Research for Wargaming
The War Gaming Department (WGD) of the Naval War College (NWC) asked CNA to identify key game-design issues and to develop recommendations for more effectively representing the linkage between the strategic, operational/strategic, and operational levels of war, especially as applied to future Navy Title X Global War Games (GWG). We researched existing wargame systems and interviewed leading wargaming practitioners, both in government and in industry, to learn how others have conducted multi-level games in the past and to discuss their ideas about how to improve techniques in the future. We synthesized our research and experience into specific recommendations for the design of a game structure and processes that the NWC could use as a starting point for designing future GWGs.
The War Gaming Department (WGD) of the Naval War College (NWC) asked CNA to identify key game-design issues and to develop recommendations for more effectively representing the linkage between the strategic, operational/strategic, and operational levels of war, especially as applied to future Navy Title X Global War Games (GWG). We researched existing wargame systems and interviewed leading wargaming practitioners, both in government and in industry, to learn how others have conducted multi-level games in the past and to discuss their ideas about how to improve techniques in the future.
Our starting point, of course, has to be wargaming itself. What is it? Too often, people in this business use the term loosely, to describe everything from the activity of thousands of real troops and vehicles maneuvering across hundreds of square miles, to the largely intellectual activity of a couple of guys crouched over a paper map and pushing around tiny cardboard squares. What I am going to be talking about here are REAL wargames, not field exercises, analytical models, or computer simulations without players (what I call cazwhips). Real wargames involve human beings making decisions and dealing with the consequences of those decisions, but not the action of actual forces.
To transform the way we fight wars we must first transform the way we think about war. One of the major elements affecting the way we think about war is wargaming. The War Gaming Department (WGD)of the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) asked the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) to work with them to develop some new ideas about transforming Navy wargaming as part of the Navy's ongoing efforts to transform U.S. military thinking and practice in response to the perceived changes in the global military-political-technical environment at the start of the 21st Century.
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