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With recent technological advances, commanders request the support of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled systems during mission planning. Future AI systems may test a wide range of courses of action (COAs) and use a simulator to test each COA's effectiveness in a war game. The COA's effectiveness is however dependent on the commanders' intent. The question arises to what degree a machine can understand the commanders' intent? Currently, the intent has to be programmed manually, costing valuable time. Therefore, we tested whether a tool can understand a freely written intent so that a commander can work with an AI system with minimal effort. The work consisted of letting a tool understand the language and grammar of the commander to find relevant information in the intent; creating a (visual) representation of the intent to the commander (back brief); and creating an intent-based computable measure of effectiveness. We proposed a novel quantitative evaluation metric for understanding the commanders' intent and tested the results qualitatively with platoon commanders of the 11th Airmobile Brigade. They were positively surprised with the level of understanding and appreciated the validation feedback. The computable measure of effectiveness is the first step toward bridging the gap between the command intent and machine learning for military mission planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) could be used in political-military modeling, simulation, and wargaming of conflicts with nations having weapons of mass destruction and other high-end capabilities involving space, cyberspace, and long-range precision weapons. AI should help participants in wargames, and agents in simulations, to understand possible perspectives, perceptions, and calculations of adversaries who are operating with uncertainties and misimpressions. The content of AI should recognize the risks of escalation leading to catastrophe with no winner but also the possibility of outcomes with meaningful winners and losers. We discuss implications for the design and development of families of models, simulations, and wargames using several types of AI functionality. We also discuss decision aids for wargaming, with and without AI, informed by theory and exploratory work using simulation, history, and earlier wargaming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wargames and crisis simulations can be useful pedagogical tools when deliberately used. This paper explores the spectrum of pedagogical objectives; what use are wargames for learning? What types of objectives can they explore? How do you align the learning objectives with the right type of game? The paper leverages Bloom's Taxonomy of learning as a method to guide game selection according to the desired classroom learning objective. For each type of game, the paper identifies lessons from higher education classroom use that others should consider before applying their own wargame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the challenges of operational analysis as displayed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Despite the tremendous success of strategic warning, analysts grossly over-estimated conventional Russian military capabilities and under-estimated the Ukrainians' capability and will. Even after observing Russia's operational capabilities and tactics, analysts again over-estimated Russia's ability to secure Eastern Ukraine. This study finds that poor understanding of military campaigns is the result of six contributing factors. One, risk management requires tradeoffs based on competing priorities and finite resources inevitably creating blind spots. Two, there can be insufficient collection for operational details due to a focus on strategic requirements or tactical intelligence. Three, an insufficient number of analysts required to cover a breadth of topics leaving them susceptible to challenges like mirror-imaging or single source bias, culminates in poor analysis. Four, Russian and Western external and internal strategic narratives were filled with deception. Fifth, despite 'need to share' policies, information stovepipes continue to plague Western intelligence agencies. Finally, a lack of professional wargaming can lead to an analysis-centric view that ignores the valuable expertise of operators and logisticians. Each of these factors contributed to analysts' poor understanding of the operational level of war in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Space warfare has been a dream conquest for the few who are willing to fight and survive, since the early days of astronomy in the mid-16th to 17th centuries. Space is the most physically challenging of all the warfighting domains and operations in this domain are a strong contest between nations as well as others seeking to advance their interests spontaneously. The US Space Force was officially established by December 2019 to address these physical demands of the present age, also known as the Information or the Digital Age, for American defense against all odds of adversaries attempting to sabotage the way of life for all Americans. This research paper introduces the concept of space wargaming and how it can be applied for military applications of approaching or conducting space warfare through illustrative examples of definition, doctrine, principles of war, and rules of conduct and engagement across the board. The Space Force has been struggling to develop a consistent warfighting culture, in comparison of the other military branches across the board, so this paper also emphasizes on implementing joint-operations driven missions that are training or preparing to approach space warfare against the powerful odds of their adversaries, such as Russia and China. Next, this paper explains major principles both the DoD and the Armed Forces should abide by, in response to high senior officials and top ranked leaders from the national defense boards have declared space as a warfighting domain. It describes the major components of space wargaming, within the context of the following areas: mission planning and architecture, leadership and vision of the squadron space forces, economic support through relations with public-private institutions, joint command operations through various models or state of their architecture and historical context of wargaming in applications for modern society, especially the civilians (non-combatants of space warfare). A detailed analysis from both the military and civilian perspectives of space wargaming for a future space conflict is included throughout the paper to establish a non-bias, well-balanced approach of understanding and thoughts regarding the topic selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing the future requirements of distributed warfare at sea, the strategic planning of missile penetration is firstly analyzed based on the background of intelligent missile salvo penetration against surface ships in distributed warfare scenario. Secondly, a strategic planning method of intelligent missile penetration based on reward-shaping reinforcement learning is designed by using multi-class reward function. Then, the operation scenario of the missile penetration ship is constructed on the Mozi joint operation simulation system. The comparison experiment shows that the success rate of the intelligent missile penetration attack controlled by the model learned by the reward molding method is 79%, which verifies the effectiveness of the reward-based reinforcement learning method. Finally, after action review, it is found that there are emerging four kinds of penetration strategies of intelligent missiles in the reward shaping experiment, including concentrated and roundabout attack, scattered penetration multi-direction attack, group delay attack and cruise detection guide attack.

