The RAND Strategy Assessment System at the Naval Postgraduate School

Abstract

This report describes the RAND Strategy Assessment System (RSAS) installation at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) with emphasis on improvements made to the installation at NPS over the past year, and to the upgrades provided by RAND Corp. The section on Strategic Nuclear and Related Models has been expanded and updated. The RSAS attempts to combine the best features of political-military gaming and analytic modeling. The RSAS can be run in a near automatic mode with essentially two expert systems playing against each other or as an interactive game with human players. In between these extremes, the RSAS can be used as an analytic tool to support research and instruction. RAND has upgraded the naval models over the past year, but they are not yet completely developed to the satisfaction of Navy users. The Navy should continue to encourage development of maritime models and continued in-house expertise in the use of the system. When fully operational the RSAS will be a unique system that will aid Navy analysts and decision-makers who, for the first time, will have models that can represent every level and location of the political and military dimensions of warfare simultaneously. Keywords: Strategic warfare, War games