516. Report from Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference, 06-07 November 2024

[Editor’s Note:  Army Mad Scientist and the Georgetown University Wargaming Society co-hosted our Game On! Wargaming & The Operational Environment Conference at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, on 06-07 November 2024.  This conference explored:

• • • Trends in hobbyist wargaming;

• • • How wargames can address unconventional and neglected aspects of the Operational Environment;

• • • How wargaming can provide experiential learning for Professional Military Education (PME); and

• • • How technology is enhancing wargaming.

Attended by approximately 150 participants, with an additional 20-odd virtual participants live streaming it remotely, the conference facilitated an open dialogue with wargamers from both inside and outside the military (e.g., professional, commercial, and hobbyist gamers).

Today’s blog post is our preliminary report from this event — for additional information, you can drill down into each of the presentations via the link provided at the end of this post.  Enjoy!]

Day 1:  Wednesday, 06 November 2024

Welcoming Remarks:  Lee Grubbs, Director, Army Mad Scientist, and ACE Chief, TRADOC G-2, welcomed the conference’s live and virtual participants, describing the vital role wargaming plays in enabling Soldiers and Leaders to better understand the breadth of the Operational Environment.  Dr. Rebecca Patterson, Associate Director/Professor of the Practice, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University, cited wargaming’s versatility and impact on learning – providing a form of cognitive experimentation that fosters critical thinking and adaptability.  Ian Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff Intelligence, TRADOC G-2, recounted the seven lessons he has learned over the past five years, playing in 12 separate wargames for the Army, the Navy, Combatant Commands, and the Joint Staff — in nine of them, he served as the wargame’s Red Commander.  “Gaming is important, but you need to make it stick – wargaming done right allows us to fight through to the light of victory.”

How is the Army Wargaming?  COL Frank Scherra, U.S. Army War College, set the scene for the conference, describing how Carlisle’s Department of Strategic Wargaming seeks to explore and broaden Army Leaders’ experiences by:

• • • Wargaming better scenarios with better data,
    • Using new models based on real world scenarios, and
    • Building a knowledge and understanding of Red, vice mirror imaging Blue.

COL Scherra described how wargaming literacy helps achieve experiential learning — enabling practitioners to explore new concepts and promote understanding.  Wargaming facilitates the development of ideas through cycles of research and learning.

Trends in Hobbyist Wargaming:  Ian Sullivan facilitated this panel discussion with representatives from the hobbyist wargaming community, exploring how and what they are gaming for potential application to the U.S. Army.

• • • Ian Brown, Group W, described how this community is gamifying modern combat following three precepts – game what’s happening (e.g., sensor fusion, asymmetric warfare [Houthis]); game what you know to share (e.g., logistics/sustainment operations); and game the “what if” (e.g., Unidentified Aerial Phenomena [UAP]).  This can be challenging, as it is hard to game many aspects of modern combat – e.g., influence operations, the will to fight, human processes (e.g., OODA Loop), Artificial Intelligence (AI)-generated hallucinations and other disruptions.  That said, it is morally imperative that we game the horrors of war and understand the human aspect of warfare.

• • • Sebastian Bae, Center for Naval Analyses (CNA); Faculty Advisor, Georgetown University’s Wargaming Society; and co-host for this conference [as well as previously featured in a Mad Scientist Laboratory blog post and The Convergence podcast]; described how hobby wargaming is increasingly addressing Joint, Coalition, and Interagency operations – to include multilateral intelligence operations. Commercial games are increasingly being used in PME to build wargaming literacy in Junior Officers/Leaders.  Wargaming is also becoming more accessible/playable through the use of microgames, while traditional tabletop games are being enhanced by various technologies, including multi-modal formats employing apps, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR), and AI.

• • • Mitchell Land, Game Designer, addressed how commercial wargames are driven by the marketplace to be fun, and thus often abstract out mind-numbing details. As a result, some challenging aspects of the Operational Environment (OE, e.g., logistics) are “handwaved.”  That said, commercial games have a place in PME – one way to readily incorporate them is to leverage local hobbyist wargamer talent to help learn and teach the games.  Above all, Mr. Land suggested that gamers should feel free to customize wargames – adapt them to meet their specific model objects.

