Sea Control - Sea Control 275 - Make it Stick: Institutionalizing Wargaming

Episode Date: September 12, 2021

Links1. "Make it Stick: Institutionalizing Wargaming at EDCOM," by Maj Ian Brown and Cpt Ben Herbold, Marine Corps Gazette, June 2021.

Hey, folks, Jared here. Excited for this one. You've got John Frerichs hosting. He's brought in Sebastian Bay, Ian Brown, and Ben Herbold to discuss how to institutionalize wargaming. This episode is the final one edited and produced by Taylor Fairless for us. Taylor has moved on to bigger and better things, and we wish her all the best. We just launched the call for submissions for the SimSec Forum for Authors and Readers over at the main website. If there was a particular piece that you enjoyed this year, nominate it, and if it gets enough votes, you can hear the author present his or her work. We've also officially put out our call for articles for the end-of-year fiction contest.

Go over to SimSec.org for full details. Finally, as always, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of our brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Guten Tag, shipmates, and welcome back. Today we will discuss a recent article published in the Marine Corps Gazette that lays out the why and the how to institutionalize wargaming across the Marine Corps. Joining us today are the two co-authors of the article, Captain Ben Herbold and Major Ian Brown.

Additionally, we have one of the designers of one of the games that's discussed throughout the article, Sebastian Bay. Gentlemen, can you please give a brief personal introduction and your interest in the topic? Yeah, sure thing. I guess I'll go first. Major Ian Brown, I'm the operations officer at the Brute Kulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare. I've been there about two years now, and my background, I'm a CH-53 Echo pilot by trade, but I've also jumped around on some other ground and acquisitions-related MOSs. And also, I have a long-time passion for wargaming that precedes my time in uniform, and I'm happy that I get a chance to help spread that passion here

for what we do at the Kulak Center. Yep, and I guess I'll follow up. So Captain Ben Herbold, I've been over at Marine Corps University since last summer as a utilization tour for my time at the Naval Postgraduate School. I'm an infantry officer by trade and then had the privilege of going through weapons and tactics instructor's course as a ground guy, So a lot of exposure to air and fires from that aspect and then got my degree in information warfare systems engineering. So my utilization toward here is how to bring that education back to the university and be placed in the Krulak Center was was beneficial.

You know, linking up with with Ian and Sebastian. And it was the opportunity to to take some of this knowledge and then communicate it through a forum with the students. And from what I've seen working with the multiple schools across the university, the utility of wargaming to explore and test concepts and really get at what's stated in the Commandant's Planning Guidance of getting in the reps and sets, it's fun. Sebastian Bay here. I'm a research analyst at the Center for Naval Analysis, also known as CNA, where I work in wargaming, emerging technologies, the future of war, and the strategy and doctrine. mainly for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. I also serve as an adjunct professor teaching war game design at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown. I also teach similar classes at command staff at Marine Corps University and U.S. Naval Academy. It's been a great pleasure working with Major Brown and Captain Herbal on this.

And our hope really is to bring educational gaming down to the tactical edge, into the units, and sort of getting those reps and sets to the people and in the hands of commanders at units and to be able to really create a grassroots movement for educational gaming. Gentlemen, thank you for the introductions. And for the listeners, the article that we're going to discuss is titled Make It Stick, Institutionalizing Wargaming at Education Command. It was published in the Marine Corps Gazette in June of 2021 and will be linked on our show notes. The importance and value of wargaming has been discussed previously on the Sea Control podcast,

but when I read this article, I appreciated the linkages in the article to the Commandant's planning guidance from 2019, followed by a structured proposal on how to achieve the Commandant's vision specific to wargaming. Before we begin, I'll remind the listeners that all opinions expressed are our own and not reflective of any institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Ben and Ian, I want to start with you guys. Why did you guys write the article and what were you trying to achieve? Sure. So, you know, the there's a short part of the answer, which is we were asked to by Education Command because Training and Education Command had put out a wider call to collect articles for a special Marine Corps Gazette issue a couple of months ago that, you know, focused on 21st century training and education and across the Marine Corps. But we had evolved into what really was a great opportunity for us, as we mentioned in the introduction to the article, which was a chance to both capture the good work going on at the Kulak Center and Marine Corps University as it comes to wargaming,

