Exploiting Commercial War Games for Teaching, Training and Mission Rehearsal Exercises
David G. Gruenbaum
Mr. Gruenbaum is an Alion Science and Technology Senior Military Analyst supporting Department of Defense Training Transformation.

Teaching military history and art is particularly challenging because of the difficulty in communicating concepts of logistics, maneuver, and combat; because campaigns appearing predictable in hindsight were actually fraught with uncertainty (e.g. the German plan for the attack through the Ardennes in May, 1940); and Clausewitz’s “friction” of war is hard to convey. Further, the key concept of “how to think” is often better taught through problem-solving than by lecture. Lastly, commanders do not have many opportunities to deploy ground, air, or naval forces to gain familiarity with their capabilities, or the situation precludes the opportunity to do so, as in mission rehearsal exercises (MRE).

The main frame computer opened combat simulation programs as a new methodology for students of military affairs, but these also entail large monetary and technological commitments. However, an alternative exists in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation games which offer an expanding selection of titles covering a wide variety of battles, campaigns, and wars, from the tactical to the strategic level.

Thomas J. Willmuth encapsulated the realization of COTS’ promise based on his experiences as an Assistant Professor of Military Science teaching Army ROTC cadets the basics of tactics, and as a Command and General Staff College student, analyzing the value of using a COTS war game in communicating the fundamentals of combined arms forces, logistical constraints, and the complexities of campaign planning and operations.1 He documented the level of understanding students gained by playing a wargame scenario, presented a methodology for using games as a training tool, and noted the tremendous cost and time savings compared to a Corps Battle Simulation (CBS) exercise ($20-$60 per COTS game versus more than $100,000 in equipment and contract support for even a small CBS exercise).2

Since then, more COTS wargames have become available. In fact, the Army Homepage (www.army.mil/fcs/) offers a free download of a well-done computer wargame, Future Force Company Commander (F2C2), based on some of the equipment and capabilities of the Future Combat System. Below is an overview of some current offerings which trainers and leaders may find useful in teaching, training, and MRE.

Ground Combat COTS Games

Many games cover ground combat from the Seven Years’ War to contemporary conflicts, from the tactical level (fire teams to company-sized units) through the operational level (from company up to divisional-sized units) to the strategic level (armies, fleets, and air forces). Among tactical games are Danger Forward and Desert Rats, by Shrapnel Games (www.shrapnelgames.com); and Vietnam and Tour of Duty from HPS Simulations (www.hpssims.com). Shrapnel Games also publishes Armored Task Force (ATF), designed by an Active Duty Army officer, which resembles both the F2C2 and the JANUS simulation as a “real-time command” game in which units are in movement and combat unless the game is paused; other ATF series games are Raging Tiger, The Star and the Crescent (the Arab-Israeli wars), The Falklands War: 1982 and most recently Air Assault Task Force (which

Screenshot of Air Assault Task Force
from Shrapnel Games

includes scenarios modeling the LZ X-Ray battle fought by 1-7 Cavalry in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 and another of the “Blackhawk Down” battle in Mogadishu); since the ATF series has a powerful editing capability, a player can create scenarios similar to F2C2 and compare the FCS units’ capabilities in each. Another game is TACOps, which is a tactical game based on game pulses of mutual movement plotting followed by mutual movement and combat, designed by a retired Marine officer for the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and used by both it and the U.S. Army Armor School; the game is published by Battlefront (www.battlefront.com).

The following operational level games are especially noteworthy: Conquest of the Aegean and Highway to the Reich, Matrix Games (www.matrixgames.com); both are “real-time command” presentations of German 1941 airborne operations and the September 1944 Operation MARKET-GARDEN, respectively. Matrix also publishes the “Decisive Battles of World War II” series games(Across the Dnepr, Battles in Italy, Korsun Pocket and Battles in Normandy) of army-group operations from 1941 through to 1944; a scenario editor function allows modification of existing scenarios or creation of entirely different scenarios (e.g. Gallipoli 1915, Luzon 1941 and the 1944 Ardennes Offensive). Game turns represent approximately 12 hours in most scenarios, but may represent longer periods of time, such as one day per turn. Matrix also publishes Flashpoint Germany, a “what-if” game of NATO forces against the Warsaw Pact in the late 1980s, set on typical central European terrain, in which a player plans movement and combat for his/her forces, and starts a pulse representing approximately one-half hour of time during which movement and combat are then resolved simultaneously, creating uncertainty and chaos. Matrix is republishing, as a single collection, Norm Koger’s The Operational Art of War III, a set of games originally published by Talonsoft (Willmuth used an earlier version in his study, comparing it to the U.S. Army’s Brigade/Battalion Simulation system), with scenarios covering the period of 1939-1991, incorporating a powerful and flexible scenario design feature which gamers have used to create hundreds of scenarios representing battles and campaigns from the Napoleonic Wars to hypothetical future wars, on maps scaled from approximately 1:150,000 to 1:4,000,000, with forces sized from platoons to army groups, in turns representing time periods as short as 6 hours or as long as one month.

Also, HPS Simulations publishes a broad variety of operational level games, in many cases the only game on a specific campaign. The “Age of Rifle and Musket” games are: Campaign Shiloh, Campaign Ozark, Campaign Corinth, Campaign Peninsula, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga and Campaign Franklin, in which players may fight set-piece battles of varying sizes (small, such as the Devil’s Den, medium such as Pickett’s Charge, or large such as all three days of Gettysburg); the

Page 2