War on the Rocks – Planners today struggle to properly apply operational art in large scale war — and they don’t fully realize why. It takes something like firsthand experience in a strategic level wargame against a human red team to fully realize how much understanding of classical military art has been lost.

The Guardian – Venezuelan politicians battling to end Maduro’s rule reject claims his downfall would thrust their country into maelstrom of bloodshed and retribution.

CIMSEC – This article highlights the Navy’s current wargaming education capability at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and makes recommendations for the Fleet to create a pipeline of naval officer wargamers to enhance the professionalism, preparedness, and knowledge of the servicemembers and organizations of the naval services.

CIMSEC – Initiating decision-making training must begin early in officer accession pipelines and is best accomplished through curriculum-mandated wargaming. Incoming Officer Instructors could quickly receive instructional training to incorporate wargaming in NROTC at the Teaching in Higher Education course run biannually. The professional wargaming community has a deep bench full of capable instructors to maximize gaming in the NROTC enterprise, which would ultimately have a significant long-term effect and organizational change by delivering wargame literate officers to the Fleet. For now, the Trojan Battalion is preparing its first Wargaming Club meeting with the permanent absence of the Officer Instructor, who kicked the program off, meaning they achieved the first step towards organizational change.

CIMSEC – My participation in the Halsey Alfa program, which has focused on war with China for more than 20 years, became one of the most significant and impactful learning experiences of my career. I believe this critical, analytical, and educational opportunity should be mandatory for every unrestricted line officer in the Navy.

CIMSEC – Educational wargaming is underutilized and possesses the potential to teach warfighters intricate modern doctrine and force capabilities. Historically, analytical wargaming has functioned as a critical tool for military leadership, offering insights into force capabilities and aiding decision-making through experiential learning. Yet, within the US Navy and Marine Corps, the potential of digital or electronic wargaming as an educational platform for junior officers and Midshipmen remains largely untapped.

CSIS – CSIS developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years. China also lost heavily, and failure to occupy Taiwan might destabilize Chinese Communist Party rule. Victory is therefore not enough. The United States needs to strengthen deterrence immediately.

Breaking Defense – Early results from a DC think tank’s wargame suggest the US would prevail in defending Taiwan from China, but at a heavy cost that would leave it ill-prepared for new threats from Russia or Iran.

CIMSEC – This is the second part of our conversation series with General Anthony Zinni, USMC (ret.) on leadership, strategy, learning, and the art and science of warfighting. In this installment, General Zinni shares his experiences with wargames, Desert Crossing and Millennium Challenge 2002 in particular, and discusses how the differing objectives of service chiefs and combatant commanders manifest in wargames. Gen Zinni then touches on the U.S. military’s overreliance on technology and draws parallels from the business world to inform approaches to great power competition.

CIMSEC – Wargaming should also be used by naval intelligence professionals to improve their analysis. Wargaming is a unique tool that can help reveal potential adversary courses of action and facilitate the use of other analytic techniques. It is time to add it to the analysts’ toolbox.

U.S. Army Mad Scientist Laboratory – The Mad Scientist Laboratory is excited to feature today’s post by returning guest blogger Mr. Ian Sullivan, who converges the power of wargaming with narrative to compellingly imagine the unthinkable — China defeating the US in large scale combat operations.

War Zone – Last fall, the U.S. Air Force simulated a conflict set more than a decade in the future that began with a Chinese biological-weapon attack that swept through U.S. bases and warships in the Indo-Pacific region. Then a major Chinese military exercise was used as cover for the deployment of a massive invasion force. The simulation culminated with Chinese missile strikes raining down on U.S. bases and warships in the region, and a lightning air and amphibious assault on the island of Taiwan.

CIMSEC – The U.S. Department of Defense has failed to educate generations of military officers on the skills of wargaming. 

– War on the Rocks – NATO’s navies should draw a lesson from history and begin wargaming for a potential future European conflict now.

– US Naval War College Review – In recent decades, corporations have turned to wargaming techniques to assess strategic environments and evaluate potential scenarios. The rich history of wargaming and its evolution as a tool for predicting success make it a useful corporate instrument. The lessons learned in business and military games can inform each other to create more-effective gaming outcomes.

– War on the Rocks – The United States can win World War III, but it’s going to be ugly and it better end quick, or everyone starts looking for the nuclear trigger. That is the verdict of a Marine Corps War College wargame I organized that allowed students to fight a multiple great state conflict last week.

– CIMSEC – To understand the prospects for incorporating the interface of levels, we must examine how something, whether a phenomenon, factor, issue, etc., can be addressed in a game. There are three ways: simulation, representation, and discussion.

– CIMSEC – Wargaming is ubiquitous throughout the U.S. Armed Forces as a tool for research, education, training, and influence. It is a flexible tool, adaptable to different scenarios, purposes, and levels of war. It is in this last arena, levels of war, that gaming organizations and their sponsors can bump up against the limits of wargaming.

– PAXsims – Tim Price has produced a free matrix game exploring economic and military competition and cooperation in the Arctic: HIGH NORTH.

– BBC – A look at Dire Straits, a megagame of East/Southeast Asian crisis stability.

– US Naval War College Review – A look at the history of German naval war gaming.

– New York Times Magazine – Why the most popular cultural depictions of America’s current wars are video games.

The Atlantic – SimCity Baghdad

A new computer game lets army officers practice counterinsurgency off the battlefield.