Matching Strike Dice Rolls to the Chinese Calculus
Abstract
An understanding of the character of future high-end warfare, particularly between peer great powers, is essential to preparing future military leaders to think critically and avoid strategic surprise. The Halsey Alfa Advanced Research Program explores potential military decisions using a two-team (Red vs. Blue) wargame scenario representing high-end conflict between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the United States (US). Halsey Alfa utilizes Global Dice Rolls (GDR) to distill complex geostrategic decision points to manageable statistical events within each trimester wargame. GDRs provide a strategic framework to bound the potential authorities for allowable (permissive, not directive) military action in a campaign. The Autumn 2020 Halsey Alfa wargame's GDR restraint on Red's employment of retaliatory strikes against Blue bases in the second island chain was fundamentally flawed, leading to skewed gameplay and lessons learned. The Departments of Defense and Navy will make substantive investments to evolve the Joint and Naval Forces toward deterring or winning a future conflict against the PRC. As such, a deep understanding of the true threat of strikes against our bases is critical to the force posture in the Western Pacific region and our operational design of force application in the event of conflict escalation between the two great powers: PRC and US.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 14, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1144299
Entities
People
- James Arnold
Organizations
- Naval War College