The breakthrough and progress of intelligent gaming technology with deep reinforcement learning as the core in the field of games provide a method reference for the research of agents in sea-air wargames. The architecture design of the agent is the primary core key problem that needs to be solved, and a good architecture can reduce the complexity and difficulty of training and accelerate the convergence of policies. A stochastic game model of sea-air cross-domain cooperative decision-making has been proposed, and its corresponding equilibrium solution concepts have been analyzed. Based on the analysis of typical agent frameworks, aiming at the decision-making gaming process of sea-air wargames, and then an agent bi-level architecture based on multi-Agent hierarchical reinforcement learning is proposed, which can effectively solve the problems of collaboration and dimensional disaster. The key technologies are analyzed from four aspects: force coordination, agent network design, adversary modeling and training mechanism. Hoping to provide architectural guidance for the subsequent design and implementation of sea-air wargaming agents.

In modern wargaming, accurately predicting the locations of the opponent units is crucial for effective strategy and decision making. However, situational data provided by tactical wargame systems present significant challenges: high redundancy across consecutive frames and extreme data sparsity, with units occupying only a small fraction of the overall map. Traditional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) struggle to extract meaningful patterns from such data. To address these limitations, we propose an enhanced location prediction neural network (ELP-Net) that integrates graph neural networks (GNNs) and transformers, combining the robust representation learning capabilities of GNNs with the temporal dependency modeling strength of transformers. By capturing complex inter-node relationships, our model effectively reduces the impact of data repetition and sparsity, achieving robust location predictions in dynamic and sparse wargaming environments. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach significantly improves the prediction accuracy (the combined use of both the GNN and transformer modules results in a 6.4% average performance boost), highlighting its potential to advance intelligent decision making in wargaming applications.

