A storm is brewing. Thousands of gamers are working to disrupt traditional models of training, education and analysis in government and defense. A grassroots movement has grown in several countries, and through a joint venture called Fight Club International, civilian and military gamers are experimenting with commercial technology to show what they can do to address national security concerns. But while technology is at the heart of the program, its more fundamental goal is to change culture, no easy feat in military organizations with their deep sense of history and entrenched bureaucracy.
A common barrier to the adoption of transformative technologies is the imagination of users, or in other words, the willingness of users to use their true imagination. Early testing of “Fight Club” in a constructive simulation called “Combat Mission” showed that civilian players without military training outperformed officers with years of experience. The minds of military gamers are limited, dogmatically clinging to dogma. To their dismay, they found that their decision-making speed was slower than that of more intuitive and skilled players.
In the Allied Rapid Reaction Force, this is starting to make a difference. Recently, a Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander has taken on combat missions in addition to traditional wargames to more realistically explore what a potential reconnaissance engagement might look like in a wargame scenario. In doing so, the officer discovered a discrepancy in the intelligence of the corps, which led to the necessary changes in the planning of the corps. Soldiers become more adaptable by learning combat through experiential learning for games.
Given their large budgets and direct access to the world’s leading science and technology, Western military forces are in the best position to take advantage of modern computing, data processing and advances in artificial intelligence. However, they face an equally significant obstacle: conservative institutionalism. The challenges these armed forces face reflect the larger social challenge of transforming the national service with transformational opportunities designed for a more effective future.
Few institutions understand their past more deeply than the military. Young ambitious military leaders consult their history books, trying to understand what it means to lead. The examples may vary, but the themes are similar: being on the battlefield, leading by example, inspiring followers with words and deeds, giving selflessly.
What if all this changed? How does an institution with such deep historical roots adapt to the disruptive power of modern technology? How do you embrace startup culture when your DNA is shackled by the past and bureaucracy?
Today’s military will pay lip service to the destructive potential of technological progress, incorporating terms such as “military revolution” into their professional lexicon. But how many military leaders would vote to make themselves (or the organizations they grew up in) obsolete? Individual fear of obsolescence is an institutional barrier to change in general. Unhindered technology does to the military what Frederick W. Taylor did to American industry in the early 20th century: if it’s not business critical, you don’t need anything else. If this process did not take place in industry, the United States would be left with an outdated and unviable model of industrial production, and therefore with a severely weakened economy. Similarly, if the fear of obsolescence prevents this in the military, the result will be an obsolete, inadequate force—too slow and inefficient to keep up with its adversaries.
The human factor is the biggest limitation of the technology. Given their respective overload tolerances, UAVs can outperform manned aircraft. It is estimated that modern self-driving cars are 70% safer than ordinary drivers. Modern ground sensors will detect images and patterns better than humans. A $30,000 drone can survey more land than a $12 million manned surveillance vehicle. However, the reluctance to fully embrace these technologies stems from the fact that people enjoy interacting with people—a subjective vulnerability that is acutely felt in institutions built around people. Witness powerful storytelling in Top Gun: Maverick.
How about people? Pulling the trigger is not a human value, but a judgment of whether or not to pull the trigger. Evaluating strategic context, evaluating consequences, and exercising moral judgment are human beings. Technologies like artificial intelligence require people to keep doing it, but faster and with better results. The UK Fight Club team, in partnership with the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, is exploring how games can boost human performance in a fast-paced war where robotics and unmanned platforms are changing the dynamics of the battlefield. The first evidence suggests that the military is not ready for such a battle. It’s fast and deadly, requiring new structures and abilities to deal with complex vortices.
In addition to better robots, the military needs better humans capable of operating complex adaptive systems with greater speed and intelligence. We need to find and develop a modern Ander Wiggins capable of coordinating capabilities and coordinating effects on a battlefield filled with sensors.
What about gamers? Well, they can help. If the last century was defined by the power of cinema and moving images, the twenty-first century has replaced these linear media experiences with the interactive power of games. Games generate powerful stories, experiences, and most importantly, data. Games have huge potential due to the unlimited collection of training data. Fight Club is taking this forward by crowdsourcing game information to inform new ways of thinking and fighting. From strategy-level matrix games that explore how combat is conducted in the gray zone, to simulating how to defeat complex air defenses, the wisdom of the crowd can help uncover anomalies worthy of further study. Here’s how. This leads to discoveries, learning and adaptation in times of peace and war.
Changing the way you fight is just as important (if not more important) than buying new things. The USMC game found asymmetric benefits to offset the need for heavier and more expensive tanks. The US Air Force uses the commercial game Command: Professional Edition to highlight testing concepts and inform procurement. The US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects is exploring how games can mitigate cognitive biases that affect decision making and intelligence analysis. Research shows that game-based learning improves player perception. Obviously, attracting gamers and introducing more games can improve the strategic effectiveness of defense and government, but will we allow cultural change to take hold? Or will institutional bias get in the way?
