By Jeff Appleget and Jeff Kline

Introduction

In the decade since Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work began his 2014 initiative to reinvigorate wargaming, there has been a decided uptick in the number of wargames being conducted for DoD. However, the quality and relevancy of DoD wargaming has not been uniform.

One of the primary causes for this lack of consistency is the dearth of wargaming capacity residing within DoD. Many combatant commands turn to the private sector and pay premium rates to have wargames conducted for them. Other DoD organizations conduct wargames using a pick-up team extracted from their staff that has little or no knowledge of wargaming. Wargaming is a skill that every Commander or Lieutenant Colonel should possess. However, there has been no DoD focus on educating uniformed personnel who can initiate, design, develop, conduct, and analyze wargames for their services.

This article highlights the Navy’s current wargaming education capability at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and makes recommendations for the Fleet to create a pipeline of naval officer wargamers to enhance the professionalism, preparedness, and knowledge of the servicemembers and organizations of the naval services.

Background

The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) has been wargaming almost since its establishment in 1909. As with any military education, wargaming’s state of the art has evolved and advanced since that time. NPS’s sister institution, the Naval War College (NWC), contributed greatly to the U.S. Navy’s success in World War II through the focused Plan Orange series of wargames conducted from 1919-1940.

The use of wargaming waned as the 1960s ushered in the computer era and proponents of “Systems Analysis” advanced the idea that “computerized wargames” (what is known today as combat simulations) could replace commanders gathered around charts and maps and working through the risk calculus and the consequences of employing their forces against a thinking, malevolent adversary. In the 1970s and 80s, DoD created a Modeling and Simulation (M&S) enterprise that allowed combat simulations to dominate the analysis that underpinned the DoD’s acquisition process.

This analysis capability led to the massive U.S. Armed Forces build up that contributed greatly to the break-up of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s. The Abrams tank, the Aegis cruiser, and the A-10 Warthog all benefited from systems analysts using combat simulations to quantify the goodness these weapon systems would bring to U.S. forces in a NATO-Warsaw Pact fight. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm gave U.S. forces one more chance to fight a ground-focused kinetic war before the U.S. plunged into nearly two decades of counterinsurgency and irregular warfare conflicts, warfare that was really a poor fit to analyze using our kinetic-focused combat simulations.

2014 saw a U.S. Department of Defense wargaming renaissance as Deputy Secretary of Defense Work championed a reinvigoration of wargaming throughout the services. As a result, senior leaders finally began to understand that wargames and combat simulations were two completely different tools that, when used properly together, could provide the foundation for robust analysis of new concepts, platforms and technologies. The use of these and other tools in a campaign of analysis provided organizations the means to do both qualitative and quantitative analysis to inform a spectrum of decisions to better position the U.S. DoD for an uncertain future against two growing powers that employ both kinetic forces and non-kinetic hybrid threats. The challenge is building and maintaining a DoD-wide wargaming capability to conduct such analyses.

Bringing the Fleet to NPS Wargaming Education

The NPS Operations Research Department was leaning forward and in 2009 began its own wargaming renaissance, positioning NPS to better advantage not only the Fleet, but the other DoD services and U.S. allies and partners. 

Focus on the Fleet

To accomplish this, the Wargaming Applications course was re-focused on applying the craft of wargaming to address existing and future Fleet challenges. Teams of junior to mid-grade officers provide direct support to real world sponsors by designing, developing, conducting, and analyzing wargames that focus current or future challenges of the Fleet, our sister services, allies, and partners. The wargaming course culminates with officer-conducted, Fleet-sponsored wargames during “wargaming week,” normally the last week of the academic quarter. NPS warrior-scholars come from all branches of DoD, and many of our partners and allies. Wargames are conducted at the Unclassified, CUI, Secret, and Top Secret/SCI levels.

Wargaming week occurs at NPS in early June (5-10 wargames) and early December (1-3 wargames). Outside attendees are welcome to attend wargaming week given that they have the proper security clearances. Since 2009, NPS officer teams have designed and conducted over 100 wargames, helping the Fleet underpin flagship concepts such as Distributed Maritime Operations, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations and Stand-In-Forces, and assessing a spectrum of Contested Logistics issues for OPNAV N4.

Joint and coalition wargames are also conducted for Fleet partners, such as examining the impact of emerging maritime capabilities and technologies for the Taiwan CNO, examining interoperability challenges for the U.S. Marine Corps Forces – Pacific (MARFORPAC) and the Australian Defence Force (ADF), and assessing the impact of emerging technologies for the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the Office of the Secretary of Defense – Strategic Capabilities Office (OSD-SCO).

Modernizing Wargaming

Combining the recent operational experience that our warrior-scholars bring to NPS with a seasoned faculty that conducts cutting-edge research for the Fleet provides NPS a competitive advantage in innovation over other DoD schools, FFRDCs, and civilian universities. As wargaming entered the second half of the 20^th century, the surge in the DoD modeling and simulation (M&S) enterprise served to push wargaming to the side because senior military and civilian leaders didn’t understand that simulations could not supplant wargaming. Today the urge to again ‘computerize’ wargaming is re-emerging, necessitating another round of wargaming education to ensure we align both wargaming and our M&S enterprise to provide best advantage to DoD in the future.