Copyright of Chinese Journal of Intelligent Science & Technology is the property of Beijing Xintong Media Co., Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Command Control & Simulation / Zhihui Kongzhi yu Fangzhen is the property of Command Control & Simulation Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This work reviews the development and tests of an intermediate force capability (IFC) concept development hybrid wargame aimed at examining a maritime task force's ability to counter hybrid threats in the gray zone. IFCs offer a class of response between doing nothing and using lethal force in a situation that would be politically unpalatable. Thus, the aim of the wargame is to evaluate whether IFCs can make a difference to mission success against hybrid threats in the gray zone. This wargame series was particularly important because it used traditional game mechanics in a unique and innovative way to evaluate and assess IFCs. The results of the wargame demonstrated that IFCs have a high probability of filling the gap between doing nothing and using lethal force. The presence of IFCs provided engagement time and space for the maritime task force commander. It also identified that development of robust IFC capabilities, not only against personnel, but against systems (trucks, cars, UAVs, etc.), can also effectively counter undesirable adversarial behavior [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent does educational gaming add value to more traditional instructional models in learning core concepts of national security and warfighting? This paper presents the results from a quasi-experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal study of students taking two standardized courses in the Joint Military Operations department at the US Naval War College. Split into wargaming and non-wargaming sections by instructor preference, subject learning is measured through self-reported and objective measures at three points: prior to the start of the content block on "Operational Art"; after the case study of the WW2 battle of Leyte Gulf but prior to any wargaming; and for subjects in wargaming course sections, after participating in the Leyte Gulf scenario of the "War at Sea" wargame. The results support the hypotheses that wargaming increases learning and alter student preferences in favor of learning through gaming but fail to find evidence that students recognize the value of the debriefing phase of educational gaming. This article adds to existing studies by focusing on an understudied practitioner population—graduate-level career military officers at a professional military education (PME) institution—and mitigating several of the methodological challenges facing many scholarly projects in the study of educational gaming in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modeling conflict through wargaming is the only option outside of high-cost real conflict for militaries to train their forces and attempt to reveal information about their own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of their foes. This is the function wargaming serves in theory, but in reality, the process of wargaming is undermined by information and incentive problems that cause the real-world performance of wargames to deviate sharply from their performance in theory. These problems resolve the conflicting professional views on wargaming between those who want to use them for predictive purposes and those who want to use them for training purposes in favor of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of games to model and understand complex systems has an extensive history in military circles. Gaming is used by commanders at all levels to inform their understanding of the operational environment, evaluate disparate courses of action, and refine future concepts of operation. The current article examines the use of gaming by the U.S. Air Force to mature and promote its Agile Combat Employment operational concept. The case is made that this approach is extensible to allow leaders with varying problem sets a tool to develop a deeper understanding of their leadership options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to effectively solve the problem of acquiring knowledge from tactical wargaming data, an overall analysis framework is designed based on the standard process of data mining. The data is analyzed from four aspects: time, space, maneuver path and multi-operator behavior correlation. The behavioral characteristics of single operators at different stages and the spatial distribution of key points such as shooting points, hit points and hidden points, and the association rules of movement, shooting, and occupation between multiple operators are obtained. This will provide commanders with experience and knowledge, help them to quickly accumulate combat experience, and provide behavior rules and action modes for the development of wargaming AI, effectively improving its intelligent level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents the wargaming commodity course of action automated analysis method (WCCAAM) – a novel approach to assist wargame commanders in developing and analyzing courses of action (COAs) through semi-automation of the military decision making process (MDMP). MDMP is a seven-step iterative method that commanders and mission partners follow to build an operational course of action to achieve strategic objectives. MDMP requires time, resources, and coordination – all competing items the commander weighs to make the optimal decision. WCCAAM receives the MDMP's Mission Analysis phase as input, converts the wargame into a directed graph, processes a multi-commodity flow algorithm on the nodes and edges, where the commodities represent units, and the nodes represent blue bases and red threats, and then programmatically processes the MDMP steps to output the recommended COA. To demonstrate its use, a military scenario developed in the Advanced Framework for Simulation, Integration, and Modeling (AFSIM) processes the various factors through WCCAAM and produces an optimal, minimal risk COA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the breakthrough of machine learning based on deep reinforcement learning provides a new development direction for intelligent game confrontation. In order to solve the problems of slow convergence speed and great difference in training effect of heterogeneous multi-agent reinforcement learning algorithm in intelligent confrontation, this paper proposes a priori knowledge-driven multi-agent reinforcement learning game antagonism algorithm PK-MADDPG, and constructs a MADDPG model under the framework of double Critic. The model uses the experience first replay technique to optimize the prior knowledge extraction, thus achieving remarkable results in the training of game confrontation. In the national competition of MaCA heterogeneous multi-agent game confrontation, the paper compares the game confrontation results of PK-MADDPG algorithm with classical rule algorithm, and verifies the effectiveness of the algorithm proposed in this paper.

