Unlocking the Potential of War Games: A Look Beyond the Black Box

Abstract

War games are currently enjoying a revival of interest and popularity within the American defense community. Strategists, analysts, and policy-makers alike are turning more and more to gaming as a medium for education, planning and discovery. This paper examines war gaming as a tool for strategic planning and offers a perspective different (yet complementary) to that of operations research: the war game is viewed as a source of synthetic history, to be studied and interpreted by historical-type methods. Keywords: War games, Strategy, Strategic planning, U.S. Defense policy.