Wargaming Small Wars (merged thread)

[jonSlack]

That would be a complex wargame with a lot of competing agendas. A lot more than a binary action, reaction, counteraction.

Perhaps it is time to move from wargames to war-MMORPGs.

[BayonetBrant]

Perhaps it is time to move from wargames to war-MMORPGs.

Yes... but how do you keep everyone 'in character'?

[William F. Owen]

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!

[sullygoarmy]

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!

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?

[JT Clark]

The recent COIN Leaders seminar at the CAC Ft Leavenworth was a great intro to how actual ground-up intel can (and should) be used to model complex COIN scenarios. Combined with a knowledge of basic insurgent strategy it is then relatively straightforward to forecast likely insurgent actions and come up with pro-active rather than reactive strategy on all fronts- military, social, economic and political. Gaming such scenarios was an eye-opener to all that attended.

On a side note, counter-strike and ghost recon fans out there might be interested to see that Hezbollah has their own version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Force

The interplay between globalization, media, and insurgency is always fascinating...

[Entropy]

I've been a "gamer" all my life, beginning with military board games and going right up through MMORPG's (World of Warcraft being the most recent). I agree with Wilf that "simulation" is probably a more accurate term, though I would suggest "model," at least for certain types of "games."

Like any simulation or model, there are limits to what it can do and there are some things that simply can't be modeled/simulated very accurately. In my experience, those un-modelables are often the human and leadership factors. I think we're all in agreement that those human factors are preeminent in insurgency/COIN, so for that reason alone I think games/models/simulations will have less utility in COIN than, say, naval warfare. In other words, it's easier to simulate hardware than it is to simulate people.

[JT Clark]

Couldn't agree more. It is definitely possible using some basic modelling techniques however to ID the various stakeholders in a COIN scenario and predict their most likely courses of action.

[Rex Brynen]

It is not that difficult to simulate a COIN/peace operations setting in a human-moderated role-playing game, given the flexibility and large number of variables that an RPG allows one to include. (I'm more dubious about electronic ones at present, since player options are starkly limited and there is to much temptation to metagame the AI system.) You can also fairly easily scale for the scope of the exercise, number of participants, presumed level of experience. As I've posted in other threads, I've run them for both large numbers (120) of students and smaller numbers (30) of senior officials/negotiators/technical experts. The real challenge is preparing an adequate amount of appropriate background information and briefing notes, and making sure that the proper dynamic starts among the players early on.

The World Bank has started used a heavily modified version of UN DPKO's mythical "Carana" setting for training mid-level officials on aid operations in conflict-affected countries. It focuses on determining national policy priorities with a diverse group of stakeholders.

(Very advanced heads up—I'll be in DC at some point this fall giving an in-house talk at the World Bank on the use of simulations in education and capacity-building. PM for details.)

[BayonetBrant]

I think one of these days I'm going to have to write an article about "Game" v "sim" and their best uses in training/learning - already did a bunch of this for my dissertation... I just need to cut it down to a consumable size.