Wargaming

Military operations such as Desert Storm are not successful by accident. Leaders and soldiers spend years training for such contingencies. This training process increasingly includes time working with simulations and simulators. The simulation stresses their reactive and decision making capabilities, and gives them the opportunity to make mistakes with consequences that are not lethal. The military defines any training that is not real combat to be simulation. This has lead to a division of simulations into three broad categories: live, virtual, and constructive. Constructive simulation, also known as wargaming, derives its name from the fact that the pieces operating on the battlefield are not individual tanks and aircraft but a construction of many different types of equipment into a single aggregated unit such as an armor company or artillery battery. Wargaming is described, current problems in simulation are outlined, and the technical skills needed by an engineer for building simulations are discussed