Passing from recruitment to training, compared with other training methods that carried on with the aid of computer games/simulators has several important advantages. First, it is cheap: once the equipment is available and the initial program has been written, tested, and debugged, it can be infinitely reproduced, easily distributed, and played over and over again at practically no added cost. The wear and tear that other training methods produce is all but eliminated. Second, it is realistic since opponents can “really” fire at each other. By so doing, they incorporate, at least to some extent, some of the nervous strain of war in ways that many other kinds of wargames, particularly Reisswitz-type ones and BOGSATs, do not capture nearly as well. Third, it is safe since errors do not have fatal consequences. Fourth, training can be interrupted and resumed at any desirable point or location. This increases flexibility and makes it much easier to arrange schedules and timetables of every kind.92
Modern simulators are capable of reproducing the aircraft themselves, complete with controls, movements, noise, and much else. To this are added friendly as well as hostile aircraft as well as the external world as perceived by the pilot with the aid of his eyesight, or radar, or FLIR (Forward Looking Infra Red), or whatever.93 All these different elements, moreover, must be carefully coordinated with each other, a feat that only powerful computers enable the designers to achieve. The outcome is some of the most complex machines ever built. The time was to come when almost any kind of engagement could be simulated as aircraft, ships, and vehicles, either friendly or hostile, received information, maneuvered this way and that, were fired at, and fired back.
For many years play was a matter of one trainee/player per computer, or, perhaps one should say, one computer per trainee/player. More recently the Internet, linking together numerous computers, has enabled entire squadrons or units to “fight” one another onscreen just as those who play World of Warcraft do. This is true even when the players remain widely dispersed in geographical space, although in that case some time-lags may become noticeable even when working with machines that exchange information at the speed of light. One example is the Close Combat Tactical Simulation system for training army mechanized infantry and armor units that replicates combat vehicles, tactical vehicles, and weapons systems interacting in real time with each other and semiautonomous opposing forces.94 Another is the Joint Tactical Combat Training System (JTCTS). It is described, somewhat ponderously, as a joint effort by the navy and air force to create a virtual simulation at the battle group level in which combat participants will interact with live and simulated targets detected and displayed by platform sensors. A third is the Synthetic Theater of War (STOW) program. This particular system was meant “to integrate virtual simulation (troops in simulators fighting on a synthetic battlefield), constructive simulation (war games), and live maneuvers to provide a training environment for various levels of exercise.”
The number of shooter-type simulators used by all three services during the first decade of the twenty-first century must have run into the hundreds, if not more. Some were new, some old, some extremely sophisticated, some crude and out of date. As with many if not most other types of military equipment, what explains the mix is the cost of the systems which can easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars each. Both for technical reasons and because of the constant need for updates, making all of them work together under the aegis of the Joint Simulation System or JSIMS is an ongoing task too daunting for the imagination to grasp. As in the case of the “real” military world which it is supposed to simulate, most probably it will never be completed.
At a lower level, though, simulators, by drawing on fields as different as ergonomics, cognitive psychology, painting, acoustics, and a host of others have been making such good progress that the line between the “real” world and the simulated (or virtual) one is becoming more and more blurred. One indication of this fact is the growth of a new phenomenon – known as simulator sickness. Simulator sickness is much like motion sickness, only in reverse. Apparently the cause is a mismatch between what a simulator makes a pilot see in virtual reality and what his or her vestibular system registers. For example, he may be sitting upright while the image of the outside world being fed to his display board or helmet tells him that he is “actually” hanging upside down. Symptoms can include eyestrain, blurred vision and difficulty in focusing, mental disorientation, apathy, drowsiness, fatigue, headache, and nausea, up to and including vomiting. Even though fighter pilots are specially selected for their ability to resist motion sickness, and even though they are used to the machines, between 20 and 40 percent of them are said to suffer from it.95
At least one fighting game, Trekken Torture, provides players with electrified armbands that convert each hit taken into a jolt of acute pain. Regardless of who plays them and why, wargames are developing to the point that they can all but substitute for certain kinds of war. Conversely, certain kinds of war are being reduced to wargames. Suppose one is the pilot of a fighter-bomber on a night mission. Outside the cockpit the world is pitch black. Wireless communications with headquarters and perhaps other aircraft apart, all the data concerning the outside world, i.e. the atmosphere as well as friendly aircraft and those belonging to the enemy, will be gathered by some kind of sensors. Much of what takes place inside the aircraft itself, such as fuel consumption, engine temperature, and the like, will also be recorded by sensors. Whatever its nature and source, the data will be translated into electronic signals. Thus transformed, it will end up either in the form of voice or warning noises or else as blips on a battery of screens in front of the pilot. Some of it may even be fed directly into his helmet. To perform his work, the pilot will manipulate the aircraft’s controls. Whatever effect his actions may have will also be displayed in the form of blips.
