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Wargaming and Analysis
16-18 October 2007
Terms of Reference
(Last Updated 14 September 2007)
1. Background
War games have been used in varying ways and purposes for centuries. Although the exact date of the first war game is uncertain we do know that toys and games based on warlike subjects have existed for several millennia. Some have ascribed the first war game to the Chinese general and philosopher, Sun Tzu, while others believe that war games had their origin in India. Although the precise date of origin remains a subject of some debate, there exists overwhelming agreement that in varying forms war games have played major roles in both the education of military leaders and in the evaluation of military capabilities.
Given the latter role, evaluation of military capabilities, it is perhaps prudent to draw a distinction between the terms, war games and analysis. Borrowing from Peter Perla’s classic text, The Art of Wargaming, U.S. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1990, these Terms of Reference (TOR) consider a war game to be defined as “a warfare model or simulation, not involving actual military forces, and in which the flow of events is affected by and in turn affects decisions made during the course of those events by players representing the opposing sides.” Analysis or operations research is defined as a “scientific method of providing decision makers with a quantitative basis for decisions.”
Using these definitions, it is recognized that war games and analysis/operations research may have major distinctions. Historically, war games have not produced substantive quantitative products because they are often but a single realization of a complex stochastic process. As such, war games are frequently considered as tools for exploring the decisions humans make, how and why they make them, and what effects they have on subsequent events and decisions. Analysis, however, is normally characterized as a collection of techniques for quantifying and manipulating quantitative information about physical parameters to calculate the quantitative outcome of physical processes.
This MORS Special Meeting proposes to focus on articulating the role(s) of war games in the 21st century national security environment and the identification of appropriate relationships between war games and analysis. Specifically, the purpose of the Special Meeting is to identify proposed enhancements to war gaming techniques, processes, and structure and to determine how war games and their results may be better integrated with operations analysis to better serve decision makers.
2. Goals, Objectives, and Scope
2.1 Goals. The Special Meeting has several goals. First, the Meeting will provide participants with an understanding of the current uses, capabilities, and limitations of wargaming. Secondly, the Meeting will identify and assess needed war game enhancements, i.e., those activities, data and information sources, metrics, rules, structure, and participants, that must be identified and/or addressed prior to the conduct of a successful game. Thirdly, the role and identification of appropriate analysis tools, to include modeling and simulation, in support of war games will be addressed. Finally, Meeting participants will be challenged to develop recommendations as to how wargaming and operations analysis may be better integrated to serve the needs of national security decision makers.
The primary focus of the Meeting is to support the military analytical community’s ability to better employ both wargaming and analysis/operations research as means of supporting senior Department of Defense and military decision makers. However, participation by analysts from other U.S. federal agencies, and civilian war game practitioners is encouraged and will enable opportunities for the mutual exchange of wargaming and analytical approaches, techniques, tools, and data.
2.2 Objectives. In order to achieve a better understanding of the current and potential contributions of war games to DoD and military decision makers, the Meeting will pursue the following objectives:
- Gain an understanding of the basic design, structure, techniques, tools, use, products, capabilities and limitations of war games.
- Identify and develop recommended enhancements to war gaming design, structure, techniques, methodologies, and processes to better enable the application of analytical tools and techniques in addressing current and anticipated national security challenges.
- Recommend specific analytical tools, techniques, methodologies, and processes for incorporation into war games.
- Identify how credible and substantive war game products may be derived and better integrated with other quantitative analyses to better inform decision makers.
2.3 Scope. This Meeting will focus on war games that are intended to identify and address issues and problems generated by non traditional challenges of the 21st century national security environment: irregular; catastrophic; and, disruptive.
Characterizations of these challenges are as follows:
- Irregular: unconventional methods are adopted and employed by non-state actors to counter stronger state opponents.
- Catastrophic: acquisition, possession, and possible employment of WMD or methods producing WMD-like effects against vulnerable, high-profile targets by terrorists and rogue states.
- Disruptive: international competitors developing and possessing breakthrough technological capabilities intended to supplant U.S. advantages in particular operational domains.
Within these contexts focused working groups will be formed to seek enhancements to:
- War game design and structure
- War game data, information, and metrics
- War game modeling and simulation, techniques, and process needs
- Integration of war game results with external quantitative analysis
3. Approach
The three day Special Meeting will be preceded on the PM of 15 October 2007 by a series of tutorials that will seek to provide a basic understanding of the evolution of wargaming, wargaming uses, techniques, tools, capabilities, and limitations.
On Tuesday, 16 October 2007, following remarks by the Keynote Speaker, the plenary session will continue with a series of three debates. These debates will address the "seams" between conflicting approaches to wargaming which act as barriers that restrict wargaming from providing the best possible support to senior DoD and military decision makers. The purpose of the debates is to provide clarity and understanding between proponents of opposing sides of the "seams" and a context for the working groups that follow on subsequent days. Agreement and consensus is not sought, rather creative tension based on understanding is the goal of the debates. Both sides of the "seams" are motivated by the desire to better serve DoD and military decision makers and are anticipated to present good arguments on their side. However, it is recognized that there are fundamental contradictions between them.