but also offer a potential way ahead in the wider effort to institutionalize wargaming as a decision-making tool across the Marine Corps. And as you mentioned, the Commandant's planning guidance, when that came out, you know, it was obvious that the Commandant wanted wargaming utilized to fill what he called the greatest gap in our training and education of Marines, which was decision-making opportunities against a dynamic-thinking human adversary. um but you know if you don't have any previous experience in doing wargaming or those sorts of decision forcing activities it can be hard to figure out where to start you know how you when and where you use wargames if a wargame is even the appropriate method for driving a learning outcome you know how you tie those learning outcomes to the wargaming process or even what types of different games are out there so our hope was that the article would provide a possible framework for this institutionalization. And we're not saying that this way ahead was the only

answer, but it offered a place to start in some examples. And I think what Ben can talk to is a great example of how you can leverage the talent you had on hand to do this without having to go outside and spend a lot of money on external experts. So Ben, if you want to talk about the work you did with command staff and saw in that article? Yes, sir. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, I had the privilege to work with some of the instructors from School of Advanced Warfighting, as well as Command and Staff College, to basically create experiences for the students that couple with a historical study and then a planning exercise, you know, back in Italy during World War II or the Burma India Theater and basically create new problem sets using a commercial

off-the-shelf game called the Operation Harder War IV. It's very, very basic. The mechanics are very simple. It's based on the range and shell weight, things like that. But what it does is it provides a simple interface where the students can put their plans to the test and really have to deal with the consequences on, you know, did you plan correctly? Did you make the correct decision support tools? And one of the biggest things that that I found was the the ability of facilitation. And Major Brown referred to our our internal expertise to make this stuff useful.

The facilitator on the military faculty side is by far what I've seen the most critical piece that can tie as students are having discussions and making decisions and seeing the effects come through in the game. And the MILFAC or the military faculty is the one who can make those linkages to the larger lessons and to the operational context that in which the students are learning. So I was just I was very happy to be able to capture those those good things that we learned and pass them on, hopefully, to to the rest of the force. Gentlemen, thank you for that. I appreciate the, you know, the upfront answer of I was told to do so and therefore I did. But it's also evident in the reading of the article that you guys are both passionate about it. And that definitely comes through both in the reading and then hearing you guys discuss your why behind the article as well. Sebastian, for you, while you're not an author of the article, you play a leading role throughout it. How did you get involved in bringing or enhancing wargaming at the Marine Corps University?

I'm one of the non-resident fellows. That was the first cohort under the Krulak Center. So I was sort of linked in with the Krulak Center even before my time. as a non-resident fellow at the Krulak Center, where I do a lot of my wargaming collaboration with Major Brown and Captain Herbold. But I also teach at Command and Staff, and that's along with Dr. Paul Galeppi and Dr. Craig Hayden, who I teach one of the great scholars programs, electives, where it's based on my Georgetown course, where majors unexpectedly, I think for them, will research, design and execute an educational wargame. and the first iteration of it was in this past academic year, and we're about to kick off another academic year this fall. Sebastian, thank you for that. And for the listeners, if you don't follow

Sebastian on social media, you can track his different efforts across multiple different universities, always tweeting about it and always genuinely enjoy seeing the number of opportunities you're giving to students at different schools across the country. For anyone, the war game or board game titled FMF Indopaycom or Fleet Marine Force Indopaycom is highlighted throughout the article. I want to discuss the development of the game and describe to the listeners the intended purpose of the game. FMF or Fleet Marine Force really started as a fun little pet project for me and some of my students. In the wake of the Commandant's planning guidance, several units and commanders reached out, curious about how they could leverage wargaming, particularly in the

context of education and training. They really wanted a game that allowed their Marines to explore tactical decisions and the new Marine Littoral Regiment concept that was still pretty nascent at the time back in early 2020. And they really wanted some way to explore an unclass environment, expedition advanced spacing operations, or EEABO. And there was no commercial game that fits that mold. And there was no educational game that I knew of in the DOD realm that fit that mold either. So as a pet project, my students and I really decided to create this game for the Marine Corps, for that tactical edge. And given it's one of my soapbox passion projects, it really developed and matured into something bigger. We collaborated with the

