.”
Conclusion
Ultimately, the critique examined here may reveal less about the mechanics of U.S. wargaming than about differing assumptions regarding the purpose of wargaming itself. If games are understood primarily as instruments for technological optimization, centralized analysis, or narrative control, then the messy, adversarial and often internally contested nature of U.S. wargaming practice can appear contradictory or incoherent.
Yet it is precisely this friction that gives wargaming its enduring value. Wargames are not useful because they generate certainty. They are useful because they expose assumptions, challenge institutional comfort and force human beings to confront uncertainty before reality imposes its own consequences. Their purpose is not to produce perfectly optimized answers, but to generate better questions.
In practice, successful wargaming cultures are rarely tidy or fully synchronized. They are argumentative, iterative and deeply human. That is not a flaw in the system. It is the reason the system remains valuable.
You can chat about this article in the Professional Wargaming section of our discussion forums
Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
Footnotes
- Huang Lin, Xu Ting, and Deng Xiaotu. “Can ‘Armchair Strategizing’ Secure Victory from a Thousand Miles Away?” Navy Today, PLA Navy, May 2025. Translation by the China Maritime Studies Institute, Naval War College.
- Perla, Peter. The Art of Wargaming. Naval Institute Press, 1990.
- Sabin, Philip. Simulating War. Continuum, 2012.
- Davis, Paul K. Analytic Architecture for Capabilities-Based Planning. RAND, 2002.
- See works by Stephen-Downes Martin regarding adjudication, sponsor influence, and professional wargaming practice.
- Caffrey, Matthew. On Wargaming. Naval War College Press, 2019.
- Kahn, Herman; Schelling, Thomas. RAND studies on nuclear strategy and escalation dynamics.
- CSIS. The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan, 2023.
- Various public and classified wargaming efforts demonstrating differing outcomes based on assumptions, design choices, and player behavior.
- Recent literature on AI integration and computational risk in wargaming from RAND, CNA, NPS, and related institutions.
- Huang Lin, Xu Ting, and Deng Xiaotu. “Can ‘Armchair Strategizing’ Secure Victory from a Thousand Miles Away?” Navy Today, PLA Navy, May 2025. Translation by the China Maritime Studies Institute, Naval War College.
My experience in wargaming is on the commercial side, but I have had an interest in the professional DoD side, and was a guest at one Connections conference that brings together professional officers and civilian wargame designers to share ideas. There was much discussion of DoD gaming, and it was mostly not kind. It did parallel what I had heard from officers at wargame conventions and what I had seen in articles. This was back in the 1990s, but the pressures on professional wargame designers and referees would not seem to have changed much since then. And the problem was what the article above says does not exist. Famously, the Japanese wargamed the battle of Midway beforehand, and in their game several of their carriers were lost to American air strikes. The referees overruled the outcome and “corrected” it so that no carriers were lost. In the event, of course, 4 were sunk.
While wargaming can be used to test assumptions and challenge doctrine, in the words of one speaker at Connections – “DoD wargaming has no dark side.” It was at that time at least used for two purposes – to analyze hypothetical operations – and for training. And most of it for training, where the point of the effort is to teach doctrine. When Jim Dunnigan ventured into the lucrative world of professional wargaming and sold the US Army “Firefight” as a tactical training aid, I was very curious. First scenario has a US infantry company defending a German village from a Soviet tank battalion. It was a “Zulu” game – the sort where the Bad Guys line up over THERE, then they advance while the Good Guys shoot them all down. Rinse and repeat. The tool of destruction was the Javelin ATGM, not the modern version, but the first edition. It was noted for its very visible backblast upon launch, spotlighting the location of the firer. Not in the game though. The tanks are armed with 115mm guns, which have an HE round. They might as well have been armed with Super Soakers. The intrepid US infantrymen were ensconsed in stone-built German houses, so were by the game system nearly invulnerable to anything the tanks could throw at them. Sigh.
Similarly, a USN LT told me of an exercise he’d been in. 7 frigates, escorting 40 cargo ships, attacked by 90 Backfire bombers, firing cruise missiles. Outcome? The frigates were armed with single missile launchers (this was before vertical launch came in vogue.) Oooh, this will be ugly. Not. The outcome? 3 cargo ships sunk, 1 frigate damaged. Excuse me? How did that work? “The SAM being used by US Navy on these frigates is rated to have a 94% kill probability.” Yeah, but there are only 7 you can launch at a time and there’s 90 missiles incoming. How did they get so few hits? “Simple. The referee cues the first missile, rolls the dice, if its less than 95 on a D100 the missile is down. Then he cues the next missile…” Anyone see a problem here?
