Virtual War

[jcustis]

It would appear that one could die from some of this stuff...

BEIJING, China (AP) -- A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/09/17/i....ap/index.html

[wm]

I recently stumbled across an interesting 1897 text by English Field Marshall Evelyn Wood, VC, entitled Achievements of Cavalry. I found the following quotation on page vii of the preface particularly instructive with regard to the topic of this thread

Cavalry officers can become efficient leaders, after
adequate study, by two means:—
Firstly, by war service.
Secondly, by practice in cavalry, and combined
manoeuvres.
The former experience, costly in lives and money,
is not often available, and the latter means has
only been afforded to our Service during the last
few years, and even in that time but to a very
limited degree. The Prussians, on the other hand,
have had manoeuvres of some kind ever since the
time of Frederick the Great, i.e. for a century and a
half; and it is significant that during the twenty-two
years, 1821-43, m which no large bodies of cavalry
were assembled for manoeuvres in that country,
there was a tendency to eliminate warlike exercises,
and substitute parade movements for them.
Until recently our regiments had not got beyond
parade movements. I hope, however, that the British
public is beginning to recognize the necessity for
annual manoeuvres ; and, satisfied, as I am, that there
is an increasing desire for improvement amongst the
officers, I believe in the future of our cavalry.

Here's another interesting paragraph from the previous page (my emphasis added) in which Wood explains the distribution of the 12 examples he has choosen.

It will be observed that England, Poland, and
Russia each furnished the troops for only one of the
feats I have selected, Austria two, and France two,
while North Germany is credited with five out of the
twelve Achievements. This is to be accounted for,
so far as our cavalry is concerned, by the fact that
though it had many opportunities of achieving success
in the Peninsular War, yet the leading of its
commanders, being more indicative of courageous
hearts than of well-stored minds, was often barren of
results.

The thoughts expressed in this second quotation may be even more germane to the discussion at this thread or the various discussion spawned by LTC Yingling's article.

For those interested in the book, you can find it on-line here

[Beelzebubalicious]

Interesting discussion. Reminds me of an article I read awhile ago and saved as a favorite. It's titled "Insurgency: Modern Warfare Evolves into a Fourth Generation" and was written by Thomas X. Hammes and was published in the Strategic Forum publication of the Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University in January 2005. Might be old hat for some out there, but I thought it was an interesting read at the time and given this thread, worth another look:

http://www.ndu.edu/inss/strforum/SF214/SF214.pdf

Here is something I came across (now a bit dated) related to using onling gaming for Military Training and Education:

Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming: A Research Framework for Military Training and Education

By the way, I've looked into virtual games a bit and come across some interesting examples. Check out:

VECTOR (Virtual Environment Cultural Training for Operational Readiness)

The Institute for Creative Technologies does some interesting work, including a Stability and Support Operations Simulation