February 1, 2005: After eight years of effort, and spending over $300 million, the U.S. Army has officially received its new wargame (WARSIM) for training battalion, brigade, division, and as big as you want to get, commanders, and their staffs. Now even the most elaborate commercial wargame would not get $300 million for development, and eight years to create the system. But wargames for professional soldiers have different requirements, and a troublesome Department of Defense bureaucracy to deal with. First, the requirements. Commercial wargames shield the player from all the boring stuff (support functions, especially logistics.) But professional wargames must deal with these support activities, because in a real war, these are the things commanders spend most of their time tending too. Sad, but true, and it's why you have the ancient military quip, "amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics." Professionals also study personnel issues. A division commander will also know his half dozen combat and support brigade commanders very well, and the 15 or so battalion commanders well enough to know who is ready for a promotion to brigade commander, and who has to be supervised a little more carefully. Actually deciding where the combat units go, and when they attack or defend, takes up little of a commanders time, especially for higher level commands (divisions and larger.)
WARSIM covers a lot of complex activities that a commander must deal with to achieve battlefield success. Besides logistics, there's intelligence. Trying to figure out what the enemy is up to is, next to logistics, the commanders most time consuming chore. Then there is maintenance (keeping equipment running, and getting it fixed), transportation (especially helicopters) and personnel (particularly finding people capable of replacing leaders lost to combat, disease or accidents.) Another unique aspect of WARSOM is data capture. Every action by the players is recorded, so that after the game, it is possible to identify which decisions were responsible for success, or failure. |