Wolfhag | 05 Oct 2018 1:43 a.m. PST |
War gaming has become more popular as the Department of Defense struggles to anticipate what future conflicts might look like. A little judicious war gaming now just might stop bad strategies or bad procurements before they cause disastrous consequences down the road. War gaming comes in all flavors, from simulating the actions of individual soldiers to designing battle plans for entire armies and fleets. But the hardest war gaming of all is strategic gaming. To model the behavior of an entire nation, with its complex interplay of political, economic and social factors, is a daunting task. That's why DARPA's Foundations for Strategic Mechanism Design wants to see whether it's possible to devise a better high-level wargame that will prevent the U.S. from being surprised by the actions of an adversary, or enable the U.S. to surprise an opponent with its own actions. However, the game that DARPA envisions is the opposite of the usual Pentagon simulation: while most military war gaming aims to determine how a given plan might work out if implemented, DARPA wants a game with a predetermined outcome. The game is there to tell the military how to achieve it. link Wolfhag |
Cacique Caribe | 05 Oct 2018 2:16 a.m. PST |
Hmm. Let me get this straight. They want today's Academia to help DARPA make the US stronger? If they do help, but if their motivation to cooperate is all about the money and not for love of country … chances are they'll also take other offers later, to sell the information to outside parties. They won't be doing it to get fame either, as the information will need to be confidential. Interesting nonetheless. Dan |
David Manley | 05 Oct 2018 4:29 a.m. PST |
Academia has been working with DARPA, DOD and comparable organisations for decades, universities and other academic organisations often work at "interesting" levels of classification. A significant proportion is the US'cutting edge technology comes from programmes like this. Nothing unusual here. |
Wolfhag | 05 Oct 2018 4:53 a.m. PST |
Here is another one. This is the CIA's private non-profit venture capital arm: iqt.org/about-iqt/history By following them for a number of years and submitting some proposals to them (all turned down) I can tell the direction they are heading in by the types of companies they fund. Wolfhag |
Thresher01 | 06 Oct 2018 7:55 p.m. PST |
Games with predetermined outcomes are a waste of time and money, in my opinion. Kind of like the naval wargames they play, where carriers can't be sunk, and when they do, or almost do, those commanding the carriers howl in protest. |
Wolfhag | 07 Oct 2018 1:47 a.m. PST |
Thresher, I've talked to DoD contractors that designed those games where carriers cannot be sunk. They were told by the Navy to model it that way because if Congress realized their carriers could get sunk they may stop funding them. I guess it's the same reason Van Ryper was kicked off the Millenium 2002 simulation team. Link: link Wolfhag |
Uparmored | 07 Oct 2018 11:14 p.m. PST |
Would the pre-determined outcome be that the US wins? If so that's not bad. You just have to find the parameters that make that happen. I don't think a predermined outcome in the design stage is bad, just a pretermined outcome in the implementation and actual simulation stage. |
McLaddie | 08 Oct 2018 11:40 a.m. PST |
I don't think a predermined outcome in the design stage is bad, just a pretermined outcome in the implementation and actual simulation stage. It all depends on what the simulation is designed to do. 1. If the simulation is meant to test different systems and operational parameters within a process, a predetermined outcome can be useful. 2. If the purpose of the design is to test the effectiveness of systems or tactics in combat situations, or learn new information about the combat process and options, then pre-determined outcomes really are counter-productive. 3. If the purpose of the wargame is to assuage concerns about vulnerable ships or keep members of the political groups in the military or government happy, then pre-determined outcomes are the entire point of the exercises. The third purpose is what often submarines the second purpose because the third purpose is often either covert or unspoken and a response to unwelcome outcomes of any learning experience in the second purpose. |
Andy ONeill | 09 Oct 2018 1:32 a.m. PST |
I don't follow why you'd not define victory conditions and attempt to achieve them. Maybe that's what is meant though. |
Uparmored | 09 Oct 2018 3:30 a.m. PST |
Interesting posts Mc Laddie and Andy ONeill |
McLaddie | 09 Oct 2018 8:17 a.m. PST |
You see this conflict or confusion between the three purposes in the huge Millenium 2002 simulation. It was meant to test systems operating together on a large scale. But it was also meant to test the effectiveness of operational tactics. That is the task set Ryder's red team. And of course, on something costing nearly a billion dollars to run, it had to justify the costs so the US had to win any engagements. The complaints about Ryder was that he was screwing up the testing of systems #1, when He had been obviously tasked with #2 and specifically chosen for that task…he was seen as a radical,'thinking out of the box' kind of soldier. The real shame was that the whole simulation had three goals which were not either fire-walled or well managed. Because of that, #1 and #3 purposes were tainted and #2 purposes was an embarrassment. |
Wolfhag | 10 Oct 2018 8:44 a.m. PST |
McLaddie, Do you think that Van Ryper had anything worthwhile to contribute? Did his decisions predict anything that actually happened? Wolfhag |
McLaddie | 10 Oct 2018 3:43 p.m. PST |
Wolfhag: I have no idea. That would--would have been a conclusion for the boots on the ground…so to speak. What I see is enough confusion over what the leaders of Mil 2002 really wanted from the exercise that most any result or conclusions were going to leave questions. |