Or take General Van Riper, who had the temerity to sink US carriers and amphibious ships in an exercise simulating a US attack on Iran. He took enormous abuse for that, and the referees ruled he had cheated, fighting the red side in ways that were inconveniently effective. That wasn’t that long ago.
In training you want to train to doctrine. Like my naval lieutenant, or some shave tail trained on “Firefight,” these games taught that if you do it the doctrine way you win, and hardly take a scratch.
Now I did hear of people messing with expected outcomes. One military wargame I heard of had the red team look at the terrain, and see a number of deep river valleys leading from the enemy’s direction into their rear. Knowing the enemy had F-111s and having a shrewd notion of how they would exploit their radar altimeters to fly very low, they stripped off all MANPAD assets and deployed them in belts across the river bottoms. When the Aardvarks came booming up the rivers at 20 feet off the ground, the referees scored most of them shot down. The blue team set up a howl that they had been cheated.
In another a dentist who was a National Guard colonel told me of an exercise in which his team had committed all their reconnaissance assets at the beginning of the drill, spotted the enemy reserve, and nuked it, ending the exercise the first day. (When I pointed out he had just started a world nuclear war, he just snorted.) In an air exercise, red team decided, what the hell, lets try something, threw a couple of their fastest fighters straight at the enemy AWACS and were successful in shooting it down, thus ending the game before it really began.
But think about what the DoD really is. It is primarily an organization whose primary function is transferring public money into the hands of weapons makers, and serving to police the world for American oligarchs with extractive ideas. A lot of money is spent on games, but not to prove that assumptions are flawed, or that war is a bad idea that should be avoided, or that the most expensive high capability equipment may be less effective than cheaper, simpler solutions, or that, horrors, the enemy won’t assume the dying cockroach position once our superior technology is applied. Who’s going to fund systems that produce the wrong messages?
In sum, while the Chinese article may misunderstand exactly what we’re doing,, its not because the American professional wargaming is so skeptical and constantly challenging doctrine, strategy, or tactical thinking of the DoD. If it doesn’t begin with baked in assumptions, and regularly embarrasses the official position, why who wants it? So things may have changed dramatically, everyone may have become all sober and realistic and no one bows to money or The Official Position. Sure. Absolutely.
As I read it Jack is essentially arguing that DoD is an organization that looks after a lot of different priorities, many of which do not benefit from ideas and arguments that differ from what the organization prioritizes (e.g. funneling money from Congress to Contractors). And games can be used to reinforce that trend, whether through natural selection (don’t do controversial games) or shenanigans (as Stephen Downes-Martin so wonderfully argues in many of his papers). This is absolutely true. However when considering the benefit of games, their best and highest use, it is their abiltiy to penetrate this system and talk back to it where they really provide value. And they do, in fact, talk back, its just that it is not seen (due to classification, obscurity, or any number of other things) or not seen as significant (who would want to point out their assumptions are bad). After all, if a game identified a key vulnerability you’d probably not advertise it. So I’m not arguing that games always do great things, they do not any more than any other human activity (including M&S and analyses), only that if they are going to do great things you should understand how they work and what they truly provide. And by doing so I would also mention that the DoD’s fixation on technology in games and analyses (and command) is a form of exertion of control, which doesn’t lead to a lot of innovation, creativity, lethality, or winning. So, by pointing out how games work, I also illustrate out some of the things Jack points out.
As to the whole MC02 situation, there are people better able to comment on that than I can. I would just say that it was an exercise, not a game, and VanRiper may have had as much of an agenda as those running the exercise.
Aloha Ed,
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I think your observation that games can “talk back” to institutions gets to the heart of what makes them valuable. When used well, they provide a way to challenge assumptions, explore alternatives, and expose vulnerabilities that might otherwise remain hidden.
I also appreciate the distinction between games, exercises, and other forms of analysis. Those terms are often used interchangeably in public discussions, but they serve different purposes and should be evaluated differently.
Thank you for adding your perspective to the discussion.
Jerry
“Or take General Van Riper, who had the temerity to sink US carriers and amphibious ships in an exercise simulating a US attack on Iran. He took enormous abuse for that, and the referees ruled he had cheated, fighting the red side in ways that were inconveniently effective. That wasn’t that long ago.”
