At the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, the simulation of warfare— that is, war gaming—has been studied and practiced for over three-quarters of a century. Since its beginnings, it has been employed for the same reason that it is used today, to provide officers with an insight into current and future naval warfare.
War gaming was not a new technique when it was introduced into the War College, although at that time it had not been employed very long or very extensively for the simulation of naval warfare.
The modern war game was invented in 1824 by Lieutenant von Reisswitz of the Prussian Guard Artillery and, by the time of our Civil War, it was in general use throughout the Prussian Army. Following the Seven Weeks War and the Franco-Prussian War, the “War Game of Prussia” was introduced into other armies, initially as an off-duty and voluntary activity. Shortly afterwards, the game was adapted to naval operations.
The first naval war game appears to have been invented about 1878 by Captain Philip H. Colomb of the British Navy. One of his superiors observed that the game provided “certain rules which were of great service, and also afforded some general information as to the tactics of a gun and torpedo action between a couple of ships.”
During the latter part of 1887, William McCarty Little, a retired naval lieutenant, delivered a series of six lectures that introduced war gaming to the staff and students of the Naval War College. In those lectures, he covered the spectrum of 19th century gaming, and he illustrated its educational and analytical applications to naval warfare. Some years later, Admiral Stephen B. Luce, U. S. Navy, wrote that the naval war game was Little’s special contribution to the work of the College, and that it was he who perceived and demonstrated all its possibilities.
The inclusion of Little’s lectures in the college curriculum represented the first official recognition of war gaming in this country, and very likely its first official recognition by any navy. The scheduling of such a series at a time when the majority of naval officers had little patience with theoretical pursuits, and when the very existence of the College itself was in doubt, required an unusual amount of courage and foresight on the part of the then relatively unknown President of the College, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, U. S. Navy.
During the period from 1887 to 1893, members of the staff conducted occasional games and, in 1892, there was limited student participation on a voluntary basis. Throughout this interval, Little continued his studies of war gaming, and he also translated into English a description of “The Italian Naval Game,” a game devised by a lieutenant in the Italian Navy to “form a useful and voluntary occupation.” In 1894, during the presidency of Commander Harry C. Taylor, U. S. Navy, war games were scheduled for the students, and, from that year on, games have been included in every curriculum.
In 1885 and 1886, Little worked in an unofficial capacity, and then in 1887, he was assigned to the staff. Except for one short period, he remained at the College until his death in 1915. Congress, by a special act, appointed him to the rank of captain in 1903.
Throughout his long distinguished War College career, Captain Little was concerned with war gaming. His knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm made possible the orderly development of gaming at the College; his continuous service and prestige insured such a development. He seems to have been the world’s first professional war gamer.
For convenience, the history of Naval War College gaming may be divided into five periods. The first period, already briefly described, was short, from 1887 to 1893. The second period ended about 1921, having featured the use of the war game as an analytical tool for devising and testing plans and doctrines. The next time frame encompassed the years from 1922 to approximately 1951; this period was characterized by the use of detailed rules, particularly those dealing with damage assessment. The fourth period, from 1952 to 1957, featured the use of faster and freer gaming techniques, and a shift in the scope and level of College games. The fifth period extends from 1958 to the present. This period has been marked by the utilization of the Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator, and the establishment of the War Gaming Department.
Early in the second period, war gaming was referred to as the “laboratory method,” and the College defined a war game as “an exercise in the art of war, either land or sea, worked out upon maps or tables with apparatus designed and constructed to simulate, as nearly as possible, real conditions.”
War gaming was considered to be both mental training and the pursuit of special professional investigation. Captain Little wrote: “The Object of the Naval War Game is to afford a practice field for the acquirement of skill and experience in the conduct or direction of war, and an experimental and trial ground for the testing of strategic and tactical plans.”
Before the first scheduled games were played, the players were furnished a set of rules. These rules were modified and expanded almost yearly until shortly after World War II, and successive editions served as guides for all College games during the second and third periods.
The initial rules were based in part on the earlier English and Italian games, and in part upon the experience gained in previous staff plays. They described the methods for conducting three kinds of naval games: the “duel,” the “tactical,” and the “strategic.”
The duel, or single-ship game, simulated a conflict between two battleships armed with guns and torpedoes. This game required two players and an umpire, and it was conducted on a sheet of paper spread out on the top of a table. The rules provided data for scoring the effects of gunfire, torpedo fire, and ramming.
The duel game was designed to provide a player with experience in fighting a battleship, and to test the effects of variations in turning radii and other parameters. It aroused little interest, however, and was discontinued after 1905.
