Help support TMP


"Marine Corps targeting completion of wargaming center" Topic


9 Posts

All members in good standing are free to post here. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the posters, and have not been cleared with nor are they endorsed by The Miniatures Page.

Please do not post offers to buy and sell on the main forum.

For more information, see the TMP FAQ.


Back to the Ultramodern Gaming (2014-present) Message Board


Areas of Interest

Modern

Featured Hobby News Article


Featured Link


Top-Rated Ruleset

Tractics


Rating: gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star gold star 


Featured Showcase Article

1:300 Scale US Modern Tanks & Mortar Carriers

Twenty-five years? It seems like just yesterday to

Personal logo Editor in Chief Bill The Editor of TMP Fezian...


Featured Profile Article

Swimming With Warlords #1: Chagatai Ridge

Scenario ideas from Afghanistan in 2002.


Featured Book Review


959 hits since 9 Jul 2021
©1994-2024 Bill Armintrout
Comments or corrections?

Wolfhag09 Jul 2021 9:31 a.m. PST

for summer of 2023.

link

To accommodate wargames that will incorporate a range of future battlefield scenarios, the facility will include new modeling and simulation, visualization, immersive and analytical tools, according to a news release. The facility was first envisioned by then-Commandant Robert Neller in 2017 to help the corps' "ability to make analytically-informed decisions" about its weapons and capabilities.

Wolfhag

Bismarck10 Jul 2021 11:22 a.m. PST

Thanks Wolf!
Could only access the title in the link yesterday, so I just
read it today. Look forward to hearing more as completion
nears. Unless it is classified, some photos as well. Be
interesting to see how their minis and tables compare with
some of the masterpieces shown here on TMP.

OT, how are you coming with the move?

Semper Fi!

Sam

79thPA Supporting Member of TMP10 Jul 2021 2:17 p.m. PST

Will they use miniatures?

Wolfhag10 Jul 2021 8:26 p.m. PST

Sam,
Looks as if the house sale is closing. I should be in TN by the end of Sept.

In the Spring of 1973 I was at the MCDEC in Quantico as an aid for a wargame exercise the Marines were running. It was a high-level logistical exercise for the 1st and 3rd Marines to invade NVN. It was an old building with no intercom. They didn't have any real dedicated gaming facilities. For comms they had field phones run throughout the building with the wires duct-taped to the walls and ceilings. In a big conference hall dozens of wires from the field phones from around the building came down from the ceiling for the HQ and higher rank guys were operating. The exercise culminated with an amphim landing (of course) using the adjoining basketball court. The different LZ's and assembly areas off the coast were taped off in different colors and they used wooden ships and amtracs. All of the players were in the bleachers. I was mostly running intel reports and messages from other "players" throughout the building. I wasn't in on the details of how it played out but it was very interesting.

While I was there I was working for a Major Joe Hoar (eventual CENTCOM Commander after Army Gen. Schwartzkoph) was an instructor at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. I guess he liked me enough to recommend me to the Naval Academy Prep School at Bainbridge. Unfortunately, before it went through my clearance was good and I got transferred to Marine Barracks NSA at Ft. Meade. I also had a tryout for the Marine Rifle Team too as I knew the Team Captain, WO David Boyd. I shot against the Marine team when I was in high school in Florida and was high shooter (M-14) in Boot Camp at PI. That got shot down too. I was really bummed out – this was not what I had in mind when I joined.

In Oct 1973 after the Yom Kipper War, 2/8 was reforming to go on a Med Cruise and needed 03XX's. Fortunately, I had been enough of a pain in the ass (off-duty activities) they were glad to get rid of me. That's how I ended up at Geiger and got overseas.

Is your daughter still in? See you soon.

Will they use miniatures? Maybe. My experience in attending these high-level events like Connections they are mostly focused on theater-level exercises.

Wolfhag

Bismarck11 Jul 2021 5:39 a.m. PST

Wolf, I do not have a daughter! You could be thinking about
another one of us old Jarheads. Sounds a far cry from the
tabletop gaming we do! I know West Point has a large gaming
community and an actual club. Prior to the pandemic they
even had an annual con. I am not certain, but I do think
they use tabletop for some classroom training.
With your prior shooting experience and rifle scores, it's a
shame you didn't make the rifle team. Had to be a huge disappointment.
Good luck with the closing and pending move.

Sam

Wolfhag11 Jul 2021 8:12 a.m. PST

Sam,
Oops, must have been some other jarhead's daughter. IIRC one of you guys has a daughter that is a LAV driver.

I did get my son started shooting when he was 5. When he was in high school he made the local Junior AR-15 team that went on to win a National Championship at Camp Perry. He was then beating in in M1 Garand CMP Matches. On his last day before he went to SD for Boot Camp, we were shooting in a match with my M1 at 600 yards.