The adjudication of wargames can leverage M&S if done in a deliberate and thoughtful manner, ensuring the M&S chosen to integrate into wargames is ‘fit for purpose.’ We have been researching the integration of M&S into wargames since 2009. To facilitate this research, warrior-scholars and faculty from our Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute have been integrated into the wargaming course and have tested many M&S tools in NPS wargames including Command PE (Professional Edition), a commercially available simulation; MAST (Modeling and Simulation Toolkit), a U.S. Navy owned agent-based simulation, as well as other M&S tools widely available or created by NPS warrior-scholars. Preliminary research results indicate that the purchase of a ‘one-size-fits-all” uber wargaming software platform is, in most cases, ill-advised.

Bringing NPS Wargaming Education to the Fleet

Mobile Education Team (MET)

In 2011, NPS conducted its first five-day Mobile Education Team (MET) wargaming workshop for the Royal Canadian Air Force in Trenton, Ontario. Since then, we have conducted over 50 MET workshops across four continents. The wargaming workshop is designed to stand up an organic wargaming capability in an organization by creating wargaming apprentices from 16-20 of the organization’s personnel. The teaching philosophy, learn by doing, is exactly the same as the NPS resident wargaming course. Course participants are formed into teams. The teams then design, develop, conduct and analyze a wargame for their organization in the span of 5 days.

NPS has conducted these workshops for U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa (NAVEUR-AF), Sixth Fleet, U.S. Army Europe and Africa (USAREUR-AF) U.S. Naval Forces-Korea, Commander, Pacific Fleet, U.S. Marine Corps Forces-Pacific, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Marine Corps Combat Development Command, U.S. Strategic Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Africa Command, Taiwan Armed Forces, Indonesian Navy, Australian Defence Force, NATO Joint Warfare Center, NATO Special Operations Forces, as well as many others.

As organizations stand up and matured their wargaming capabilities, we began to field requests for advanced wargaming workshops. Our long-time partnership with the ADF resulted in a special three-week course that combined both basic and advanced workshops. The first two weeks are an extended basic analytic workshop that provides more exposure to a variety of wargames while still embracing the series of practical exercises that results in wargames being conducted by participants at the end of the two-week workshop. The third week is an advanced course that focuses on topics selected by the sponsor and tailored to participants who have completed the basic course in previous years and completed at least a year of practical wargaming experience. Common advanced course topics include wargaming facilitation, building the wargame’s foundation by the decomposition of a sponsor’s key issues and case studies of wargames that embrace innovation and unique models, methods and tools.

As NPS began our second decade of MET workshops, we were asked by organizations who had experienced our basic wargaming workshops to create a wargaming practitioner course consisting of three modules delivered over the course of 18-24 months at the sponsor’s home station by the NPS wargaming MET. After attending an NPS MET 5-day basic wargaming module and passing the wargaming apprentice certification exam (earning 4 Continuing Education Units (CEUs)), the wargaming apprentices are assigned to work on wargames for their organization and conduct self-study activities to prepare for the wargaming journeyman module.

The wargaming journeyman module is delivered by the NPS wargaming MET team, and upon the completion of the wargaming journeyman certification exam students earn an additional 4 CEUs. These wargaming journeymen again work on wargames for their organization and conduct self-study activities to prepare for the third and final module, the wargaming practitioner module. Upon completion of this module, students are then certified as wargame practitioners and 4 additional CEUs. Two EUCOM organizations, NAVEUR-AF and USAREUR-AF, have begun the process of creating wargaming practitioners in their organizations.

Northwest Pacific Wargame (NWPAC)

In 2024, the Naval Postgraduate School conducted its first Chief of Naval Operations (CNO)-directed wargame. The Northwest Pacific wargame had been conducted for over 35 years by the Naval War College. In recent years, the venue was moved from Newport, RI to Japan. The wargame is sponsored by the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The U.S. Seventh Fleet and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force are the two primary organizations that provide the players, augmented by other joint and combined players. The transition from NWC to NPS required a new paradigm because of the different staffing models each organization has.

While the NWC relies on a wargaming faculty of over 30 personnel with a support organization, NPS combines staff, faculty and NPS students to form the core of the wargaming team. NPS has leveraged several different Operations Research (OR) curriculum courses (Wargaming Applications, Spreadsheet Modeling, Introduction to Joint Combat Models, Case Studies in OR) to have NPS warrior-scholars prototype and test M&S adjudication models, conduct post-game analysis, and most importantly, build the nucleus of the wargaming execution team to deploy to Japan to conduct the wargame.

Keeping Wargaming in the Fleet

As Robert Rubel pointed out in his excellent CIMSEC article “Restore Wargaming Focus to the Naval War College,” the Navy needs to produce a “critical mass of officers with intensive wargaming experience.” There are several challenges that must be negotiated to create the requisite pipeline to achieve this critical mass.

Creating the critical mass

While both the NPS resident and MET courses and workshops do provide the Fleet, DoD, and our allies and partners officers who have designed, developed, conducted, and analyzed wargames for real-world sponsors, the numbers of officers with this unique skillset needs to increase ten-fold to begin to build that critical mass of wargamers in the Fleet that Robert Rubel calls for.

