Wargaming at sea

The following article is authored by Lieutenant James Court, United States Navy, who is currently serving as an instructor at the Academy for Defense Intelligence. He has served in the US Navy for 8 years both at sea and ashore and has deployed to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Fleet areas of responsibility. His game research and design has largely focused on educational games about great power competition, operational and tactical levels of war, and information operations. He graduated from the George Washington University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and is currently pursuing a Master of Arts degree in Securities Studies from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Navy, Department of Defense or the US Government.

---

Introduction

Wargames have a long history of helping the warfighter simulate battle and conceptualize ideas. They serve to foster creative thinking, problem solving, and to teach players how operations work. While war colleges have traditionally been the hubs for wargaming in the military, the practice is virtually non-existent in the surface fleet. 

Training for junior officers in the surface warfare community is already in crisis – two collisions in the Indo-Pacific region in 2017 publicly exposed training shortfalls that had long been open secrets in the surface warfare community.^[1] Surface warfare training is left to the Commanding Officers (COs) of ships, who must balance junior officer training along with other administrative and operational tasks.  When surface warfare officers study for their qualification boards, they are often counseled to simply focus on topics that the CO cares about. As a result, there is significant variance in how officers are trained and qualified. ^[2]

Wargames are a solution to this problem – they are small, inexpensive and can be tailored to work in a shipboard environment and around a shipboard schedule. They can be standardized across the fleet and can be used to educate officers and prepare them for their boards – better yet, they can be used on boards for practical demonstrations. Wargames can even be used by crews to game out scenarios before conducting unfamiliar operations. Peter Perla, the father modern wargaming, has even noted the benefits of a computer-based wargame being played on several terminals where junior officers pit destroyers against each other, while a more senior officer follows from another terminal and offers advice. Wargames can serve as efficient tools for training, morale, and creative problem-solving – all of which the surface fleet needs. 

How Wargames Benefit Wardrooms

Educational wargames can directly benefit wardrooms in three ways: train surface warfare officers on maritime warfare, foster creative decision-making, demonstrate understanding of key concepts and build morale – all at a very low cost in terms of time and money. 

When newly commissioned surface warfare officers arrive at their first commands, they are required to undergo a training program that culminates with their full qualification as surface warfare officers. As part of this qualification, officers must study maritime warfare, which consists of understanding capabilities, limitations, and TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) for US and adversary forces. Officers are expected to understand this information for future application against an adversary.  

Wargaming can help junior officers memorize basics such as weapons and detection ranges, radio and RADAR frequencies, missile salvo and magazine sizes, as well as how to apply tactics and doctrine at sea. Playing games can build neural pathways and muscle memory to not only practice application of this knowledge, but also to create memorable experiences of both positive and negative application theory through wargame immersion. If the wargame is appropriately scaled and appropriately represents technical characteristics of platforms, players can absorb real, non-abstracted information that they would normally have to memorize.^[3] This includes adversary information – even an unclassified wargame, built on open-source information, can help junior officers grasp adversary technical capabilities. 

Wargames also encourage something that rote studying does not – creative decision-making. Creative decision-making is more than just choosing between options correctly – it is about recognizing mission needs and making decisions that best meet that mission, even if those decisions are unusual or out of the box. Creative decision-making is a crucial skill to all officers, given that the most crucial decision-making occurs while under stress and with limited resources. ^[4] A wargame can introduce junior officers to unfamiliar situations and force them to improvise.^[5] These unfamiliar situations can include combat damage, inoperable systems, or unreliable communications – all of which are difficult to simulate in practice.

Moreover, wargames provide a valuable platform for junior officers during their qualification boards. In these boards, officers are expected to answer scenario-based questions, often crudely drawn out on a whiteboard. Wargames can both enhance and standardize these scenario-based sections. By employing a formal ruleset that is founded on actual military capabilities and well-designed scenarios, wargames enable officers to practically demonstrate their acumen and showcase creative decision-making skills. 

Finally, wargames can serve as morale-building tools that COs can employ as fun and team-building outlets. They can foster competition in a positive and enjoyable environment while still reinforcing learning objectives. 

How to Incorporate Wargames at Sea

While the benefits of wargaming on ships are evident, implementing wargames on ships is not without challenges. To effectively integrate wargames into professional military education at sea, they must be well-scoped to meet the training requirements of a wardroom. 