The world’s leading military academies have portraits of the most famous leaders in history – characters who, in Theodore Roosevelt’s phrase, “were there.” But a future that emphasizes making hasty judgments about being there will require our leaders to stay on stage, not actually there. Instead of making emotional calculations under the influence of the “sweat, dust and blood” of battle, they use the cold, calm side of the outsider to formulate a clear strategy.
The notion that future generals are today’s players is anathema to institutions built on practical examples. However, if we cling to the past and cling to the present, we inevitably mortgage our future.
Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Moran (British Army) and Colonel Arnel David (US Army) are members of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force. They championed and conducted purposeful, groundbreaking experiments to explore how artificial intelligence and machine learning can improve Land Command’s processes and planning approaches for targeting, warfare and decision making. Thanks to Shashank Joshi and Nicholas Kroli for reading and reviewing this article in advance. Any errors or problems belong to the author.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the official position of the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Army or the Department of Defense or any organization to which the author belongs, including the British Army or NATO. .
Wargaming has a long and storied history in military tradition. Many elements of modern board and computer games can be traced directly to the Kriegspiel, while smaller area games such as chess, hnefatafl and go have a long tradition of operational and strategic art.
Even today’s sandbox drills have an affinity for these wargames, although unfortunately sandboxes are also becoming less and less common.
Rather than treating modern wargames (which still require real effort to be truly viable) as a new concept that traditional military conventions shy away from, they should be seen as an evolving iteration of a proven and long-used tool in a proven set. tools.
As described in the article, the popular/populist computer “wargame” and its technology has now merged into the real battlefield, and it’s a quantum leap, not just a leap in time. How is the *committee* of military and naval history more academic? – Game designers… and caring citizens and parents… it worries me.
Things are tactically “out of control” as they are strategically dangerous – even our traditional military bureaucracy that exists to *maintain* control cannot stop them.
Sir, I’m not sure I understood your comment correctly. If so, then I don’t think the infiltration of popular video games into military thinking is any different from boxing or football concepts of the past.
We celebrated such a decisive “left hook” in Desert Storm and gave us fights like 73 Easting as proof of concept for air-to-ground combat. Continue to use terms such as “end of life” when developing the concept of operation. Since future planners/spectators are turning to first-person shooters rather than strategy football, it seems only natural that video game terms like “rocket jump” or “respawn” could find their way into layman’s vernacular. The possible synergy between the two is almost inspiring.
I agree that popular games are a potentially dangerous tangent that can detract from the needs of the real world, but it can be dealt with: like general strategic concepts through terrain models (sandboxes, etc.), CPX, etc. etc.) and with them. can address overlooked variables in popular games by quickly reminding young leaders (perhaps with a temple paintball) that what they experience in a game is not the full picture.
Bureaucracy is a problem, but these fixes happen outside the bureaucracy’s purview – if commanders do their job and protect their subordinates from the ravings from above.
Self-supporting struts push several hydrofoils 60 feet below the keel of a 1,000-ton ship to overcome 42-foot waves.
12-inch armor and the heavy cruiser “USS Salem (CA-139)” has 9 8-inch guns of 8-inch armor;
Will be dry docked on the main pontoon with GE LM2500+G4 turbines (47,000 hp = 34 MW);
I could be wrong about this, but don’t the most popular games allow for instant healing of wounds and, of course, resurrection after a kill? Maybe we could better mimic the “sweat and blood of battle” where those games disconnected a user because they got hurt, or banned their account when they got killed.
The most popular games prioritize gameplay over realism. It seems there was an article in Onion a few years ago that ridiculed the notion of “the most realistic military video game”.
Specifically, you’re considering a play style that falls into several different genres (first-person shooter, adventure, etc.). The industry as a whole, like its academic research, is relatively young and terminology varies between developers/producers/academics… suffice it to say you are talking about “popular” games played by teenage boys. This is misleading, because they represent a much smaller percentage of the video game market than was supposed.
Categories of games usually intended for real-world applications (agriculture, civil aviation, military games, etc.) are often referred to as “serious” games. They range from tractors and flight simulators to the Navy’s MMOWGLI system. It’s at this level of design that the effects of mundane (in terms of gameplay) variables in the real world are really taken into account: if you don’t have to worry about g, pitch, pitch, yaw, let the 747 barrel be a lot more fun, and all that boring pilot crap ; without all this, it is impossible to learn how to fly an airplane (pilots are cretins, especially fighter pilots).