“Tough Nuts” – Gaming Unconventional Aspects of the OE:  Kate Kilgore, Intelligence Specialist, TRADOC G-2, Red cell wargamer, and frequent contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory, facilitated this insightful panel discussion addressing how to wargame several challenging aspects of the OE.

• • • Andrew Olson, Center for Naval Analyses [and previously featured in both a Mad Scientist Laboratory blog post and The Convergence podcast], described how incorporating Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR – now a DoD priority with the implementation of DoDI 3000.17 on 21 December 2023) into wargaming efforts helps build an understanding of this policy amongst Leaders.  Adherence to CHMR has a critical impact in facilitating freedom of action, preserving alliances, precluding narrative exploitation by adversaries and VEOs, enhancing the prospects for peace, and meeting our national moral and legal obligations.  By incorporating CHMR as an integral aspect of gaming, our military Leaders can attain a more thorough, experiential understanding of this policy “before the bang.”

• • • Lt. Col. Christopher Nixon, Staff Weather Officer, TRADOC, described how incorporating weather into wargaming can build an understanding of how this aspect of the OE can provide us with an asymmetric advantage over our adversaries, enabling freedom of action for friendly forces and creating decision space.  Lt. Col. Nixon discussed how AI-generated weather injects can be incorporated into wargames to remind military Leaders that operationally – “weather always gets a vote.”

• • • Kristine Henry, Applied Physics Lab, Johns Hopkins University, addressed how her organization is currently providing Department of Defense and Department of the Army customers with technical support in incorporating Space and Cyber Domain operations, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Missile Defense, and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems modelling into wargames – with feeds into tabletop exercises (TTX) for a hybrid approach in addressing these aspects of the OE.  She  identified four challenges in wargaming:  1) Layering new OE aspects onto dated, legacy wargaming platforms (e.g., WARSIM); 2) modeling “intangible” effects (e.g., information operations, cyber effects) on maneuver forces; 3) modeling time and duration over extended periods – i.e., replicating the challenges of protracted LSCO; and 4) providing scalable solutions for wargames, as not all games are big campaign events like Unified Pacific.

During the Lunch Break, Joseph Chretien, Deputy, Sustainment Exercise and Simulation Directorate, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, briefed senior leaders in attendance about his game First Contact (learn more about this in the Day 2 section, below); while student wargamers from The College of William and Mary, University of Nebraska – Omaha, and Georgetown University gathered to share insights and discuss their respective universities’ gaming initiatives with conference presenters and panelists at the Gen Z & Wargaming Roundtable.

“Pink Flamingos” – Gaming Neglected Aspects of the OE:  Brian Train, an independent wargamer who has also been featured as a Mad Scientist Laboratory guest blogger, described how civilian wargames are grappling with the changing nature of warfare to help make sense of the world around us and provide better understanding of the OE.  Civilian wargames – self-published, and therefore not commercial games – benefit from John F. Dunnigan’s wargame design dyad:  “keep it simple and plagiarize,” allowing gamers to experiment and create new games tailored to replicate often neglected aspects of the OE.  These include planning and coordinating across domains, incorporating deception on the battlefield, and replicating limited intelligence (i.e., the fog of war), logistics, information warfare, and civilians on the battlefield – aspects of modern warfare that are poorly addressed (with some exceptions) in commercial games.  Mr. Train contrasted these neglected aspects with those that have not been neglected:  the transparent battlefield, increased lethality, and WMD.  He observed that civilian wargames continue to influence military wargaming.

“Near Miss” – the U.S. Army Wargaming Gap:  Jeff Hodges, Army Training and Simulation Subject Matter Expert, addressed how U.S. Army Commands and Army Service Component Commands are not properly resourced to meet internal wargaming needs, limiting commanders’ ability to rapidly and effectively wargame to inform their decisions.  As a result, wargaming activities are episodic, stove-piped, and oftentimes ad hoc.  Using the Army’s DOTMLPF-P capabilities spectrum, 1) there is no overall Army wargaming doctrine; 2) no Army wargaming proponent organization; 3) no repository of wargaming products (i.e., materiel) or lessons learned and limited access to wargaming tools on U.S. Government networks; 4) no all-encompassing wargaming purpose or vision (i.e., leadership); 5) no wargaming facility to host or export wargaming capabilities, and 5) no formal Army policy establishing wargaming responsibilities or guidelines.  Furthermore, only episodic training is available to the workforce with no Center of Excellence or Headquarters Department of the Army school and limited personnel are assigned to direct wargaming responsibilities across the force structure.

