SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 – Approximately 20 Department of Defense leaders, allies and partners, came together for a Basic Analytic Wargaming Course taught by the Naval Postgraduate School Wargaming Mobile Education Team in Wiesbaden, Germany, Aug. 30 – Sept. 10. The class provided access to the unique capabilities of the Naval Postgraduate School students and faculty.
“We teach wargaming at the Naval Postgraduate School to Master’s students, but we also teach wargaming around the world,” explains retired U.S. Army Col. and Naval Postgraduate School Senior Lecturer, Jeff Appleget.
“When a command or organization wants to stand up a wargaming capability, they contact me and we bring our MET team to teach the Basic Analytic Wargaming Course at their location. The typical course size is 16-20 students, and the only prerequisite is a willingness to learn.”
The course is five days long and built around hands-on practical exercises that are focused on a topic coordinated with the sponsoring organization.
Students practice strategy during hands-on exercises at the Basic Analytic Wargaming Course taught by the Naval Postgraduate School Wargaming Mobile Education Team in Wiesbaden, Germany, Aug. 30 – Sept. 10, 2021. The course is five days long (40 contact hours) and built around hands-on practical exercises coordinated with the sponsoring organization.
“About 70 percent of the course content consists of mentored practical exercises where the students roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty building and conducting a wargame,” Appleget added. “The whole idea is to learn by doing and we want them to create a wargame that’s important to their command.”
According to Appleget, the sponsoring organization can request to have the course extended another five days to further develop student skills.
“When they develop the game in one week, as you might expect, it’s a prototype of a game,” Appleget adds. “So if the command wants us for a second week then we create new course materials to further guide them, so they can now take that new information and build with better resolution.”
The Basic Analytic Wargaming Course trains a cadre of the organization’s personnel as analytic wargamers who can design, develop, conduct and analyze wargames for their command.
The students are led through a workshop as they are learning the basic fundamentals. The workshop is focused on a wargame that the sponsoring organization conducts and by the end of the 40 hours, the students conduct that as a graduation exercise.
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By Thomas Mort