But how many uniformed wargamers does DoD need? As a minimum, every combat arms Lieutenant Colonel and unrestricted line officer Commander should be a wargamer. Every officer with an Operations Research designation should be a wargamer. Every military strategist should be a wargamer. Every flag officer should be a wargamer. We should stop thinking of wargaming as something someone else does for DoD and start accepting responsibility for wargaming to keep the Fleet ready for tomorrow’s fight as well as helping us to shape the force so that we are prepared for an uncertain future.

We should be conducting analytic wargames to better inform future force structures and technologies. We should be conducting educational wargames to allow us to better understand current threats and operational environments. We should be conducting experiential wargames to keep our battle staffs familiar with their wartime roles and to be prepared to adapt plans in the face of an aggressive and unpredictable enemy.

This argues for wargaming to be inserted into JPME. And let us be clear about creating wargamers. Even the huge NWC success with Plan Orange from 1919-1940 didn’t create wargamers—the participants were players in those wargames. The Plan Orange wargames were designed and conducted by the NWC faculty.

Having the skillset needed to design and conduct wargames cannot be learned by simply being a player in a wargame. The book The Craft of Wargaming is a reference for any DoD officer tasked with leading a wargaming effort. It is based on our 11-week resident course and used for our MET engagements.

Utilizing the Critical Mass

Wargaming is a craft that requires its practitioners to keep their wargaming certifications current by designing, developing, conducting and analyzing wargames. This requires some thought and likely restructuring by the Fleet. Every Fleet organization that creates plans should have wargamers. Every numbered fleet and every Marine Expeditionary Force should have wargamers. Each of these organizations should be wargaming their plans on a routine basis. One NPS OR graduate stood up a wargaming cell at CENTCOM and quickly concluded that wargaming should be used in most, if not all of the seven planning steps outlined in Joint Pub 5-0. Currently, wargaming is only mandated in step four. Also, any plan that has sat on a shelf for over a year is likely of little value. Plans should be wargamed and updated at least once a year.

To begin to meet this challenge, we propose that every numbered U.S. Navy Fleet and Marine Expeditionary Force designate at least 10 staff officers to become wargamers.

Creating a wargaming capability at the Fleet’s operational command levels

The Navy needs to embed uniformed operations research analysts in each numbered U.S. Navy fleet by coding at least five staff billets with the Navy’s OR subspecialty 3211. In major joint staffs it is common for these analysts to be group together in some Commander’s Advisory or Analytical Group, but for a fleet staff these officers should be distributed to the future operations planning cell, the assessment cell, and the logistics cell, wherever they may reside in the staff’s N-codes. 

When a wargame is called for either in plans’ generation or assessment, these officers will form the core of a “cross code” wargaming team to design, develop, execute, and analyze the wargame for the commander. They will be augmented by other staff members who have gained education and experience in fleet wargaming. The fleet’s challenge is to maintain a critical mass of wargame experience in their uniform staff in the face of constant billet rotation. To do this, wargaming education must be integrated into naval staff preparation courses, or as part of an unrestricted line officer’s regular career pipeline.

Creating a pipeline to educate Fleet wargamers

A second step in integrating wargaming skills to the fleet is for the Navy to embrace higher education by sending URL officers to the NPS OR program. This will provide the seed corn to feed both the numbered fleet OR billets and to increase the number of Navy officers with the requisite wargaming experience. In the early 1990s it was not uncommon for each NPS Operations Research officer cohort to have as many as ten URL officers. That number has dwindled to two or three today. Type Commanders should insist on increasing their educational quotas for Operations Research. These officers bring a host of operationally relevant analytical skills to the fleet staffs and ships: from data analytics, operations assessment, campaign analysis, modeling and simulation, to wargaming.

Tactical Training Groups can also begin to offer a one-week wargaming course either leveraging NPS instructors or creating a core capability to instruct within their own staff. This course should be made a prerequisite for fleet staff assignment, unless an officer has already received wargaming education and been certified as a wargaming practitioner. In turn, officers can receive a new wargamer Additional Qualification Designator (AQD) or Navy Officer Billet Classification (NOBC) code for their Officer Data Card to enhance opportunities for assignment and promotion.

The Naval Staff College at the Naval War College may also begin to integrate wargaming education and practice in their curriculum. Officers involved in these courses would then be available to contribute directly to the Naval War College’s wargaming agenda. 

As these institutional changes occur, individual fleet commanders should designate staff across their codes as the wargaming team and receive the week-long NPS MET wargaming course. To mitigate staff rotation challenges, this MET course can be hosted every year or eighteen months and assigned a real-world fleet issue to wargame as desired by the commander. This proposal will ensure the staff has qualified wargamers and provides a regularly scheduled wargaming course for the commander to leverage in their fleet’s planning cycle.

Conclusion

The Naval Postgraduate School has played a critical role in DoD wargaming education for the past 15 years. Through our NPS resident wargaming course, we have educated over six hundred officers who can design wargames. At the same time, NPS officer teams have conducted over one hundred wargames for DoD, allies and partners. NPS has provided wargaming courses through its Mobile Education Team in both the INDOPACOM and EUCOM areas of responsibilities to over one thousand U.S., allied and partner defense professionals since 2011. NPS has been exploring modernizing wargaming through the judicious integration of models and simulations for well over a decade. As we prepare for the daunting security challenges currently facing the U.S. and its allies and partners, NPS wargamers will be using their skills to ensure we meet those challenges when the time comes.

