Wargaming

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Developing a Winning Safety Strategy for Automated Vehicles

When policy problems involve many different groups with diverging interests along with significant uncertainty about the future, games can be a valuable way to explore the potential consequences of important policy decisions. What could gaming bring to the area of AV safety?

Laura Fraade-Blanar, Brian A. Jackson

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Use Wargaming to Sharpen the Tactical Edge

As a growing consensus embraces the utility of educational wargaming, a more daunting question remains: Can the Joint Force integrate and sustain educational wargaming in the operating forces? The challenges are substantial, but they are not insurmountable. The answer depends on bold leadership, sufficient tools, and eager partners.

Sebastian Joon Bae, Paul M. Kearney

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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.

Elizabeth M. Bartels @elliebartels

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The Most Popular RAND Research of 2020

Here are the RAND research projects that resonated most in 2020, a year unlike any in living memory. Topics include remote learning, election disinformation, income inequality, and more.

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Establishing a Wargaming Insurgency at the University

When properly employed, wargaming can serve as a potent experiential learning tool. If educational wargaming is to evolve and endure, a global wargaming insurgency may be required. This will likely demand additional time, effort, and energy, but if successful, the dividends could be remarkable.

Sebastian Joon Bae

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Now You Can Play RAND Games at Home

RAND is famous for its Pentagon wargames. Now the public can play defense analyst, too. In RAND's new game, Hedgemony, players create a military strategy to allocate troops and resources and hedge against the unknown.

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Two Vignettes: How Might Combat Operations Be Different Under the Information Joint Function?

RAND researcher Christopher Paul employs storytelling to illustrate two distinct approaches to Joint Combat Operations. While both vignettes result in the expulsion of adversary forces and the restoration of territorial integrity, they take different approaches to kinetic and informational power.

Christopher Paul

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How Russia Targets U.S. Elections, Black Workers and COVID-19, TikTok: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on how Russia targets U.S. elections, Americans' increased alcohol consumption during the pandemic, Black workers and COVID-19, and more.

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Why Militaries Should Play Games with Each Other

With rising rates of COVID-19 and vulnerable populations at risk, Hawaii's people are understandably nervous about the upcoming Rim of the Pacific exercise scheduled for August. But COVID-19 cannot be a blanket check on international engagement by the U.S. military. With the effects of COVID-19 expected to last for decades, the forward thinking found in games may be exactly what is needed.

Jonathan Cham @JonathanKCham, Deon Canyon

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Preparing for a COVID-19 Election, Hurricane Response, North Korea: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on preparing for a COVID-19 election, how the pandemic is affecting artists, North Korea's deadly artillery, and more.

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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.

Elizabeth M. Bartels @elliebartels

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What Strategic Decisions on the Horizon for the Department of Defense Can Best Be Shaped Through Wargaming?

The U.S. Marine Corps is not alone in its avid use of wargaming to shape its decisions of the future. The other services are conducting similar efforts with equal rigor and zeal. And as the national deficit grows and budgetary constraints mount, the Department of Defense will most likely increasingly leverage all its analytical tools, including wargaming.

Sebastian Joon Bae

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How Can Wargaming Improve Government Response to Catastrophic Events?

Wargames are abstracted models of national security challenges, where players' decisions and their consequences are adjudicated within a rules-based environment. Due to its inherent flexibility as a tool, wargaming can be applied to a wide range of issues. Yet, it is important to understand what wargaming can and cannot do.

Sebastian Joon Bae

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The Serious Side of Gaming: Q&A with Yuna Wong

Yuna Wong, codirector of RAND's Center for Gaming, didn't expect to make gaming a focus of her career. In this interview, she discusses what drew her to the field, what makes a good wargame, and her latest research on the dangers of putting too much trust in artificial intelligence.

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Book Review: 'A Game of Birds and Wolves' by Simon Parkin

In A Game of Birds and Wolves, journalist Simon Parkin reports on a long overlooked piece of World War II's Battle of the Atlantic. Captain Gilbert Roberts enlisted the Women's Royal Naval Service to build and run a game modeling a two-sided tactical fight between British escorts and German U-boats.