Ongoing nuclear modernization programs in Russia, China, and the USA have reopened longstanding debates among scholars concerning whether tailored nuclear weapons are likely to have destabilizing consequences for international security. Without data to adjudicate this debate, however, these discussions have remained entirely theoretical. In this article, we introduce an experimental wargaming platform, SIGNAL, to quantify the effect of tailored nuclear capabilities on the nuclear threshold in a simulated environment. We then compare these results with a survey experiment using scenarios related to military basing, cyber operations, and nuclear threats from the wargame environment. While the survey experiments suggest that the presence of tailored nuclear capabilities increases the likelihood of conflict escalation, this trend diminishes in the wargaming context. Across both data-generating processes, we find support for the proposition that lower-yield nuclear weapons are used as a substitute for their higher-yield counterparts. These results have consequences for recent and ongoing policy debates concerning strategic posture and the future of arms control. This work also makes methodological contributions to the design and application of experimental wargaming for social science research, particularly for scenarios where data are limited or non-existent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Command Control & Simulation / Zhihui Kongzhi yu Fangzhen is the property of Command Control & Simulation Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Long-duration logistical wargames within the Air domain are complex and highly dynamic events that are driven by aircraft availability. In order to gain insight into the impact of aircraft use, this research developed a simulation tool that uses a stepwise approach for adjudication and provides the user many capabilities including, but not limited to, the ability to have multiple bases and types of aircraft. Daily aircraft availability and missions accomplished are two critical metrics of interest. Within the simulation, the user has the ability to control types of part failures, control parts availability, control maintenance capabilities, and control number of mission scheduled. Finally, the user can account for the possibility of attrition along with the effects of numerous major events present in real-life scenarios. This tool is validated through application of a space covering design along with regression modeling and shows that the tool is well-behaved, functions as expected, and can quickly provide meaningful insights into operational scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to mathematically model the problem of identifying the enemy traversal path in ground defense. By solving the proposed model, the best solution is given to help the commanders of the ground unit to prevent the transfer of enemy forces and equipment. This can be considered as a subject of a war game involving two players. The first player tries to move his forces towards a specific target, and the second player tries to inspect different areas by aircraft, drones, ground forces, etc. in order to identify the enemy. For this problem which is static bayesian game, a mathematical model based on real-world hypotheses is presented. Due to the complexity of the model, a column generation method is presented to solve the model. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed model and the solution method is evaluated using the simulation of the war between Iraq and Kuwait. The results show that the use of this mathematical approach has a good effect on the optimal use of equipment to identify the enemy.

This article explores the reception of the American-made board game Fulda Gap: The First Battle of the Next War in the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1980s. The German peace movement used the game, which depicted conventional, chemical, and nuclear war on German territory, as a potent symbol of what they believed to be American and NATO disregard for German lives and sovereignty. The controversy over the game reflected the changing character of German-American relations during the 'Second Cold War' and increasing concerns among Germans about the possible consequences of superpower conflict in Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, there has been a resurgence in the use of wargaming in NATO states. But countries with smaller wargaming communities have not seen a corresponding revitalization of the technique. If the interest is there, the capability often lacks. The paper argues that a critical first step in stimulating the role of wargaming in these countries is ensuring that local practitioners know of each other, so they can exchange experiences on gaming results and practices; further, they need an understanding of what wargaming might (and might not) be, and the steps necessary to make the technique work in practice. The paper offers experiences from wargames conducted by analysts and researchers at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), for the most part games on the strategic and operational level. The experiences are structured as eight broad lessons on “dos and don’ts” to consider when planning and running wargames, based on recurring practical issues in past games. While the lessons are drawn from experiences within a small wargaming community, many of the issues discussed are universal for wargaming at large.

We present a series of four wargames intended to improve our ability to analyze the alliance aspect of Norwegian military operations. We discuss the objectives, the set-up, and the lessons learned. The wargames proved to be very helpful in discovering gaps in our knowledge concerning specific types of military operations and systems, and pointed at shortcomings of our scenario portfolio. They also highlighted more general methodological aspects such as the importance of explicitly stating basic premises. We argue that wargames are a useful tool for assessing one’s own knowledge, challenging current opinions, and improving one’s analytic methods.