Krulak Center and Major Brown was a big component of that as we hooked it up into EWS. And we talk about it a little bit in the article as well, how we ran games for them as sort of like a capstone event to their afloat course. And they were also, the Krulak Center was a huge component of our playtesting and our expertise network that allowed us to really hone the game. But it was unexpected of how much the game developed into such a big thing. Originally, it was supposed to be just opportunity for my students at Georgetown to really just get another game to practice design on, and then really became a life of its own as it developed into filling a niche and a need out in the fleet. I want to expand upon one of your statements regarding all the Expedition

warfare students playing the game ben uh can you share any reflections on watching the students play and what you believe they took away from playing the game yeah absolutely you know being a being the the one captain i got to have some uh some pretty it's pretty good conversations with my fellow captains who are students at the expeditionary warfare school and um you know one of the brilliant design pieces i think it's sebastian's game is the the way that he incorporated a lot of joint capabilities, which we are, you know, as a service and as a nation looking to employ in conjunction with each other in this future operating environment. Being able to sit down and talk with the students and help to get an understanding of how to employ these things that

are truly novel, right? To most people, the technology behind it is new. They don't understand it, but it all comes down to how do we integrate these new technologies into the way that we go about planning and executing just any type of operation that we would be doing. And so watching the students play through it, you know, I had the privilege of sitting down with eight of them in a very small environment. And we actually host them in the crew center. I think two days before we did the larger play test and just having conversations over the course of, You know, five, six hours as we ran through the game iteration, being able to to use it as a teaching tool to talk about phasing of efforts, the application of non kinetic and kinetic effects and all of these problems that we're trying to wrestle with right now. I think that that came to fruition after the first day I was talking to one of the students and I said, hey, what did you learn today?

And the observation was there is a significant knowledge gap in the employment of these new capabilities, right? And so I think that's a pretty impressive comment to note when we're seeking to employ these things across the force in the future and recognizing that FMF and NOPACOM, Sebastian's game, is a tool that can be used to fill that void. Ian or Sebastian, you guys have also played the game with several different audiences outside of the Marine Corps as well. Anything that you guys would wish to contribute or any feedback from some of the players from outside the Naval Service? Yeah, sure. So I'll say that Sebastian has certainly run far more iterations than we have. But I think recently one of the most unique and I think rewarding iterations that we ran was a demo I was able to put together kind of out of happenstance from some West Point Army cadets who were up at Fort Belvoir doing a a summer sort of intern slash study program. and then uh some inviting some of the marine lieutenants from basic school over and you know

one it was just kind of a uh they were supposed to be sort of a social aspect to this but as they as they set into the game in this scenario i i i broke them up into um mixed groups so you had army and marine you know cadets and lieutenants all on the same team bringing their different perspectives and what was really great to watch was you know a this is like it was like jointness and a It was, you know, we had multiple services there around the table and they're also gathered around a maritime heavy scenario, which is something that, you know, is not common really for anybody outside of, you know, the Navy or anyone who's done a whole bunch of, you know, Marine Expeditionary Unit floats. And so we were getting them to grapple with all of these, the complex interweavings of how the fires maneuver and information and all these things operate in different domains in a maritime campaign where what your fleet was doing and what the adversary's fleets were doing were just as important to any sort of the ground tactical stuff you were talking about. And so they came away with a very positive experience with that. And I think that's, you know, that's one of the great benefits to the game is that you can it brings that that joint cross service perspective and forces you to get outside of your sort of service parochialisms and deal with all the other things that are brought on to the battlefield by the other services and the other domains.