The tactical game, also known as the fleet or board game, represented the interactions of two opposing fleets of battleships and cruisers. It required six officers: two Fleet commanders, a director or arbitrator, a recorder, and two movers. When forts, destroyers, torpedo boats, and submarines were involved, additional players were needed to act as their commanders. The individual ships were represented by model sailing vessels with red hulls for one side, blue hulls for the other. Different colored sails were used to represent the various types of ships.
Early tactical games were conducted on a large sheet of paper called a “game board” by the college; a “checkerboard” by newspaper reporters. The paper was marked off into squares. Later, large wooden boards, similarly marked, were placed on low sawhorses. Toward the end of the second period, the squares were painted on the deck.
At the start of a game, the ships were placed on the game board in formations selected by the respective commanders. The commanders prepared their orders in “signal- book language” for a two and one-half minute move, and the plotters moved the ships on the board. The recorder sketched the movements on a record sheet, noting any damage that occurred during the move. Then the director called for the next move.
A game was stopped when the director considered that it had achieved its purpose, or when it turned into a melee. In the latter case, the game was either ended, or it was transferred to the scale of the duel game, and additional players were assigned to act as commanders of individual battleships and cruisers.
At the end of a game, the director criticized briefly the plans and the play. Later, he wrote a more detailed analysis which was discussed with the players and then filed with the records of the game.
During this second period of War College gaming, a surprisingly large number of tactical games were conducted to evaluate the worth of superior speed, and to devise tactical plans. For instance, after 120 plays of one particular game, the following conclusion was reached: “The value of 20 per cent superior speed to a fleet of ships of the line of battle is less than one-twelfth of its total tactical force.” And as a result of staff gaming and studies during the winter of 1906, Battle Plan Number One was devised and sent to the Fleet for trial. Extensive gaming by the staff itself ended in 1912 when the college course was changed from a short summer and fall course to the so-called “long course.”
The strategic or chart game simulated the strategic employment of naval forces. It was played on charts, and forces were represented by symbols.
Prior to play, the opposing commanders submitted their plans to the director and to student officers chosen to act as commanders of detached forces. The commanders-in- chief, with their staffs, were assigned separate rooms, as were the players who handled the detached forces.
The director compared the opposing plans and selected a convenient length for the initial move. When this was announced, the players plotted the movements of their forces and submitted overlays to the control group. Members of that group plotted the tracks on the master plot. Then the director evaluated the situation, transmitted suitably degraded intelligence to the players, and announced the length of the next move.
When opposing fleets came into battle range, the game was ended, or it was transferred to the game board and continued as a tactical game.
In addition to providing the students with an opportunity to conduct maritime campaigns, the strategic game proved particularly useful for developing search plans. Frequent playing of the game also resulted in a number of recommendations. Thus, in 1895, the College pointed out the strategic significance of a Cape Cod canal, and the following year suggested that ship fuel experiments be conducted with fuel oil.
The planning and play of tactical and strategic games revealed a need for a formal planning process, and, in 1910, the system in use by the German Army was adapted to naval operations.
Obviously, the College was fully aware of the advantages of war gaming. But what were its limitations? Captain C. F. Goodrich, U. S. Navy, President of the College, commented on this point in 1897. “It should be borne in mind,” he wrote, “that a reasonable approximation is the best we can hope for. Because of the imperfections that must naturally exist in this mimic warfare, its results can not be accepted in their entirety but must be analyzed and digested before they can be made the basis of future campaigns.” Staff members continually cautioned the students that the “results flowed from the assumptions made,” and that the games served their purpose only as long as limitations were clearly recognized.
Throughout this second period of War College gaming, damage assessment was based on the use of an average or notional ship to represent all vessels of one type, U. S. and foreign. This relatively simple method proved entirely satisfactory for pre-World War I gaming. It did not, however, prove adequate for postwar requirements. Hence, in 1922, a new and more sophisticated system was devised, a system based on actual armaments and actual ships. Known as the “War College Fire Effect System,” it was designed to lead “to sound tactical conclusions when used in connection with game board problems,” and to furnish “a means of making substantially accurate relative strength comparisons of ships and forces.” The introduction of this fire effect system ushered in the next period of Naval War College gaming.
In the third era, 1922 to 1951, the emphasis shifted to educational games, that is, to games conducted for the primary purpose of providing the players with decision-making experience. The term “war game” was not defined, but it was noted that results of the games served to create successive changes in the military situation. The results which led to these changes had been arrived at under conditions which simulated the realities of war —at least to the extent that they were usually arrived at after the actions of the opposing commanders and their subordinates had been considered.
The strategic games conducted during the third period employed substantially the same procedures as those used in the preceding era. However, intercommunication and pneumatic tube systems were installed to facilitate the flow of moves and intelligence.
During board games, the individual ships were represented by scaled models. The models were moved on the game board by the players. Curtains and screens were used to control visibility. All moves were transferred to a master plot for umpire evaluation, although ranges and target angles were measured on the board. At the end of each day’s play, the master plot was edited and redrawn, and slides were prepared for the critique.