Dr. Jeff Appleget is a retired Army Colonel who has taught wargaming at NPS since 2009, mentoring over 100 warrior-scholar conducted wargames. He is a co-author of the book The Craft of Wargaming.

Jeff Kline is a retired Navy officer who is currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research department. Jeff has taught Joint Campaign Analysis, led the NPS Warfare Innovation Continuum, and coordinated Naval wargaming sponsorship for NPS wargaming for over 20 years.

Featured Image: NPS students participate in analytic wargames they designed to explore solutions for some of DoD’s most pressing national security concerns. (NPS photo by Javier Chagoya)

By Jack Tribolet

In Fall 2023, the University of Southern California reconstituted its previously abandoned wargaming club. Ultimately, wargaming reemerged in two places for USC’s midshipmen, one as a mandatory test of knowledge after a precursory look at the impending Taiwan crisis in the Introduction to Naval Science (NSC 101) course and, second, as part of an optional club that met once a week for two hours. Observed midshipman learning from each group, spotlighted valuable lessons and provided two options for wider curriculum installment across the NROTC enterprise and Fleet. The educational application of wargames reaped undeniable returns to midshipmen growth, thus demanding the question—why is the Fleet not installing wargaming as an official, curriculum-integrated means of junior officer education?

In military history, wargaming has undeniably been well-applied in the analytical sphere to test doctrine and capabilities spanning from a reeling Prussian Army in the Napoleonic Wars to the generation of War Plan Orange pre-WWII. Today, gaming continues to occur at the highest levels of the US military. However, as an educational tool, few concrete steps have occurred to gain the full benefit of this powerful tool.

A couple of anomalies exist, such as the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfighting at Marine Corps University (MCU), which has developed its Wargaming Cloud to provide easy online access to competitive games to its students. Additionally, the newest edition of the NROTC governing Professional Core Competencies (PCCs) includes three vague line items regarding instructing basic knowledge of wargaming. Still, the MCU alone does not have adequate reach, and the new PCCs fail to provide instructors with the “how-to” and “why” necessary for organizational change. Modern wargaming began at the Naval Academy five years ago in the form of an elective course and an extracurricular activity with plans for outreach to the fleet and the ROTC community. In its current incarnation, wargaming has been broadened but only within the confines of Annapolis. However, there is currently no coordination in its current state.

Filling the Sails of Organizational Change

When starting the USC Wargaming Club, my first instinct was to find the most up-to-date educational wargame, Sebastian Bae’s Littoral Commander, and entice midshipmen with pizza in their off time to gain attendance. Robust class and work schedules left the club only meeting once a week in the evening for two hours. Excitement about launching a new organization emerged quickly, however, the rationale behind wargaming was not immediately clear to the students. Consequently, I recognized that the club would not survive my departure back to the Fleet. The club had to become self-sufficient to create lasting organizational change within the USC Trojan Battalion. Going back to the drawing board, I realized that the midshipmen needed a complete comprehension of “why” wargaming served a purpose, see personal progression, and, most importantly, they needed to have fun while participating.

Although we later employed Littoral Commander to significant effect, the need to simplify gameplay for participants unfamiliar with hex-based wargames prompted a search for a more accessible alternative.” Eventually, the club settled on Axis & Allies. We had a physical copy and multiple digital copies running side-by-side. Axis & Allies, while set during WWII, provided the essential lessons I wanted the students to gain initially—geographical familiarity, combined arms, and, most importantly, economy of force.

Using a crawl, walk, run method, the students progressed from game familiarity to spending significant time developing pre-game team strategies reproduced across multiple iterations simultaneously as different crews clashed. Teams soon learned the necessity of flexible plans and the requirement to anticipate enemy strategy.

Furthermore, the juxtaposition of digital games coinciding with the physical version delivered some interesting observations regarding the pros and cons of digital versus analog gaming. Midshipmen clearly preferred the video game version, appreciating its built-in rule enforcement and streamlined mechanics. However, I noticed that the board game players, while taking significantly longer to complete their iteration, had more buy-in to their game, non-active players remained attuned to the action, while their compatriots observing the digital game on a large television often had their heads down in phones or idle conversation.

Despite sometimes lacking full attention, the digital gamers far outpaced their board game brethren, finishing games in a little more than half the time. Generation Z’s preference for video games cannot be overstated. Digital games must be the organizational choice, and, unlike MCU’s Wargaming Cloud, it should include AAA titles such as Command: Modern Operations and Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age to maintain midshipman attention. This generational bias is a lesson that Sebastian Bae has recognized as Littoral Commander has recently gone into production to digitize.

While not as robust as Littoral Commander, Axis & Allies served its purpose; it drew participation, and the lesser complexity ensured inexperienced gamers remained engaged. The digital versions felt more familiar to a video game-saturated generation, whereas many had never played complex board games. This basic introduction to gaming offered accessible decision-making opportunities while reinforcing key lessons mentioned earlier.

After a semester of Axis & Allies, the club shifted to some of Sebastian Bae’s microgames, Callsign and Find, Fix & Finish. Due to their simplistic mechanics and single focus, these mini-games took ten to twenty minutes for the midshipmen to complete, allowed for multiple rounds per session. Looking around the room full of engaged students, I recognized it was time to return to Littoral Commander.  