Despite these industry differences, the ability to replicate immediately still has some learning value. When I train in simulations, I always have a few rehearsals where Joe is told to keep going despite the blows. The pain is enough to stop making the same mistake again, reinforcing the idea that you won’t give up just because you’re hurt.
We have always fought wars based on our core competencies as a society. The most dangerous weapon of the First and Second World Wars was still the trained human rifle, but our introduction of manufacturing capabilities in the form of vehicles (especially armored vehicles and aircraft) expanded the battlefield and the way we fought. From blitzkrieg to combat in the air and on the ground, we have adapted our approach to warfare to fit today’s information-centric warfare.
Since we have a young population that is familiar with the game and largely unsuited to doing manual labor in the military, being able to give them virtual control of an unmanned combat vehicle in an organized team could be a challenge for us. . There are many cultural, ethical and moral aspects that need to be explored, but this certainly affects our 21st century skills.
Having said that… are we completely sure who designed these games? Has any information about evolution been passed on to these coders? What if these games can be created by malicious interests to push us in this direction or mislead us into changing the doctrine based on false results? It seems to fit in perfectly with the Sino-Russian gray area and the concept of total war – they are certainly quite involved in software and programming companies.
One of the pieces of evidence I noticed in the DCS (Russia) model was that when our forces clashed with Russian and Chinese troops, the Red Army performed almost perfectly – far beyond the known parameters of the weapon systems used. Even with these weapons set to low power levels, the in-game AI seems to be manipulating the result. Another example: their radar detected stealth aircraft much farther than their systems could detect.
Now, for fun, this can lead to more interesting fights. However, if this is implemented in the simulations used by our military, decisions about how many missiles are needed to saturate a Chinese task force’s missile defenses or perform SEAD on Russian SAM networks, for example, could be severely affected and reduce our ability to operate. This will be the first step in shaping the battlefield.
known settings. Perhaps the war games in the East—in Russia and China—are just overly optimistic, like Nagumo’s “Midway Plan” war game. Or maybe they have something we don’t know about… for example, a few months ago it was reported that Russian cruise missiles could disable decoy systems in foreign fighter barracks near Kiev.
Would it be surprising if we watched the war games of the Imperial Japanese Navy before World War II to see the “unrealistic” speed, range and striking power of their torpedoes, which we later learned have been since they invented oxygen ? torpedo? (well, on 07/12/41, the Japanese sank the anchored American battleship, just like the British Italians in Taranto in 1940, but * at sea * it was impossible … in 3 days?)
”Exceptional” – the assumption of Western superiority – thinking has destroyed us in the past … like the South China Sea on December 10, 41.
EncyBrit: Which weapon caused the most deaths in World War I? Cannons caused the most casualties, followed by small arms and then poison gases. The bayonet, the decisive weapon on which the French army relied before the war, will not lead to numerous casualties.
”The Oxford Companion to Military History. During the Napoleonic Wars and World Wars I and II, most deaths – over 60 percent on the Western Front in World War I – were caused by artillery. In the deserts of World War II, the hard, rocky terrain was reinforced by shells, and this the percentage rose to 75%. Stalin called her the “God of War” in a 1944 speech, and her artillery units have a tradition of excellence, and for good reason. Besides, it’s not a clean way. operator make it a hated and terrible weapon of war.
We are seeing this now in Ukraine. In 1944, Stalin called artillery the god of war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hSTTPkp2x4
Even throughout the 19th century there were relatively few direct bayonet kills, but the tendency of bayonet charges to crush enemy formations was often decisive.
The cannon was probably the most lethal weapon in World Wars I and II, but it was far from decisive in their conclusions (admittedly, it was a major factor in Russian tactics on the Eastern Front, as it is now shown in Ukraine).
Exercise Louisiana (legitimate imitation of the war game) may have been an invaluable contribution to the success of our military.
Once recruited/contracted, it is very easy for recruits to acclimate to physical labor in the military.
But will the military allow Ander Wiggins to rise in the army so quickly? How do we find Anders who matches the current career expectations of leaders and officers? Do existing teaching/training methods assess the managerial competence of students at the field level or at the level of general officers? Remember, Ender was not a very good soldier, but an excellent general. Current military practice does not allow for such a jump. I agree that wargaming is the best way to find thinkers who can adapt to very dynamic and changing environments, but to say that 1LT Smith won the military wargame competition and was promoted to COL/BG/MG is an overstatement. Plus, Ender doesn’t have to worry about budget or staffing issues.
Taking the time to swing anything in the striker’s box will improve your skill exponentially more than just reading or discussing it. Games allow you to focus on the skills you develop by bringing simulation models closer to reality, and we have used rehearsals and simulations with great success in the US military.
Post time: Mar-22-2023