Box: building tactical decision making and warfighting function integration expertise through wargaming.

As the Army transitions from a seventeen-year focus on stability operations, the majority of leaders at the tactical level lack experience operating in a high intensity conflict environment. Realistically, no U.S. service member has experienced peer-level conflict lasting more than a few days since the Korean War in 1950-1951. When analyzing Combat Training Center (CTC) observations over the past decades, a common trend arises: tactical leaders and staffs struggle to make rapid tactical decisions and maximizing the effects of warfighting function integration, directly impacting success or failure at the CTCs. Through the use of a tabletop wargame simulation, this thesis develops an easily-distributed, adaptable, and rapid method to develop leaders' abilities in tactical decision making and warfighting function integration. Titled The Box, this simulation is a turn-based, hex-mapped, brigade-level, peer-capable, force-on-force tactical wargame where players assume the role of a brigade commander and staff at the National Training Center. Players must use their knowledge of tactical maneuver, planning factors, and warfighting function enablers to achieve victory. The Box seeks to be a method through which a leader can develop organizations in preparation for future training events or combat deployments.