Sebastian Bae’s Littoral Commander has everything you’d want to instruct midshipmen on the Taiwan Crisis: scenarios based around Taiwan, Luzon, the Straights of Malacca, and Okinawa. The game contains all five domains of war and even informational warfare elements. Once learned, these attributes are perfect for future Navy/USMC leaders to simulate scenarios and provide realistic decision points. However, the initial learning curve can be time-intensive for board game amateurs. Furthermore, setting up the board can take thirty to sixty minutes, even with multiple helpers. Lastly, I found the students spending far too much time selecting Joint Capability Cards (JCCs), which include nearly a hundred unique abilities to choose from for play. To mitigate these issues, I began showing up an hour early to set the board and decided the JCCs each team would have.

Littoral Commander subsumed the last three weeks of Wargaming Club at USC. To ensure maximum participation, I created a scenario that included Luzon and the Philippines so that we could have a total of twelve players. This time around, the game was a total hit. Participation and attentiveness soared, and unlike Axis & Allies, the midshipmen recognized their future platforms and weapon systems, instilling a sense of realism and urgency into the gameplay.

In the end, China maintained a foothold on Luzon but was repelled by Taiwan with heavy losses, resulting within the realm of possibility and aligned with published professional wargames. The eagerness to play Littoral Commander surpassed previously observed midshipman behavior, and most of all, when Sebastian Bae announced the video game version, the midshipmen applauded his decision to go digital. They will undoubtedly be some of his first customers.

Lessons in Integrated Gaming

Creating USC’s Wargaming Club arose after three years of running an end-of-semester wargame for the 4/C (freshman) NSC 101 course. The class objectives for the NSC 101 course span basic introduction topics: Navy organization, traditions, platforms, USMC, and UCMJ, among others, but by time demands, it leaves roughly half the class time to dive into other topics.

Midshipmen love sea stories, which bring to life the job they aim for; however, in these dangerous times, I found it highly pertinent to study the Taiwan Crisis and Ukraine War with the extra time. This teaching strategy came to fruition in my second year when I assigned Toshi Yoshihara and James Holmes’ excellent book, Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (2018). The midshipmen read and presented on various pertinent subjects: regional geography, history, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) platforms, US platforms, current events, and even culminated in a Q & A session with Dr. Holmes himself.

The final two instructional hours of the class weaved the entirety of their recently gained Taiwan knowledge into an instructor-led wargame. Dividing the class into two, they developed three courses of action, giving the CCP the initiative. The Allies had to create three scalable defensive strategies for their opening move. Forcing pre-planned responses emulated the fog of war surrounding a new conflict and demonstrated the rapidity with which plans can fall apart. Furthermore, I encouraged subterfuges at home and learned that many attempts occurred to steal one another’s plans during the interim between classes.

The NSC 101 wargame panned out on a large whiteboard, with me as a sort of “dungeon master” controlling the board and pushing the pace of play. I determined any probability-based moves or attacks by giving an odds of success and employing dice for the participants to roll. Like the final game of Littoral Commander, this wargame mainly centered around the Philippines, where the CCP gained a foothold despite enormous losses. Unlike Littoral Commander, this conflict iteration spread throughout most of Asia, including Korea and Japan, demonstrating the incredible danger a Taiwan War poses to spreading across the hemisphere.

The popularity of this semester-end wargame surged through the students, many even asking to continue the game despite the course ending. Thirty-five students participating in a single match proved a significant challenge, but I solved it by randomly cold calling to ensure maximum attentiveness and participation. This wargaming model in educational settings is easily replicable, which any Officer Instructor with Fleet experience could imitate.  

Ultimately, the purpose of wargaming remains to put the participant in the decision-making hot seat. To make important decisions under pressure, see the fallout of said decisions and enemy reaction, and most importantly, receive instructor feedback on their choices. The USMC has far outpaced the Navy in decision-making training with its Tactical Decision Games (TDGs) and Decision Forcing Cases (DFCs). The naval aviation community has simulator events and occasionally decent pre-flight walkthroughs. Still, these mainly revolve around platform tactics, techniques, and procedures, rarely forcing the participant to make gray-zone decisions.

Initiating decision-making training must begin early in officer accession pipelines and is best accomplished through curriculum-mandated wargaming. Incoming Officer Instructors could quickly receive instructional training to incorporate wargaming in NROTC at the Teaching in Higher Education course run biannually. The professional wargaming community has a deep bench full of capable instructors to maximize gaming in the NROTC enterprise, which would ultimately have a significant long-term effect and organizational change by delivering wargame literate officers to the Fleet. For now, the Trojan Battalion is preparing its first Wargaming Club meeting with the permanent absence of the Officer Instructor, who kicked the program off, meaning they achieved the first step towards organizational change.

Lieutenant Jack Tribolet was an Assistant Professor of Naval Science at the University of Southern California ROTC and was the course coordinator for Seapower and Maritime Affairs. He recently returned to the fleet as a Tactical Action Officer assigned to the Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69).

Featured Image: A student describes his strategy during hands-on exercises at the Basic Analytic Wargaming Course taught by the Naval Postgraduate School Wargaming Mobile Education Team in Wiesbaden, Germany, Aug. 30 thru Sept. 10, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Thomas Mort)

A shorter version of this piece was originally published by the Surface Navy Association. This longer adaptation is published with permission.