so from uh my perspective as a designer it's been really amazing to see how fmf has been used both virtually also in person uh since covid happened a lot of our play tests last year were hampered or physical play tests were hampered by covid and social distancing so we shift to the virtual realm and i created a tabletop simulator version uh on steam that we play virtually almost every week. We have two or three sessions a week. We do them for anyone who wants to come and join and learn about how to use FMF or the units and their commands or are curious about the topic that are related to national security or defense. So for instance, since we've been tracking the after action reports in March, we have run over 100 virtual sessions and the

players are pretty evenly broken up we have about 30 percent uh that are marine corps officers are enlisted and then about 12 or 13 percent from the army air force and navy respectively each and then we have a bunch of ffrdc think tanks and other sort of civilians who work in uh work for the military in various services and it's been fantastic you see analysts engaging with their counterparts who are majors or captains and you see uh navy lieutenant commanders uh mentoring young ensigns uh during the game of like oh that's not gonna work or this is a capability or this is what a p8 does and this is how you should think about um you know i mean they talk about wayne hughes a lot because our game is really about the sensor to shooter uh chain and

how do i shoot things how do i sense things how do i uh determine when i should control my signal signal management of being emitting and shooting or do i hide and conceal and sort of reserve my ammunition and it's all part of it and coordinating capabilities across turns and time uh one of the great things about our game is that it forces like a very simplified abstracted like planning process where our planning step really uh where each team is given a certain allotment of command points which is just a game abstraction to represent how much juice your planning staff has to ask for things right uh the deck of cards that represents the litany of joint capabilities like what we call the joint capability cards they you don't get everything in that deck right you

can't ask for a b2 bomber on top of a fad on top of everything else you only get a small slice of that and you have to decide as a team uh what you're gonna buy from that deck with your command points given in the scenario and the scenarios change with those command points and but that's always some of the most interesting parts for me as you listen to the team discussions of what they think is important, what they think is a threat, what they think the enemy is going to do and how that does or doesn't align to what you hear as a facilitator in the other room. One of the things I remember most is there was an army officer and he was like, hey, we should really get that. We don't have any ballistic missile defense. We're right in the

ring. And he was arguing to the other Marine Corps officers that essentially that they should buy this really high-end um capability from the deck which is a five pointer in our game um at one out on a scale one to five and they had limited uh command points they only have 15 in the scenario so that'd be one third of what uh they would have so they opted for lower end things and on turn uh two on the chinese used ballistic missiles to great effect against the marine littoral regiment contingent and you can see on the army officer's face that he was like i told you so this was a problem and it was one of those great instances where we had a great hot wash of why they thought that wasn't a problem and one of the things is that you get stuck in a it's very

tempting to go down the tactical rabbit hole and even though you know it in your brain that you're within the west sometimes you forget uh and that's very common and it's really about understanding to think across multiple levels of war but also across multiple domains but also coordinating with other teammates and commanders. Sebastian, thank you for that. And, you know, an interesting reference back to Wayne Hughes, author of Fleet Tactics. I hadn't made the connection prior to, but, you know, when you stated that, just reflecting on the different chapters and the structure of his book, Fleet Tactics, it is fascinating

the number of topics that do have a direct correlation over to the FMF war game. So definitely an interesting connection there. Sebastian, you mentioned the opportunity to play the game. If any of our listeners are interested in playing, how do they get involved? So if you're interested in playing FMF, particularly if you want a physical copy that we're trying to produce right now, we're aiming to get 30 copies of the physical FMF board game out to units by the end of September. The virtual copy is on Tabletop Simulator, which does cost money to get, But the game itself, after you get the platform, is free.

The way you can reach out to me is at sjb261 at georgetown.edu. So that's sjb261 at georgetown.edu. And I am more than happy to give you access. You can't find it normally on TTS unless you have my permission to search for FMF. Sebastian, thank you for that. And a question for all of you, potentially putting you guys out of your comfort zone. If you guys were commandant of the Marine Corps for a day, what would be one decision that you would make to assist in institutionalizing wargaming across the service? So I actually I would love to answer this question.