I remember that, from a few years ago.
“But think about what the DoD really is. It is primarily an organization whose primary function is transferring public money into the hands of weapons makers”
Or, more specifically, the stockholders of said weapons makers, whose identities, of course, cannot be determined due to a complex intermingling of “privacy” laws and myriads of shell companies.
“and serving to police the world for American oligarchs with extractive ideas.”
For globalists, actually, who are hardly just Americans. I know the word “Globalist” is a difficult one for you, Mr. Radey, considering your own extreme left wing political views, which are not a secret. Lets not blame everything on the proverbial Ugly American scapegoat, especially since most political intrugues of the past several hundred years and right up to the present day can be traced back to the so-called City of London financial/political/media nexus.
In short, anyone with at least half a brain doesn’t need these things pointed out by a Che Guevara beret-wearing so-and-so.
I frankly cringe every time I see pictures of members of the US military, in uniform, playing boardgames on my taxpayer-funded time. But people should do more than cringe, they should be outraged. It’s one thing for General and Admiral ranks to “wargame”, however it might be defined, but another to have lower ranks do this, for which they will gain nothing, except a day inside an air conditioned room with a short walk to the cafeteria, also paid for by me.
“It’s one thing for General and Admiral ranks to ‘wargame,’ however it might be defined, but another to have lower ranks do this, for which they will gain nothing, except a day inside an air conditioned room with a short walk to the cafeteria, also paid for by me.”
The extent to which you’re wrong about this will defy the word count allowed here, so I’ll save the site administrator the trouble and simply note that, having spent part of my time in uniform teaching wargaming at lower ranks along with a good amount of my time out of uniform doing the same thing, you apparently think that the lower ranks should be satisfied with the role of unthinking cannon fodder which, frankly, would piss me off at the best of times but especially pisses me the fuck off over Memorial Day weekend when the memories of my dead friends already weigh heavily on my mind.
I spent my last 4 years in uniform as a Marine promulgating wargaming through educational curricula entirely with the goal of improving decision making and critical thinking skills across all ranks, because at least in the Marine Corps I grew up in, every rank is a decision maker. A rifleman makes decisions for him or herself. A fire team leader makes decisions for themselves and the other three members of their fire team. A squad leader makes decisions for a dozen Marines. As a helicopter pilot myself, I’ve made decisions not only on behalf of my flight crew, but the other aircraft in the flight I was put in charge of leading along with potentially the 30 Marines carried as passengers in my aircraft and the dozens and dozens of other Marines carried as passengers in the other aircraft, all of whom trust my judgment and decision making, along with that of the other flight crews carrying them, to get them safely to their destinations so that they can execute their own missions.
Wargaming improves decision making and critical thinking at all levels. I could frankly give two shits about admirals or generals wargaming; at that point in their careers, their decision making skills should already be solid and well-informed. Who I care about is the young squad leader or platoon commander who doesn’t have combat experience, who missed the never-ending deployment rotation of the GWOT, and whose decision making skills are left to be informed by second-hand experience or whatever training and education they get before they go into combat.
Wargaming can build that experience, can inform their training and education, and expand that repertoire of knowledge and gleaned experience so that when they finally go into combat, they can draw from wargaming the value of having made tactical decisions dozens or hundreds of times previously, rather than having to make their first tactical decision with bullets flying and the air hot with fire and cordite and someone’s brains smeared in their hands. That’s not the time to wonder “do I go left or right?” Wargaming lets the junior leader deal with that question of “left or right” a hundred, a thousand times before they get into combat, so that when they’re tired and scared and hot and have the brains of a rifleman splashed on their flak jacket, they’ve already made the decision of “left or right” so many times in training and education that their response is immediate and leaves them with one less thing to worry about.
Jesus fucking Christ if you think that the people in the realm of professional wargaming are simply the faces of “weapons makers” or “stockholders” you need to get the fuck out of your house and touch grass and maybe actually interact with some of them.
If there’s someone who’s gotten rich off professional wargaming I have yet to meet them. Those who I’ve worked with usually fall into two categories. One: the true believers that wargaming provides our uniformed members some value and who have sunk their own time, resources, and reputations into trying to translate that value into tangible lessons that might help in a future war. They do so by burning down their spare time, their pursuit of other interests, and their chances of monetization because having even just a handful of people walk away with new insights that might shape their own actions or policy inputs in the future makes it all worthwhile.