By CDR Anthony LaVopa, USN

During my early days as a Department Head on USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), my Executive Officer advised me to reach out to Professor Jim FitzSimonds and the Halsey Alfa group at the Naval War College. He urged, “Pick their brains and absorb everything you can.” At that time, I had no idea how profoundly this exposure to the Halsey Program would refine my understanding of tactical, operational, and strategic topics. I did not anticipate the extent to which it would challenge my knowledge and assumptions about U.S. capabilities, tactics, and force employment, as well as those of our adversaries. My participation in the Halsey Alfa program, which has focused on war with China for more than 20 years, became one of the most significant and impactful learning experiences of my career. I believe this critical, analytical, and educational opportunity should be mandatory for every unrestricted line officer in the Navy.

With the addition of the Halsey Bravo Program, focused on conflict scenarios with Iran, the Halsey Program leverages subject matter experts and employs continuous free-play, iterative wargaming to educate students. Running three, ten-week wargames each year, the Halsey Program has completed more than one hundred wargames combined across both Alfa and Bravo since 2003. This large base of wargaming experience has created a wealth of valuable insight on operational warfighting, with OPNAV, flag officers, and senior leaders regularly consuming outputs from the Halsey program.

After commanding USS Hurricane (PC 3) and serving at OPNAV N96, I recognized that participating in the Halsey Advanced Research Program (ARP) at the Naval War College was essential before returning to sea and assuming command. I sought to challenge myself in every aspect as a naval officer and warfighter, aiming to sharpen my operational eye – and bring that mindset to my next command. The Halsey program is vital for cultivating the critical thinking and tactical skill required for pacing the rapid evolution of modern naval warfare. By effectively bridging theoretical knowledge with practical application through rigorous wargaming, it prepares naval and joint officers to navigate the complexities of high-end conflict against a peer competitor. 

Why Wargame?

Replicating real-world conflict, especially at the high end, is inherently challenging. Wargaming stands out as one of the most time-tested and effective methods for doing so, offering a realistic way for naval officers to practice their craft. It fosters critical thought and discussions about capabilities, limitations, theater geography, the strengths and weaknesses of allies and partners, and the dynamics of fighting peer competitors, making it the premier method for simulating warfare. In contrast, exercises conducted at sea or with other branches of the Joint Force, allies, or partners typically capture only limited aspects of high-end conflict within a carefully controlled environment. Warfare is inherently complex, involving the integration of multiple domains and intricate kill chains. At its core, warfare requires a deep understanding of technology and the creative application of that knowledge to defeat adversaries. Wargaming serves as an effective framework for exploring these complexities. Successful war planning, operational execution, and future systems acquisition should hinge on relevant combat information, accumulated operational experience, and the conclusions reached in series of wargames.

Wargaming facilitates essential discussions on assessing risks to both force and mission. When introduced in a joint and partnered environment, it helps dispel myths and inaccurate assumptions – inherently dangerous beliefs and variables when discovered “in contact.” Analysis of exam data from new students in the Halsey Program reveals that many officers lack sufficient knowledge of domain integration and have even less familiarity with competitor systems and capabilities.

Wargaming is unlike any other game. There are no simple rules for either side and no pre-defined outcomes. There seem to be three major areas in wargaming that I have observed after almost two years in the Halsey Program: the operational environment (the game board) which is driven by the strategic context of politics and a desire to contain conflict, the friendly and opposing forces (the game pieces), specifically what forces exist and how they move, and the third area is the rules of force interaction (combat assessment factors). The brilliance of the Halsey experience is that politics, policy, bureaucracy, and other factors are also discussed, but at the end of the day, the game’s outcomes are driven by what is technologically possible. The results can help inform policymakers, acquisition professionals, and naval commanders on what the art of the possible could and should be.

Many visitors to the Halsey spaces often ask whether the U.S. wins or loses. They are looking for a definite answer and a “recipe card” for success. Although winning or losing is complex based on which metrics and objectives each side is given, the true gold mine of insight in more than twenty years of Halsey wargaming is the set of identified factors that most strongly influence the prospects of red or blue victory in particular domains. These combat interactions between forces are the most complex because the net assessments between red and blue entities are often game-specific and dependent upon a personal point of view – realistic or optimistic. This is not to suggest that a wargame is wholly subjective, but rather it can be limited in effectiveness based on the limits of player knowledge and experience, as well as the control team’s ability to understand and adjudicate force interactions based on known and proven capabilities. A singular and biased viewpoint has the potential to impact the entire game, from the conduct of the game, to the adjudication of force interactions, and the outcomes reached.

The essence of a wargame lies in the assessment process itself. This process cannot occur in isolation or in small groups lacking transparency, especially when security classification limits collaboration. An inclusive discussion, conducted at the appropriate classification level, is essential for shaping game assumptions and determining outcomes. It is crucial to recognize that the fleet and joint force primarily operate at the Secret level. While some individuals may have access to higher classification programs and capabilities, a “black box mentality” should not dictate wargame results. This mentality can introduce significant uncertainty and unwarranted optimism, leaving players unable to assess the validity of the capabilities in question. In both wargames and real-world operations, players must prioritize managing uncertainty to enhance mission effectiveness while maintaining acceptable risk to force. Exquisite capabilities that are not integrated with more common tactics or are not adequately trained can be detrimental, providing a false sense of confidence that may ultimately cause more harm than good.

