War-Gaming Network-Centric Warfare Robert C

Naval War College Review Volume 54 Article 7 Number 2 Spring 2001 War-Gaming Network-centric Warfare Robert C. Rubel U.S. Navy Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation Rubel, Robert C. (2001) "War-Gaming Network-centric Warfare," Naval War College Review: Vol. 54 : No. 2 , Article 7. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol54/iss2/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Rubel: War-Gaming Network-centric Warfare WAR-GAMING NETWORK-CENTRIC WARFARE Captain Robert C. Rubel, U.S. Navy he familiar techniques of war gaming will be insufficient for scenarios in- Tvolving network-centric warfare. NCW, as it is known—with its focus on speed, downstream effects, and information flow—will require of gamers more than simply additional computational power or communications bandwidth, although these will certainly be needed. Gamers will need a new framework in which to apply these tools. In 1886, Lieutenant William McCarty Little introduced war gaming to the Naval War College. The concept found immediate acceptance; faculty and stu- dents recognized that the war game was well suited to analyzing the characteris- tics of naval warfare of the time. Gaming has since been applied to all manner of warfare, in a variety of ways. As warfare has become more sophisticated, multidimensional, and joint, the challenges of gam- Captain Rubel is a naval aviator who flew A-7s and F/A-18s from 1973 to 1991. He made seven carrier de- ing it have increased. Even the application of com- ployments and participated in operations in support of puter technology has not been effective for all U.S. policy in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1974 Cyprus purposes, especially in games that involve large forces. crisis, the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis, the TWA Flight 847 crisis, and DESERT SHIELD. He commanded Fighter Attack We are now facing, in network-centric warfare, a new Squadron (VFA) 131 and served as the inspector general form of conflict that will challenge gamers even more of U.S. Southern Command. He attended the Spanish severely. In this article we will attempt to develop a Naval War College and the U.S. Naval War College, where he also served on the faculty. He has a bachelor of framework to help us identify techniques necessary science degree in psychology from the University of Illi- for gaming network-centric warfare.1 nois, a master of science in management from Salve Re- A characteristic of warfare that has made it gina University in Newport, Rhode Island, and a master of arts in national security and strategic studies from the amenable in the past to simulation through gaming is U.S. Naval War College. He is currently the deputy dean its inherently structured nature. Troops operate in of the College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies. formations; so do ships and aircraft. Groupings of Naval War College Review, Spring 2001, Vol. LIV, No. 2 units or formations generally operate according to Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2001 1 Naval War College Review, Vol. 54 [2001], No. 2, Art. 7 62 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW doctrine, in some specified relationship to one another. As a result, war-game designers have been able to govern and model the movements of forces and to project the results of combat with the enemy by relatively simple rules. A scenario that confines itself solely to surface ships, ground forces, or aircraft gener- ates possible interactions and outcomes that are few enough in number for a “playable” game—one with rules sufficiently simple to allow it to be played in a reasonable period of time and at acceptable effort and expense. However, as the numbers and types of playing “pieces” grow and the flexibility of their employ- ment doctrine increases, the difficulties of gaming by sets of rules swell almost exponentially. Today, despite the impressive increases in computing power, operational-level games involving the full range of forces (which includes space assets), even in traditional hierarchical command arrangements, must generally be controlled and adjudicated not by rules or algorithms but by the professional judgment of human umpires.2 The current state of affairs in war gaming, then, is not totally satisfactory. Still, it is possible to design and execute games that have a reasonable degree of validity. By validity we mean a correspondence with reality sufficient to allow useful insights to be drawn from the game’s results. Validity is achieved through careful design of the scenario and control techniques, and recruitment of players and umpires with appropriate credentials. Of course, computer models are criti- cal, but they are usually employed “off-line”—that is, specialized models are used to support the judgment of the human umpires who ultimately decide the aggregated outcomes of complex and extensive engagements. A BASIC GAMING FRAMEWORK War gaming can be classified in many different ways. One common distinction is between educational (or training) games and research games. In educational games, the objective is to acquaint players with warfare situations and exercise their decision-making skills. Designers of educational games may stretch the bounds of probability somewhat in scenarios, as may control cells in move- outcome assessments, in order to ensure that players are confronted with the decision-making situations desired by the game’s sponsor—the command or entity (not necessarily the war-gaming center where it is conducted) that created the game requirement and set its objectives. Research games, in contrast, are de- signed to generate insights into military problems; designers and controllers attempt to inject as much realism as possible, given the inherent limitations of the medium. Network-centric warfare would be gamed primarily for research purposes; however, of course, research games frequently have instructional value, and the proposals advanced here would apply to educational and training games as well. https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol54/iss2/7 2 Rubel: War-Gaming Network-centric Warfare RUBEL 63 War games are also classified by the way they deal with time. Some proceed in stages, known as “moves.” In each of these steps, players (or groups of players) privately assess a situation as they perceive it—on the basis of “intelligence”pro- vided by the control cell, and within the scenario framework—and then report to the controllers their intentions Until a tactical network of units, each of (force movements, dispositions, them exercising a great degree of autonomy, and fighting orders) for the next can be simulated, it will be impossible to game specified period of time. The con- network-centric war adequately. trol cell’s umpires, receiving in- puts from all player cells, analyze their interactions to identify likely combat engagements and assess their outcomes. Generally, moves cover short periods of time for tactical-level games and much longer increments for operational and strategic-level ones. In contrast to such stepwise exercises are operational games, which involve “moving game clocks”and present players with continuously changing situations to which they must respond. The “clocks” in such games, which are almost always computer based, typically run at four or six times normal speed. Operational games tend to be limited to the tactical level, due to the necessarily limited spans of time they can accommodate. Network-centric games virtually demand moving game clocks because of the criticality of time dynamics. In other words, one of the primary benefits of NCW is that the side employing it can generate rates of change that are unman- ageable for the other side’s command and control system. Because of this, a timestep-move convention would be unsuitable. A moving game clock would be sufficient for tactical-level play. However, analysts believe that NCW will produce an intermixing, or compression, of the levels of war.3 If so, it will be necessary to accommodate both short and long-term phenomena in NCW-based war games. One possibility would be composite operational and move-step games, in which “time” advances at different speeds in various portions of the game. To meet tactical-level objectives, designers would set aside periods in which players would operate against a moving game clock, alternating with move-step phases embracing much longer increments of game time. At the start of each successive operational-play session, umpires would assess the war’s progress to that point and produce a new situation for players to confront. There are probably other ways of dealing with the problem of time in network-centric games, but it is clear that traditional methods will not suffice. In order to explore fully the needs of network-centric war gaming, however, we must go beyond traditional classification methods. The underlying structure of war games suggests a set of categories that illuminate the way in which NCW relates to traditional gaming. All war games, whether they involve fighting sail Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2001 3 Naval War College Review, Vol. 54 [2001], No. 2, Art. 7 64 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW or network-centric fleets, soldiers, and satellites, share a certain hierarchical organization. We will refer to the levels of this structure as “dimensions” (figure 1), in order to avoid confusion with the “levels of war”—tactical, operational, and strategic—which themselves form a different gaming framework.

Load more