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Web Sites of Interest

There are a lot of web sites with information on current professional wargames. Most useful sites we know of are;

US Army. There is a major command (STRICOM) that oversees all army wargame projects. The army was the main proponent of abandoning manual and history based wargames after World War II. For the last twenty-five years, the army has been changing direction to the use of more history based data, but the process is still underway. Just for the record, I'm on the STRICOM Technical Advisory Board 

US Navy. Unlike the army, the navy maintained its wargaming activities after World War II and never abandoned the use of historical experience. The Navy strategy for using M&S (Models and Simulations, a buzzword for wargames) to support training is to merge M&S tools with existing and future C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence) systems and take training to sea. Two M&S thrusts are being pursued; one supporting training at the unit or platform level and centered around the BFTT and JTCTS programs; the other supporting training at the Joint Task Force or Battle Group Commander level using JSIMS. Navy emphasis is on reducing use of  existing M&S tools while retaining current capabilities (primarily supported by Research, Evaluation, and System Analysis (RESA); ENWGS, and TACDEW) until follow-on M&S tools (BFTT, JTCTS, and JSIMS) are functional. Click here for the US Navy master plan for wargames.

US Marine Corps. The marines were the most eager to adopt commercial wargame techniques and, not surprisingly, have developed the most realistic and cost-effective wargaming program. Since the marines are a part of the navy, information on their wargame activities can be found in the US Navy web sites. One thing to keep in mind about the marines is that they do not have a lot of money. Thus they still use a lot of manual wargames. The effectiveness of the Marine Corps does not seem to have been hurt by the lack of billions to spend on custom made, computerized wargames. There may be a lesson in all that.

US Air Force. A list of current US Air Force simulations and wargames. The principal air force wargames have long been been flight simulators. Currently, each of these simulators is more expensive than the aircraft they simulate. But simulators can be run round the clock and never get destroyed when they crash. The flight simulators are quite accurate, mainly because pilots spend a lot of time in real aircraft and are quick to point out any unrealistic behavior in the simulators. The air force was slower to adopt wargames, and have had the same realism and database problems as the other services when they have. The 1990s were a particularly active time for Air Force wargaming and much of the work took place at the Air War College. Their web site a great deal of unclassified - often public domain information, pictures and clip art. Should your page link to it?

US Department of Defense has several organizations that support professional wargaming. DMSO (the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office) provides coordination and guidance for American wargaming efforts. DMSO also maintains a master list of all DoD wargames.  There are many more Department of Defense wargaming operations. There is the new JSIMS (a wargame to be used by all the services) and supporting organizations like SISO (Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization).

MORS; The Military Operations Research Society holds an annual conference that provides good coverage about wargaming. Operations Research appeared on the scene a few years before World War II and revolutionized many scientific endeavors. Wargames were one of the mixed successes. OR was very useful when it came to models and simulations. But wargames proved to be more of a challenge, as battles and campaigns contained far more systems than OR techniques could sort out with the tools available during the last 60 years. Yet OR remains one of the more powerful tools available to the wargame developer.

Artificial Intelligence. An increasingly important aspect of games is the artificial opponent (called AO, or AI, for Artificial Intelligence.)  Here's one good site for wargame AI

More wargame related links can be found at this site.