10 July 2012

COA Development For Non-Kinetic Ops

Tangentially related to the current ongoing stability ops discussions, Small Wars Journal has an excellent article about Wargaming Courses of Action During Other-Than-Major Combat Operations

An excerpt from them:

Another idea.

One student group developed their own wargaming matrix that captured their analysis in Figure 10 below. Their particular matrix was laid out horizontally using five columns. The “critical event” was the first entry. The five columns are laid out accordingly left to right:

“IF” represents the “action” (the critical event to be wargamed) normally initiated by another group (militia, civilians, etc…).

“AND” represents what should be the expected protocol for that case, but for some reason has failed, thereby forcing a decision upon the command.

“THEN” represents the friendly reaction (or decision). This is where the command begins to integrate the various warfighting functions.

“SO WHAT?” represents the results of this process (the actual analysis). This includes the likely counteractions of the key leaders / populations, along with instructions to subordinate units as well as determining possible preemptive measures.





So how can the training tools of the ongoing CGSC Stability Ops discussion be re-purposed to support MDMP wargaming on similar operations?

By: Brant

2 comments:

Brian said...

Interesting article. Brant, did you get LCOL Garra's book?

Brant said...

I have an autographed copy! :)

I helped playtest some of it, and he and I split a booth together at Origins in 2005 when we debuted the Warfighter games and he had is Army Chess book.

I'll bring it with me in 2 weeks (if I can find it in the moving boxes).