Mr. Hodges proposed quantifying these capability gaps by asking every Army Command and Army Service Component Command Chief of Staff, “Are you adequately resourced to conduct internal wargames to support your command or organization?”  If the answer is “No,” he proposed 1) conducting command surveys to quantify the initial responses; 2) analyze the potential addition of a new Skill Identifier (SI) for select positions on MTOE/TDA rosters dedicated to designing and implementing wargames that inform a decision; 3) adopt the British Army’s wargaming manual as interim doctrine; 4) determine the feasibility / supportability of establishing a new wargaming office within an existing Army organization; and 5) implementing an Army training program to grow a professional wargaming workforce.  His proposed end state is every Army Command, ASCC, Corps, and Division staff would include a cadre of trained wargamers that can build a wargame to help inform decisions.

Translating Learning in PME:  COL Nathan Colvin, Council on Foreign Relations (and frequent contributor to the Mad Scientist Laboratory), led this panel discussion addressing how to integrate wargaming into PME.

• • • Charlotte Lathrop, Center for Applied Strategic Learning (CASL), described the more than 80 games and wargaming events supported by her organization in FY24 – the National Defense University’s wargaming center.  CASL builds wargame linkages that combine micro and card games; strategic, operational, and policy-level TTXs; facilitated discussions and modelling and simulation events; campaign design wargames; and OWS wargames that can be combined into a cohesive student learning experience.

• • • Steven Sallot, Strategic Wargaming Division, U.S. Army Center for Army Analysis, discussed the benefits of non-wargame gaming (e.g., Settlers of Catan) in PME.  These non-wargame games stimulate creative and critical thinking and promote players dealing with the consequences of their decision-making, without the associated threat to players’ military reputations – providing them with a fail-safe experience and the opportunity to reflect on an experiential, shared event in PME.

• • • Mike Dunn, Battle Simulations Specialist, Directorate of Simulation Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, emphasized the importance of linking wargames to PME learning outcomes.  CGSC’s use of Major’s Gambit forces students to make better decisions under pressure; avoid thinking errors due to cognitive biases, uncertainty, emotions, and stress; and manage tactical risk.  The game drives students to focus on mission and the higher commander’s intent, consider terrain effects and timing, visualize the battlefield and model a thinking enemy; and use all available assets (e.g., aviation, close air support, missile artillery, etc.) beyond those organic to their formation.  Ultimately, the game supports the following course terminal learning objective:  Evaluate an organizational-level land force commander’s tactical sense-making and decision-making in modern warfare.

• • • Tim Barrick, Director of Wargaming at Marine Corps University, described how wargaming should focus on developing students’ effective mental models for great power conflict to facilitate/calculate operational risks. Wargaming builds relationships between the faculty and students to achieve learning.  This learning is “by, with, and through the faculty” – who must be practitioners of Joint Warfighting and All Domain Warfare.  The challenge faculty face is finding enough wargaming time in the curriculum.

Game Night:  Following the conclusion of Day 1’s panel discussions and presentations, conference participants were invited to stay and attend Game Night from 1800-2200 EDT.  Approximately 50 conference attendees and presenters alike did so, engaging in and observing a host of tabletop wargames — including Littoral Commander – Baltic, First Contact, Southern Crisis, Command PE, and Oak and Iron — while Fight Club, Matrix Pro Sims, and Battle Road presented and ran digital wargames.

Day 2:  Thursday, 07 November 2024

Welcome Remarks:  Steve Duncan, Assistant TRADOC G-2, welcomed everyone back to Day 2 of the Conference, providing a recap of what had been learned from the Day 1 presenters and panelists and a look ahead at Day 2’s focus on wargaming’s emerging technology enablers.

