Connections 2002

Lecture: Air War College

by Russ Lockwood



presented by Dr. Michael Hickok

The evolution of air war simulations is shifting from the old "Force on Force" exercises across SE Asia or versus Iraq or Iran and towards a more free-flowing modeling of political, economic, and military power around a national identity. It's an attempt to imbue the offciers with a sense of strategy and process.

In 2001, the AWC broke away from the scripted major-theater model and towards a broader, adaptable 1-week scenario. For example, the AWC ran a Chinese-Russian conflict scenario based around a contested border river. The idea is not just application of resources, but figuring out why the US would even be involved in the first place. The bottom line is that they are teaching processes for understanding and action across multiple scenarios and not just straight adapatation of forces and resources in a campaign.

Two Basic Scenarios

The first concerns China in 2010 in a sort of "reverse Cuban missile crisis." The Taiwanese are emplacing intermediate range ballistic missiles and the Chinese establish a blockade around the island. The US "plays the Soviets" so to speak and brings into processes for evaluating the situation and acting on data to help an ally but not start WWIII--as well as practical planning processes of creating an air bridge or forming force protection packages.

The second scenario focuses on the collapse of the Saudi Arabian regime in 2010 and a pre-emptive strike by Iran. Iran has air superiority and US forces are no longer based in Saudi Arabia. Here, the officers confront an unstable "ally," forced entry, and a situation where the US is working against Iran-backed "free elections" in order to restore an authoritarian government.

AWC is creating four scenarios in the 2005-2010 timeframe for other areas, which will use the results of these small mini-simulations to influence the start of the major scenarios.

One problem in current simulations is measuring effects--especially in replicating connectivity of the real world. E-mail is not effective and there are not enough staff resources to duplicate the entire Pentagon structure. Some positive efforts have been made to use faculty expertise to adjudicate regional and functional effects, and simply by eleminating half (from 10 to 5) of the simulations, you get a longer time span with each individual scenario.

Homeland Defense

The AWC is working to add a homeland defense scenario, with the central process being the force allotment between the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security as well as appropriate measures of response to threats and activities.

Bio

Dr. Michael Robert Hickok - Historian, Educator, Area Expert, Military Wargaming Dr. Hickok is Associate Professor of Turkish and Central Asian Studies in the Department of Warfighting at the Air War College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, Alabama. He received his B.A. in Near Eastern & North African Studies and his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. Dr. Hickok also holds a degree in Advanced Turkish language from Bogazigi Oniversitesi, Istanbul, Turkey. He has been the Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Turkey, a fellow of the American Research Institute in Turkey, a research scholar of the Institute of Turkish Studies, and a visiting Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University in Ankara. He was the Senior Fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics in Japan, and on the 1999-2000 Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in Japan. As well as teaching, Dr. Hickok has worked as an intelligence officer at the CIA and as policy advisor within the Department of Defense. His column has appeared in the Turkish defense magazine Ulusal Strateji [National Strategy] and Long Island Newsday.

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