by Gary C. "Mo" Morgan
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Background
Working on development for the new War Over Vietnam (WOV) game has been a labor of love and brings to fruition the hopes and dreams of many for a "God?s Eye View" format, theater level wargame on modern airpower. The Modern Air Power series of games now fills a void in computer strategy gaming that has been overlooked for over a decade, despite the abundant preponderance of cockpit-view, flight simulator format computer games that cover the entire century of manned flight. While flying one fighter aircraft is lots of fun in a flight sim, the realm of modern operational airpower has evolved to a highly complex and technical environment where many diverse air and space platforms each contribute their unique capabilities to achieve the theater commander?s air objectives.
Comprehending the intricate teamwork and orchestration of air operations at the theater level requires a dynamic, spatial visualization environment or "common operating picture" due to the speed, range, and elevated perspective of modern airpower that help overcome some of the terrain limitations to ground forces on the Earth's surface. Airpower?s speed, range, and altitude characteristics also require an elegant balance between planning and execution. The sheer number of sorties (sortie is one takeoff and landing by an aircraft) involved in one day?s Air Tasking Order during a major air campaign, requires extensive centralized planning and very accurate spatial orchestration of platforms to achieve the desired effects. "Timing is everything" applies more to air operations than anything else, since supersonic fighter aircraft burn fuel at high rates and must land before exhausting their fuel (otherwise they fall out of the sky and crash).
Execution of air operations is best done in a decentralized manner, giving small unit element commanders (flight leaders and strike package commanders) full flexibility to modify their aspect of the massive air plan according to the dynamic local situation (threat, weather, aircraft systems, target status). The most recent air operations in Southwest Asia made maximum use of this flexibility through the use of time-sensitive targeting; aircraft took off from their base without knowing the exact location and type of targets and operated under the control of ground controllers embedded with indigenous or US Army or Marine Corps troops. These operations hearken back to the origin of close air support of ground forces during the days of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. In fact, most of the modern air operations can directly trace their origins to the revolutionary and innovative changes that were forced on America during the Vietnam War. It was this intricate and challenging air operations environment that we wished to replicate in the WOV game.
The Modern Air Power game series owes its inspiration to the "Connections" airpower wargaming conferences that began at Maxwell AFB Alabama ten years ago under the inspired leadership of gifted airpower theorist and planner Colonel John A. Warden III and continued for the next ten years under the diligent care of Colonel Matt Caffrey. Colonel Warden is typically referred to as the "Mastermind of the Gulf War Air Campaign" and his visionary, revolutionary approach to planning an air campaign, based on systemic analysis of the enemy as an integrated system of five interlocking rings. Colonel Warden became commandant of Air Command and Staff College, the Air Force?s postgraduate professional military school for Majors and gave a high emphasis to wargaming as one of the best ways to drive learning to the highest possible levels of comprehension, analysis, and ultimately application of what is learned out in the real world.
Colonel Warden authorized ACSC to conduct an annual event where wargaming faculty from military colleges could meet and collaborate for a week-long conference with commercial game developers and publishers in the hopes that a synergistic effect might benefit both diverse groups. Hopefully military educators would get more familiar with commercial computer strategy gaming (and possibly use some in their schools) and ideally the commercial computer wargame developers would learn more about airpower (and therefore more accurately depict it in their commercial games).
Colonel Matt Caffrey was working on the faculty at School for Advanced Airpower Studies and later ACSC when Colonel Warden arrived. Matt had become personally involved in wargaming in the 1980s under the auspices of Air Force Project Warrior, an informal program that encouraged professional development and study of warfare by Air Force personnel. Matt established an after-hours wargaming program at Nellis AFB with the base l