Often, military capabilities are viewed in a sterile, non-human way—as mere technologies tied to specific platforms delivering defined effects. This perspective fails to capture the reality of warfare, where human intuition and judgment, shaped by years of experience, drive tactical and operational decisions. Wargaming can illuminate the asymmetrical technological advantages of different sides, but it also offers crucial insight into the human element of decision-making, especially in complex, full-spectrum warfare. The experience should immerse players in mental, emotional, and psychological stress as they pursue their objectives and help them understand how this stress influences operational decision-making.

Many assume that peacetime rules and Command and Control (C2) structures will function effectively in future conflicts, yet skepticism persists, particularly regarding the Composite Warfare Commander (CWC) model. Originally designed to defend carrier strike groups and their air wings, the CWC has marginally evolved but remains the default structure for operations—prioritizing capital ship defense to hopefully enable offensive power projection. However, if the carrier and air wing are removed from the equation, what C2 structure best supports a transition to an offensive campaign at sea? A key objective of wargaming is to explore the relationship between technology and human decision-making and test alternatives. This skillset cannot be developed in just a few days, it requires weeks or months of dedicated study of adversarial capabilities, employment methods, and C2 processes to understand how best to counter capabilities or change our own. In essence, effective wargaming not only challenges our assumptions about military operations, but also cultivates the critical thinking and adaptability needed to navigate the complexities of future conflict.

The Essence of the Halsey Program

The Halsey program’s core values are an absolute allegiance to reality and a deep skepticism of both technological and operational capabilities – by all sides – that have not yet been proven in peer combat. These values align well with the lessons of history and how unproven capabilities introduce major uncertainty and risk when high-end combat finally takes place. Another core value of the program is developing deep expertise in capabilities of rivals. It is challenging to distill nearly two years of experience into a few pages, but the opportunity to spend dedicated time every day reading and learning about the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its components (Navy, Air Force, Rocket Force) has been professionally rewarding, and I believe beneficial as I turn my focus to returning to sea in command.

Unfortunately, I am in the three-percent club at the Naval War College. Less than three percent of the in-residence, non-international graduates each year can be involved with the Halsey programs, specifically the ability to wargame at the classified level. Unclassified wargames can achieve some of the critical thinking effects of a classified wargame, but are not sufficient to effectively assess real-world strategy and combat outcomes. It is perplexing that during a time of heightened tensions with the Chinese Communist Party, specifically regarding claims over Taiwan and the South China Sea, that almost 97 percent of my peers from the Naval War College can go through a year’s curriculum of Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) at the Navy’s premier strategic and operational center of excellence with only limited classified discussions, no requirement to conduct net assessments at the classified level, nor conduct any classified wargames.

The ongoing analysis and education in the Halsey program, facilitated by continuous wargames, have revealed several key trends. The trends are applicable at the operational level of war – meaning, the potential success of a tactical-level engagement is overshadowed by the effect at the operational level of a campaign. The reason these trends are significant is that unlike many other wargames, Halsey only games two years into the future. This prevents a series of “perfectly executed acquisition cycles” from impacting the game. The students go to war with the military we already have.

Two of the largest trends I have observed include the decreasing relevance of the aircraft carrier and tactical aircraft based within 2,000nm of the fight, as well as hardkill cruise and ballistic missile defenses. There was an inflection point that occurred somewhere around the mid-2010s that triggered the decreasing relevance of these U.S. capabilities and tactics based on advances in PLA missile technology.

However, the two largest trends I have observed for increasing relevance are penetrating ordnance rather than penetrating platforms, and passive missile defenses. In his July 2012 Proceedings article “Payloads Over Platforms: Charting A New Course,” then-CNO Admiral Greenert clearly articulated the necessity to shift our focus to payloads, specifically decoupling platform development from payload development.¹ That shift has yet to occur, and while our peer competitor continues to turn out one anti-ship weapon after another, we are still struggling to bring meaningful, offensive, anti-ship payloads into the fleet on a relevant timeline.

Wargaming Must Lead to a War Mindset

The primary expectation of a wargame is to produce quantifiable evidence of whether the employed technology effectively achieved desired outcomes. However, the most critical aspect is ensuring these results reach the appropriate levels to influence the fleet more broadly. Rarely if ever are the findings from the Global series of wargames communicated at the tactical level within the fleet, even as we strive for a “warfighting first” mentality.

As part of the Halsey program, we brief every Prospective Executive Officer (PXO), Commanding Officer (PCO), and Major Commander (MCO) course at the Surface Warfare Schools Command (SWSC) in Newport, Rhode Island. The consistent feedback from these classes is, “I wish someone in the fleet was sharing this information. Why aren’t we using it?” Despite challenging students to critique our analyses, not one has been able to find fault in over twenty-five briefings, supported by more than twenty years of continuous gaming and learning.

Merely encouraging a war-focused mindset with words alone is insufficient. For the average sailor or officer, “war” often translates to routine maintenance, administrative tasks, or unit-level certifications. We need to create opportunities for sailors to think critically about war and wargaming, fostering discussions that lead to meaningful training and education. While deploying units participate in the culminating month-long event known as COMPUTEX (Composite Unit Training Exercise), this is arguably the sole instance during a 36-month Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP) where they experience a challenging tactical environment at the high-end, combined arms level. Aside from that fraction of sailors who are about to deploy, many other shoreside sailors have little access to tools for practicing their high-end warfighting skills at the operational level of war.