The three debates will address: (1) Technology vs. Technique; (2) Bureaucrats vs. the Barbarians; and (3) Control vs. Chaos. The first debate will address the conflict between those who believe that Models and Simulations (M&S) are key to understanding the kinds of complex issues and decisions that war games are called to address, and those who believe that the key lies in the heads of the players and that M&S are merely labor saving devices. The second debate will address the conflict between those who focus on the wants and desires of the war game sponsors, and those who focus on what they claim are the needs of the sponsors and challenge those sponsors. A third debate will address the conflict between those who see a need to “VV&A” war games using approved models and processes, and those who see a need to experiment with new approaches even if such action “breaks” a specific war game. Each of the three debates will address four questions:
- What does the decision maker want?
- What does the decision maker need?
- How do war games provide the decision maker what they need?
- How can a combined notion of wargaming and analysis be used to help decision makers?
A final panel discussion is planned that will address issues that cross debate boundaries and will serve as an opportunity to summarize positions in the broader wargaming context. Additional briefings to provide information on current wargaming issues and practices will also be offered.
The second and third day of the Meeting, 17 and 18 October, will be conducted as a Workshop. The Workshop phase is intended to identify and develop the means of implementing appropriate enhancements to war games. During this phase participants will be divided into four working groups.On the afternoon of day three, participants will gather in plenary session to receive reports and recommendations from each of the working groups.
Working Groups
Each of the four working groups will assess for their assigned focus topic current war gaming capabilities and limitations in the context of the three 21st century national security challenges addressed earlier. Each working group will then develop necessary enhancements and/or actions that if implemented will provide an improved war gaming capability and improved integration of war game results with other external quantitative results.It is anticipated that the working groups will address the following specific issues:
WG 1 - War game design and structure. The purpose of the war game structure and techniques workgroup is to examine changes needed in future game designs required to address the world’s evolving irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive threat environments. Also, how techniques that support game execution (i.e., pre- and post game analysis, participant determination, assessment concepts, and asymmetric modeling and simulation) must be modified to support game execution and follow-on activities
WG 2 - War game data, information, and metrics. This working group will examine war game data inputs and outputs, information required for and information derived from games, and the associated metrics developed for war games conducted in the three areas of interest (irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive). The intent is to have three parallel tracks, based not on the areas of interest, but on the three topic areas: data, information, and metrics. Such an approach will give working group participants a better appreciation of the requirements for designing and running a game, as well as what can be expected as outputs from a game. All three tracks will address:
- Typical (data, information, metrics) required to design, build, and run a war game in area of interest x
- Typical (data, information, metrics) expected from the execution of a war game in area of interest x
WG 3 - War game modeling and simulation, techniques, and process needs. This working group will explore the use of modeling and simulations in war games by identifying why and when you would want to use models and simulations. The working group will then split into subgroups in each of the current defense challenges (with emphasis on Irregular, Catastrophic and Disruptive) and develop a list of appropriate wargaming types, wargaming techniques, and M&S tools to support a variety of games.
WG 4 - Integration of war games results with external quantitative analyses. This working group will explore methods of integrating the results of war games with quantitative analysis performed in other operations research and systems analysis venues. The focus will be on examining this issue in the context of the national security challenges encompassing irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive environments. Some of the questions to be addressed include: how can data “from the field” be incorporated into war games to provide better information to decision-makers? How can system performance characteristics and/or test results be better integrated into war games? How can war game results be better implemented into simulations and computer models to enhance the representation of the human dimension?
4. Products
4.1 Reports and Briefings
- Executive Summary and After – Action Briefing to MORS Sponsors (S: TBD)
- Summation Briefing to MORS Special Meeting on "Improving Cooperation Among Nations for Irregular Warfare Analysis," December 2007
- Final Report to MORS Office (S: TBD)
- 76th MORSS Briefing (S: June 2008)
4.2 News ArticlesPHALANX articles announcing the Wargaming and Analysis Workshop (S: TBD)PHALANX article summarizing the Wargaming and Analysis Workshop (S: TBD)
5. Administration
5.1 Dates. 15-18 October 2007
5.2 Location. Northrop Grumman Heritage Conference Center, Chantilly, VA
5.3 Classification. Unclassified
5.4 Program Chairs. Ted Smyth, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Doug Williams, Northrop Grumman. Tutorial Chair: Rich Phares, Booz Allen Hamilton. Plenary Session Chair: Peter Perla.
5.5 Working Group Chairs
WG 1 - War Game Design and Structure, Lew Epperson, Booz Allen Hamilton
WG 2 - War Game Data, Information, and Metrics, Rich Phares, Booz Allen Hamilton
WG 3 - War Game M&S, Techniques, and Process Needs, Dave Lee, Group-W; Michael Terry, USAF Space Command
WG 4 - Integration of war games with External Quantitative Results, Bill Krondak, TRADOC Analysis Center
Synthesis Group - Mike Garrambone, General Dynamics
5.6 Registration FeesEntire Workshop (16-18 October):
US Government MORS Member: $575
US Government Non-MORS Member: $640Non-US Government MORS Member: $675
Non-US Government Non-MORS Member: $750Fees for the One-Day Plenary Only (16 October):
Members: $325
Non-MORS Member: $375 Attendees will be able to purchase lunch in the Northrop Grumman Cafeteria.
 5.7 Tentative Agenda
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