Military Gaming to Keep Forward, But Not the Form You Assume

Over practically 40 years in uniform, I noticed battle shift from the massed battles we braced for within the Cold War, to pinpoint strikes on terrorists, and now to a battlefield dominated by autonomous machines, torrents of information, digital deception, long-range missiles, and unblinking surveillance. As rivals sharpen their edge and subject a technology raised on digital instruments, the U.S. navy ought to seize each benefit to remain forward in coaching — particularly one few anticipate: gaming.

The fashionable battlefield requires split-second decision-making, seamless coordination amongst distributed groups, the power to see with out being seen, and instruments able to rapidly processing huge quantities of data, all below excessive stress. As I’ve realized over the past 12 months, as an advisor to August Interactive, a gaming studio, these are precisely the talents that well-designed navy gaming packages can develop and refine.

Unlike conventional navy wargaming — which usually entails structured, turn-based workouts on maps or fashions to discover marketing campaign plans and strategic ideas — the gaming mentioned right here attracts closely on digital interactive platforms, together with modified industrial titles and purpose-built navy simulations. These environments — starting from real-time technique video games to tactical shooters, flight simulators, and cyber-themed video games — emphasize speedy steady decision-making, high-pressure coordination, and immersive ability growth. While each approaches purpose to sharpen judgment and put together leaders for advanced situations, this type of navy gaming leverages the pace, interactivity, and scale of contemporary gaming expertise to domesticate competencies which might be tough to duplicate in conventional wargaming codecs. And they’re additionally extra partaking and enjoyable, which is an effective factor.

The U.S. navy ought to formally embrace and spend money on superior digital gaming as a core coaching device, leveraging its capability to construct crucial cognitive, coordination, and technical expertise for contemporary warfare. Doing so will preserve America’s coaching edge towards rivals who’re already integrating gaming into their navy preparation.

Beyond Entertainment: Gaming as Tactical Training

Military gaming isn’t nearly troopers taking part in industrial video video games throughout their free time. It’s about using superior simulation applied sciences to create sensible coaching environments which might be too advanced or too costly to breed bodily. The Army’s Synthetic Training Environment  and CAE’s Naval Combat Systems Simulator for tactical coaching already display this idea, however the U.S. navy ought to proceed to set the worldwide commonplace for coaching excellence by aiming even increased, and navy gaming is the subsequent wanted evolution.

Consider the cognitive calls for of contemporary warfare. Units should defend themselves from detection and assault whereas additionally creating alternatives to launch deadly results. They should function in areas dominated by layered threats, together with digital jamming, drones, sensors, and missiles. They should achieve a call benefit by buying, processing, analyzing, and appearing on giant quantities of information quicker than their adversary. They should generate localized fight energy to beat the mass and momentum benefit of their enemies after which, simply as rapidly, disperse to scale back vulnerability. These situations will be practiced repeatedly and at better scale in digital environments, permitting leaders and troopers to refine expertise, techniques, and decision-making frameworks earlier than lives are on the road, making certain America retains its unmatched coaching benefit.

Getting Specific

Video video games can develop a number of expertise related to fashionable navy purposes, notably in contexts involving subtle adversaries like China and Russia. The U.S. navy has used modified industrial video games for coaching, and some branches actively recruit gamers for sure roles requiring these ability units. Some examples of video games that can be utilized to show crucial expertise embody:

Strategic and Tactical Thinking

Real-time technique video games (StarCraft II, Command & Conquer, the Total War sequence, Age of Empires, Civilization VI, Hearts of Iron IV, Europa Universalis) develop multi-level strategic considering, useful resource administration, and the power to adapt techniques rapidly. These expertise translate to operational planning and battlefield decision-making.

Situational Awareness and Multitasking

First-person shooters and tactical shooters (Warhammer, World of Warcraft, Rainbow Six Siege, the Arma sequence, Valorant, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Insurgency: Sandstorm) improve spatial consciousness, menace detection, the power to course of a number of data streams concurrently, and firm to squad degree techniques in addition to tactical communication and actions, all crucial for contemporary battlefield environments with advanced sensor networks.

