How do "war games" work?

Factual Questions
1

When the Joint Chiefs or the High Command or whatever get together for “war games,” how are they conducted? Who sets up the parameters? How do they know how strong the opposing forces are? Who plays the other side? How do battles get resolved? Please, please tell me it’s by comparing attack and and defense strengths printed on chits and then rolling a die.

Also, who plays the higher authority–like if the generals want more troops or to use nukes, who plays president/premier?

And how realistic are these war games? In the US I assume there are institutional and political pressures that shape the assumptions and outcomes–in other countries I can imagine them being much worse. For example, in Soviet war games, how would they ever dare “lose” to the West? And who wanted to be the guy(s) playing the West that wins?

2

There are a number of different ways these things are done. When I was in the Air Force, I participated in a small scale exercise that involved simulated air combat. I’m not sure who was in charge of the scenario, but essentially my unit was assigned to play the role of “Red Air”. Our goal was to overfly a certain location, and if we could get there, it would be assumed that we’d successfully bombed the target. I was in the back seat of one of the “bomber” aircraft, an F-16B. We were given about a dozen “bomber” airplanes, and a few fighter escorts. “Blue Air” was a Navy fighter unit assigned to defend the target.

The exercise did not end well for us. Only one of the “bombers” managed to survive long enough to overfly the target. The rest of us were “shot down” during the simulated combat. I saw hud video from the guy that claimed the kill on my airplane. He had his gunsight right on my helmet when he claimed the kill.

3

This incident/war game makes for interesting history…

4

Thank you, but I’m thinking more of the “sit around a table” kind of war game, not one that involves actual troops.

5

“You sunk my battleship!”

6

Old Grognard here: I grew up with The Avalon Hill Game Company, and was one of Simulation Publication Incorporated’s best customers.

Wargame: start with a map with a grid. A hexagonal grid is very common.

Counters: little half-inch cardboard squares to represent units. You can stack them together, to represent a concentration of forces, or you can spread them apart, only one counter per hex, to represent a light “screen” of defending troops.

This, by and large, is the whole key to the game: where do you concentrate force, and where do you let your forces be thin.

(In real life, allied forces in Europe in WWII spread themselves very thin – and the Germans punched right through them, creating the “bulge” in the Battle of the Bulge.)

Movement: the counters can usually be moved a limited distance. If you’re going to concentrate a bunch of units, you want to be prepared by having them all close enough to the concentration point to reach there in one move.

Combat: usually done by counting up odds. Each counter usually has an Attack Strength and a Defense Strength. Say, a U.S. Tank Division has an Attack of 12, a Defense of 10, and a movement of 8. A German Tank Division might have an Attack of 13, a Defense of 9, and a movement of 8. If the “American” player can concentrate five of his tank divisions to attack on enemy tank division, the total odds are 60 attack to 9 defense. This rounds down to “6 to 1” which is a very good attack ratio.

There is usually some die rolling at this point. At high odds, the results are very likely to be “Defender Destroyed.” The defending counter is removed from the map.

At low odds, the attack might succeed…or it might not. The attacker might end up getting destroyed. (This happened in real life in the Crimean War…rather a lot.)

The game is a contest of maneuver, and of concentration of force. And also of some luck.

These games are somewhat historically accurate. They tend to have outcomes that could have happened in real life. So, for instance, in these games, Japan almost never wins WWII…but sometimes they can make the war last longer. The battle of Midway could have gone differently. The battle of Waterloo could have gone differently.

The games are educational. You can learn a lot about what actually happened. You learn a lot about geography from studying the maps. You learn the very basic rudiments of maneuver, tactics, strategy, planning, and even deception. If you can make the other guy think you’re attacking his left…and you actually attack his right…you can win the game.

The games are abstractions. In real life, units that lose a battle aren’t “removed from the board.” They usually are scattered, but rally and get back into action in some way. The simplification makes it a better game.

The games are primarily for entertainment. They’re more realistic than chess, but they can’t be taken as true historical simulations. They’re an awful lot of fun, and I’m very sorry that the hobby collapsed so heavily back in 1974. (Dungeons and Dragons killed it dead!)

7

I’m confused about your question. The JCS, unless they’re doing so as wargaming enthusiasts, don’t play the type of war game you’re talking about. (Pen & paper or board wargames–of which I was a huge fan up until the early 90s.) When the military plays wargames they use real troops and real equipment.

In the past wargames would have been called “exercises”, and are intrinsically troop related. This goes back to at least the Napoleonic era when you’d put troops through maneuvers, they’re specifically designed to test out things in the real world and thus doing them on a board would make little sense.

Now, what I have done when I was in the Army is use a sand board to work out strategies and they had little models of battlefields. Now they have more advanced computers and simulations. But it was more “work out a situation” type thing, it wasn’t like a hex based wargame where you are competitively playing against another person and where you have “attack values” and dice rolling and etc. I haven’t usually heard that exercise called wargaming, you might hear it called “Tactical Exercise Without Troops” or something of that nature.

There is a famous picture of Lyndon Johnson overlooking one of these during Vietnam, link.

8

Again, thank you, I know about these games and have played them.

What I am interested in is the simulation of warfare scenarios by generals/the military as an aid to strategic thinking and planning.

9

Answer to all five - I do. Well, OK, people like me. I haven’t done a war game in almost 10 years. I was in an Army intelligence unit, and it was my job to 1) know the enemy’s strength, 2) know their weapons capability, 3) estimate where and how they’d deploy, 4) estimate the battle damage from encounters.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of a war game. It’s to put all the various bits of information to the test and see what can be learned. It’s a beta test, so to speak. You’re supposed to lose. Repeatedly. That’s the whole point.
Fun fact: I was once killed by a helicopter squadron. My tent was strafed.