Two: the non-professionals still deserve the benefit of the accrued knowledge and insights of the wider community, and who are worth transferring that knowledge if we think there’s any value at all in professional wargaming whether it’s analytical, educational, or experimental. That includes the lance corporal or lieutenant who is the decision maker at the lowest level, and who by dint of being the most prolific of ranks, also thus become the most prolific number of decision makers and thus are those whom the investment of wargaming pays the greatest dividends. I’ll take training a hundred lance corporals over one admiral. Those lance corporals will make the difference and the admiral doesn’t need it anyway.
I have made it a mission in my post-Marine Corps life to get “the US military, in uniform, playing boardgames.” I think it will improve their decision making and thus improve the chances of mission success and thus make our national security better. I think it so strongly that not only am I not making SES or C-suite level income, but I burn my own money, my own PTO, and my own creative energies to provide those uniformed servicemembers with game options that are relevant, cheap, and accessible, because I want them to win, I want them to survive, and I want them to bring themselves and their Marines – and other servicemembers – back home alive when it’s all said and done.
Don’t worry about your taxpayer money. Many of us burn our own time and resources to ensure our servicemembers have the wargame tools they need so that they can come back home and hug their children again rather than have their only remembrance be on a tombstone. Go ahead and be outraged that they’re playing games. I’m outraged that you hold their lives so cheaply that you don’t give a shit about tools that could make the difference between them coming home in one piece or coming home in a flag-draped coffin.
Happy fucking Memorial Day.
Bravo Ian!
Aloha Jack,
Thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful response. I think one of the key distinctions is between using wargames to validate assumptions and using them to challenge assumptions.
Many of the examples you describe seem to reflect exercises where participants were rewarded for conforming to expected doctrine or where outcomes were adjusted to preserve an accepted narrative. That is very different from the type of decision-focused wargaming I find most valuable, where the goal is to expose vulnerabilities, reveal flawed assumptions, and force participants to confront uncomfortable possibilities.
One reason I wrote the article is that many people outside the hobby and professional communities assume wargames are primarily prediction tools. In my experience, their greatest value is often in the questions they generate rather than the answers they produce.
The examples you describe are a useful reminder that the value of a wargame depends as much on the culture surrounding it as on the game itself.
Jerry
“First, humans exist in a world where outcomes and possibilities are often distributed according to power laws rather than smooth statistical averages. In practice, this means rare and unexpected events occur far more frequently in human systems than statistical averages would suggest. Weird things happen.”
I’d just like to note how much I like Ed’s succinct explanation of what I find is all too often levied as a complaint about wargame outcomes.
I try to avoid political issues because they cause controversy and generally go nowhere. However, I would like to say, that I have a not inconsiderable amount of experience in having members of the military (and many others) play in my games. First of all, USG professionals, of all ranks, shapes, and sizes, are treated very poorly compared to their private sector counterparts. If you don’t believe that, I will direct you to the Defense Travel Service as your first stop on your journey to believing. In general unless I work at it I cannot feed them lunch, and often the venues are fully sub par (crowded, hot, uncomfortable). Feed them lunch you say in horror! Yes, because the people who play in the games still have their day jobs to do, meaning my game they are playing in is unpaid overtime. And a stupid government rule (lunch) causes me to have to waste 0.5-1hr of that unpaid overtime in sending them to the local subway and back for lunch. The least I could do is feed them lunch, because it treats them like professionals and saves time, and money. Second, the games they often play in are designed to help them understand how to win, things like wars or the economy (depending on the player) or save your family from a pandemic (assuming that its not all assumed to be evil sorcery). Those are things that are not taught in school, because a) no one teaches it because it very much depends on insider details and b) in most cases we don’t really understand how to do it which is why we’re playing games in the first place, to understand it. So, sure, you can get a bunch of people showing up at your chemical spill not having every encountered one before, I just hope you have a respirator and rubber boots on you to get out alive. Or they could play in a game.
Is the government a rotating clown show of chaos and poor decisions? Perhaps. Are contractors a blast furnace burning piles of money as fast as they can? Likely. But don’t take any of that out on my players. They are working overtime, often in poor conditions, and giving up a lot to be at my game when they could do better in private practice (or just playing the crypto markets). And all ranks, not just the flags, have more demands on their time than is imagined in your science. And they also pay for their own lunches. Out of their own pockets. Even the enlisted guys.