Precision and Fine Motor Control

While there’s comprehensible debate about video games that characteristic first-person shooters, what gamers truly worth and develop from these video games goes past surface-level fight simulation. The actual expertise embody excessive precision below stress, split-second hand-eye coordination, micro-movements for accuracy, and the power to take care of regular efficiency throughout intense conditions. Games like Valorant and Rainbow Six Siege demand millimeter-precise aiming and timing. These high quality motor expertise and precision capabilities are useful for working subtle navy tools, from superior weapon programs to delicate technical devices.

Team Coordination and Communication

Multiplayer tactical video games (Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Squad, Insurgency, Valorant, Overwatch, League of Legends, Dota 2) develop clear communication protocols, management below stress, and coordinated group actions. These instantly apply to small unit techniques and joint operations.

Electronic Warfare and Cyber Skills

Games involving hacking mechanics or digital warfare parts (the Watch Dogs sequence, Cyberpunk 2077, the Deus Ex sequence, Hacknet, Uplink, Grey Hack, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon sequence) can introduce ideas related to data warfare — more and more essential given China and Russia’s emphasis on cyber and digital warfare capabilities.

Drone and Remote Operations

Flight simulators and video games involving unmanned programs (DCS World, Microsoft Flight Simulator, War Thunder, the Falcon BMS mod, IL-2 Sturmovik, Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen) can develop hand-eye coordination and spatial reasoning for working drones, that are central to fashionable navy operations.

Stress Management and Decision-Making

Competitive gaming environments (StarCraft II, Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Rocket League, combating video games like Street Fighter or Tekken) prepare speedy decision-making below stress and sustaining efficiency throughout high-stress conditions.

Pattern Recognition

Strategy video games and puzzle video games (Chess.com, Tetris, the Portal sequence, The Witness, StarCraft II, the Civilization sequence, Europa Universalis IV) improve sample recognition talents, helpful for intelligence evaluation and menace evaluation.

Attracting the Next Generation

Military gaming additionally addresses a crucial recruitment problem. Today’s potential recruits are digital natives who grew up with subtle interactive leisure. They anticipate expertise to be intuitive, partaking, and responsive. By incorporating gaming parts into coaching and operations, the Defense Department ought to display to recruits that the U.S. navy continues to guide in innovation, creativeness, and demanding considering — values that guarantee it stays the world’s most superior combating drive. The Army’s current success with esports teams and gaming-focused recruitment campaigns exhibits that this strategy is efficient. When younger Americans see the navy partaking with the applied sciences they use and perceive, they’re extra prone to view navy service as a possible profession possibility.

Building Critical Skills

The most compelling case for navy gaming lies not in its expertise, however within the distinctive competencies it develops — expertise that conventional coaching strategies, regardless of their continued significance, wrestle to duplicate at scale and below sensible situations.

Distributed Teamwork Across Distances

Modern navy operations more and more require seamless coordination between items separated by continents, not miles. I’ve witnessed firsthand how difficult it may be to take care of unit cohesion when your groups are scattered throughout a number of time zones, speaking by encrypted channels, and executing advanced missions with out ever assembly face-to-face. Gaming environments naturally train this type of distant collaboration, forcing individuals to speak clearly, share crucial data effectively, and execute intricate plans with teammates they might by no means see.

Rapid Adaptation

The handiest navy gaming situations don’t comply with predictable scripts. Rather, they continuously introduce new variables, sudden problems, and evolving threats. This mirrors the fact of contemporary warfare, the place enemies adapt their techniques each day and expertise shifts the battlefield quicker than doctrine can hold tempo. Through repeated publicity to dynamic situations, troopers develop the psychological agility to pivot rapidly when their preliminary plans meet sudden resistance.

Systems Thinking

Today’s conflicts aren’t received or misplaced by particular person heroics, however by understanding how technological, logistical, and human programs interconnect and affect one another. A single resolution on the tactical degree can cascade by intelligence networks, provide chains, and diplomatic channels. Well-designed gaming situations assist troopers visualize these connections and perceive how their actions ripple by advanced operational environments — a perspective that’s tough to develop by conventional subject workouts alone.

Stress Inoculation for High-pressure Performance

While no simulation can completely replicate the stress of precise fight, aggressive gaming environments can generate real stress that impacts decision-making and efficiency. The key’s creating situations the place failure has significant penalties throughout the coaching context, educating troopers to take care of their effectiveness when adrenaline is excessive and time is brief. This isn’t about changing fight expertise. Rather, it’s about constructing the foundational resilience that helps troopers carry out when it issues most.

