Wargaming and innovation

In November of last year, then US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the “Defense Innovation Initiative,” intended to accelerate innovation throughout the Department of Defense and US military. As part of this he noted that “a reinvigorated wargaming effort will develop and test alternative ways of achieving our strategic objectives and help us think more clearly about the future security environment.” You’ll find the full memo here.

Subsequently this past February, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work issued more detailed instructions on “wargaming and innovation” (pdf version):

The 2015 Connections interdsciplinary wargaming conference will be devoted to this theme of innovation. It will be held at National Defense University in Washington DC on 27-30 July. I’ll be co-chairing the panel on “reinvigorating education through wargaming—developing innovators.” Most or all of the PAXsims editors, and many of our contributors, will be in attendance too. See you there!