Naval War College Review. Volume 67, Number 1, Winter 2014
Abstract
One of the four key missions assigned the Naval War College has long been the education of future leaders. In 2007, the College of Operational and Strategic Leadership (COSL) was established as a component of the College to sharpen the focus of its educational activities in direct support of the fleet. In our feature, after these notes, Rear Admiral James Kelly, USN (Ret.), the current dean of COSL , provides an account of what may prove to be the most important initiative undertaken in recent years to review, align, and strengthen the policies and processes by which the Navy develops its leaders at all levels. (Rear Admiral Ted Carter, President of the Naval War College, addresses this topic in his President s Forum, below.) Further reflections on military leadership today are offered later in this issue by retired Navy captain Chris Johnson, as well as by the distinguished military historian Williamson Murray in his extended essay on Tom Ricks s widely discussed recent book The Generals. The Naval War College s War Gaming Department is located in McCarty Little Hall, a state-of-the-art gaming and decision-support facility on the College s Newport campus. As Hank J. Brightman and Melissa K. Dewey remind us in Trends in Modern War Gaming: The Art of Conversation, Lieutenant William McCarty Little, the founder of war gaming in the U.S. Navy, was a true innovator and visionary who devised an approach to war gaming that remains highly relevant today. Rather than seeking to use gaming tools to reduce complex interactions into artificially simplified terms, McCarty Little understood clearly that warfare is a holistic experience that is at its heart a dialogue or conversation among comrades and adversaries alike. As the coauthors show, this understanding persists today in the way the department structures its games in such challenging contemporary areas as irregular warfare.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2014
- Accession Number
- ADA591444
Entities
Organizations
- Naval War College