Interactive Tactical Decision Games
An opinion on the way forward
If we wanted to continue the path of emphasizing wargaming for professional development and critical thinking, we should be advancing the interactivity of these thought discussions by applying those gazette questions to wargames we have readily available that can provide reactionary feedback rather than having a discussion solely. This applies to future concepts as well.
100% agree and support what the Assistant Commandant is talking about, but I can't help wonder if there's a much better way to advance this kind of learning forward and whether or not they even know these capabilities exist.
We just executed a wargame at Marine Corps University which took a Modeling and Sim tool named CommandPE to look at a very specific portion of BLUF CONOP.
The execution timeline started at the end of their COA briefs, yesterday at 1200 to running this for 50 Iterations to execute a brief for the student body and encourage these "What If" discussions.
Less than 24 hours the Wargaming Team at MCU was able to deliver a substantial product that the students could interact with in order to inform their planning going forward.
Some of the key takeaways;
1. Students understood mutually supporting DDG's equipped with AEGIS is essential for defense of the Task Group.
2. Students realized that their CONOP was planned appropriately, with air assets able to support and/or strike ASCMs once identified outside of enemy air defense ranges.
3. Students noticed that had Red shifted some of their ASCMs to the South, it would have presented a noticeable difference in the overall efficiency of the DDG's to intercept salvos from multiple angles.
4. We created a second variation, showing them the difference between a simple ASCM Time on Target Attack, now adding Ballistic Missiles to understand the difficulty in intercepting, or showing the OODA loop drastically changes once sensors start to become overwhelmed.
5. Students had concerns seeing the amount of munitions they had left after the engagements were over. The initial plan called for a Sea Control operation with long term sustainment, but after the RED attack they badly needed to resupply.
I'm not so sure they would have gotten the same education from a discussion without being able to interact with their plan, or seeing physics based sim results to visualize what the concentration of fires actually looks like.
For reference, most of the action took place within a span of 10 minutes and truly hammered home the intensity of Naval combat and how quickly things can develop.
We went from a Cease Fire to a coordinated Red Attack and culminated within that time frame.