In addition to being used for tactical maneuvers, the game board was employed to demonstrate tactical plans, and to reconstruct and analyze historical naval actions.
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, in a lecture at the Naval War College on 10 October 1960, had this to say of pre-World War II War College gaming: “The war with Japan had been re-enacted in the game rooms here by so many people and in so many different ways that nothing that happened during the war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the Kamikaze tactics toward the end of the war; we had not visualized those.”
Toward and after the end of that war, the rapid and unprecedented changes in military concepts and hardware were anticipated and reflected by relatively frequent revisions of the College curriculum. The time available for war games was reduced to make room for new subjects; the scope and level of games were increased. And it became increasingly apparent that the detailed manual procedures that had proven so useful in the more leisurely prewar years were not suited to postwar requirements.
A long-range proposal for modernizing the gaming facilities was considered as early as 1945. During that year, the College recommended the development of an electronic game board. This suggestion led to the design and construction of the Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator (NEWS). That system, however, was not completed until 13 years later, and consequently it had no effect upon College gaming until 1958. In the meantime, the manual gaming procedures were updated. The rules and the damage assessment system which had been employed for all College games were replaced gradually by less-rigid rules tailored to the purpose, the level, and the scope of each separate game. By about 1952, each of the various games was on its own, so to speak, with each being conducted according to its own little package of rules and damage criteria. This development started a fourth phase.
Throughout the brief fourth era, 1952 to 1957, all games played at the College were educational in nature, and the emphasis shifted to those conducted at task group and higher levels. Increased stress was placed on political and economic factors, and a national- level strategic game was initiated.
A small number of board games were played each year. These, however, bore little resemblence to the slow and detailed games of the earlier periods. The players were stationed in rooms. They transmitted their moves to the control group. The control group made the moves on the game board, evaluated interactions with the aid of simplified procedures, and relayed CIC-type intelligence to the players.
The strategic games were no longer solely concerned with naval campaigns, but more often than not were used to simulate joint and combined operations. Moves frequently involved days rather than hours, and evaluations were based largely upon the professional judgment of the umpires. During the 1956 and 1957 national-level strategic games, leased teletype lines connected the College and The George Washington University, and the high-speed computer of the latter’s Logistic Research Project was employed to check the logistic feasibility of opposing plans and to assist in the assessment of damage.
When the Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator became operational, the game boards and their associated model ships and measuring and plotting devices were discarded. The techniques of the game board were replaced by modern simulation methods. The current age of Naval War College gaming had begun.
The NEWS was used first for College gaming during the academic year of 1957-1958, and all board games and a few of the strategic games were conducted on the simulation system. As experience with the NEWS increased, other strategic games were adapted to the system, and presently almost all College games utilize its facilities.
When the Navy War Games Program began in May 1958, the NEWS was made available for the examination of fleet and force exercises and plans.1 A rapidly growing number of fleet and force commands have since taken advantage of its facilities and of War College gaming know how.
To fulfill better its war-gaming commitments, and to provide an optimum utilization of simulation facilities and a greater continuity of war-gaming knowledge and skills, the Naval War College established the War Gaming Department in 1959. Members of this department design and control fleet and force games as well as most College games, conduct war gaming courses for the College students and for fleet officers, maintain the NEWS, and develop simulation techniques.
During this current period, a war game is defined as “a simulation, in accordance with predetermined rules, data, and procedures, of selected aspects of a conflict situation.”
Originally conceived as a modern replacement for the game board, the NEWS was earlier known as the Electronic Maneuver Board System or EMBS. It is a large electro-mechanical war-gaming complex which occupies all three floors of the center wing of Sims Hall of the Naval War College. The NEWS provides the basic elements of mobility, firepower, vulnerability, and intelligence so that opposing commanders may exercise their professional judgment in the employment of assigned forces during a war game.
In a NEWS game, player-commanders, physically located in command centers, gain intelligence, communicate with friendly forces, and make and implement decisions under the pressure of a continuous gametime—opposed by an enemy whose intentions and forces are imperfectly known. The area of operations is depicted on a large, master-plot screen located at the front of an umpire area. On this screen, the movements of NEWS forces are projected automatically. The operating status and “effectiveness remaining” of forces, and the employment of weapons are shown by lights and meters on either side of the screen. These and other display facilities enable the umpires to monitor the actions of the players. A damage computer evaluates the results of interactions and, when so programmed, automatically reduces the maximum speeds and weapons effectiveness of damaged forces. The outputs of the damage computer, or its pregame programmed parameters may, when necessary for the purpose of the game, be modified by the umpires during a play.2
Above the umpire area is a balcony from which spectators may watch the progress of a NEWS game. To assist them in following the course of events, a member of the control group acts as a narrator, explains the meaning of the various lights and meters, and describes the changing situation. His running commentary also helps keep the umpires aware of the over-all pattern.