A tactical-level wargame would be most appropriate, with gameplay revolving around a single surface platform. The design features of the game must reinforce what junior officers learn in their first three tours, such as how missiles and air defense work, how to hunt submarines while balancing air operations, and how to avoid mines while engaging surface threats, to name a few.^[6] It would also have to be easy to adopt and with minimal abstractions of key maritime warfare concepts. ^[7]

Modularity would also be key, so that the game could introduce players to other ship classes, different environments, different adversaries, and so on. This would allow junior officers to place themselves on other warships and employ their capabilities, thus developing a broader understanding of maritime warfare. Modularity would also help players craft scenarios based on the time and resources they have – enabling a quick game between officers after chow, amongst a group of officers as part of a qualification board, or to prepare the entire wardroom for a major event.

While Peter Perla may hope for computer terminals serving as wargaming stations in wardrooms, the real scarcity of computer systems on ships makes this impractical. To ensure accessibility and ease of gameplay, wardroom wargames should be low-cost, employing physical maps, tokens, and cards that can be stored in compact boxes, allowing officers to play in various settings, both at sea and in-port.

How to Change the Culture

Introducing wargames into the Navy’s training culture requires overcoming resistance and skepticism. To ensure adoption and acceptance of wargames, three approaches can be employed:  introducing officers to the game at schoolhouses, standardizing the game across the fleet, and deliberately integrating the game into the qualification process and in preparation for major operations. 

Perhaps the defining hurdle to overcome is the perception that wargames are unnecessary or frivolous. Some argue that they are a waste of time and provide little educational value.^[8] Ultimately, this perception often comes from the discomfort with suspending disbelief and learning game rules. To address this, the same wargame that wardrooms play at sea should be introduced in the schoolhouses that train surface warfare officers at all stages of their careers. 

The Navy’s schoolhouses, such as the Basic Division Officer’s Course, Advanced Division Officer’s Course, Department Head Course, and Command Qualification Course, offer ample time for officers to be exposed to wargaming. This way, officers can learn the rules of the game without feeling like they are being distracted from more important administrative or operational tasks. They can absorb rules and gameplay in an educational environment, where they are more prone to suspending disbelief and trying something new. Furthermore, by experiencing the educational benefits firsthand more senior officers will understand how to leverage wargaming for the training and development of junior officers.

By standardizing the wargame across the fleet, using identical rulesets regardless of platform or location, officers can retain their understanding of the wargame from tour to tour, which helps overcome variations in training standards across the surface fleet. Incorporating the game into the qualification process further reinforces its importance and encourages widespread adoption.

In preparation of significant operations, such as navigating through a strait or executing freedom of navigation operations, using the wargame to play through these situations can provide officers with valuable visualization and insights. It allows them to anticipate unexpected situations and understand the roles of each team member. Officers can apply their understanding of maritime warfare and even develop TTPs. Even routine events, like a strait transit, can benefit from wargaming by introducing highly unlikely scenarios and allowing new officers to test roles they wouldn’t normally play.

Conclusion

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis noted in the summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy that “PME [professional military education] has stagnated, focused more on the accomplishment of mandatory credit at the expense of lethality and ingenuity.”^[9] By incorporating wargaming into officer training, surface warfare boards, and pre-operations planning, wardrooms can start comprehensively training according to universal standards. Investing in the training of junior officers through wargaming, even with simple materials like cardboard game pieces, maps, and dice, will better prepare them to face the challenges of the high seas.

---

^[1] Davidson, Phillip. “Document: Navy Comprehensive Review of Surface Forces.” USNI News, November 2, 2017. https://news.usni.org/2017/11/02/document-navy-comprehensive-review-surface-forces.

^[2] Delloue, Thibaut. “Standardize SWO Qual Boards.” U.S. Naval Institute, August 29, 2022. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/november/standardize-swo-qual-boards.

^[3] McBreen, Brandon. “Close Combat and Learning Infantry Tactics.” MCA, 2019. https://mca-marines.org/blog/gazette/close-combat-and-learning-infantry-tactics/.

^[4] Stavridis, James. To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision. New York: Penguin Press, 2022.

^[5] Wong, Jeff. “Wargaming in Professional Military Education: A Student’s Perspective.” The Strategy Bridge. The Strategy Bridge, July 14, 2016. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2016/7/14/wargaming-in-professional-military-education-a-students-perspective?rq=wargaming.

^[6] “U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) Careers.” U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) Careers | Navy.com. Accessed April 24, 2023. https://www.navy.com/careers/surface-warfare-officer-swo.

^[7] Perla, Peter. “Design, Development, and Play of Naval Wargames.” Defense Technical Information Center. CNA. Accessed April 23, 2023. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA183506.pdf.

^[8] Perla, Peter P., and John Curry. Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming: A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists. United States Naval Institute, 2011.

^[9] Mattis, James. “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy,” 2018. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.