The Need for Joint Wargaming: Combining Theory and Practice
Robert P. Haffa, J Patton · The US Army War College Quarterly Parameters · 1999
Since the end of the Cold War, the US Department of Defense has embarked on a series of studies and force planning efforts in an attempt to adjust its military strategies and force structure to an uncertain future.The most recent of these efforts have taken the form of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and its congressionally mandated corollary, the report of the National Defense Panel (NDP).[1]Despite congressional hopes that the QDR and NDP might produce alternative defense strategies and forces that could be compared side-by-side, that is not the way it turned out.The QDR took a relatively short-term look, expanded the scope of DOD's Bottom-Up Review (BUR), and kept major programs and budget projections essentially on track.The NDP adopted a longer-range view, called for additional funding to support a "transformation strategy" that would enable a "revolution in military affairs" (RMA), and questioned the future and rationale of certain major DOD programs.Both studies note the tension between managing near-term threats and preparing to meet longer-term challenges, suggesting that there will be considerable pulling and hauling over the next few years as defense priorities and funding are manipulated to meet those competing needs.Both reports also recognize the importance of using wargames and experimentation to explore the military doctrines, operational concepts, and organizational arrangements needed to take advantage of the emerging RMA, as well as to develop and test "concepts and capabilities that will ensure the ability to transform for the future."[2]To assure Congress that his department had such work already under way, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, in a response to the NDP, described the number and variety of "transformation activities" that DOD has undertaken to improve understanding of the future security environment.In that response, he termed wargames a "critical tool for ensuring senior decisionmakers, joint force commanders, and their staffs are able to maximize 21st-century warfighting capabilities."[3]