And because I I think the commandant himself said something recently that sort of points to the perspective you can have to do it effectively. And he just a couple of months ago, in fact, at the commencement for Marine Corps University, where he in his speech, he was he mentioned that wargaming doesn't have to be a one million dollar building. You can do it low tech. You can do it in any unit that you're in. And it's all about, you know, your the creative approach up here and you're in your brain housing group or your your your skull. So I think to build off of that, a great first step forward would be simply a formal policy that goes beyond the guidance of the Commandant's planning guidance and gives commanders and units the permission and support from higher to devote their own time and resources to it. And this goes to something else we talked about in the article, in fact, which is, you know, the policy could be as simple as a reissue or update of Marine Corps Order 1500.55, Military Thinking and Decision Making Exercises, which was issued by General Charles Kulak in 1997 when he was the Commandant of the Marine Corps. And this order, it's only a couple pages long, but it literally tells the Marine Corps to go and do this, to integrate game-based critical thinking and decision-making activities into their training and education efforts. And interestingly, as we mentioned in the article as well, it's still listed as an active order.

So I think a great way to to move off the starting block would be a either a reissue of that Marine Corps order or an appropriate update for, you know, changes in technology that have happened in the interim to just lay down the expectation that Marines should do this. And then it gives units and commanders the formal backing for carving out time from busy training schedules to do it. And, you know, going and that ties back to the Combinant's point, right? Like if you're you just you get told to go do it and you're given sort of the permission and the top cover from higher to go do it. It's not complex or expensive. You know, I think Sebastian has certainly proven what you can do with just some, you know, some creative energies and people willing to help you test it out. in generating a game that, you know, you can go and get the pieces and the stickers and the wooden blocks and all that stuff, you know, for a few pennies here and there. Or you can go out to

any number of third party or third party market, you know, websites and find used copies of old games. Or you can find, you know, or go out and and again, to tap into the talent you have around you. Ask your Marines what they're playing already. Right. I'm willing. We're I think we're to bet that they're they're out there either on their phones or on xbox or playstation or something they're already playing games see what it is they're doing and then see how you can find a creative way to tie what they're doing anyway to a learning objective that you want them to walk away from um but i think simply getting that that initial you know permission and directive in a formal fashion from from hire and then just going you know without permission going

out and start doing it with the tools you have around you would be a great first step to just reinforce major rounds comments you know i think that the you know getting it getting the required uh resources into the hands of of the fleet the hands of marines and sailors that examine this problem is is extremely important um and i think you know going back to a letter that general gray wrote back in 1989, you know, to quote, says the focus of effort should be teaching through doing through case studies, historical and present day, real and hypothetical, presented in war games and math exercises, force on force wars, et cetera. You know, and I think that providing the freedom of maneuver, freedom of navigation to actually engage in these types of exercises, both in

training and education uh you know and here at the university we are particularly suited to develop that interest as you know as hasn't been reflected in the article um that the schoolhouses at rincon university are seeking to incorporate more and more war gaming to you know to allow students to explore to fail to make mistakes and then in the end create create better decision makers and you know marines sailors service members and better military judgment and i think that you know starting it at the university there's an incorporating more here is a is an opportunity to trickle down effect get that get that passion and that that sense of utility that we're giving has to offer uh down to the rest of the service and across the force for me i think

the biggest thing that would help on top of everything that major brown and captain herbal mention is to connect the war gaming expertise that is often resident in these sort of near islands of excellence at like caa at mcwill and the war gaming division at you know i mean kulak center uh even at the center for naval analysis we have a huge gaming team that works for the marine corps and navy but most of those places are separated by layers and distance to the tactical edge to commanders out at i mean the marine littoral regiments in the future but also to the current fleet right uh and i think that is a gap in terms of wargaming that we really should aim to close right to because if you want wargaming at the tactical edge to be a sustained effort

and not a boom and bust cycle that often happens when you rely on individual hard charging marines to spend their own time and money to you know get uh wargaming happening at in the units and commands then it will fail when they pcs or they go to a different command when they get promoted because they are hard charging self-motivated individuals but the idea is that if you can connect those two places like cna and the crew lack center and other places that have resident war gaming knowledge that you're able to keep that institutional knowledge uh going and you're able to build on it into successive years and successive commands so it doesn't always have to start back at zero right and there's no i don't tell people that fleet marine force is the best game in the world

