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Determining America’s Role in the World
The opinions and views expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Government, U.S. Department of War or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.
A century ago, the staff and students at the Naval War College routinely conducted war games as a significant portion of the 11-month long courses taught annually from 1919 through 1941, the first “golden age” of war gaming at Newport. Ever since the end of World War II, military leaders, research scholars, and academics have portrayed Newport’s interwar games as training, planning, experimentation, research analysis, and everything in between. Characterizations of the interwar war gaming have been chameleon-like, serving the purpose and needs of whoever is advocating for war gaming. How should the Navy think about those two decades of war gaming at Newport? More importantly, what lessons should today’s defense enterprise apply from the Navy’s war gaming of nearly a century ago? The Navy’s interwar games succeeded not as analytical tools for prediction, but as experiential simulations that developed strategic thinking—“habits of mind”—preparing officers for wartime decision-making under uncertainty and with new technologies that had emerged in the force.
Many cite the work of the late Peter Perla to argue what is useful about war gaming then and now. In the mid-1980s, Perla placed war gaming in the context of a “cycle of research,” emphasizing the role of war gaming as an analysis tool. Perla’s description of war gaming, research, and analysis is a reflection of his era, the pre-eminence of operations research and analysis and the computer age. When evaluating Newport’s war games in the 1980s, Perla wrote that war games “are of little use in providing rigorous, quantitative measures to ‘objectively’ prove or disprove tactical or technical theories.”[1] What he and other war gaming proponents advocated for was the integration of findings and results from other research activities with the human decision making experiences of the games—activities that fostered technological and tactical innovation. Perla is not to be dismissed. Indeed, he understood better than anyone the power of war gaming in preparing leaders for war and informing research analysis.
Nevertheless, the most enduring sources to understand this golden age of American naval war gaming are Michael Vlahos’ The Blue Sword (1980), John Lillard’s Playing War (2014), and Norman Friedman’s Winning a Future War (2017). Each of these monographs emphasizes the inherent value of what William McCarty Little intended for the naval officers to gain from conducting war on a map or “chart maneuver” as he called it. Vlahos explains how the Newport games created a warrior ethos in the American naval officer corps coming out of the First World War. Lillard’s history portrays the importance of the Newport war gaming in the professional military education of the officers, in accordance with the guidance of Admiral William S. Sims. Friedman’s study highlights the connections of the Newport war games with the Fleet problems to overcome Treaty Navy limitations and produce the American fleet that fought in the Second World War. All three of these treatments offer important analogs to the role of war gaming for the Navy and the defense establishment in the 21st century. In short, war gaming was necessary for building warrior experience, educating naval and joint leaders how to conduct war, and informing the Navy how to resource the maritime forces required for future security challenges and war.
War gaming then, and now, is how the U.S. Navy plans. Similar to Eisenhower’s oft quoted observation, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” William McCarty Little advocated war gaming as a means to condition officers for operational war.[2] By 1941, the value of the war college’s use of war gaming was plainly evident to the Navy. As head of the Navy’s Bureau of Navigation, Rear Admiral Chester Nimitz spoke to the college’s graduating class five days prior to Pearl Harbor. He asserted that Naval War College graduates were “better and more useful… to the Navy, [and] able to attack [the] perplexing problems” that they could expect in the future. More importantly for Nimitz, the college “strengthened and regularized” reasoning, enabling its graduates to work independently, separately, and reach supporting decisions that could contribute to a general plan.[3]
The power of war gaming for players is enduring. In the research enterprise, war gaming is the most human-centric activity. Naval leaders want to war game against a vigorous, plausible adversary, usually represented by the most capable team of intelligence subject matter experts available. Not only do war games educate players on known and emerging war fighting capabilities of friend and foe, but they also create “band of brothers” moments that enhance understanding of commander’s intent. In effect, war games enable subordinates to fight in accordance with leadership guidance, and to incorporate the most relevant emerging capabilities in the fight.
As Norman Friedman explains in Winning a Future War, the interwar war games were also critical to informing the Naval War College’s recommendations to the General Board of the Navy. Mainly through the efforts of Harris Laning, the staff and war gamers at Newport systematically designed the games, collected the results, and wrote reports that informed the Navy’s General Board fleet design decisions for the best possible fleet allowed within Treaty Navy limitations. Naval War College staff not only conducted the war games, but they also served as umpires during the Fleet Problems and did duty on the war planning staff in Washington. Ideas about new platforms and weapon systems learned or reinforced in war games made their way to the fleet throughout the period.
With respect to the role of war gaming and national strategy, the Navy focused on operations required to achieve anticipated policy ends. During the interwar period, a key military objective was to be prepared to defeat Japan, or at least the Japanese navy. As early as 1920, Holloway Frost, William Pye, and Harry Yarnell promulgated the pamphlet, “The Conduct of an Overseas Naval Campaign” where they outlined the plan for a trans-Pacific joint naval campaign to defeat Japan. This document was one of the important underpinnings of Blue-Orange operational games played throughout the interwar era. National strategy assumptions have to be the foundation of the war games.
If there is one takeaway from the Navy’s interwar experience for today, it is to leverage the experiential merits of war gaming and conditioning for war time decision making with the most current capabilities. Just as the interwar games forced players to integrate aerial reconnaissance, submarines, and carrier aviation, today’s games force players to adapt space, cyber, and unmanned capabilities into joint warfare. Iterative war gaming is not predictive, but rather it is illuminating, a source of paths to failure and paths to success. Newport’s war games produced leaders capable of fighting and winning a war fundamentally different from what they had anticipated. Those war games enabled the American tradition of improvisation during war, creating leaders with the “habits of mind” to adapt doctrine, experience, and the fleet to overcome the unpredictable challenges of war. Through war gaming, the Navy can do that still.
[1] Peter P. Perla, “A Guide to Navy Wargaming,” Center for Naval Analyses Report 118 (May 1986) 12.
[2] 1958, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference, Date: November 14, 1957, Start Page 817, Quote Page 818, Published by the Federal Register Division, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, Washington, D.C. (HathiTrust Full View) link.
[3] December 2, 1941. Address by Bureau of Navigation Chief at graduation, by Chester W. Nimitz, RG16_02_05_05. Naval War College Archives.
Dr. Jon Scott Logel is a professor in the War Gaming Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the United States Naval War College. Since joining the War Gaming Department faculty in 2011, he has focused his research on the use of historical methods in war game analysis for gaining insights into maritime and joint operational issues. Specifically, he has collaborated in qualitative research and analytical projects that have informed the Navy’s development of future naval warfighting concepts, and the drafting of operational plans to address current and emerging threats. He is the author of Designing Gotham: West Point Engineers and the Rise of New York, 1817-1898, co-author of several white papers and chapters on war gaming and analysis, and multiple war game reports. He served twenty-one years as an Army Aviation officer, including combat deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. He holds B.A. from Wake Forest University and Ph.D. from Syracuse University.