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. The game engine draws on empirical evidence and best practices and, thus, can be applied in many contexts.

Conceptual Design for a Multiplayer Security Force Assistance Strategy Game

Elizabeth M. Bartels, Christopher S. Chivvis, Adam R. Grissom, Stacie L. Pettyjohn

ResearchPublished Feb 7, 2019

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 under different conditions. The game engine draws on empirical evidence and best practices and, thus, can be applied in many contexts.

Key Findings

  • The Security Force Assistance Game is a portfolio game in which players decide how to invest in the capabilities of different partner forces in order to achieve objectives.
  • Twelve principles of security force assistance were identified from empirical literature and used to build an adjudication tool to project plausible operational outcomes from player investments. Changes in the strategic relationship between actors caused by operational shifts in relative capability were adjudicated based on expert judgement.
  • This game allows structured comparison of different SFA strategies, enabling players and sponsors to consider the potential benefits and risks of different courses of action.

Recommendations

  • The Security Force Assistance Game can be adapted to look at SFA in other countries or to create a strategy for SFA investments across multiple nations.
  • Future games can benefit from using "live" teams of experts to represent recipient nation decisionmaking; exploring SFA in a competitive marketplace with multiple possible investors; subdividing the U.S team to better reflect competing objects and constraints; playing further into the future by including more turns; and requiring materiel investments to be sustained.

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RAND Style Manual
Bartels, Elizabeth M., Christopher S. Chivvis, Adam R. Grissom, and Stacie L. Pettyjohn, Conceptual Design for a Multiplayer Security Force Assistance Strategy Game, RAND Corporation, RR-2850-AFRICOM, 2019. As of October 10, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2850.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Bartels, Elizabeth M., Christopher S. Chivvis, Adam R. Grissom, and Stacie L. Pettyjohn, Conceptual Design for a Multiplayer Security Force Assistance Strategy Game. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2019. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR2850.html.
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This research was sponsored by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.

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