New Methods for Strategic Analysis

Automating the Wargame

Morlie Hammer Levin, Carl H. Builder

Expert InsightsPublished 1982

This paper, to be published in Policy Sciences, gives a conceptual overview of a new approach to political-military wargaming, sought by the Department of Defense to improve upon the conventional methods of analyzing strategic forces. Developed at RAND during a nine-month demonstration phase, the approach automates all features of political-military gaming from the force calculations to the decisionmaking participants in the traditional wargame. Machine-controlled players were developed to make the reasons for their actions explicit and reproducible and thereby subject to debate and systematic analysis. The proposed concepts appear to offer a unique and useful framework for analyzing strategic force operations.

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Levin, Morlie Hammer and Carl H. Builder, New Methods for Strategic Analysis: Automating the Wargame. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1982. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6763.html.
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