A Task Analysis of U.S. Army War-Gaming: Implications for Assessing the Performance of Combined Arms Task Force Battle Staffs

Abstract

To inform ongoing efforts to assess war-gaming performance, we sought to identify, develop, and validate techniques for assessing the war-gaming effectiveness of U.S. Army National Guard officers in training. Through extensive literature review, consultation with subject matter experts, and observation, we have achieved a more in-depth understanding of the war-gaming process than has previously been accomplished. We have identified what individual and team competencies should be targeted to assess student war-gaming and to diagnose performance deficits in a variety of instructional settings. We have developed assessments to capture a subset of these competencies and have administered these assessments to National Guard officers enrolled in the distance-learning version of the Armor Captains' Career Course, taught through the U.S. Army Armor School. Qualitative analysis of the data collected tentatively suggests that our assessments are valid and that the competencies we measured may be those used to make intuitive, expert judgments of student performance.