In professional military education (PME), wargames and field-training exercises are among the pedagogical tools used to teach students to be professional officers. It is generally accepted that wargames are important sources of insight – even if, as Peter Perla (2012, p. 157) points out, they are “not real.” Notwithstanding the truism that there exists a gap between the game and reality, the wargame is a tool designed to provide the learner something to aid them in the real world. There are discussions in the literature concerning which aspects of the experience and practice of gameplaying are relevant to the player’s understanding of the aspect of reality their game is about; here, Perla’s discussion of the categorization of wargaming analysis is useful (2012, pp. 231–239), as is the report 'Wargame Pathologies' (Weuve et al., 2004). While, with a few exceptions, the literature on wargaming does not engage with the fundamental epistemological questions of wargaming, there is a tendency to demarcate the relevance of wargaming for professional competence to specific aspects or domains of knowledge. In this article I argue that wargaming and field-training exercises in PME shape the future officer’s understanding and professional practices in much more profound ways than commonly assumed. Starting from Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language and his discussions of what learning means and how meaning arises, I will show that, as far as learning to become an officer is concerned, wargames and exercises are intrinsically educative: learning inevitably takes place, and this learning shapes, in fundamental ways, how the officer understands and responds to situations they might face as a professional practitioner. The article proceeds in three steps. First, the theoretical basis for the argument, a Wittgensteinian view of learning and of professional knowledge, is presented; second, the nature of wargames and exercises, and their nature as sources for knowledge, are discussed; and in the final section, the implications for our understanding of wargames and exercises in professional military education of the preceding two sections are suggested.

Wargames have a long history as a military training method. A typical explanatory framework for their efficacy is their narrative aspect. There remain, however, questions concerning the ways narrative functions in context, and how it can be analysed to assess the educational value of wargaming in Professional Military Education programmes (PME). The article offers a case study of how officer cadets employed narrative elements during a matrix game which aims to test their knowledge of peacekeeping operations and to develop their critical thinking and argumentation skills, focusing on how these narrative elements functioned rhetorically. Using positioning analysis buttressed by insights from argumentation studies and expanded with approaches from literary narratology, this study uncovers the extensive and subtle ways players employed narrative persuasion to further their goals, and the extent to which argumentation in matrix games relies on narrative. The study suggests that this aspect of matrix game argumentation has been understudied, and that attention to narrative can have a range of benefits: it helps shed light on how players shift between participatory frameworks or narrative levels in the game, how meaning is negotiated, and how professional reflection and identities are initiated. Demonstrating how subjectivity and experience can be employed as data in military sciences, the study also offers educators an interpretive framework for analysing game interaction. It further suggests that the matrix game’s educational value in PME can be extended by incorporating awareness of the rhetorical functions of narrative into the post-game reflection; knowledge of how stories are told could enhance student learning.

Some thirty years ago, I coined the concept of the 'Cycle of Research', which described how wargaming, exercises and analysis, coupled with real-world operations and history, have worked together in concert to help the national-security community to understand better political-military reality and its past and future evolutions. When first proposed, I had in mind the uses of Wargaming in the analytical context, or what the community of professional wargamers most often calls research wargaming. Over the years, however, I began to recognize how much the same integration of tools and techniques can—and should—influence education and training for national-security professionals, both uniform and civilian: In essence, a Cycle of Learning. In this paper I explore these ideas more fully. I hope these musings can be of some help and inspiration for future researchers to probe deeper into the application of all our tools in the critically important task of educating future leaders. That task can be made more successful by using wargaming to help structure a framework for PME that integrates the inspiration, instruction, and application of the key knowledge and habits of mind—the mental muscle memory—required to operate effectively in the real world and to demonstrate those characteristics in the game, whatever form that may take.

The most widely established consensus on regional resilience is that there is no consensus on definition, application and theoretical boundaries. Despite most authors expressing objections to "stretching" the concept of resilience too far to be meaningful and its applications too varying to establish a practical framework, this study offers a participatory study of the applied concept with both conclusions about the framework and results of its implementation. The design of the study took into account the substantiated claims of previous use of resilience as a patch to all community problems and adding a new name instead of a new way of addressing them. The study introduces wargaming with the policy-makers of NATO as a reflection and mapping tool to recognize the deficiencies of the framework. The results have verified the main criticism of the concept and offered recommendations on continuing the revision of the resilience framework based on practical insights from policy-makers.

