[WarInEur] RE: winning and wargames

[Wardall Clark]

In a RW military wargame, there are usually competing objectives 
involved.  
 
One is to test the ability of the participants to do their jobs under wartime conditions. For this objective the simulated military "outcome" of the simulation is not far from irrelevent.  What matters is what the wargame reveals about the weaknesses and strengths of the participants and the procedures they were supposed to be following. Such a wargame prior to the Grenada 
invasion would have revealed the usefulness of having compatible communications nets for the services involved. 
 
The other, which is not relevent to all military simulations, is to 
test the "combat" effectiveness of one team relative to another.
For this second objective "winning" matters only if the outcome 
yeilds militarily useful information such as "tanks work better in 
big concentrations" or "Calais would be too well defended for a
landing."     Only when the loss is directly attributable to errors in judgement by a participant does it really matter who was on the winning side. 
 
 Bob
> From: Chuck Sutherland <csutherland at gamewoodinc.com>> Subject: Re: [WarInEur] wargames> > "While winning and losing is important – perhaps the most important > thing – in civilian wargames, it is not necessarily the most important > aspect of the military wargames. Rather, the exercise emphasis is on the > staff planning process, orders production, reporting, and execution of > the plan. This is not to say that the commanders, the staffs, and the > role players do not think that winning is important. No Army or Marine > officer likes to lose anything. However, the training may not be as > valuable if the emphasis is on winning."> > > Thats a scary statement, if you don't win it won't matter how well you > ran the logistics! Isn't Islandwana (sic) supposedly won by the Zulu > because the Quartermaster was unwilling to give up the ammo without > documenting where it went and to whom? Clearly a case of great > logistical process that led to a military loss!> > They need to try Operation Crusader before the poo poo the civilian > wargames! ;)> 
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