Learning from Adversaries

China and Russia aren’t dabbling. They are normalizing digital, game-like coaching at scale.

In February 2023, PLA Daily (please be aware I can’t responsibly hyperlink to those Chinese on-line sources as a result of they will not be protected web sites to go to in regular browsers) explicitly urged items to “upgrade existing video games and wargaming systems” and use clever simulation for human-machine confrontation coaching, highlighting virtual-real interplay and closed‑loop suggestions — precisely the mechanics that fashionable digital video games ship.

Another PLA Daily characteristic in April 2023 described a digital actuality tactical assault taking pictures simulator and a “metaverse + game” coaching setting for small‑unit communication, motion, and resolution‑making. Chinese navy items report fielding VR and simulation labs at scale. Reports element digital actuality parachute coaching for jumpers (2022), multi‑expertise simulation platforms to speed up ability technology (2022), and in April 2025 a People’s Liberation Army brigade constructed at the very least 10 simulation rooms utilizing digital actuality to shorten coaching cycles throughout artillery, air protection, and reconnaissance specialties. The U.S. Defense Department has noted the Chinese navy’s emphasis on extra rigorous, sensible coaching, together with simulated strikes — an indication of routine reliance on artificial, recreation‑like environments to rehearse towards U.S.‑related targets.

Russia is transferring alongside an identical path, with official navy colleges codifying PC‑based mostly simulator coaching for drone and anti-drone operators. The builders of one other Russian online game, Squad 22: ZOV, claim it’s endorsed by the Russian navy for coaching.

The lesson is simple: America’s rivals are mixing industrial‑type recreation tech, digital actuality, and goal‑constructed simulators into on a regular basis drive preparation, from small‑unit shooters and man-machine “blue force” confrontations to standardized PC‑simulator time for drone operators.

The Path Forward

For those that need the United States to maintain its coaching edge, it’s time to deal with this not as a curiosity, however as core tradecraft — and useful resource it accordingly. To maintain America’s position because the world chief in navy coaching and be sure that management extends into the subsequent technology of warfare, listed below are three issues U.S. protection leaders can do:

First, the Pentagon ought to dedicate funding and assist for navy gaming analysis and growth. This entails forming partnerships with main expertise firms and universities to develop coaching programs that make the most of the newest advances in synthetic intelligence, digital actuality, and cloud computing.

Second, the Defense Department ought to develop standardized metrics to guage the effectiveness of gaming. Just because the division and providers assess conventional coaching strategies, they want rigorous analysis instruments to make sure gaming packages meet their supposed objectives.

Third, it’s time for a cultural shift. Senior civilian and uniformed leaders ought to brazenly and repeatedly endorse gaming as a sound coaching device, not a distraction from “real” navy expertise. This entails educating leaders about gaming’s potential and clearly speaking its position in bigger coaching efforts.

The Bottom Line

I visited the gaming middle at West Point final spring. I used to be impressed with the setup and technological capabilities, however I used to be much more impressed by the insights shared with me by combat-experienced officers and non-commissioned officers overseeing this system. The optimistic impression on cadet management growth was outstanding: improved communication expertise, faster decision-making, and quicker adaptability to alter. Notably, many intercollegiate athletes there are concerned in navy gaming.

Gaming isn’t about changing conventional navy coaching. It’s about enhancing it. Physical health, marksmanship, tactical execution, and self-discipline stay basic to navy effectiveness and lethality. But in an period when warfare more and more entails human-machine teaming, data warfare, and sophisticated multi-domain operations, the U.S. navy wants coaching instruments that put together troopers for these realities.

Every navy innovation is met with resistance from those that want conventional strategies. However, historical past demonstrates that nation’s main in coaching innovation persistently dominate future battlefields. The U.S. navy has at all times been that chief — and by embracing gaming, America can guarantee it stays on the forefront of navy readiness and operational excellence.

Gen. (ret) Joseph L. Votel is the previous commanding common of U.S. Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command. He is a senior advisor to August Interactive, a video games and immersive experiences studio. None of the video games talked about on this article have been produced by August Interactive.

Image: Senior Airman Kristine M. Gruwell through Little Rock Air Force Base