equipped and trained reactive defense forces being available on short notice might be an effective and efficient tool to absorb the initial attack by fighting, at the demarcation line, an attrition‐oriented delaying battle thus providing the time for the active defenses to deploy at the points of the enemy’s main thrusts and for counterattacks into the enemy’s exposed flanks. The main reason why the Bundeswehr and its NATO partners did not consider following up the options investigated by IASFOR was that restructuring the all‐active forces, deployed at the time, in the Central Region close to the demarcation line, would involve some time of conventional weakness and strategic risk considering the strategic situation in the 1970s and 1980s. However, given today’s strategic situation between NATO and Russia, it seems that NATO partners in the East might well revisit some of the reactive options investigated by IASFOR for their territorial defense forces.
Comparing the proceedings14 of the follow‐on conference held in Brussels under the aegis of Panel 7 of the Defense Research Group (DRG)15 – eight years later – with the proceedings of the conference in Ottobrunn (see footnote 8), both published by Plenum Press, the number of papers that addressed inter‐active and computer simulation models had increased by 36% and their average length of papers by 60% suggesting that battle simulation modeling had expanded and intensified significantly in the eight years between the two conferences.16 And this expansion went on with the reorganization of NATO in 1998 when the former DRG panel 7 established, parallel to its System Analysis and Studies Group (SAS), the Modeling and Simulation Group (MSG).17 While the mandate of SAS did not change, MSG’s primary mission areas include standardization of modeling and simulation (M&S), and education and associated science and technology “to promote co‐operation among Alliance Bodies, NATO Member and Partner Nations to maximize the efficiency with which M&S is used.”
Concerning wargaming at the Brussels conference, I well remember G. G. Armstrong of the Directorate of Land Operations Research and Analysis Establishment (DLOR) in Ottawa, who discussed Canada’s evolutionary army wargaming approach that is in fact a package of simulations in either training game or research game formats together with an experience in playing wargames.18 The research game was a manual game with the purpose to produce data from which the sponsor’s questions may be answered involving a great deal of computer assistance required to carry out the assessments and record the data that the games produce. The training wargames were carried out by the same people who create the research wargames with the purpose to exercise staff colleges and formations thus exposing DLOR’s methods and findings throughout the Canadian army. It seems that the Canadian approach was a good fertilizer for today’s renaissance of manual wargaming in most NATO nations.
Armstrong ended his talk by emphasizing that civilian scientist and military officers must work together. “An all‐scientist war game can easily become a ‘black box mathematician’s delight’ which is tactically ridiculous. Conversely, an all‐military wargame can very easily become an exercise carried out without regard to its purpose.”
At the end of this Foreword, let me come back to Stuart Starr’s initially mentioned paper on the changing nature of wargaming by the emergence of sophisticated collaboration tools allowing geographically dispersed individuals to participate fully in the deliberation and decisions in a wargame. Contrary to delegating the participation to subordinates because of short of time, this would allow actual decision‐makers (commanders, heads of agencies, senior executives) to participate and play personally in wargames, thus increasing both the fidelity of the games and the real value of the entire activity by educating the decision‐makers directly about the intricacies and nuances of the problems being considered. In the long term, Stuart was convinced that the state of the art of collaboration technology had already advanced to the point of integrating the available standalone collaboration tools into “virtual buildings” in which participants interact “face to face” in real time. In fact, decision‐makers would, in a crisis, be able to play relevant wargames practically ad hoc provided, however, the military wargaming community had generated, together with battle simulation institutions, the respective data and gaming rules.
Thus, Stuart Starr’s foreseen challenges are facing both of the communities, the War‐Gaming and the Simulation.
Reiner K. Huber
Emeritus Professor
University of the German Armed Forces
Munich, Germany, September 2019
Notes
1 1 It was a project of NATO's Research and Technology Organization sponsoring the research task group SAS‐026 chaired by Dr. David S. Alberts. It was published first by the Pentagon's C2 Research Program in 2002.
2 2 Starr, Stuart H. (2001) ““Good Games” – Challenges for the War‐Gaming Community,” Naval War College Review: Vol. 54: no.2, Article 9.
3 3 Founded in 1962, IABG became, in addition to its engineering facilities for testing military hardware designs, the principal Operations Research and Defense Analysis Institution of West‐Germany's Defense Ministry.
4 4 The mathematical air war model had been developed, together with analysts of the RAND Corporation and the USAF Systems Command, by IABG's Air OR group for the assessment of combat aircraft designs proposed by industry.
5 5 At the time, Mortensen, a senior member of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, was head of STC's OR division.
6 6 The Special Program Panel on Systems Science (SPOSS) was the follow‐on of the Advisory Panel on Operations Research (APOR), which was established by the NATO Science Committee in 1958 tasked to organize conferences and symposia, develop educational programs, and award scholarships for study visits to spread methods and applications of operational research in WW 2 and thereafter, thus facilitating the buildup of both NATO and national military institutions to support defense planners and militaries in sustaining a NATO force structure capable of deterring a Soviet aggression. The initial Chairman of APOR was Prof. Phillip Morse, a pioneer of OR research in WW 2 and chairman of the US Navy's Anti‐Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group (ASWORG). In 1973, the Science Committee replaced APOR by SPOSS arguing that, after 15 years, APOR has accomplished its mission and a reorientation of its effort was necessary toward applying previously developed techniques und theories to deal with real large‐scale systems continuing, however, along the high scientific standards of APOR and its chairmen.
7 7 The War Gaming Center evolved from a classical manual “Kriegspiel” group set up by retired German Army officers in the mid‐1960s, and the Air OR Group mentioned above, to eventually develop air/land games and simulations for investigating force structure and theater‐wide defense operations.
8 8 Reiner K. Huber, Lynn F. Jones, Egil Reine (Eds.): Military Strategy and Tactics – Computer Modeling of Land War Problems. 1974 Plenum Press, New York,