It paid off. He said one day he was on a rooftop in Yemen (1st Radio Battalion) and they called for a sniper for a target that was too far away but they could not get him there in time. So using his standard M4 with an ACOG sight he estimated the range to be 750 yards, gave him some lead as he was walking 90 degrees, and squeezed off the round. The round hit in the armpit, an almost perfect, but he admitted an absolutely lucky shot.

I have heard about the gaming at West Point. When I was at Quantico I was also part of the "Aggressor" unit that played tactical war games (field not minis) at the Basic School in Camp Barret against the new 2nd LT's. That's also where the MTU and FBI Academy are located. Sometime early next year I'm going there with my son to demo our game. I got a satellite image of their Combat Town that they can practice their tactics. We'll probably be using 15mm figures.

My game system is based on an individual or group OODA Loop which makes the game "Time Competitive" which is the concept the Marine Warfighting guys are pushing. Link: link

In general, whoever can make and implement decisions consistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive advantage. Decisionmaking in execution thus becomes a time-competitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes essential to generating tempo.

Boyds OODA Loop and the Infantry Company: link

My son is now in VA and will be accompanying me, he's been playing war games since he was 10 and helped develop the game. He has the squad-level tactical combat experience and room clearing that can relate to young LT's better than an old fart like me from the last millennium. Uwe Eickert from Academy Games has been there a number of times.

Maybe I'll get a tour of the new facility when it opens.

Wolfhag

Striker11 Jul 2021 10:10 a.m. PST

I'm curious if they are actually going to try and win as the aggressor or just act as an echo chamber. The navy seems to like to just validate what they are already thinking Based on the changes to USMC organization it sounds like they are just re-affirming what they want to do.

Wolfhag11 Jul 2021 12:01 p.m. PST

Striker,
Very astute. At that level, it's politics and justification for funding. I'd imagine the first thing the new center would work on would be confirming the Marines' new sea interdiction strategy. Hopefully, retired General Zinni shows up to throw the games into chaos.

It will be interesting to see if the Marines create their own homegrown systems or sub-contract to a major DoD contractor.

A couple of years ago I was at the Connections Conference at Carlisle, PA. They had a presenter from the Naval War College that I listened to. When he was taking questions I inquired if the US Navy is still not accepting simulations that allow their carriers to be sunk. I got a dirty look, a non-sequitur answer and he was on to the next question.

Wolfhag

Personal logo etotheipi Sponsoring Member of TMP12 Jul 2021 6:34 p.m. PST

When he was taking questions I inquired if the US Navy is still not accepting simulations that allow their carriers to be sunk.

If you want the answer, it's pretty simple – You don't understand what happened in MC2002.

Von Riper used weapons that were in the system, but not validated for use against aircraft carriers. The interactions that sunk the carriers were based on random numbers in the lethality tables.

If you actually look at the combat interaction in detail, those types of OTS weapon would not damage, let alone sink an aircraft carrier.

Why weren't they validated? Simple. They weren't supposed to be used like that. There are on the order of 10K weapon types and 10K unit types in that type of exercise. That's over 100,000,000 interactions to validate. Over 95% aren't in the scenario to be used.

Should the DoD spend the money to validate 9mm pistol fire against an aircraft carrier hull? Also .45 ammo? And so on … And against a concrete building? A brick building?

If you want them to validate every possible interaction among every possible entity, you think they have way more money than they do.

On the tabletop, you have probably seen some huge (bloated) rulesets, but nothing that approaches evaluating every possible interaction case. And you probably wouldn't want to play it.

Now, why wasn't that an option? Because the actual commander of the forces in the exercise – not the retired contractor consultant – had determined that the best value would be a denied C2 exercise for over the horizon support, not a kinetic engagement at sea.

If you pay me $50 USD for a set of WWII Eastern Front division level combat rules, how happy are you to open them and find a set of swashbuckling adventure individual swordfight rules?

How happy are you that your government wasted the money on about three days of that exercise on an invalid result for something they weren't supposed to do.

As a Marine, von Riper should have acknowledged that while he disagreed with the commanders' objectives for the exercise, it wasn't his call to change them. As a wargaming consultant, he should have realized that any outcome that wasn't in the system was worthless.

If he had actual integrity he would have said, "I cannot in good conscience support this exercise because I disagree with the declared focus." and withdrawn. Instead, he took the paycheck.

And he knew the approved objectives many months before the exercise. He should have known (I don't know if he did) that you can't just whip that type of event to a different focus like that at the last minute.

BTW, I actually professionally agree with the validity of many his arguments about what were important focuses for analysis. I was a warfighter and am now a cyber SME. I am greatly attuned to the concept of "Death Star Syndrome" with respect to advanced technology. I would have professionally preferred to see those objectives either (1) integrated into MC2002 (at the expense of something less important; zero sum game, you know) or (2) added on to other series of wargames later. Fat chance of that, after what happened.

So, are you really upset about the Navy rejecting an invalid analytical result?

Sorry - only verified members can post on the forums.