Basic Analytic Wargaming

Non-degree

Start Starts: Available upon sponsor request Info For details, contact NPS Online at NPSWargaming@nps.edu.

Location pin Offered: In person, at NPS

Avg. tuition cost per course: Request information Online@nps.edu

Questions? Reach out directly:

NPS Wargaming Center

NPSWargaming@nps.edu

Email
Offerings database access

Overview

The NPS Wargaming Mobile Training Team (MTT) provides organizations the opportunity to educate a wargaming cadre to design, develop, conduct and analyze wargames through the Basic Analytic Wargaming Workshop (BAWW). The BAWW is a 5-day course (40 contact hours) built around hands-on practical exercises coordinated with the sponsoring organization. The course is taught at the sponsoring organization’s location. The sponsoring organization nominates the course attendees.

The Basic Analytic Wargaming Workshop is a mixture of lectures and practical exercises. The workshop provides students a hands-on experience with designing, developing, executing, and analyzing a wargame. This workshop is for 16-20 students. The sponsoring organization provides the wargaming topic that is used as the basis for the workshop’s practical exercises. The instructors then mentor the student teams’ development of a wargame that is executed by the student teams on the last day of the workshop.

This workshop format provides the sponsoring organization two primary benefits:

1. It builds a cadre of personnel who can initiate, design, develop, conduct, and analyze a wargame. COCOMs have leveraged this opportunity by having personnel from their J-3, J-5, J-2, J-4, J-7 and J-8 staff sections attend the workshop and work, in teams, to learn how to design and execute a wargame.

2. It allows the building of up to four wargames created by the workshop’s completion that can then be further built out and used by the organization to meet actual wargaming requirements.

Organizations interested in an NPS MTT BAWW should contact jaappleg@nps.edu.

 

 

Dr. Jeff Appleget

A retired Army Colonel who served as an Artilleryman and Operations Research analyst in his 30-year Army career. Jeff was a key member of the Concepts Analysis Agency’s Desert Storm analysis team. Jeff later served as the Director of the TRADOC Analysis Center (TRAC)-Monterey and served as the Commander of Troops and Deputy Director at TRAC-White Sands Missile Range where he was the senior military analyst for the Future Combat Systems Analysis of Alternatives. He finished his uniformed career as the Deputy Director of TRAC at Fort Leavenworth. Jeff joined the OR department faculty in May 2009 and re-designed the Wargaming Applications course to integrate real world sponsors into the curriculum.

 

Dr. Robert E. Burks, Jr.

A retired logistics Army Colonel with more than thirty years of military experience in leadership, advanced analytics management and logistics operations who served as an Army Operations Research analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, TRADOC Analysis Center, United States Military Academy, and the United States Army Recruiting Command. He has led multiple analytical study teams responsible for Army Transformation (organizational change) issues and his work includes applying analytical methods to develop solutions for complex problems in support of the Combined Arms Support Command, the Army’s sustainment think tank and premier sustainment learning institution.

Learning Outcomes

Students learn how to:

  • Initiate (problem definition, problem scoping, sponsor interaction, forming a wargaming team, create a data collection and management plan (DCMP)).
  • Design (create a scenario, collect data, choose methods models and tools (MMTs), select players, develop Constraints, Limitations, and Assumptions).
  • Develop (understand design-development cycle, playtesting, blind playtesting, full dress researsal).
  • Conduct (facilitation, data collection, adjudication, player management, exercise contingencies).
  • Analyze (collate data, prepare and present a quick look report, write an executive summary).