Wargaming and Operational Art - How Do We Increase Our Practical Experience Level?
Abstract
Are we losing our expertise in operational art? The seeming ease with which we have dispatched our last few opponents, coupled with the near-mythical capabilities associated with the still evolving Net Centric Warfare concept should be cause for concern. In our rush to transform we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. From a purely military perspective, our challenge is to retain our dominance, not just in technology and training, but more importantly in our ability to employ those forces successfully in combat through the proper application of operational art. Future U.S. military leaders must possess both a thorough understanding of, and adequate experience in employing, operational art. This paper contends that the U.S. is losing it's practical experience in operational art. It explores the current lack of operational art in some commissioning programs. It goes on to illustrate how some Professional Military Education (PME) curriculums address operational art in classroom settings, but have all but removed the practical application phases due to the constraints of accreditation processes. The paper then asserts that shortfall could be mitigated through more war gaming and then illustrates how war games have been used historically to address operational art issues. The paper also illustrates the significant decline in the amount of war gaming in modern day. The paper concludes with a proposal on how the amount of war gaming could be increased in the future through the use of distributed, or networked games. These would allow students doing PME by correspondence to participate in war games as well and would offer the added ability to have students continue to play war games from their follow-on duty locations, thus allowing them to practice operational art every year.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 16, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA419815
Entities
People
- Scott E. Goehring
Organizations
- Naval War College