First Contact – What We Learned Last Night:  Joseph Chretien presented the results from the previous evening’s Game Night round of First Contact – a matrix game (vetted with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence [SETI]) involving players representing the United States, European Union, Russia, China, and the United Nations, confronted by an Unknown Alien Culture (UAC) that has been detected entering the Solar System and is headed for Earth!  The game explored Great Power responses to a potentially existential threat through the DIME plus Science lens.  Limited information and random event cards during game play resulted in varying degrees of cooperation, exploitation, and misinformation as each player jockeyed for advantage, and in turn, was played by the UAC.  Ultimately, the game proved a fascinating exercise in wargaming the unknown, with the UAC getting within each of the Earth powers’ OODA loops, masterfully harnessing the U.S. and EU as hegemon proxies to defeat Russia and China, only to then turn on them to achieve a “Cortez-like” colonial subjugation of a divided Earth!

Next Gen Wargaming – New Technological Advances:  Rob Taber, Senior Intelligence Analyst, TRADOC G-2, led this panel discussion exploring emerging technology enablers’ impacts on the future of wargaming.

• • • Yuna Wong, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University, discussed how APL is helping Department of Defense organizations incorporate emerging technologies into their wargaming efforts.  This includes the use of Large Language Model (LLM)-generated observations to augment wargaming efforts.  She noted that technology is constantly evolving and changing – i.e., it is generational — and cautioned that we need to remember who our audiences are and their differing levels of digital competencies.  Technologies can help break down barriers to wargaming – helping to democratize its use by those less familiar with some of its more arcane aspects – by providing expert assistance.  Dr. Wong also noted the pitfalls of over relying on technology solutions – e.g., scenario development is often performed by apprentice / entry-level wargaming practitioners, helping them to build a foundational level of expertise; reliance on LLMs for scenario development could thwart the professional development of our next generation of wargaming professionals!

• • • Jason Jones, Matrix Pro Games, explored the difference between training and wargaming.  Technology can enhance the accomplishment of a specific training task by stimulating command and control; whereas wargaming is the practice of decision making.  Digital tools can help augment learning accomplished through wargaming, but it must be accompanied by a facilitator operating the software to augment the wargame.  One should determine “is this the right fit?” when incorporating technology into wargames.

• • • Kevin Williamson, Battle Road, described how 300 Assaults, an interactive Tactical Decision Game (TDG), helped close a doctrinal and training capability gap in the Marine Corps – i.e., successfully conducting a rifle squad assault as part of a platoon attack. TDGs can provide Soldiers (and Marines!) the reps and sets required to master individual and collective warfighting skills.

• • • Billy Barry, Army War College (and featured in several The Convergence podcasts) described how hybrid intelligence (human-AI teaming) can augment human cognition and addressed how it could be used to amplify learning during Army wargames.  Dr. Barry demonstrated his TIM and Vladimir AI avatars’ perfect recall and retrieval of expertise, granting the human in the hybrid intelligence both cognitive and decision advantage and perfect memory and recall — all accomplished at machine speed.  Hybrid intelligence could help democratize access to wargaming across the Force – providing a level foundation of game play understanding and proficiency.

Combatant Command (COCOM) Use Case – Advanced Digital Wargaming and Simulations in Europe:  COL Arnel David, NATO Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE [also frequently featured in Mad Scientist Laboratory blog posts and The Convergence podcasts]), facilitated this panel discussion examining how the U.S. Army in Europe is experimenting with wargaming to sustain Soldier overmatch

• • • COL David described LG Rave – a cloud-based tool with both Blue and Red orders of battle and high-fidelity terrain.  This tool facilitates Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) time savings, building combined overlays and generating Task Orders.  It feeds Palantir’s Maven Smart System (MSS) platform to generate a Common Operating Picture (COP), is scalable from Squadron staff to Theater-level, and is exportable to the Army’s Virtual Battle Space (VBS) tactical training and mission rehearsal training simulation program.  Stryker crews in USAREUR-AF have used LG Rave, conducted mission rehearsals on VBS, then executed the mission live in a maneuver area.  It has also demonstrated its interoperability with flanking units from Allied nations.  Col David also observed how gaming is helping to provide our Soldiers with mental agility, bringing together disparate Allies and Partner Nations via simulation and AI.  COL David issued a “call to action” for the wargaming community to embrace technological applications  to sustain our advantage in cognitive maneuver.