Now suppose some gnome has taken over the aircraft without anybody noticing the fact. He continues sending out voice messages indistinguishable from the “real” ones as well as a stream of electronic blips to be displayed to the pilot. However, instead of allowing the sensors to generate the signals, he produces them himself in an arbitrary way. In that case he will have the pilot acting without any reference not only to the real world, enemies and targets included, but to his own aircraft. Signals that are impossible or self-contradictory will either cause the pilot to conclude that something has gone very wrong with his machine or make him go mad. Supposing the gnome knows his job, though, he may very well be able to prevent the pilot from noting that anything has changed and make him carry on as usual, making him respond to dangers that do not exist while engaging him on a wild goose chase.
To repeat, the most important qualities those who play shooter-type wargames require are good eyesight, excellent motor coordination, and extreme concentration. While it would be an exaggeration to say that those qualities are all pilots need, need them they certainly do. No great amount of psychological study is required to tell us that the performance of a pilot who has to do his work while his life is in serious danger is likely to drop very sharply96 – as Clausewitz puts it succinctly but accurately, under such circumstances even the bravest are likely to behave somewhat strangely. Training and habituation may certainly improve things, but only up to a point. Yet we have seen that, from the pilot’s point of view, as long as the signals are consistent it makes no difference where they come from or even whether they do or do not correspond to anything in reality. In theory, and perhaps one day in practice as well, it might therefore be possible to take the opposite approach: namely, to improve the pilot’s performance, and that of other warriors as well, by having them act under the illusion that what they are engaged on is not real war but merely a game or exercise.97
Just such an arrangement is explored in Ender’s Game, a science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card first published in 1977.98 Ender, the eponymous hero, is a boy aged six. Following an exhaustive battery of physical and mental tests, he has been selected to attend Battle School. There, using si
mulators all the way, he spends several years being trained to wage interstellar war against an alien race known as the Buggers. One day, which to him is just another day at the school, he finds himself engaged in a more difficult struggle than ever before. As absolute concentration is achieved, cause and consequence are abolished. Like some berserker of old he enters a sort of trance, taking leave of his senses even as, paradoxically, he controls them better than at any other point in his life. Days and nights turn into a nightmarish blur. He fights much harder than he ever knew he could fight or that it was possible to fight.
After months of ferocious battles during which several of his highly trained co-fighters are driven to the point of collapse and beyond, Ender manages to win, but only just. The planet that forms the center of the Buggers’ universe is blown up onscreen, leaving nothing behind. As he staggers out of the game room for what he does not yet realize is the last time, so drained that he hardly knows where he is or what he is doing, he is greeted by tears and applause. He learns that the struggle that has just ended was not a game or simulation but a real life-and-death war in which the Buggers were defeated and the human race saved from annihilation. Forget about the question, which Ender himself raises, as to whether putting any individual into such a situation is fair. Real reality and virtual reality have become one and the same.
1 Herodotus, The Persian Wars, 2.36.
2 For a short history of computers in wargaming see Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, pp. 77–85. See also E. D. Swedin and D. L. Svero, Computers: The Life Story of a Technology, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, pp. 1–46 .
3 See H. Kahn and A. W. Marshall, “Methods of Reducing Sample Size in Monte Carlo Computations,” Journal of the Operations Research Society of America, 1, 5, November 1953, pp. 264–5 .
4 McHugh, Fundamentals of War Gaming, pp. 5.2–3, 6.20–1 .
5 N. C. Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957, pp. 60–4 .
6 See, for a simple overview of computer chess, Shenk, The Immortal Game, pp. 199–221. Another excellent overview of the subject is “computer chess” at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess.
7 See J. Jervis et al., eds., Psychology and Deterrence, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985 , as well as B. D. Watts, “Diagnostic Observations on Theater-Level Gaming,” Washington DC: National Defense University, April 1985 (unpublished).
8 The Marker [Hebrew], January 12, 2000.
9 See S. White, “The Blackmailer’s Paradox,” 2010, at: www.scotworkblog.com/index.php/2010/07/the-blackmailer%E2%80%99s-paradox/.
10 R. Aumann, “The Blackmailer’s Paradox,” The Iconoclast, July 7, 2010 , at: www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/28397.
11 The first to realize this was Bernard Brodie: see B. Brodie, War in the Atomic Age, Princeton University Press, 1946, pp. 21–69 .
12 H. Speier, German Rearmament and Atomic War, New York: Row & Co., 1957, p. 182 .
13 D. R. Segal, “Military Organization and Personnel Accession,” in A. Fullinwider, ed., Conscripts and Volunteers, Totowa, NJ: Rowman, 1983, p. 17 .
14 See, for the part of the arrangements that had been made public, P. Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985 . For a partial update, R. D. Critchlow, Nuclear Command and Control: Current Programs and Issues, Washington DC: CSIS, 2003 , at: http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/poni/060503_nuclear_command.pdf.
15 See on this “Women’s Work,” Strategy Page, at: www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlead/articles/20090104.aspx (referring to Israeli women).
16 See, for the kind of calculations involved, R. Ehrlich, Waging Nuclear Peace: The Technology and Politics of Nuclear Weapons, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985, pp. 165–212 .
