Main Theater Warfare Modeling in the RAND Strategy Assessment System (3.0)

This Note provides an overview of the main theater warfare model developed as part of the RAND Strategy Assessment System (RSAS, Release 3.0), in a game-structured simulation of global conflict. This model covers land and air combat in Central Europe and Korea and is part of a global combat model (CAMPAIGN) that provides a fully integrated treatment of conventional, theater-nuclear, and intercontinental-nuclear warfare worldwide. The model has been designed to answer "What if?" questions quickly, to be used either as a closed simulation or as an interactive game, and to be flexible. It permits the user to vary assumptions about a broad range of qualitative and quantitative issues such as national fighting effectiveness, maximum combat intensity, air-ground interactions, etc. The model is also unique in its treatment of maneuver because it allows the attacker and defender to have explicit concepts of maneuver at corps level and above.