for the Marine Corps, and it is the solution to have all solutions. Major Brown and I always have a discussion about that. There's never a one game to rule them all, right? There is a game that fits your need, and FMF was designed for a specific need to look at tactical problems in the 2040 timeframe for EABO and sort of Marine Littoral Regiment. If that's not your mission set, that game is not good for you, right? Other games, if you're looking at the operational level at the JIFMIC and JFAC level, like Assassin's Maze, designed by Colonel Tim Barrett, is probably a better choice. But the idea is that we need as a service to go back to the years of TACWAR, which is an acronym for a series of family of games that the Marine Corps used to run for education and

training back in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s. And they had a whole ecosystem built around the tack war family of games and we need to go back to that right um and me and major brown are currently writing and editing a paper on that topic as we speak gentlemen thank you for those responses and uh and i hope some of the senior leadership across uh both the naval service and and the other services do listen and find opportunities to institutionalize the war gaming methods that you guys are identifying uh before we wrap can we how can listeners connect with you on social media and what are you guys working on next um well i i nobody wants to hear what i and brown have to say on social media because it's mostly pictures of me playing games

with my children um but the crew lack center is on we're on twitter facebook instagram uh we have a youtube channel where we've captured a wide range of our activities um we have a website under the national security innovation network as well where we post a lot of our content and as of 24 hours ago, we're on LinkedIn as well. So if you just look at the Krulak Center on any of those sites, you'll be pointed back to our content. And, you know, we've talked about Wargaming today, but I want to point out that we support Marine Corps University in a wide number of ways, simply beyond Wargaming. That's just one little tool on our toolkit. So if you're looking for some PME lectures, if you're looking to contribute to creative writing contests, or if you want to get

connected with some of those non-resident fellows like sebastian bay we have about two dozen other names on the roster as well with a very diverse set of professional backgrounds just look for us on any of those uh social media platforms you should be able to find us under the kulak center and we are happy to help yep from my side like uh like major brown i'm not not too too active on on social media but can be reached through some of the same methods that major brown mentioned um and then moved over to an assignment where i won't be able to be as involved uh you know in wargaming efforts throughout the university but i'm i'm just hoping to stay involved as much as i can over the course of the next academic year don't worry ben we'll keep you in our orbit you're

not going to escape us uh that's why i tell major brown at least same thing to him as well um so you can find me on twitter is where i spend most of my social media time at uh sebastian bay uh i was Super creative when I created it. So just look for me, Sebastian Bay, at Twitter, and you should be able to find me. There's not many of us out there. As for sort of future projects, Major Brown and I are working on a paper for MCU Press right now on sort of the educational history of wargaming in the Marine Corps. For FMF, we are currently in the process of producing FMF copies for the fleet. We are hoping to have a tranche of 30 and then another tranche of 30 by the end of December.

But at the same time, we are looking to include allies and partner sets for the digital version to include other partners in the region in the Pacific. Because that's one thing that our playtesters always bring up. another aspect is that we would want to make a ucom version of it looking at different regions in the european theater such as the mediterranean the black sea the high north or even the straits of denmark and we're currently slowly amping up research for that look into order of battles and and new decks of joint capability cards and sorry to to steal the mic back but i'd be remiss if i didn't mention in terms of both the war gaming and the fmf game for those in the quantico or the national capital region area specifically we are the crew like center is doing a series of open

houses focused specifically on war gaming on fridays throughout the month of august and then for any new students at the marine corps university schools we'll be using fmf as the platform for our sea dragon war gaming tournament at the end of august so you will have ample opportunities to get touch points with that game here in the coming months ben ian and sebastian my sincere appreciation for coming on the podcast today to discuss your article. To the listeners, highly recommend that you check out the article as it provides a myriad of different wargaming options and methods to institutionalize wargaming across the service. Thank you for listening, and until next time, guten tag!

© BF-WATCH TV 2021 © transcript Emily Beynon