ILITES: SOLDIERS, BEWARE — LEARNING FROM PAST ARMY EXPERIMENTS
Posted byBob Bradford February 10, 2022
EDITOR’S NOTE: The current temporary theme we are using only credits a single author. This article was written by Bob Bradford and Fred Gellert.
These wargames bring together experts from across the Army to wrestle with important questions while representing military action against a thinking adversary in a future context.
Experiments and wargames can provide important insights on future warfighting requirements, but if their design is flawed these insights may be precisely the wrong lessons to learn. As participants in multiple Army future concept experiments, the authors have seen well designed events result in solid feedback to improve concept development. Alternatively, poorly designed events have been “much less productive than they could have been.” A quick review of best practices in experimentation can help the Army as it is embarked on another exploration of the future.
In August 2021 and again in late January 2022, members of the Army Modernization Enterprise (AME), along with several joint and coalition partners, converged at Carlisle Barracks for a series of two-week long experiments to inform the development of the Army’s concept for warfighting in 2035 and beyond. Led by the Army Future Command’s (AFC) Director of Concepts (DoC), the U.S. Army Future Studies Program (FSP) is the latest instantiation of the Army’s Title 10 wargame series and the Army’s main venue to evaluate and examine questions about the future. Each service uses its Title 10 wargame to help understand the future environment, build future concepts, and identify future requirements. These wargames help senior enterprise levels consider future capabilities across the design elements in DOTMLPF-P, especially organization, materiel, and policy.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/caveat-milites/
