Essential Wargaming Frameworks That Should Be Incorporated Into Every Military Force Development Strategy
Summary
In 2019, Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger identified wargaming as a critical component of Force Design 2030, executing over twenty major wargames to guide institutional transformation, yet neither the Marine Corps nor the Department of Defense has ever formally codified a structured process for organizing and sequencing these wargames. The authors argue that this gap is a significant problem, as wargames heavily influence military requirements, investment decisions, and capability development, making an undisciplined approach potentially costly and misleading. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the late wargaming expert Peter Perla's "cycle of research," the article emphasizes that wargames must be integrated with exercises, real-world operations, historical analysis, and other qualitative and quantitative methods to deliver a complete picture of challenges and solutions. The abolishment of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System has further elevated the responsibility of individual services to validate requirements, making structured wargaming even more essential within the emerging mission engineering approach. The authors propose a five-phase wargaming framework to be adopted across the Department of Defense, designed to bring discipline, traceability, and coherence to force planning efforts while preventing flawed assumptions from becoming deeply embedded in future requirements.
Key Takeaways
- 1. The Marine Corps and broader DoD lack a formally codified process for sequencing wargames within force design, creating gaps in strategic planning and capability development
- 2. Wargames alone are insufficient for designing an entire force and must be integrated with experimentation, historical analysis, exercises, and other analytical methods as part of a "cycle of research"
- 3. Poor or limited wargaming has already led to rapid, inadequately tested conceptual shifts, as seen in the development of the Joint Warfighting Concept
- 4. The DoD's elimination of the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System places greater responsibility on services to rigorously validate requirements, elevating the importance of structured wargaming
- 5. A proposed five-phase wargaming framework could standardize force planning across the DoD, ensuring technology development is driven by operational needs rather than technological interest alone