Cybersecurity threats to railways are increasing, both due to improvements in the techniques of hackers and the increasing merger of cyber and physical spheres. Accepted approaches to safety can be extended to consider the risks from cyber, however the nature of railways as complex cyber-physical systems of systems may require a broader approach beyond functional safety. This paper explores some of the cybersecurity hazards using a war gaming approach. The authors find that, while standard engineering approaches are effective in building new rail control system components, a broader and more creative consideration of attacks has benefits. In particular they identify the ability to cause mass disruption by targeting the fail-safes designed to ensure safety or auxiliary systems that are not directly classified within the scope of the ICS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in decades of defensive technologies, as well as defensive thinking, such as the spread of a quick war on the planet, the network of warfare, and the emergence of free and open access to the virtual media have transformed the face of the wars. This transformation has led to new features for wars. War is one of the most challenging arenas of decision making for mankind. The advancement of technology and the evolution of war have forced commanders to make important decisions in short periods. Due to the complex nature of war and difficaulty of the fast analysis of its environment for human mind, its nessecary for commanders to use computer modeling methods to making better decisions. One of these methods is System Dynamics. Its important ability is calculating simultaneous effect of many variables on each other. In this Research the researcher tried to use system dynamics for executing the causal models of experts on the I.R.I and K.S.A Military conflict issue. Along with that, with a qualitative approach, the researcher reports the difficaulties of applying SD for strategic security and defensive issues and at the end, makes some suggestions for better modeling of these issues.

Based on a review of diff erent analytical frameworks, it is suggested to run a table top cyber wargame when trying to analyse the eff ects of closed national networks being imposed in the near future. Th e scope of the wargame is to extract results to show how the resilience of an open national network diff ers from a closed national network. It is self-evident that the formation process of resilience is diff erent between the diverse systems. Th e proposed wargame is a two-sided cyber table top wargame. Th e wargame is based on at least two blue teams, at least one red team and a control team (namely a white team). One blue team is located in the closed national networks and its system relies on closed national network infrastructure. Th e other blue team operates its system within open network society. By designing, constructing and executing the proposed cyber wargame we argue it is possible to fi nd these diff erences and similarities as well. Current research improves cyber situation awareness and proposes a direction to be followed when trying to understand the changing circumstances of the cyber space. It also suggests how the research resources could be directed when trying to improve the situation awareness of the closing process.

Rational, analytical, directed approaches for strategy creation and execution may work for creating value by conventional, hierarchically structured organizations operating in stable environments. However, when the basis of competition shifts from product features to an experience delivered by a network of independently acting participants in a complex and fast-evolving market environment, approaches based on command and control do not work. For order to emerge from such chaos and to gain more control over success, strategy based on reason alone is not enough to inspire action in others. To understand what it takes to effectively make strategy under such circumstances, this article shows how the UK's Royal Marines, in collaboration with more than a dozen different stakeholder groups, developed a novel adaptation of war gaming to affect strategic change in Afghanistan. It also demonstrates the broad applicability of this strategic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wargaming is one of the techniques of futures studies that prepares military commanders to predict future threats and how to make decisions in different situations. The wargaming decision support system is used to optimize the use of manpower, equipment, and to choose the best solution against the opponent's strategy. The decision making process in the wargaming system includes decision makers and players, environmental factors, objectives, strategies and criteria. In this article, the decision making process in tactical and operational wargaming scenarios is described. To this end, the model of fuzzy zero sum games in the decision support system of tactical and operational wargaming is examined. In this model, linguistic variables are used to set the game's payoff table. By using alpha-cuts of fuzzy numbers, the payoff matrix of game with interval elements is obtained, and the expected payoff is written as interval and depend on alpha . By calculating expected value of expected payoff, payoffs as crisp are written. After evaluating objectives and criteria, a mathematical programming approach is proposed for each player. By solving these problems, optimal strategies of players are obtained. Finally, the modeling of a wargaming battle scenario is illustrated and the use and resolution of these models is described.

