Sam and Ivan: Automated Agents for Analytic War Gaming
Abstract
A recent Briefing article in Jane's Defence Weekly discussed Pentagon war gaming and the RAND Strategy Assessment System (RSAS). Readers may have been left with the erroneous impression that the RSAS has been widely used in government for war gaming and contingency planning. The Jane's article described a game focused on the Persian Gulf, which was actually a series of analytic cases studied in 1982. The author first compares RSAS capabilities in 1982 and now. He then describes the purposes, procedures, and outcomes of the games described in the Jane's article, noting how a study of similar problems using today's RSAS would be undertaken. Finally, he'll try to put the use of automated war gaming into a realistic perspective. The first version of the RSAS was developed in 1980 as a demonstration of concept, the concept being that, by giving computer programs a game-like structure, the contextual richness of war gaming could be combined with the explicitness and replicability of computer simulation. The game-like structure meant having Red Agent programs play against Blue Agent programs, with game control functions being performed by a Scenario Agent, representing nonsuperpower governments, and a Force Agent, simulating force operations and interactions. There was also the notion that the system could be run with either human teams or the computer programs playing any of the parties. (kr)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1988
- Accession Number
- ADA216642
Entities
People
- William Schwabe
Organizations
- RAND Corporation