War Gaming on the Naval War College—Then and Now

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During the interwar interval, conflict gaming was the principal technique of training on the Naval War College. Each 12 months’s video games ended with a month-long “Big Game” which often simulated all or a part of the plan for the potential conflict in opposition to Japan (Orange). For instance, in 1927, introducing the scholars to that 12 months’s Big Game, the president of the conflict school advised them that what they enacted would form the remainder of their careers.

Gaming had two distinct features. One was academic, instructing college students who had specialised in a single or one other aspect of the fleet how the fleet as an entire match collectively to battle as a unified entity. Game situations had been suffused with plane on each side. As a consequence, officers who weren’t aviators turned conversant in what plane might do. The most well-known instance is Raymond Spruance, who specialised in cruiser operations. William F. Halsey, who entered the College as a destroyer specialist, left it looking for aviation coaching to turn into an efficient service power commander.

The different position was as a laboratory for the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. In the late Nineteen Twenties and the early Thirties, for instance, the War College suggested on the general traits of U.S. carriers and cruisers. Most spectacularly, its evaluator’s feedback on the result of the 1933 Big Game induced the Chief of Naval Operations to revise the plan for a Pacific conflict, to the one the navy very efficiently executed in 1943–45. Oddly, following this success the War College was downgraded from being a part of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations to being a part of the naval academic system, its views not sought on questions such because the character of latest warships. However, solely graduates of the gaming course of had been accepted into the War Plans Division, and the Division obtained reviews of the video games. In this sense the laboratory perform survived.

The present state of affairs is somewhat completely different. The War College is way nearer to a standard educational establishment, with departments and professors. In the interwar interval, the instructors had been typically latest graduates quickly hooked up to the College. Because they and the scholars had been all lively naval officers, and since the instructors didn’t typically far outrank the older college students, the standard educational distinctions in all probability mattered little or no. That is definitely not the case now. Students now usually perform lifelike workouts, equivalent to planning and budgeting, however the days of the Big Game are gone.

Gaming is definitely alive, and the College gaming facility is used as a laboratory. But it’s a laboratory for high-level analysis, by no means (it appears) a method of familiarizing college students with the details of future naval warfare. That is sensible. For a long time, graduates of the War College have needed to cope with a variety of points, lots of them diplomatic or administrative.

What could be wanted to show the College again into what it was within the Thirties, an establishment designed to organize the officers of the fleet for a looming conflict? What new expertise would suffuse conflict video games as aviation did within the Thirties? The apparent solutions could be area methods, command and management, unmanned automobiles, and cyber weapons. The particulars of the weapons, significantly cyber weapons, are justifiably very secret; cyber verges on black topics equivalent to decryption of enemy messages. But until officers not instantly concerned in such black arts can get a really feel for them, they might be unable to wield or beat off assaults using the brand new weapons. The penalties for ignorance might be very critical.

History gives some proof. The up to date Royal Naval College of the Thirties was a extra standard educational establishment whose college students heard lectures and wrote papers. They obtained a single lecture on the Fleet Air Arm. Their sole sport, which got here on the finish of the course, was a simulation of a part of the British conflict plan for the Far East.

The Royal Navy did conduct some efficient service operations, however its naval air report was not typically excellent.

We don’t need our personal report in a future conflict suffused with unmanned automobiles and cyber-attacks to be equally undistinguished. Having sensible cyber-commanders just isn’t sufficient. Fleet commanders need to know what these cyber-experts can accomplish that that they’ll successfully wield all of their weapons.

It might be that the officers in query are already receiving the mandatory education, however not on the Naval War College. The U.S. Navy at the moment has a way more in depth college system than it had within the Thirties. The perform of the Naval War College could also be fairly completely different than up to now. In that case the hope should be that the war-fighting college is offering the instruction related to the War College of the Thirties.

Dr. Norman Friedman is a strategist recognized for his potential to meld historic, technical, and strategic components in analyses of present issues. He spent over a decade at a outstanding assume tank, then a decade as a private guide to the Secretary of the Navy within the Office of Program Appraisal. Dr. Friedman served on a U.S. Navy examine of future floor combatant traits and afterward a panel reviewing U.S. Navy R&D on ship hull and equipment matters. He wrote below authorities contract a historical past of wargaming in the course of the interwar interval on the Naval War College. Dr. Friedman has printed over forty books, together with The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy within the Cold War, Seapower as Strategy, and Fighting the Great War at Sea. His most up-to-date e book is Cold War Anti-Submarine Warfare. In 2022, the Naval Historical Foundation awarded Dr. Friedman its Commodore Dudley W. Knox medal to acknowledge his contributions to naval historical past. He additionally obtained the Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Nautical Research. Dr. Friedman obtained his Ph.D. in physics from Columbia University.