• • • Rich Millington, Fight Club International, described how Fight Club is bridging communities in free and flexible online environments, freed from institutional stovepipes with a flat hierarchy.  Fight Club is mobilizing hobbyist wargamers and enthusiasts from the civilian space and linking them with military professionals.

• • • MAJ Brian Hausle, NATO SHAPE, discussed how Soldiers can use Combat Mission (ably demonstrated by SSG  Richard Firth during Game Night the evening before) to simulate a Joint British Recce Element / Estonian Mechanized Infantry Battlegroup mission rehearsal (a virtual “crawl/walk”) and experiment how best to execute before conducting the mission in an expensive Field Training Exercise (FTX — a live “run”).

Amplifying Wargame Analysis – Dr. Brandon Behlendorf, Director, Center for Advanced Red Teaming (CART), addressed how the entire wargame is an opportunity to learn:

• • • Outcomes of play,
    • Decisions during play, and
    • Best practices for play.

The wargame itself should be both a methodology (for learning or analysis) and an object of study.  All wargames (whether for learning, education, discovery, or analysis) should collect data, so that we can learn from and about the wargame, and amplify our analytical approach – the cumulative step in the wargaming process.  Dr. Behlendorf proposed using the SPORE methodology to achieve amplification:

• • • Sequence – Focus not just on outcomes, but the pathways from which they emerge.
    • Perception – Capture perceptions, not just decisions.
    • Observation – Study the wargame itself, as well as its results.
    • Replication – No two games are alike, so ensure there are at least three.
    • Experiment – No one right game, so use differences to distinguish outcomes (or not).

Closing Remarks:  Sebastian Bae concluded the event by thanking Army Mad Scientist for co-hosting the conference with Georgetown University’s Wargaming Society, the conference panelists and presenters for sharing their perceptive wargaming observations, and the conference attendees for their many insightful questions.

If you enjoyed this post, you may review the conference’s agenda, panelist and presenter biographies, and slide decks here (links to the videos from each of the panel discussions and presentations will also be posted here in the near future).

… then check out the following Mad Scientist Laboratory wargaming related content:

Seven Reflections of a “Red Commander” — Lessons Learned Playing the Adversary in DoD Wargames, by Ian Sullivan

Hybrid Intelligence: Sustaining Adversary Overmatch and associated podcast, with Dr. Billy Barry and LTC Blair Wilcox

“Best of” Calling All Wargamers Insights (Parts 1 and 2)

Whipping Wargaming into NATO SHAPE and associated podcast, with COL Arnel David

Wargaming: A Company-Grade Perspective, by CPT Spencer D. H. Bates

Taking the Golf Out of Gaming and associated podcast, with Sebastian Bae

Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (CHMR) Considerations in Wargaming LSCO, Achieving Victory & Ensuring Civilian Safety in Conflict Zones, and associated podcast with Andrew Olson

Brian Train on Wargaming Irregular and Urban Combat

Live from D.C., it’s Fight Night (Parts One and Two) and associated podcasts (Parts One and Two)

Would You Like to Play a Game? Wargaming as a Learning Experience and Key Assumptions Check and “No Option is Excluded” — Using Wargaming to Envision a Chinese Assault on Taiwan, by Ian Sullivan

Using Wargames to Reconceptualize Military Power, by proclaimed Mad Scientist Caroline Duckworth

Gaming the System: How Wargames Shape our Future and associated podcast, with guest panelists Ian Sullivan, Mitchell Land, LTC Peter Soendergaard, Jennifer McArdle, Becca Wasser, Dr. Stacie Pettyjohn, Sebastian Bae, Dan Mahoney, and Jeff Hodges

The Storm After the Flood virtual wargame scenario, video, notes, and Lessons Learned presentation and video, presented by proclaimed Mad Scientists Dr. Gary Ackerman and Doug Clifford, The Center for Advanced Red Teaming, University at Albany, SUNY

Gamers Building the Future Force and associated podcast

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Army, Army Futures Command (AFC), or Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).