17 See R. Powell, “Nuclear Doctrine and the Strategy of Limited Retaliation,” American Political Science Review, 83, 2, June 1989, pp. 503–19 .
18 See on this V. Utgof, “In Defense of Counterforce,” International Security, 6, 4, Spring 1982, pp. 44–60 .
19 See Ghamari-Tarbrizi, “Simulating the Unthinkable,” pp. 165, 166.
20 S. D. Sagan, “The Nuclear Plan Briefing to President Kennedy,” International Security, 12, 1, Summer 1987, pp. 27, 28 .
21 See, on these weapon systems, T. Greenwood, Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision-Making, Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1975 ; and R. K. Betts, ed., Cruise Missiles: Technology, Strategy and Politics, Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 1982 .
22 A. W. Marshall, “Problems of Estimating Military Power,” 1966, at: www.rand.org/pubs.papers.1005.P3417.pdf, pp. 12–13.
23 A. W. Marshall, “A Program to Improve Analytic Methods Related to Strategic Forces,” Policy Sciences, 15, 1982, pp. 47–50 .
24 P. K. Davis et al., “Automated War Gaming as a Technique for Exploring Strategic Command and Control Issues,” Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1983, at: www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/notes/2009/N2044.pdf, pp. 9–11.
25 M. H. Graubard and C. H. Builder, “New Methods for Strategic Analysis: Automating the Wargame,” Policy Sciences, 15, 1982, p. 71 .
26 P. K. Davis et al., A New Methodology for Modeling National Command Level Decision-making in War Games and Simulations, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1986 .
27 Ibid., pp. 78–9.
28 “Computer chess” at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess.
29 See on this “Alpha-beta pruning,” at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-beta_pruning.
30 Quoted in J. L. Gaddis et al., eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy since 1945, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 226 .
31 T. Calvan, Crisis Relocation Plans: The Realities of Planning for Nuclear Attack in New York State, Albany, NY: New York Assembly, 1983, p. 2 .
32 See A. M. Katz, Life after a Nuclear War: The Social and Economic Effects of Nuclear Attacks on the US, New York: Ballinger, 1982, pp. 377−83 .
33 C. Gray and K. Payne, “Victory is Possible,” Foreign Policy, 39, Summer 1980, pp. 14–27 .
34 J. Badham, WarGames (1983) .
35 Allen, War Games, p. 315; Watts, “Diagnostic Observations of Theater-Level War Gaming,” p. 21; M. de Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, New York: Urzone, 1991, p. 2 .
36 Graubard and Builder, “New Methods for Strategic Analysis: Automating the Wargame,” p. 74.
37 E.g. S. Zuckerman, “Judgment and Control in Modern Warfare,” Foreign Affairs, 40, 2, January 1962, pp. 196–212 ; D. Lindley, “What I Learnt since I Stopped Worrying and Studied the Movie: A Teaching Guide to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove,” Political Science and Politics, 34, 3, 2002, pp. 663–7 .
38 See, most recently, T. V. Paul, The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons, Stanford, CA: Stanford Security Studies, 2009 .
39 R. M. Bashrur, Minimum Deterrence and India’s Nuclear Security, Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2009 ; and A. L. Johnson, “China’s ‘New Old Thinking’: The Concept of Limited Deterrence,” International Security, 20, 3, Winter 1995, pp. 5–43 .
40 Quoted in Chong Pin Ling, China’s Nuclear Weapons Strategy, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988, p. 78 .
41 Allen, War Games, pp. 314–15.
42 D. A. Gilmour et al., “Real Time Course of Action Analysis,” 2006, at: http://scholar.google.co.il/scholar%3Fq=Real+Time+Course+of+Action+Analysis&hl=iw&btnG=%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A9, p. 3.
43 See, on the military reform movement, A. A. Clark et al., eds., The Military Reform Debate: Issues and Analyses, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984 .
44 See pp. 184–6 above.
45 Luttwak, Strategy, pp. 3–68.
46 D. Gates, Sky Wars: A History of Military Aerospace Power, London: Reaktion, p. 22.
47 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, “Researchers Stage Largest Military Simulation Ever,” December 4, 1997, at: www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/97/military.html.
48 See M. van Creveld, The Changing Face of War, New York: Ballantine, pp. 197–205.
49 R. P. Haffa and J. H. Patton, “Gaming the ‘System of Systems’,” Parameters, 38, 3, Spring 1998, pp. 110–21 .
50 See, for a general account for their development, J. Lundy and B. Sawyer, Engines of War: Developing Computer Wargames, Scottsdale, AZ: Paraglyph, 2004 .
51 See van Creveld, Fighting Power: German and US Army Performance, 1939–1945, Woodbridge, CT: Greenwood, 1982, p. 107 .
52 See, for the very different publishing dynamics of hexed and computer games, Dunnigan, Wargames Handbook, pp. 198–204, 234–7.
53 See Fast Chess at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_chess.
54 See, for what follows, Eastern Front (video game) at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(video_game).
55 See an interview with Chris Crawford at: www.dadgum.com/halcyon/BOOK/CRAWFORD.HTM.
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