I'd like to see someone game the interagency collaboration process, perhaps in a PRT like setting in Iraq. the scenario - you are assigned to lead/manage a PRT in Iraq and here's your team, AOR and objective - Get 'er done!
That would be a complex wargame with a lot of competing agendas. A lot more than a binary action, reaction, counteraction.
"Law cannot limit what physics makes possible." Humanitarian Apsects of Airpower (papers of Frederick L. Anderson, Hoover Institution, Stanford University)
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“their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’… and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure.” Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers 1959
Play more wargames!
I've played "wargames" since I can remember, but I have a slight issue with the idea of a "game". In combat, you can have winners and losers. The end states are easy to define and the limits can be pretty well understood. The "game" analogy works and is de-facto professional education
The issue here I suggest is with "Simulations". Simulations have limits, and as I see many limits to what "gaming" can contribute to the human and social side of the issue we call COIN.
Trying to "game COIN" might be like trying to "simulate" marriage just using an inflatable sheep. The lack of realistic responses would show up pretty quickly!
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
I won't touch the inflatable sheep comment but in terms of simulating marriage, isn't that what 2nd Life is supposed to do? I've never tried it but read plenty about people who literally have a simulated marriage online. Personally one real one is enough for me...I'd rather hunt "tangos" if I'm playing online.
Along that thought process, however, is using something like a 2nd life simulation to mirror COIN. You can replicate every type of personality in a known AO, have events from a car bombing to an election drive and best of all, you can run this over a looooong period of time. For example: you know your unit is deploying somewhere next year. You have an idea of the AO (always subject to change of course). About a year out, you inject your key leaders into this 2nd Life environment. Even an hour a day whether from work or the house over the course of a year would help them build up a huge knowledge base based on actual people, locations and events. If kids sitting at home on a Saturday night can design these types of environments, why can't STRICOM and the military?
May be worth a look. Thoughts?
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-Thucydides
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