Friday, November 6, 2015

When Wargames Go Wrong: A Cautionary Tale

“They sunk my damn navy”.

 This is more a post about military theory than about wargaming, but there’s an interesting crossover.  Yesterday I came across the story of Millennium Challenge ’02 (MC ’02) by Micah Zenko, a well-known US defence journalist.

MC ’02 was a major military simulation carried out by the US military in 2002.  The goal was to imagine military conditions in 2007 in a war between the US and Iran.  Iran, or the Red Team, led by a maverick and imaginative general, was given limited resources to defend against Blue Team  -  a US fleet with technology and abilities beyond what was foreseen to come online in 2007.  Using an imaginative and asymmetrical plan, the Red Team essentially destroyed the US force by swarming it with a mosquito fleet.

After an initial shock, the Blue fleet was refloated, the Red Team hobbled, and the exercise was allowed to follow a script that ended up validating US military doctrine.  The fortunate result of MC’02, however, was that it led to more freedom for Red Teams in military wargames and less tolerance for scripted outcomes.

Just out of curiosity, I flipped the link on Zenko’s story to my brother the Mad Colonel, who spent 15 years after retiring from the Army running simulations for military clients in a location that will remain nameless.

 "I can say quite categorically that the friendly side never lost a war game in X.  Ever.  The force ratios were always in favour of the blue side and the control as such that even if it looked like blue might be threatened (which very rarely happened), control would step in to correct the situation.  I only ever had one force-on-force event when the CO of [XYZ Regiment] had his squadron commanders play a capture the flag (hill) scenario. We tried to suggest to the training audience to give the Opfor commander free reign, even with a much weaker force, but it never happened.  I was told very often that having blue get badly beat up would be bad for morale! It did not matter that they walked away with false conclusions of their state of training or their combat effectiveness."

My brother’s anecdote made me wonder about the limitations of wargames and simulations in situations, such as military training, where sometimes there are vested interests to produce certain outcomes.   Perhaps a new doctrine or technology needs to be proven desirable for procurement, or reputations of certain commanders need to be upheld, or morale needs to be protected. Of course there are exceptions, where military exercises allow opposing forces the freedom to seriously challenge and even embarrass the Blue Team.   A good example of this is in Dan Bolger’s 1991 book, Dragons at War: Land Battles in the Desert.  Bolger describes his experience as a US Army company commander, whose unit was sent to the National Training Centre at Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert.   The NTC was home to a highly specialized OPFOR, trained to simulate a Warsaw Pact mechanized force which often beat the simulated crap out of the units sent for training.  Steve Whitesell, owner of the excellent blog Sound Officer’s Call, tells a great story about getting Bolger, a general by then, to autograph one of his books while they were in Iraq.  

So while not all military simulations were as corrupt, to use Zenko’s word, as MC ‘O2, it’s worth asking what assumptions and desired outcomes are built into these sorts of exercises.  It also leads me to wonder if , sometimes, hobbyists might actually do wargames more honestly than militaries.   Wargamers don’t have careers to protect or enhance.  We don’t have morale to protect, or cherished doctrines or weapons systems that we want to show in the best light.   We’re usually just interested in who comes out on top.  Mind you, our wargames, rules sets and historical research can be  subject to our own pet theories, prejudices and assumptions, but that’s for another post, perhaps.

MP+

18 comments:

  1. Makes one think, doesn't it? As somebody said to me once "To assume makes an ass of you and me,"

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  2. Yeah, sounds like 02 was just a photo op. When I was training with the 82nd, we would win half the time in are training. We applied METTC, Mission, Enemy, time, terrain, and civilians on the battlefield. All factors to plane for and that can affect the over all plane.
    Hell I remember being so embarrassed for a Cav squadron that we where playing green force for. Kept on getting their butts handed to them by the Red Force. So after about half of them got killed in a assault on the town we where patrolling, we decided to ignore are mission of not getting involved and wiped out the attack force and then simulated burning down their camp site.
    We where instructed not to do that again, but got thumbs ups from are CO for being aggressive and showing the Cav scouts how it's done in the Infantry.

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    1. Thanks Comrade Moody! That's a great story. I think the infantry and combat arms do this sort of training better than others, particularly if they are using MILES gear or equivalent. Observer Controllers can allow one side to do very badly, reset the gear, and let people try it again, hopefully with lessons learned. Perhaps tactical training is more honest than higher level simulation.
      One of the things I hear a lot from following US military news blogs is senior leaders saying that we excel at tactics but suck at strategy.

