{"id":81083,"date":"2023-03-30T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2023-03-30T09:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=81083"},"modified":"2023-03-29T20:29:56","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T00:29:56","slug":"the-use-and-mis-use-of-wargames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/03\/30\/the-use-and-mis-use-of-wargames\/","title":{"rendered":"The use and mis-use of wargames"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cheating in wargames must be approximately five minutes younger than wargames themselves … famously, the Imperial Japanese Navy didn’t like the outcome of wargaming what became the Battle of Midway and “cheated” by refloating the aircraft carriers shown as sunk in the simulation and Wehrmacht<\/em> General Paulus ran a wargame that showed Operation Barbarossa would fail and he was also told to ignore the results and ended up in Stalingrad. Lessons can be learned from formal wargames, but as CDR Salamander<\/a> points out, a wargame outcome can be custom-tailored as the leaders require:<\/p>\n

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Not this kind of civilian wargame … a real wargame run by professional military staff!<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the things that will get my eye twitching faster than about anything else is when someone responds to a question or concern with a, “Well, in our wargames …”<\/p>\n

Bullshit.<\/p>\n

That may work for civilians or under-briefed lawmakers who lack the depth in military matters, but anyone who has run or been part of a wargame knows that you can design one to give you the outcomes you want. <\/p>\n

Planning assumptions etc … it is all flexible.<\/p>\n

Wargames, done right, don’t tell you the future, but they do help inform gaps in your OPLAN, thinking, or expectations of the enemy … and shortfalls you might have.<\/p>\n

At the POLMIL level — where our most senior uniformed and civilian leaders live — you have distinctly different concerns than Tactical, Operational, or — if your Planning Confession separates Strategic from the POLMIL level — Strategic level.<\/p>\n

For the senior uniformed leader to make this statement<\/a>, as if it were a bolt out of the blue, is simply gobsmacking;<\/p>\n