A Look Inside the Army's Unified Quest Game

National Defense Magazine had a look inside the Army's attempt to see the future.

The seminar is designed to challenge Army thinkers to look far into the future at a time when the service is being criticized for staying focused on current wars at the expense of preparing for unexpected contingencies. Overseeing the “alternative futures” seminar is Col. Jeffrey F. Vuono, deputy director of the Army’s Future Warfare Division at the Training and Doctrine Command, in Fort Monroe, Va. The discussion will be part of a series of debates and academic discussions that make up the Army’s annual “Unified Quest” war game.

The Army aims to cultivate future leaders who possess warrior-diplomat skills such as being able to negotiate with foreign government officials. They also will need to be prepared to cope with unforeseeable crises against a backdrop of reduced military budgets, uncooperative allies and global volatility, Vuono said Oct. 26 in an interview at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.

Grooming “adaptable” leaders has been a priority of TRADOC’s commander, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Vuono said . The “futures” war game will contemplate what-if scenarios that could test the mettle of the Army’s emerging generation of leaders who have spent most of their careers focused on counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the post 9/11 era of U.S. military expansion and rising defense budgets.

The game took place up in DC at the same time as AUSA, which was really just teasing the wargame participants, as they were all too busy wargaming to really go enjoy the AUSA conference.

One of the “alternative futures” that will be considered in the war game is a world with diminished financial resources and a U.S. national debt that is so out of control that foreign investors no longer might be willing to invest in U.S. Treasuries. Such a scenario would most certainly affect the Pentagon’s budget and, conceivably, the size of the Army and its ability to modernize, Elfendahl said. Traditional U.S. allies, confronted by their own fiscal woes, could back away from participation in military operations alongside the United States. “What might we have to do to grapple with this?” Elfendahl asked.

Sounds a lot like a COA Analysis in the making... if y'all were bothering to respond to them! :P

By: Brant