# War games for conflict in the Gulf

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-games-for-conflict-in-the-gulf/835500>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 13, 2019, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-games-for-conflict-in-the-gulf/835500 "2019-06-13T22:41:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\
**Post date:** [June 13, 2019, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-games-for-conflict-in-the-gulf/835500/1 "2019-06-13T22:41:22Z")

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I imagine that what’s going on in the Gulf, with the threat to the oil supply and the very real possibility of military action, has been war-gamed a zillion times by the Pentagon (I assume/hope in conjunction with State Dept officials).

I would be curious to know how much faith government officials place in the ‘results’ and ‘solutions’ of war-games. On an intuitive level, if nothing else, I can’t imagine _anything_ involving human behaviour during a high-stakes time as being predictable with any degree of confidence. Even if they have big data and AI that the rest of us still think is ten years away.

I guess my question might as well be - what do high level war games look like? Exercises in game theory? How can their results ever be verified?

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**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2019, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/war-games-for-conflict-in-the-gulf/835500/2 "2019-06-14T02:42:18Z")

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The US military does [exercises for it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002). When they don’t like the results they ignore the lessons.