Research for War Games

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is interested in exploring key factors that affect how teams, particularly distributed teams, develop what is called shared situational awareness (SSA) in an operational environment. The DARPA Program Manager for the Wargaming the Asymmetric Environment program asked CNA to address these issues, with subcontracting support from ThoughtLink Incorporated. The focus of the project was to demonstrate how wargaming could be used as a testbed for conducting experiments to explore these key factors in team SSA. The approach centers on the use of a simplified, though not quite abstract, game that allows us to tailor its design and mode of play to focus on the specific research items of interest. In the case of SSA, we designed the game so that the bulk of the operational task faced by the players lies precisely in building a shared picture -their SSA-of their operating area. This approach removes much of the potential confounding between SSA and game-playing skill, a problem that can be associated with measuring a team's performance in a game primarily by measuring its success in performing a specific operational game task (such as winning the game). This paper summarizes our survey of SA and SSA research, and describes the game we used as our testbed, and outlines our experiment and its results. We conclude by discussing what we learned and speculating on where our research could lead.

This paper summarizes phase 1 development of an agent-based interactive game called SimNavy. The purpose of the game is to teach users through simulated experience how best to manage the Navy's resources in order to reach operational objectives. This paper provides a description of the SimNavy concept and the role CNA could play in its future development.

This paper describes some of the important elements of wargame design, development, and play. Wargame design is the art of creating a warfare model or simulation to be used in wargaming; wargame development is the process of testing and refining that model to make it more effective in achieving its objectives; and wargame play is the exercising of the model by becoming an integral part of it.

The nature of wargaming and its uses in exploring defense issues is discussed in this paper. It is the first in a series of papers written to help wargame designers, players, analysts, and decision makers at all levels to better understand and exploit wargaming.