In general, two types of NEWS games may be played. The first uses the system in the manner originally envisioned. Each player controls his own force (which may represent a surface, air, or subsurface unit, or an aggregation of units), changes its course, speed, altitude or depth, fires its weapons, and so on.
As an example, an “ASW Carrier Group Commander” receives a report of a possible submarine contact within his area of responsibility. As he analyzes the situation in the flag plot on board the carrier, the admiral has confidence in his command’s ability to meet the test. His command is not only at full strength, it also boasts the latest in ships, aircraft, detection systems, and weapons systems.
After hours of fruitless search a contact is made, evaluated as “possible nuclear,” and then lost.
The Group Commander rushes additional surface forces to assist in detecting, pin-pointing, and destroying the elusive quarry. The hunters, however, become the hunted, as one of his destroyers slips beneath the waves, a victim of torpedoes.
The group commander rushes additional forces to the scene. Again a contact is made and lost. Then, after more anxious hours, two messages are received in quick succession. The first, a contact; the second, a report that the submarine had been destroyed by a ship- launched long-range weapon. The Carrier Group Commander, and his ship and aircraft commanders, are in reality Command and Staff Course students at the College. The war game had given them a chance to test their plans against simulated enemy opposition, and to make, as the book says, “appropriate revisions.” In no other way could this invaluable experience have been gained.
In a second and increasingly popular technique, the players, in the roles of task force or task group commanders, transmit orders to members of the control group acting as their subordinates. The umpires fly the planes, steer the ships, fire the weapons, and so forth, and report to their player-superiors in the same manner as they would in any real operation. This technique provides a more realistic simulation at task force and group levels, and it also allows a greater and more imaginative utilization of NEWS forces and facilities, including, when necessary, the integration of manual techniques to simulate forces and features that are beyond the capabilities of the system. In this type of NEWS game, the players are, more often than not, an admiral and his staff. These officers are doing what they could not do at sea; they are speeding up and slowing down the interactions, stopping the game to make evaluations, repositioning forces to try different approaches, expending large quantities of expensive weapons, and destroying and reactivating ships, submarines, and aircraft.
Fleet games for ASW, HUK, destroyer, and other operational commanders provide the force commander with an opportunity to familiarize his subordinates with selected aspects of his plan, to “see” the plan evolve dynamically through time and space and against opposition, to note both its good and bad points, and to strengthen the latter prior to sailing, or as a Carrier Division Commander observed: “To make our mistakes in the NEWS before we get to sea.” NEWS games also enable an operational commander to experiment with the weapons and forces of the future, and to gain an insight into the effects of their employment upon his concepts and tactics.
During 1962, a “remote-play” NEWS game was developed and conducted. The players were the Commander Fleet Air Quonset and his staff; the game-forces at their disposal were the ships and aircraft that would be available to that command in the event of mobilization. Stationed in their own Operational Control
Center at the Naval Air Station, Quonset Point, the players transmitted orders over “secure” conventional communication facilities to the control group in the NEWS. Members of that group maneuvered the forces, transmitted reports, acted as the opposition, and injected into the game such diverse environmental factors as weather, sonar conditions, and merchant and trawler traffic. Simulating almost 300 hours of continuous operations in four six-hour days, the game enabled the operational commander and staff to implement and evaluate his War Plan. It also proved that with adequate liaison and lead time, and a secure communications link, a remote-play NEWS game can be played from any operational control center.
But the NEWS does more than provide the College—and the Fleet—with modern war gaming facilities. It also furnishes a means of dynamically demonstrating both naval operations and the naval phases of modern amphibious operations.
The Naval War College looks back with justifiable pride on its past three-quarters of a century of war gaming, and to its early leaders who possessed both the foresight and the fortitude to encourage the study and practice of war gaming in a day and age when it was as useful but not nearly as popular as now.
And what of the future? Today the College is better organized, staffed, and equipped than ever to meet tomorrow’s simulation requirements—both its own and those of the forces afloat. Within the War Gaming Department are officers of broad and varied military and gaming experience, and permanent professional war-gaming personnel well versed in the art. As for equipment, the Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator provides a man- machine war-gaming system second to none. It is a system that has already proven itself adaptable to all types of naval warfare, present and future, and a system in which the human decision-makers, and not the machine, play the dominant roles.
1. See John B. Davis, Jr., and John A. Tiedeman, “The Navy War Games Program,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1960, p. 61.
2. See Richard S. Brooks, “The Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, September 1959, p. 147. The unclassified training film: The Navy Electronic Warfare Simulator, MN-8870, is also recommended.