Elizabeth M. Bartels

Wargames as an Educational Tool

The benefits of games for military education are well documented. But harnessing the potential of games to foster innovation may require a commitment to sustain gaming over the years needed to explore a problem space and develop and stress-test new ideas.

Wargaming the Department of Defense for Strategic Advantage

Defense acquisition, personnel, and management systems have long been seen as areas in need of reform, as costs and man-hours continue to increase over the years. Gaming new policies that govern these areas can offer early insights into potential stumbling blocks and provide leaders valuable feedback on decisions before major costs are incurred.

Building a Pipeline of Wargaming Talent: A Two-Track Solution

How does the Department of Defense imagine the future of war and make long-term investments to confront the challenges ahead? On issues ranging from potential conflicts with Russia to the future of transportation and logistics, senior leaders have increasingly turned to wargames to imagine potential futures.

Is Iron Dome a Poisoned Chalice? Strategic Risks from Tactical Success

While Iron Dome's past success in defending Israel makes it a tempting solution to future challenges, it does have shortcomings. This becomes even more serious when considering using the system in Korea, where the threat posed is substantially greater, and the targeted terrain substantially harder to defend.

Adding Shots on Target: Wargaming Beyond the Game

Figuring out what the future may look like—and what concepts and technology we should invest in now to prepare—is hard. How can the wargaming community build a cycle of research to help understand what these paths might be?

Getting the Most Out of Your Wargame: Practical Advice for Decisionmakers

While some famous historical cases offer a compelling narrative of what wargames can be at their best and worst, they cannot illustrate the full range of contemporary wargaming that leaders should strive to achieve. A better understanding of how wargames can be helpful — or how they can backfire — is critical.

Research Brief

Fostering Innovation in Military Technology: Strengthening DoD's Commercial Technology Pipeline

RAND researchers examined how well the Department of Defense is identifying, developing, and transitioning innovative commercial technologies from the private sector to the military and how the defense ecosystem can better support this process.

Report

Strengthening the Defense Innovation Ecosystem

The Department of Defense can more effectively harness commercially developed technologies through policies that incentivize and improve coordination and collaboration between defense innovation organizations and traditional acquisition stakeholders.

Report

An Enterprise Cost-Effectiveness Approach to Decisionmaking: Improving Analytic Support to Senior Defense Leaders

The authors propose analytic and programmatic frameworks to explore potential cost-per-effect measures, assess those measures with an enterprise cost-effectiveness approach, and chart a roadmap to add a joint focus in future Air Force decisionmaking.

Report

The Role of Information in U.S. Concepts for Strategic Competition

A detailed enumeration of activities, a synthesis of expert consensus on challenges to gray zone competition, and a dynamic menu of solutions can enhance the U.S. competitive position in the gray zone and beyond.

Report

Adaptive Engagement for Undergoverned Spaces: Concepts, Challenges, and Prospects for New Approaches

This report is a compendium of expert insights regarding opportunities for investing in science and technology to increase U.S. ability to engage in long-term competition in undergoverned spaces.

Report

Acquiring a Mosaic Force: Issues, Options, and Trade-Offs

Mosaic Warfare envisions more fractionated, heterogeneous forces, dynamically composed on tactical timelines. In this report, the authors present insights from a policy game to assess alternative governance models for acquiring a Mosaic force.

Report

Brain-Computer Interfaces: U.S. Military Applications and Implications, An Initial Assessment

Emerging brain-computer interface technologies may be used to monitor a soldier's cognitive workload, control a drone swarm, or link with a prosthetic, but policy, safety, legal, and ethical issues must be evaluated first.

Report

Opportunities for Including the Information Environment in U.S. Marine Corps Wargames

An examination of requirements, principles from military theory, current doctrine, and wargaming practices points to solutions and changes to game mechanics to better incorporate the information environment into wargames.

Report

Building a Broader Evidence Base for Defense Acquisition Policymaking

This report summarizes the case for a broader evidence base for defense acquisition policymaking. It also describes a prototype policy game focused on Middle-Tier Acquisition that researchers developed to enrich the available evidence base.

Dissertation

Building Better Games for National Security Policy Analysis: Towards a Social Scientific Approach

Proposes an approach to game design grounded in logics of inquiry from the social sciences.

Report

Next-Generation Wargaming for the U.S. Marine Corps: Recommended Courses of Action

The authors evaluate wargaming tools as the U.S. Marine Corps invests in its next-generation wargaming concept. The authors describe wargaming processes, facilities, and skill sets and recommend courses of action.

Research Brief

Will to Fight: Returning to the Human Fundamentals of War

This brief argues for the importance of improving our understanding of what influences will to fight, and it describes two models for doing so: one for analyzing a military unit's will to fight, and one for analyzing a nation's will to fight.

Report

OCEANS 17 Tabletop Exercise: Findings and Recommendations

In December 2017, the RAND Corporation conducted a tabletop exercise on air operations across the boundaries between geographic combatant commands. This report describes the exercise's design, key insights from our analysis, and recommendations.

Report

Do Differing Analyses Change the Decision? Using a Game to Assess Whether Differing Analytic Approaches Improve Decisionmaking

In this report, RAND researchers use a structured comparison game to examine the value proposition of different analytic inputs (scenario-based versus Robust Decision Making) on a sample U.S. Department of Defense decision about force structure.

Report

Conceptual Design for a Multiplayer Security Force Assistance Strategy Game

The authors explain the conceptual underpinnings and basic rules for a RAND-designed security force assistance strategy game. The game is a tool to explore the potential benefits and risks of different security force assistance strategies.

Report

What Might Happen if Palestinians Start Voting in Jerusalem Municipal Elections? Gaming the End of the Electoral Boycott and the Future of City Politics

To examine possible consequences of Jerusalem's Palestinians ending their electoral boycott, a team from the RAND Corporation conducted a seminar-style game in Jerusalem in partnership with the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.

Research Brief

Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza

This brief summarizes a RAND report that explores lessons that the U.S. Army and the Joint force can draw from Israel's military operations in Gaza from 2009 to 2014 and how Israel adapted to hybrid adversaries in complex urban terrain.

Report

From Cast Lead to Protective Edge: Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza

This report describes how the Israel Defense Force fought an adaptive hybrid adversary in a dense urban setting under intense public scrutiny during its wars in Gaza and draws lessons from the Israeli experience for the U.S. Army and the joint force.