10

I see I’ve confused everybody with my joke about paper chits.

My impression is that there are people in and around the military–whether the JCS, lower level general or field officers, think tank people like from RAND or Brookings, perhaps in combination with current or former civilian government personnel–who gather to to conduct “war games.”

A scenario might be, what if North Korea invades the South? What assets do we have in place? What is nearby? Which allies will help? What will China do? Now assume that on top of this Iran sends troops into Afghanistan. What next? etc etc.

Maybe “war games” is not the right term, but this is the kind of thing I’m interested in knowing more about.

These are “games” in the sense that they are theoretical and involve no real troop maneuvers.

11

They use sandboards or digital versions of sandboards. There’s also digital simulations that can run and approximate results. They don’t play competitive games on boards to my knowledge.

Also JCS members would not typically be involved in any day to day strategic or tactical planning. The highest level battlefield planning would happen under one of the theater-level commands (CENTCOM for example.) During Desert Storm Colin Powell wasn’t doing battlefield level strategy, Schwarzkopf had command there. Powell’s job was to advise the President and work on large scale overall strategy but not tactical/battlefield type strategic activities. The JCS is much more advisory than operational.

In all reality even the theater-level commanders are (varying from war to war) too high up to be doing a lot of that kind of planning. When we were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan concurrently the generals who had overall command in those countries were directly under a theater-level command.

12

Referencing my own post above, what I’m thinking of is more strategic/regional.

Or Global.

13

That’s operations planning. But what specifically do you want to know about it? The scope for creating a high level OPLAN is vast. You’re going to bring in basically a ton of information because you need a huge amount of subject matter experts.

There’s a few well known OPLANs, like the plan to defend against a North Korean surprise invasion through the DMZ, or the SIOP plan to deal with a full scale nuclear exchange. Much of the process involved in creating these plans is classified. I don’t know what level of detail of information you’re wanting, but past a certain point you won’t find it.

If you want to know more general and not related specifically to modern day military forces, read up on things like the “Schlieffen Plan”, which was the high level plan developed by the German General Staff to deal with a two front war (prior to actually ending up in one during WWI.) Or the famous U.S. turn of the century war planning that produced things like War with the German Empire or War with Mexico.

Modern day OPLANs are going to be highly classified, but they’re developed by the combined combatant commands to deal with situations that are speculated to happen in those commands. The highest level plans would be developed at the highest levels of DoD. So for example the plan to respond to a global nuclear exchange, from what we know of it, started at the Sec Def and working groups under him and involved planning throughout the entire military apparatus. You can assume they used all the technology they would need. But it’s primarily going to be information technology resources in terms of pulling together information and writing plans from expert knowledge and analysis of that information.

Some computer simulations definitely occur, but most operations planning is based on lots of military experts giving advice to a higher ranking person who himself is also a military expert and developing a plan. It’s not something magic computer system generate, if you’re asking if there is some type of computer like from the 1980s movie War Games or Skynet that does all of this for us.

14

Here is what I’m interested in.

15

Interesting. To what extent is it possible for a civilian to get casually involved in real military wargaming? E.g. do they take people off the street (or at least without requiring them to join the military for real etc.) and let them run around the field with a paintball gun playing an “untrained local insurgent”, “peasant conscript”, “irregular militiaman”, or something like that? That would actually be pretty fun - grab a bunch of friends and see how well you fare against the real Army.

16

Starting a new thread on the same topic, hope this is clearer.

My impression is that there are people in and around the military–whether the JCS, lower level general or field officers, think tank people like from RAND or Brookings, perhaps in combination with current or former civilian government personnel–who gather to to conduct simulations or “war games.”

A scenario might be, what if North Korea invades the South? What assets do we have in place? What is nearby? Which allies will help? What will China do? Now assume that on top of this Iran sends troops into Afghanistan. What next? etc etc. The “players” are decision-makers or advice-givers.

Maybe “war games” is not the right term, but this is the kind of thing I’m interested in knowing more about.

These are “games” in the sense that they are theoretical and involve no real troop maneuvers, and, I believe, are kind of discussion based–“We activate the reserve army.” “In the month it takes for the reserves to get in position, the enemy blockades your ally.” etc.

How are they conducted? Who sets up the parameters? How do they know how strong the opposing forces are? Who plays the other side? How do battles get resolved?

Also, who plays the higher authority–like if the generals want more troops or to use nukes, who plays president/premier?

And how realistic are these war games? In the US I assume there are institutional and political pressures that shape the assumptions and outcomes–in other countries I can imagine them being much worse. For example, in Soviet war games, how would they ever dare “lose” to the West? And who wanted to be the guy(s) playing the West that wins?

17

I’m abandoning this thread and have created a new one in an effort to build a discussion around what I’m really interested in.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=707863

18

You mean like this?

19

As usual, Wikipedia has an article on that topic. They even show a spectrum with actual field exercises on one end, pure analytical models on the other, and war games in the middle. That said, I don’t know anything beyond what the article says.

20

TSBG, to answer your questions, the purpose of these simulations is to see how people react to scenarios, to see how deployment would play out and a host of other scenarios.

To answer your question, while there certainly are institutional and political pressures, the point is to identify weaknesses and opportunities. Being the “guy who lost to the West” is not going to be career ending, as the purpose of the simulation is to identify such weaknesses and not have then occur when you are actually fighting.