Research for Courses (Education)

The U.S. Naval War College (NWC) is developing an elective course on wargaming theory and practice, the first session of which will be in the fall of 2002. This course is designed to elicit ideas for the advancement of the art and science of wargaming, particularly elements of wargaming that address current operational problems. The NWC asked CNA to support their development of this course by analyzing the skills important for creating wargames, and comparing those skills to the training content of the elective course. In addition, they asked us to develop a wargame construction kit (WCK) for use in the course. This kit was intended to provide students with a baseline and framework for practical exploration of the processes of creating wargames. Our analysis of the skills associated with the creation of wargames identified six critical skills: perspective, interpretation, research, analysis, creativity, and asking questions. This report also characterizes the different levels of skills that wargame creators might possess. The Wargame Construction Kit (WCK), included in this paper, has the potential to play a useful role in the exploration of wargame concepts and how to implement them practically. The WCK was designed as an operatuinal-level distillation.