Rationale for the Article. Professional wargames have long been an integral part of the tool set used by the military. The literature includes many examples of wargames that have been successful in terms of training, military education, procurement, operational analysis and planning for war. However, retrospective examination demonstrates that many of these professional wargames also had major errors in them and by implication current games about future confrontations are similarly flawed. Nevertheless, the academic evidence is clear that such games are still invaluable tools. Methodology. Ten years of research into the development of wargames undertaken by the History of Wargaming Project has analysed and made generally available more professional wargames than ever before. Retrospective examination of a sample of these declassified games, from the British War Office Rules (1896) to more recent games about the Ukraine, shows significant errors. Value. Demonstrating that professional games had errors in the past opens challenges the overconfidence in the predictive capacity of games. It also raises the possibility for future research to identify game design bias and to develop better games in the future. Understanding the value of better games, even with their inherent issues, raise the possibility of better preparing decision makers for the future. Notes. The words wargame and game are used interchangeably in this article. Whilst the techniques used in professional gaming evolved from modelling the battlefield, modern professional gaming is increasingly focussed on other situations that are not war, such as state level confrontations, trade wars, politics, cyber conflict, banking crisis etc. Using the term wargame seems inappropriate when for example, gaming a shipping dispute. All the games referred to this article, unless otherwise noted, are professional wargames, used by military, government, public sector bodies and other parties directly involved in real world issues. The prefix professional has been omitted for brevity in most places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines simulated battle settings, to analyze how tactics are performed and victory is achieved by observing tacticians dueling in wargames. In contemporary warfare, victory in battle relates to a wide variety of elements. According to military theory, these elements commonly involve deployment, reconnaissance, manoeuvre, breakthrough, tempo, surprise, exploitation, and shock, resulting in enemy organizational breakdown. Ideally, if one side in combat exploits all elements successfully, the likelihood of victory increases. Although the use of the tactical elements is not always obvious to the participants, the study indicates a correlation between using the elements and victory in a wargame setting. Although wargames inherent bias by not being the real world, they are used in training, education and analysis worldwide. The study also illustrates that the participants view tactical victory differently in battle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blending autoethnographic approaches with critical analysis, this article explores the intersection of arts-based praxis in peacebuilding and development in peace studies and conflict resolution (PS/CR). In recent decades, arts-based approaches have emerged across the globe in post-conflict settings. Applied, or process, theatre constitutes a social ontology, analysing and digesting experiences and an acceptance of multiple methods that inform research, theory, and practice. Similar to experiential education, applied theatre methodology connects research, theory, and practice in an integrative setting, but how does it resonate with PS/CR in practice? How can peace practitioners access arts-based praxis in development efforts? What benefits do such approaches provide? The author proposes that applied theatre principles, inspired by Augusto Boal and his system called Theatre of the Oppressed, can strengthen existing connections between peace education and peacebuilding practice, whilst also providing opportunities to enhance leader and learner benefit through active engagement in various settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Current Army doctrine stresses a need for military leaders to have the capability to make flexible and adaptive decisions based on a future unknown environment, location and enemy. To assess a military decision maker’s ability in this context, this paper aims to modify the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test which assesses cognitive flexibility, into a military relevant map task. Thirty-four military officers from all service branches completed the map task. Design/methodology/approach – The purpose of this study was to modify a current psychological task that measures cognitive flexibility into a military relevant task that includes the challenge of overcoming experiential bias, and understand underlying causes of individual variability in the decision-making and cognitive flexibility behavior of active duty military officers on this task. Findings – Results indicated that non-perseverative errors were a strong predictor of cognitive flexibility performance on the map task. Decomposition of non-perseverative error into efficient errors and random errors revealed that participants who did not complete the map task changed their sorting strategy too soon within a series, resulting in a high quantity of random errors. Originality/value – This study serves as the first step in customizing cognitive psychological tests for a military purpose and understanding why some military participants show poor cognitive flexibility.

The decision-making (DM) process in critical environments is a complex process that can be simulated due to current telematic capabilities, which allow the real time interaction of large amounts of data. This document describes the proposed architecture from a research process, developed by the FAC Aerospace Technology Development Center (CETAD), where using computational and expert system tools, allowed to create a computational environment for decision maker evaluated his options to prepares for real events, simulating characteristics, resources and strategies in a real time environment. This document describes an investigation product resulted in a simulation system, based on a combination of fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms and decision trees which let modelled and simulated various entities and their automatic response according to simulated patterns and situations, in which, through operators, decision maker can modify entities behaviour, according to parameterized restrictions and physical conditions. Also based on business intelligence tools, reports are generated to evaluate the decisions made. This type of technologies improves planning capacity and facilitate the decision-making process. System allows simulating any media deployment in national security and critical events context. Thus, a case study was developed for implementation of a support in natural disaster scenario simulation