If the Naval War College is truly the Navy’s premier center for strategic and operational excellence, its wargaming results must permeate all levels of fleet education. The fleet-wide curriculum across all training commands should be adaptable to incorporate continuous updates on tactics and technology from both U.S. forces and peer adversaries. Without this integration of knowledge and a mindset focused on preparing for war, the outputs of the Halsey program and the Naval War College risk becoming merely PowerPoint presentations of good ideas, wargaming outcomes, and recommendations to commanders. In a 1912 Proceedings article, “The Strategic Naval War Game or Chart Maneuver,” Captain W. McCarty Little writes, “In the game of war, the stake is life itself, nay, infinitely greater, it may be the life of the nation, certainly its honor. We are its champions: what sort of a figure shall we cut when, at the tournament, the trumpets sound the charge, and it is found that we have neglected to practice in the joust.”²

For me, returning to the fleet means applying my Halsey experience from day one, just as I did during my previous command tour. I view everything through a warfighting lens. On Hurricane, I encouraged my sailors to understand the significance of their daily actions from this perspective. When we faced degraded equipment, the focus was not just on repairs but on understanding the implications for warfighting capability. This empowered my crew to prioritize effectively and raise issues that did not align with our warfighting culture, enabling me to address concerns that might otherwise be seen as mere resource drains. Returning to sea, I will expect the wardroom and CPO mess to share this mindset as we prepare our ship and crew, highlighting the essential distinction between leadership and management – leading people versus managing equipment and process. This warfighting focus at the unit level is as crucial now as it was on December 7, 1941.

The Right Players on the Field

During the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, the Naval War College used a Halsey program-like approach to educate its line officers through continuous wargaming. This academic effort was coupled with fleet exercises to trigger changes to tactics and produce realistic war plans. Due to this structure and effort, nearly all the Navy’s flag officers graduated from the wargaming programs during the interwar period. It was essentially a requirement for flag rank. These programs provided a critical forum for testing and socializing warfighting concepts into naval officers over weeks or months, rather than the handful of days typical of current large-scale games.

Ultimately, the model used in the interwar years was successful because the players involved in the game respected reality and were willing to make significant changes in the face of changing technology and operational concepts. These wargames brought Navy leadership together around common frameworks for understanding fleet battles and theater campaigns, frameworks that proved integral to the Navy’s success in WWII. One of Admiral Nimitz’s most famous postwar quotes argued that the rigorous and repeated Naval War College wargaming had ensured “nothing that happened during the war was a surprise…except the kamikaze tactics.”³

Unfortunately, this model has long been abandoned by the Naval War College and the fleet, with classified wargaming now relegated to the fringes of naval education. In his January 2013 Proceedings article, Naval War College Professor Milan Vego wrote that, “The Navy’s readiness and ability to fight and win at sea depends on the quality and skills of its top commanders and their staffs—yet it does not send many promising officers to attend the resident program at Newport, Rhode Island’s, Naval War College. Today’s Navy officer corps’ knowledge and understanding of naval theory and military history is far from adequate.”⁴ The Halsey program is helping to turn the tide, but at a small and inadequate rate.

The ability to further scale the Halsey program is limited by the number and quality of the war college faculty and the ability to accurately assess complex game moves. The rudder needs to be put hard over as we prepare for high-end conflict against a peer competitor, potentially within this decade. The rapid advances in warfare represent a double-edged sword to be leveraged or victimized by. The knowledge and experience I have gained as a student in Halsey has been invaluable – and has set a course of continual learning that will endure when I depart Newport. Daily discussions with officers, faculty, and guest flag and general officers have enhanced my experience at the Naval War College beyond expectation. It is this experience that continues to drive my thirst for knowledge, understanding, and research. It drives me to share what I know with wardrooms, ready rooms, and everyone with whom I interact. In the spirit of CNO Admiral Franchetti’s “more players on the field,” the Navy also needs the right players on the field. The Halsey program prepares naval and joint officers to be the right players on the field for when it matters most.

Commander Anthony LaVopa graduated from the U.S. Naval War College in March 2024 as a Halsey Alfa Fellow. He commanded USS Hurricane (PC 3) and is the Prospective Executive Officer (P-XO) for USS Bulkeley (DDG 84).

The opinions expressed are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Navy or any other entity of the U.S. government.

References

1. Admiral Jonathan W. Greenert, “Payloads over Platforms: Charting a New Course,” Proceedings 138 (July 2012), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2012/july/payloads-over-platforms-charting-new-course.

2. W. McCarty Little, “The Strategic Naval War Game or Chart Maneuver,” Proceedings 38 (December 1912),

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1912/december-0/strategic-naval-war-game-or-chart-maneuver

3. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz speech to U.S. Naval War College, 10 October 1960, Folder 26, Box 31, RG15 Guest Lectures, 1894–1992, Naval Historical Collection, Naval War College, Newport RI; quoted in John M. Lillard, Playing War: Wargaming and U.S. Navy Preparations for WWII, PhD dissertation, George Mason University, 2013, 1.

4. Milan Vego, “Study War Much More,” Proceedings 139 (January 2013), https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2013/january/study-war-much-more.

Featured Image: PLA Navy Type-055 guided-missile destroyer Wuxi attached to a unit under the PLA Northern Theater Command steams to a designated sea area during a maritime training exercise. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Wang Zezhou)