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  3. I suspect concerns about morale are only part of the story. You can't have your billion dollar outfitters told that their product can actually be overwhelmed or bettered by a smaller investment - it's bad for business.

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    1. True. Military procurement can be like banks -- too big to fail. Until they fail on the battlefield, which is bad.

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  4. I remember reading about MC'02 several years ago (possibly when it originally leaked, before the Iraq War). The Red Force general definitely came up with some interesting solutions to overcome the technological superiority of Blue Force and it was a shame that the exercise controllers manipulated things so Blue would win. That rendered the exercise pointless.

    To some extent our wargames have the potential to be a more accurate reflection of what would happen. However, we then tend to skew things to produce a balanced game Where both players/teams can have an enjoyable session.

    How often do we see games where the scenario reflects actual tactical doctrine, eg assaulting with at least 3 times the number of troops that the defenders have? It might be more accurate to have a battalion assaulting a company position, but not much fun for the outnumbered defender.

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    1. Very good points, Tamsin. Guy Bowers makes a similar argument in the latest WSS: http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/pw/wss/blog/anything-but-pitched-battle/

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  5. I am reminded of an anecdote related in Young and Lawford's 'Charge!', in respect of the Battle of Midway. The hJapanese played the thing as a wargame. During the course of a bombing raid on Midway Island, the main carrier squadron - Najumo Force - came under attack from US land-based aircraft. Dice were rolled to determine results: 9 hits; Kaga and Asaki sunk. The director of play, Vice-Admiral Ugaki, arbitrarily amended the score to three hits, which left Kaga sunk but the other carrier with but slight damage.

    The bad part - the really bad part (though perhaps just as well for the world at large) - was that even this result was cancelled, and the 'ghost' of Kaga carried on to the next phase of the games.

    Young and Lawford's comment: "Thus the war-gamers' besetting sin, a tendency to fiddle with the rules, invalidated the result of the game - fortunately for the Allies. The game in fact prophesied the Japanese disaster at Midway with considerable accuracy."

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    1. Ion, I was also thinking of the Midway story when I was writing this post. It's an excellent example of how the simulation is brushed aside if it conflicts with a plan that the high command has already bought into. What other examples of this syndrome are there, I wonder?

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  6. It would be interesting to look at some of John Curry's books on modern developments in professional wargaming to see if the situation has changed. I suspect that one reason that the story of MC 02 is so well known is that it was used as an argument by those pushing for something better that the traditional asymetric red-on-blue game.

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    1. Good point Edwin. I don't know John Curry's books, I should check them out.

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    2. http://www.wargaming.co/professional/home.htm

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  7. I was thinking of this while reading an article in the spring 2012 issue of the Canadian Army Journal "The Glaucus Factor: Red Teaming as a Means to Nurture Foresight"
    If actual units were in use then it makes sense to 'refloat' a ship etc. Can't have a whole carrier group sitting around just because they got sunk on day one of the EX after all. But in a TEWT it doesn't help blue force learn much.
    I always learn something when I get my ass handed to me on the tabletop!

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  8. Very interesting read Padre. Haven't heard about MC'02 before but only recently read about the Austrians conducting manouvres before the war of 1866 where they only reenacted battles they earlier had won against their enemies. The Prussian officers on visit then, afterwards reported back to their general staff their scepticism about that Kind of 'Military reenactment'. We all know who won the next Engagement ;-)

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  9. Nice report. I'd heard something similar myself.

    As a civie I'm always interested to hear how the military does things... though it is must be different playing a game for pedagogical reasons rather than entertainment.

    Cheers,

    Pete.

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  10. Thought provoking read, Padre. Thanks for sharing.

    I'd be interested to know how the Prussians approached it; I imagine they were rather more rigorous about it.

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  11. Its a good point. But I think with anything you will get gamers who will build lists for history and lists to win games regardless of composition,

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  12. I've never been in the military but spent many years in martial arts. There, we ask "does it work" all the time, but very few actually bring it to the edge in training, The Dog Brothers came up with the simple solution:to find out if your block works, someone has to hit you full force.
    Watch this clip and consider: this is how SF troops train tactics. Why is is not how commanders train strategy?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wR415Vy8Dc

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