By Capt. Charlie Dietz
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- If you've seen groups of military machine officers at the U.S. Army Command together with General Staff College circled to a greater extent than or less a map using pointers together with pushing to a greater extent than or less tiny plastic pieces lately, don't live alarmed that they are playing Risk or reenacting scenes from Patton. Students ditched the figurer screens together with PowerPoint slides to get together to a greater extent than or less tables together with evaluate their tactical planning past times test-piloting a novel board game March 9-15. The hex-style, map-based simulation, titled "Landpower: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey (GAAT)" was developed terminal twelvemonth past times Lt. Col. Patrick Schoof, an Army Simulations officer, together with Shane Perkins, squad leader of iv classes, both instructing at the staff college. "Landpower" builds upon a scenario the students own got worked through continually during the course, putting their strategies against ane some other to reveal potential gaps together with shortfalls they had previously non accounted for. "We set this through multiple tests, labs, together with changes earlier bringing it to the classroom, every bit good every bit spending months collaborating amongst the Director of Simulation Education to ensure nosotros were bringing a lineament production that had the potential to run into our learning objectives," said Perkins.
War-gaming together with plans analysis inward the classroom examines warfighting concepts that assist develop together with educate the students to explore dissimilar scenarios together with ideas that they can't on the battlefield. This experimentation helps to develop concepts for time to come needs of the military machine together with volition live relied on heavily inward the virtually future. Lt. Gen. Michael Lundy, Commanding General of the Combined Arms Center together with Fort Leavenworth together with Commandant of CGSC, which oversees the staff college, told Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy terminal calendar month that war-gaming is "way under-sourced" together with stressed the importance to larn the requirements needed to prioritize through war-gaming.
"Our synchronization of war-fighting functions has never been better," said Army Maj. Lukas Berg, an aviation officeholder currently deal the course. "It forced us to interact amongst ane some other to arrive at gains, something nosotros were lacking when using figurer based exercises."
The board game compliments the electrical current war-gaming process, where students copy aspects of warfare at the tactical, operational, or strategic level. The focus of the lessons taught remains on pupil evolution of plans, but the gaming procedure brings to low-cal the complexity together with suitability of the plans correct inward forepart of them, forcing them to human activity accordingly to minimalize effects. This procedure inward the past times was done through figurer systems requiring hours of pedagogy to operate inward add-on to multiple contractors to oversee together with assist the exercise. In an sweat to cut down the fourth dimension spent learning the game together with growth the fourth dimension executing their plans, Schoof together with Perkins are evaluating the results of concepts learned past times implementing attempt groups that used the board game together with comparison to groups that work the figurer simulation.
While the results are nevertheless beingness evaluated, early on conclusions exhibit that the board game is an acceptable substitute for figurer based simulation. The vast bulk of the 63 students that partook seemed to concord that they enjoyed "Landpower" more, noting that it required interest from everyone inward the group, versus the figurer simulations that tin ignore certainly players.
"When nosotros did the figurer practise terminal calendar month I was left out of the game because every bit a special-staff officeholder the organization didn't generate anything for me. With the board game, nosotros got shoulder to shoulder together with I was giving together with receiving input together with guidance from everyone on our team," said Army Chaplain (Maj.) Kevin Burton.
With a dominion mass amounting to less than 8 pages, Landpower but needs the map, printable cards, together with a few markers to play. If successful, Landpower is easily distributable to whatsoever cast or unit of measurement attempting to farther its class of activity analysis amongst the rigor that the figurer programs offering but through simpler means. Col. James Dunivan, Director of Army Tactics at CGSC,said this is precisely ane of the additions CGSC is working on to generate an environs that embraces experimentation piece tolerating dissent together with run a endangerment taking. Saving the students together with staff fourth dimension from learning the figurer organization volition inward plow maximize their fourth dimension training, a desirable outcome past times all involved.
"Overall nosotros are really pleased amongst what nosotros saw together with initial analysis looks similar the learning outcomes are on par or ameliorate than what nosotros own got seen amongst our command grouping using the figurer simulation. We hold off frontward to analyzing the data, improving the game together with implementing this into adjacent year's curriculum," Perkins said.
[Capt. Charlie Dietz is a pupil inward the Command together with General Staff Officers Class of 2018.]
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