The most widely established consensus on regional resilience is that there is no consensus on definition, application and theoretical boundaries. Despite most authors expressing objections to "stretching" the concept of resilience too far to be meaningful and its applications too varying to establish a practical framework, this study offers a participatory study of the applied concept with both conclusions about the framework and results of its implementation. The design of the study took into account the substantiated claims of previous use of resilience as a patch to all community problems and adding a new name instead of a new way of addressing them. The study introduces wargaming with the policy-makers of NATO as a reflection and mapping tool to recognize the deficiencies of the framework. The results have verified the main criticism of the concept and offered recommendations on continuing the revision of the resilience framework based on practical insights from policy-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We demonstrate that game-theoretic calculations serve as a useful tool for assisting cyber wargaming teams in identifying effective strategies. We note a significant similarity between formulating cyber wargaming strategies and the methodology known in the military practice as Course of Action (COA) generation. For scenarios in which the attacker must penetrate multiple layers in a defense-in-depth security configuration, an accounting of attacker and defender costs and penetration probabilities provides cost–utility payoff matrices and penetration probability matrices. These can be used as decision tools by both the defender and attacker. Inspection of the matrices allows players to deduce preferred strategies (COAs) based on game-theoretical equilibrium solutions. The matrices also help in analyzing the anticipated effects of potential human-based choices of wargame strategies and counter-strategies. We describe a mathematical game-theoretic formalism and offer detailed analysis of a cyber-physical table-top wargame executed at the US Army Research Laboratory. Our analysis shows how game-theoretical calculations can indeed provide a useful tool for effective decision-making during cyber wargames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces readers to core concepts around cyber wargaming. Wargames can be powerful learning tools, but few wargames exist to teach players about cyber security. By way of highlighting possibilities in this space, the author has developed an original educational tabletop wargame based on the UK National Cyber Security Strategy and deployed the game to a variety of organisations to determine its pedagogic efficacy. Overall, it is found that the game was effective in generating highengagement participation and clear learning opportunities. Furthermore, there are design lessons to be learned from existing games for those seeking to use wargames for cyber security training and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capability-based planning as an approach to defense planning is an almost infinitely complex engineered system with countless nodes and layers of interdependency, influenced by state and non-state diplomatic activities, information, military and economic actions creating secondary and third order effects. The main output of capability-based planning is the set of capability requirements needed to achieve the expected end-state. One revitalized qualitative technique that allows us to gain insights into unstructured and fuzzy problems in the military is wargaming—in its simplest form this involves manual wargaming. At the same time, there has been a push to bring computer assistance to such wargaming, especially to support umpire adjudication and move more generally towards full automation of human elements in wargames. However, computer assistance in wargaming should not be pushed, regardless of cost, towards quantitative techniques. The objective complexity of a problem often does not allow us to replicate the operational environment with the required fidelity to get credible experimental results. This paper discusses a discovery experiment aiming to verify the concept of applying a qualitative expert system within computer assisted wargaming for developing capability requirements in order to reduce umpire bias and risk associated with their decisions. The innovation here lies in applying system dynamics modelling and simulation paradigms when designing the theoretical model of capability development, which forms the core of the expert system. This new approach enables qualitative comparisons between different sets of proposed capability requirements. Moreover, the expert system allows us to reveal the effects of budget cuts on proposed capability requirement solutions, which the umpire was previously unable to articulate when comparing individual solutions by relying solely on his own knowledge. Players in the wargame validated the proposed concept and suggested how the study might be developed going forward: namely, by enabling users to define their own capabilities and not being limited by a predefined set of capabilities.

There are inherent difficulties in designing an effective Human–Machine Interface (HMI) for a first-of-its-kind system. Many leading cognitive research methods rely upon experts with prior experiences using the system and/or some type of existing mockups or working prototype of the HMI, and neither of these resources are available for such a new system. Further, these methods are time consuming and incompatible with more rapid and iterative systems development models (e.g., Agile/Scrum). To address these challenges, we developed a Wargame-Augmented Knowledge Elicitation (WAKE) method to identify information requirements and underlying assumptions in operator decision making concurrently with operational concepts. The developed WAKE method incorporates naturalistic observations of operator decision making in a wargaming scenario with freeze-probe queries and structured analytic techniques to identify and prioritize information requirements for a novel HMI. An overview of the method, required apparatus, and associated analytical techniques is provided. Outcomes, lessons learned, and topics for future research resulting from two different applications of the WAKE method are also discussed.