Wargames and Computer‐Based Combat Simulations: From the Cold War to Today
As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)–Warsaw Pact “Cold War” consumed the US defense establishment for the latter half of the twentieth century, two events greatly impacted the use and characterization of combat simulations in the US DoD. One was the development of the closed‐loop combat simulation. The earliest computer simulation of ground combat is believed to be CARMONETTE, developed by the US Army’s Operations Research Office in 1953, and used to inform defense decisions from 1956 to 1970.12 The other was the US DoD’s embracing of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s “Systems Analysis” philosophy (McNamara served as SECDEF from 1961 to 1968), which led to the thinking that every important defense concept or procurement program required quantifiable justification.13
In the late 1950s, the use of CARMONETTE, a stochastic tactical‐level closed‐loop combat simulation was still referred to as a “wargaming” technique. It was used for research purposes such as “testing the value of new weapons, fighting techniques, or war plans.”14 The developers of CARMONETTE realized that the concept of repeatability combined with modeling some of the processes of combat probabilistically could be used to remedy one of the identified shortcomings of wargaming: the results of a wargame are only a single realization of a range of potential outcomes. They determined it would be necessary to “repeat the battle calculations allowing nothing but the play of chance to vary and so identify the spectrum of the possible outcomes and the associated frequency distribution.” They also realized that the scientific method would be useful if they were to attempt to compare battle outcomes of forces equipped with two different weapons systems; in particular, “we must be able to repeat the battle simulation many times while holding fixed all parameters except that one under investigation.”15
However, these same developers also came to the realization that simulations such as CARMONETTE could not reproduce the complex decision process a military commander uses in combat:
The design of the simulation is such that it can create a realistic representation of close combat during the brief intense engagement phase lasting for approximately 1 hour or so. Continuation of the simulated combat beyond 1 hour becomes unrealistic because a decision fundamental to the execution of the maneuver would undoubtedly be made at that point. CARMONETTE has no capability to reproduce a military commander's mind, and thus the simulation must be terminated, and the results reviewed. The simulation may then continue with an appropriate order from a commander if desired.16
The implication here is that CARMONETTE could be integrated into a larger iterative process where a commander’s human decision‐making process would shape the approximately hour‐long CARMONETTE engagement, and then, after the commander reviewed the engagement results, another human decision would be made that would shape the next CARMONETTE engagement.
In the 1970s, independent of the budding combat simulation community, military wargamers realized that some of the book‐keeping functions that wargames required could be better performed by computers. In 1976, the Training and Doctrine Command Systems Analysis Activity integrated a Wang 2200 minicomputer into the Dunn–Kempf manual wargame to create BATTLE, the Battalion Analyzer and Tactical Trainer for Local Engagements. They used the computer to calculate the results of simultaneous direct and indirect fire engagements, and to perform “book‐keeping functions” such as tracking movements and ammunition expenditures. They realized that the computer could be leveraged to lessen the burden on wargaming staff to free them up to focus on more vital aspects of wargaming such as the tactical decision‐making process.17
In the 1980s, the use of computerized combat simulations became ubiquitous in the defense analysis community. The dominant scenario that the US DoD used to underpin acquisition decisions was the NATO–Warsaw Pact fight for Western Europe. This projected conflict had been analyzed continually for decades and both sides’ intelligence had been so well developed that, by the mid‐1980s, nearly the entire world understood how the battle on the north German plain would unfold: attack corridors, force compositions, and equipment, even opposing commanders were all known. Tom Clancy’s novel “Red Storm Rising” (Putnam, 1986) provided a realistic description of what that encounter would have looked like and demonstrated the amount of information commonly available about that potential conflict.18 Quantifying the kinetic combat capabilities of forces became the focus of the analysis that underpinned the US defense acquisition decisions, and this played perfectly into the strength of closed‐loop combat simulations.19 However, US Army analytic organizations realized that closed‐loop combat simulations could not be relied upon as the single tool needed to do analysis. While the automated decision rules allowed for the development of stochastic models that could be run numerous times to ensure there was a representative set of battle outcomes, the automation of the human decision‐making process was recognized to be too simplistic to rely on for a complete assessment of combat operations. Both the Army’s Center for Army Analysis (CAA) and the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) Analysis Center (TRAC) developed analysis protocols that first used wargames to thoroughly examine different courses of action (COAs) or concepts of operations (CONOPS) before deciding on a single scheme of maneuver that was then instantiated in their closed‐loop combat simulations.20
Wargaming has taken on a more prevalent role in DoD since the beginning of the US irregular warfare (IW) campaigns in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), although there have also been major efforts to develop computer simulations to model IW operations such as counterinsurgency and stability operations. Initially, some modelers attempted to add IW complexity to existing kinetic‐focused combat simulations. They added a third side to their simulation to represent the population. Others added civilians on the battlefield, so kinetic engagements between two uniformed, armed forces had the potential to cause “collateral damage” among the populous. They were missing the point. The whole dynamic of warfare changes when the center of gravity shifts from defeating an adversary’s military to influencing a civilian population. In an IW campaign, kinetic engagements between armed combatants are infrequent, small, sporadic, and often counterproductive. The Counterinsurgency Field Manual FM 3‐24 said it best: “You can’t kill your way out of a counterinsurgency.” Whole of government approaches and modeling civilian populations’ attitudes and behaviors are required, and modeling these attributes presented significant challenges to defense modelers.21 DoD stood up the Human Social Culture Behavior Program in 2009 to address some of these challenges, specifically “to develop, implement, and demonstrate forecasting and predictive models of human behavior for both analytic application and warfighter training in support of non‐traditional warfare operations.”22 The United Kingdom’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory developed the Peace Support Operations Model (PSOM).23 This is not a closed‐loop simulation, but a simulation that requires periodic decision‐making by human subject matter experts – a computer‐hosted wargame. PSOM was used in 2010 and 2011 for training UN peacekeepers in Central Asia24 and to assess campaign options in Afghanistan.25 A survey of simulation tools used