Stacie L. Pettyjohn

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What Chess Can Teach Us About the Future of AI and War

Will artificial intelligence (AI) change warfare? It's hard to say. AI itself is not new, but AI as a critical factor in competitions is relatively novel and, as a result, there's not much data to draw from. Perhaps the most interesting examples are in the world of chess.

Andrew J. Lohn

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China's 70th Anniversary, Wargaming, Fentanyl: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on what the future holds for China, the importance of gender diversity in wargaming, how Army families address life's challenges, and more.

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Synthetic Opioids, Mass Shootings, Prison Education: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap looks at fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, how to address mass shootings, higher education in prison, and more.

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A Wargame at RAND Puts Teen Girls in Command

RAND analysts developed and hosted a wargame to help young women learn firsthand about national security. It's a lesson in strategy, in the hard realities behind news headlines, but also in agility and resilience. In that, it's not so far removed from the daily life of a teenage girl.

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Boris Johnson, Teacher Training, Youth Arrests: RAND Weekly Recap

This weekly recap focuses on Boris Johnson's Brexit challenge, how educators feel about their training programs, a spike in youth arrests, and more.

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And, By the Way, They Were All Women: RAND Hosts Forum on 21st-Century Warfare Honoring Roberta Wohlstetter

National security experts, flag officers, and decisionmakers attended the Roberta Wohlstetter Forum on National Security at RAND's Washington office on October 24. The featured speakers, moderators, organizers, donor, and namesake for the event were all women.

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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.

Elizabeth M. Bartels @elliebartels

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Just Let Them Compete: Raising the Next Generation of Wargamers

Wargames are games that simulate aspects of warfare at varying levels, aimed at analyzing human decisionmaking. To develop the next generation of avid wargamers, the first step is both radical and simple: Let them compete.

Sebastian Joon Bae

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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?

Elizabeth M. Bartels @elliebartels

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Gaming and Public Policy: Q&A with David Shlapak

David Shlapak discusses how using games in research can help improve decisionmaking across a wide range of areas, including national security, health care, and climate change.

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In Defense of a Wargame: Bolstering Deterrence on NATO's Eastern Flank

A series of wargames examined the potential results of a Russian invasion of the Baltic states. While such an invasion appears unlikely, its consequences would be so dangerous that not taking steps to deter it more robustly would be imprudent.

Karl P. Mueller, David A. Shlapak, et al.

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How Can Gaming Help Test Your Theory?

The act of designing a game will force you to articulate your theory or to be more specific about it. It will also require you to operationalize your variables and theoretical constructs of interest into a specific context, and prompt you to anticipate the ways in which it may play out in that scenario.

Yuna Huh Wong

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Outnumbered, Outranged, and Outgunned: How Russia Defeats NATO

Today NATO is outnumbered, outranged, and outgunned by Russia in Europe and beset by a number of compounding factors that make the situation worse. But it is possible to begin restoring a more robust deterrent posture and to do so at a price tag that appears affordable.

David A. Shlapak, Michael Johnson

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Gaming the System: Obstacles to Reinvigorating Defense Wargaming

Reinvigorating wargaming in the defense community offers great potential value given the complex strategic situation that the U.S. faces today. DoD should educate sponsors and consumers about the appropriate use of wargames, set realistic expectations, and build the right amount of risk acceptance into its gaming enterprise.

Stacie L. Pettyjohn, David A. Shlapak

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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.

Elizabeth M. Bartels @elliebartels

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A Funny Thing Happened When These Military Officers and Academics Got Together

If senior military officers and academics find themselves divided, is there a way to build respect and trust earlier in their careers? A tabletop exercise suggested that the best way to bridge the civilian-military divide is not via large conferences or formal papers. Instead, it can be done by building trust, one person at a time, over time.

Paula G. Thornhill

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Anatomy of a War Game

War games are especially important as countries prepare to counter adversaries who use asymmetric strategies or weapons, forcing military planners to deal with unfamiliar threats, writes Bruce Bennett.

Bruce W. Bennett @bwbennett