“Som nämndes i inledningen är ansatsen med denna artikelserie att skapa en debatt kring arméns framtid och hur vi ska ta oss dit. Författarna tror att ett öppet och fritt diskussionsklimat är central för både hur vi ska utforma den framtida armén, och hur resan dit ser ut.”[1]
I’ve been thinking about the idea of an open discussion climate. That, to my mind, should include discussion at the workplace, around “fika”. But conversations tend to be built around experiences, often experiences that people have in common. Could we then not use wargames as a way to both explore ideas and sow a seed for discussion, through creating a common experience? By wargames I mean generally playing or re-enacting rather than using them to simulate actual missions.
Wargaming in general
“In my experience, communication is a matter of patience and imagination. I would like to believe that these are qualities that we have in sufficient measure.” – Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek TNG.
Wargaming in its modern form has its roots going back to Prussia in the 18th Century and Hellwig who used wargames to teach military strategy. Although chess and similar games can be seen as very early types of wargames or, at least, proto-wargames and Hellwig’s game was largely based on chess. Since then, wargames have evolved to become not only a way to teach and explore ideas in a military context but also as recreational pursuits with varying degrees of realism. Today, you can get many different kinds of wargames that can recreate battles from history and on to future sci-fi or even fantasy battles.
As we are in the 21st Century, naturally, wargaming has extended to the computer world. Actually, the first wargames for computers were available in the early 1970s. Today, we see two main types of wargames; the more traditional turn based games like Steel Panther, which uses a hex based system or the more advanced military simulators (milsim) like Armed Assault (ARMA) or Command: Modern Operations (I was working on similar systems in the 1990s). Armed Assault is the commercial version of Virtual Battlespace, which is used within the Swedish Armed Forces (SAF) as STISIM-PC[2]. A version of Command is used by BAE Systems[3].
Figure 1: Table top wargaming.
As with any training tool, wargaming, whether table top or on the computer, is not perfect but these tools not only allow for the teaching of strategy, tactics, and procedures but they also allow for experimentation and testing of ideas (which opens up opportunities regarding the need for change). You can also have access to equipment that you would not normally have access to, such as enemy equipment, or would be costly to operate, like aircraft, ships, and tanks. You can take a scenario and run it through a number of times testing out different options. There is no right way to do things in these open-ended simulations but there are options that work and options that don’t (workable is not the same as being correct). By exploring the various options you can start to learn what options would most likely work in a real situation. A real situation is most likely not going to be exactly like a situation faced during training but by exploring multiple alternatives, it would be possible to synthesise a solution to a real problem from past experiences in training. This is a process called case-based reasoning; past cases are used to reason about future cases.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.” – Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek TNG.
Figure 2: Milsim in ARMA.
An army that marches on paper
One of the disadvantages of table top wargames, and to a lesser degree, computer based milsims is people need to be present at a given place and at a given time (milsims could be run over a network, which means people have the possibility to log in remote). On the other hand, it does create a shared experience, which could then act as a kernel for conversations and open discussions. But I was thinking about using another type of wargame as a catalyst for conversations at “fika” time and that is paper wargames. Probably the best known paper wargame is a Tactical Decision Game (TDG).
TDGs go way back to the ancient world but the modern use of TGDs goes back to the 19th Century and the Prussians with Helmuth von Moltke using them. His book of TDGs was published in English in 1894[4]. The US Army began using TDGs in 1975, with the publication of “What now, Lieutenant?”[5]. The US Marines then adopted TDGs in 1982.
Basically, a TDG is a written scenario describing a tactical situation and resources. Often they come with a map. The objective is to then come up with a solution to the scenario. The solution could be in the form of an order. Again, there is no right answer to the problem as TDGs are an open-ended problem. But given a variety of solutions that work (or even ones that don’t), we then have grounds for discussions. The use of TDG not only could be used as a training tool but could be used as a platform for exploring ideas for changes in the army. That is, you relate things back to a battlefield of sorts, thus taking a battlefield perspective regarding needed changes in the Swedish Army. What changes does the army need to make? Would those changes really work in reality? Let’s run it through a TDG or two to see if it is worth taking further? At the same time, testing out changes could also check that the changes do not negatively effect the positive attributes of the Swedish Army that should be preserved.
Return to Duffer’s Drift
Just to illustrate the idea, I will take a look at “The Defence of Duffer’s Drift”, which is a book that was published in 1905. The book was really about lessons learnt by the British Army in the Boer War, so the scenario presented is set in South Africa around 1900 (incidentally, the term “duffer” is an old colloquial word meaning “idiot”).
The scenario is as follows:
You are a platoon commander in the British Army with a task of defending a ford called Duffer’s drift, which is an important crossing point along a river. The terrain around is relatively flat, open, grassland but there is a hill, with small boulders, on the south side of the river and some mountains, covered in bushes and boulders, on the north side of the river. The river banks, however, are quite steep, so the ford is the only point that an army could cross. The banks are covered in thorny bushes. On the hill to the south is a native kraal. There is a local Boer farm on the side of one of the mountains to the north and the inhabitants are very obviously pro-British. The enemy is expected to be a lightly armed Boer Commando, approaching from the north. Your task is to hold the ford and prevent the Boer Commando from crossing. A map is also presented.
So, what are your orders? How will you defend the ford?
The book actually presents six solutions in the form of dreams. Each fails until the platoon commander hits on a solution that works in the sixth dream. Lessons learnt from each failure is passed from one dream to the next. Some aspects of the solution would not be acceptable today, so, if you read the book, what solutions would we have to come up with instead?
A TDG, like the one presented, could be added to the magazines produced by the Swedish Armed Forces and then serve as a seed for discussion. Alternatives could be explored (like the six dreams in the book). In addition, scenarios could be invented to show out of date thinking and the discussion could be centred on what needs to change and how.
The Problems with Abstractions
When using wargaming to test ideas and explore changes needed in the army, we need to be aware of the two main problems of such simulations. A wargame is, by its very nature, an abstraction and abstractions are imperfect representations of reality. If a simulation or any kind of model of reality deviates too far from reality it is said to leak. “Too far” is related to the purpose of the simulation. If a simulation keeps needing special fixes to get it to work, then it is said to be a leaky abstraction and is “too far” from reality. A solution is to build a better model.
Another problem results from the biases and blind spots that are inherent to the human condition. That means we end up making simulations to simulate what we want and not necessarily what we should. This is known as the physical grounding problem.
Conclusion
Despite problems, wargames could offer away not only to stimulate conversations but also to explore changes needed in the Army. Using wargaming could even reveal solutions and situations that otherwise might not have been thought of.