NATO WIN23 conference report

This past week I had the good fortune to attend the NATO WIN23 wargaming conference in Rome. According to the media release from NATO Allied Command Transformation:

From June 26-28, 2023, Allied Command Transformation will co-lead the Wargaming Initiative for NATO 2023, deepening the wargaming knowledge of senior NATO military and civilian officials.

Allied Command Transformation is developing its Audacious Wargaming Capability as part of its effort to better understand the challenges facing the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power and out-excel potential adversaries through leadership development. It also seeks to enhance engagement and cooperation with stakeholders to refine NATO’s understanding and use of wargaming to enable it to remain at the forefront of warfare development. One aspect of these efforts is the Wargaming Initiative for NATO, which seeks to further the Alliance’s wargaming capabilities and foster a wargaming culture across the Alliance.

Allied Command Transformation is co-leading the Wargaming Initiative for NATO 2023, better known as WIN 2023, from June 26-28, 2023 in Rome, Italy. Over the course of this three-day event, the Command’s Wargaming and Experimentation Branch will be working alongside Italy, France, and Germany to expose senior NATO military and civilian officials to future wargaming practices and technologies. In line with the theme of ‘Harnessing the Power and Potential of Wargaming,’ WIN 2023 seeks to enable NATO’s competitive edge into the future by reinforcing analytical rigor at all levels of decision-making and providing the opportunity to explore threats in a safe-to-fail environment. WIN 2023 has over 300 participants from across the Alliance, with participation from NATO, Allies, academia, and industry.

Speaking on the importance of WIN 2023 to the development of NATO’s wargaming capabilities, Colonel Nicholas Waldron, Head of the Experimentation and Wargaming Branch, said,

“WIN 23 is the second iteration of ACT’s collaboration with nations to build a culture and awareness of Wargaming practice throughout the Alliance. What began as a grassroots effort to broaden the exposure to wargaming has grown this year into an event that maintains the spirit of that grassroots effort, but also exposes senior NATO leaders to the art of the possible for future wargaming practices and technologies. As such, we have a packed schedule focused on Harnessing the Power and Potential of Wargaming as a practice, with an exposure to technologies that can augment our ability to do just that.”

This year’s Wargaming Initiative for NATO features plenary sessions about the use of wargaming to enhance the Alliance’s strategic advantage as well as the use of wargaming to develop better decision-makers in an era of accelerated decision-making. WIN 2023 will also provide participants the opportunity to experience the benefits of wargaming first-hand during wargaming sessions and to interact with the latest wargaming solutions, topics, and capabilities from NATO, academia, and industry.

The Wargaming Initiative for NATO began in 2022 as a bilateral initiative between France and Italy, supported by the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, General Philippe Lavigne. It has since evolved into a continuum of events, with Allied Command Transformation co-hosting NATO’s first practitioner-level wargaming conference at King’s College London in May, and conducting WIN 2023 in Rome. The Wargaming Initiative for NATO has recently become an annual event, with planning currently ongoing for the next iterations in 2024 and 2025.

Following a very pleasant reception on Monday evening provided by our Italian hosts, the conference proper began on Tuesday morning with introductions as well as a plenary panel discussion on “Wargaming for Strategic Advantage – Challenges and Opportunities.” The rest of the day was devoted to wargame demonstrations, with many different games on display.

Photo credit: Italian Armed Forces

During this time, I ran two games of We Are Coming, Nineveh! The first was notable for a failed assault and subsequent retreat by Iraqi forces that led to a massive traffic jam—which was then hit by Daesh chemical weapons. As if this chaos wasn’t enough, Daesh stay-behind forces then successfully raided the headquarters of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (“Golden Division”). The ISF never really recovered. In the second game, a well executed ISF plan saw them methodically clear the Old City. Iraqi Interior Ministry forces—many of them heavily-armed police—played a key role in this, much as they did in real life. The result would have been an Iraqi victory had some frustrated ISF units not departed from their usual rules of engagement to use excessive firepower, increasing collateral damage to the city. This was just enough to tip the result into a very narrow Daesh victory.

The second day started with the announcement of the winners of the NATO innovation challenge award: a team from Hague University (Andrew Bell, Lowna van Hekezen, Jehezkiel Kodradjaya, José Del Olmo García, and Jane Vasov) who developed An Alliance of Arms, a wargame design about multi-domain operations.

Photo credit: Natalia Wojtowicz

This was followed by a second day of wargaming demonstrations, many of which I was able to visit since I wasn’t running anything myself this time around. The format gave everyone a real opportunity to see the many different purposes and topics wargames can address, and the many different approaches they might take—particularly important for growing wargaming in NATO countries where it may not have been commonplace in professional military education, planning, and analysis.

After lunch a plenary session followed on “Wargaming and the POL/MIL Decision-making Process,” then a debrief of the wargaming sessions and conference overall.

Overall, I thought it was a major success. There were more than three hundred participants drawn from across NATO, as well as game designers, industry, academics, think-tanks, and others. Like NATO WIN22 (held in Paris in October), the conference effectively engaged medium and even smaller NATO countries. I think this is extremely useful, since these countries face challenges in growing wargaming that are rather different from the situation in the US in particular.

The Itanian hosts were terrific. It was a hot couple of days in Rome, though (up to 37C) and while the breakout rooms for game demonstrations were fine the plenary auditorium wasn’t all that pleasant. Keep in mind that warm temperatures and high C02 concentrations have a marked effective on cognitive functioning, as previously discussed at PAXsims! It was also a very white, male audience—reflecting the composition of officer corps. By my rough count around 8-10% of the participants were women. Perhaps NATO WIN might consider embracing the Derby House Principles on diversity and inclusion in professional wargaming.

WIN 24 will be hosted by Germany. I very much hope I have an opportunity to attend!

For more on the conference, also see the reports by NATO ACT and at Thin Red Line Games.

Wargaming serves as a valuable arena for evaluating theoretical concepts and plans in warfare development before implementing them in actual operations with men and women in uniform.

Learn about the Wargaming Initiative for #NATO’23: https://t.co/95Mx8579Hv#WeAreNATO pic.twitter.com/W0Zk1lWR3b

— NATO ACT (@NATO_ACT) June 30, 2023

Highlights from #NATO WIN23 conference! Allies and partners. This is the way. #wargaming @CNA_org @NATO @NATO_ACT @SHAPE_NATO 1/ pic.twitter.com/2L3UdeXJ9n

— Sebastian Bae (@SebastianBae) June 29, 2023

For more on the Wargaming Initiative for NATO (WIN), see the NATO Innovation Hub.