Connections 2002

Lecture: Educating Campaign Strategists

by Russ Lockwood


UK Joint Services Command and Staff College
presented by Wing Commander Steve Dean

The United Kingdom Joint Services Command and Staff College was formed in 1977 from four separate staff colleges at Swindon, Wiltshire. The idea was to create one joint college and make it part of one large Defense Academy. The UK had trained well on the tactical level, but had little in the way of campaign planning since WWII, so the UKJSCSC was created to put it right.

The idea was for senior officers to be educatedon the art of operational warfare, with a focus on joint operations. The use of wargames was placed in the middle of the coursework with a series of small scale exercises, but the courses ended with a large Theater-level wargame to bring toegtehr all the ideas, concepts, and processes learned during the sourses. Dean authored, coordinated, and ran this huge simulation.

Again, the aim was to concentrate at the operational level, and so the College brought in students (read: officers) from the four major headquarters: Maritime, Land, Air, and Logistics.

The steps were:

    Mission Analysis
    Evaluation of Data
    Course of Action
    Command Decisions
    Staff Work
    Orders
    Result (Simulations...which would then loop back to analysis)

In the theater-level simulation, these cycles were "fixed" at 24 hours per turn. It worked pretty well to bring officers up to speed, but he did identify problems.

First, war is more asymetric now. There are many other factors to bring into a complete military simulation than just the number of troops, ships, and aircraft.

Second, there is a need to speed up the campaign timeline. Different events happen at different times, and so to introduce these events, there must be an accurate mechanism to model them into the timeline. In other words, you can't have 1:1 time ratio of playing to game time.

Third, more scenarios need to be added. The existing scenario is based upon the Cold War turning hot, when in fact, wars may be all over the globe with different factors and forces than those currently modelled.

Future

In the future, Dean wants more expeditionary scenarios--although they will have to be imaginary locales. He notes that with 48 nationalities within NATO, you need neutral ground to fight over. He also is looking at faster input with fewer people--as dragooning people into data entry isn't exactly the most efficient way to handle the information. And finally, he wants to speed up the cycle times in order to move the timeline.

Bio

Wing Commander Steve Dean - UK Joint Services Command & Staff College. Dean is a professional trainer whose spectrum of experience within the Royal Air Force incorporates engineering, flying and air power training. Following early tours working with enlisted and officer engineers, he became the training specialist within No 56R Squadron, the Tornado F3 Operational Conversion Unit. This led to subsequent posts within the Strike Command Operational Training Branch and on the RAF team established to determine the future recruiting, selection and training requirements for fast-jet pilots. His involvement in wargames began at the RAF Staff College in 1994 and has continued to his present post as SOI Wargames/Exercises at the UK Joint Services Command & Staff College. Wg Cdr Dean has participated in or organized wargame exercises in the USA, Canada, Germany, Kuwait and the UK.

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