War Gaming as a Technique in the Study of Operational Research Problems

Abstract

The last 10 years have seen an immense amount of effort, both here and abroad, concentrated on the development of war games that can be used for the study of many of the important problems that arise in military operational research. The first part of this paper describes in general terms the background to such operational problems, their difficulties and complexities, and explains why war gaming is regarded as a particularly appropriate technique in their examination. On this basis, the fundamental conceptual development of a war game representing a land battle is described, and is illustrated by reference to the Army Operational Research Establishment (AORE) War Game. Practical experience with this and other hand-played games allows some of the advantages and disadvantages of this type of war game to be enumerated, and leads naturally to a discussion of computer-assisted games, and of the relationship between games and analytical models of combat. It is concluded that each of these approaches has its own particular advantages, and that it will usually be appropriate to use combinations of them in the study of major problems.