Army Mad Scientist’s Post

“The most important thing that tends to result in the overall victor is whoever can continue to produce ‘good-enough’ systems. Cheap, durable, and deployable at scale are the most dominant factors for effectiveness in campaign scale wargames.” #ArmyMadSci continues our “Calling All Wargamers” series of blog posts and podcasts with today’s submission by CPT Spencer Bates, expanding on a thread mentioned in last week’s podcast and blog post by Sebastian Bae — “Integrating different types of wargames throughout different echelons allows Soldiers to practice decision making at all levels of their careers.” CPT Bates is a Combat Engineer and Team Leader with Engineer Advisor Team 5521, Bravo Company, 5th Battalion, 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB), Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. He has been an avid wargamer since his early teens, which he ultimately attributes to his pursuing a career in military service — he remains an avid player, reviewer, and organizer of large-scale wargame events. His experiences as a longtime wargamer and company-grade officer make today’s post an especially insightful submission. Check it out at: https://lnkd.in/ezWyDHvs #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC #FORSCOM #wargaming #PME

“At different echelons you need different types of wargames and we used to know this and we used to do it differently” In today’s episode of #ArmyMadSci 's The #ConvergencePodcast, we interviewed Sebastian Bae, Senior Wargame Designer at CNA, adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University teaching graduate wargame design, and designer of the phenomenally popular Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific — the single most cited game in the host of responses we received from our "Calling All Wargamers" crowdsourcing exercise last spring. In this fascinating conversation, Mr. Bae explores how #wargaming can help better prepare our Soldiers and Leaders for a complex #OperationalEnvironment. Check out the highlights from this interview at: https://lnkd.in/eqeDEUTz #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC

This past spring, #ArmyMadSci crowdsourced the intellect of the Nation (i.e., you — our community of action!) with our Calling all Wargamers flyer, soliciting input about your #wargaming experiences. Today’s Mad Scientist Laboratory blog post captures the initial tranche of the “Best of” insights we received — we’ll be featuring a “Best of” (Part 2) with more of your brilliant insights on wargaming, along with additional interviews with some of the contributors in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, check out today’s post at: https://lnkd.in/eywnP3PT #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC

“… it is far better to hit the target that we wanted and the thing that is in fact a high value target rather than a civilian fishing boat – we shouldn’t think about CHMR as a constraint, rather as a next level of precision.” In today’s episode of #ArmyMadSci's The #ConvergencePodcast, we sit down with Andrew Olson to learn more about Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (#CHMR) — now a DoD priority with the implementation of DoDI 3000.17 on 21 December 2023 — and how incorporating it into the Army’s #wargaming activities can help our Leaders better understand how it “supports U.S. national security interests… furthering strategic objectives to achieve long-term strategic success, enhancing the effectiveness and legitimacy of military operations, and demonstrating moral leadership.” CHMR helps ensure we retain the moral high ground when executing military operations, are more precise with our application of lethal force, and are more effective at the operational level — all essential components of achieving victory. Check out the highlights from this interview at: https://lnkd.in/e7b5PFCk #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC

Today’s #ArmyMadSci post features the latest in our continuing #CallingAllWargamers series documenting what we’ve learned about wargaming from our crowdsourcing effort last spring. Brian Train — a freelance writer and prolific wargame designer for both the commercial hobbyist community and the U.S. and Canadian Armies — provides many insightful and keen observations on #wargaming from an #irregularwarfare and #urbancombat perspective. His invaluable “nuggets” include: a prescription for enhancing games by injecting “… pieces of ‘realism’ that only rarely get picked up in hobby wargames, if at all. They often don’t show up in professional wargames played by the military either;” a discussion of several other neglected aspects of gaming contemporary conflict, including shaping and setting the urban fight via exurb operations, sustaining the protracted fight, and small unit subterranean operations; and his overall observation that “far too many critical aspects of operations – use of time and space, correlation of forces, limited intelligence, deception, and above all logistics – are given less than a handwave (often just a finger!) in pursuit of ‘balance’ and ‘fun.’” Check it out at: https://lnkd.in/eSwVpEZe #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC

“I don’t think America, or the West in general, is prepared in any sort of way to fight a static war like we’re seeing over there in Ukraine.” One of the twelve key conditions driving the #OperationalEnvironment (OE) in the next ten years is its #increasedlethality. According to the TRADOC G-2‘s recently published The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations: "LSCO will be increasingly lethal due to the intersection of sensor ubiquity, battlefield automation, precision strike, and massed fires." We've seen an increase in the production, employment, and success of Unmanned Aerial Systems (#UAS) on the battlefield in recent years. These systems were integral components of the Azeri victory in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War – specifically the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 and Israeli Harop – and are proving vital in the on-going Russo-Ukrainian war. Indeed, during this latter conflict, the ever-evolving UAS/Counter-UAS (C-UAS) fight has led to #rapidadaptations on both sides as they seek to achieve #battlefieldadvantage. Yet any advantage achieved is fleeting -- as observed by Daniel Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, "The peak efficiency of a new weapon system is only about two weeks before countermeasures emerge." In our latest episode of #ArmyMadSci 's The #ConvergencePodcast, we sat down with Wolfgang Hagarty to learn first-hand about the on-going war in Ukraine, its rapidly evolving UAS/C-UAS fight, and the overarching impacts of technological innovation on the changing character of warfare – check out the highlights from this interview at: https://lnkd.in/eRqZ46ZN #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC

One of the twelve key conditions driving the #OperationalEnvironment in the next ten years are Weapons of Mass Destruction — per the TRADOC G-2‘s The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations: “Adversaries view weapons of mass destruction (#WMD) as an #asymmetricadvantage that has an outsized impact on U.S. operations and will likely seek to employ WMD in #LSCO.“ Indeed, chemical weapons have been repeatedly employed on the battlefields of Ukraine by Russian forces and in clandestine targeted assassinations by both Russian and North Korean agents. Meanwhile, virologist researchers recently spent $100,000 and used genetic material received through the mail to genetically re-engineer an extinct vaccinia (horsepox) virus — related to the variola virus that causes smallpox. As proclaimed Mad Scientist Dr. James Canton has noted, “exponential convergences” of technologies are occurring, facilitated at machine speed by #ArtificialIntelligence (AI). These #exponentialconvergences will generate “extremely complex futures” that may afford strategic advantage to those who recognize and leverage them — to include nefarious actors seeking asymmetric advantages. #ArmyMadSci welcomes guest blogger Jared Kite with today’s submission exploring how the exponential convergence of AI and biological and chemical weapons is creating “a dynamic and evolving complex operational environment pos[ing] potential threats to U.S., allied, and partner forces” – check it out at: https://lnkd.in/gMsasEar #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC

“If this is the future of warfare, we need to consider it right now because there will come a time when we might not get a vote.” #ArmyMadSci featured LTC Kristine M. Hinds‘ assessment of private sector involvement in future conflicts in “Sixth Domain – Private Sector Involvement in Future Conflicts" last June. While some Army purists have taken exception to the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security's use of the term #SixthDomain to describe the private sector’s sphere of activities supporting warfighting, no one disputes the vital role that the private sector has played in providing corroborative intelligence via space imagery, effective cyber security, and resilient Command and Control networks — heretofore the domain of public sector defense services and intelligence communities — in Ukraine’s on-going fight against Russian imperialism. In today’s episode of The #ConvergencePodcast, Army Mad Scientist sat down with LTC Hinds to address #FifthGenerationWarfare, the Sixth Domain, and how we may need to adapt to defend ourselves and our Nation in the evolving #OperationalEnvironment -- check out the highlights from our discussion at: https://lnkd.in/ej-7pNmF #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC #PrivateSector #WarInc

This past spring, #ArmyMadSci crowdsourced our community of action’s insights with our "Calling all Wargamers" flyer. We were overwhelmed with the number of responses we received — a hearty Mad Scientist "Thank you!” to everyone who contributed! We will be featuring more of what we learned in upcoming blog posts and podcasts in the weeks and months ahead, leading up to our Mad Scientist Conference on hashtag #Wargaming later this fall — stay tuned to the Mad Scientist Laboratory for more information about this event! In today’s blog post, Andrew Olson addresses one often neglected aspect of wargaming Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) — Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response (#CHMR) — now a DoD priority with the implementation of DoDI 3000.17 on 21 December 2023. Failing to address CHMR during the execution of LSCO could have grave operational and strategic consequences for the United States. Incorporating CHMR injects early and often during wargaming iterations can provide our Leaders with the requisite situational understanding on how to successfully execute combat operations, achieve mission objectives, and win decisively on the battlefield, while simultaneously complying with our Nation’s CHMR policy. Check it out at: https://lnkd.in/grA4AqKz #TRADOC #ArmyModernization #AWC #CNA

“It’s got to start with knowing the enemy. Everything always starts with knowing the adversary.” The #ArmyMadSci ‘s 500th blog post features highlights from our latest episode of The #Convergencepodcast with Mr. Ian Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff Intelligence (DCSINT) G-2, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (#TRADOC), discussing the TRADOC G-2’s newly published "The Operational Environment 2024-2034: Large-Scale Combat Operations," the twelve conditions that contribute to LSCO, and the five implications for the U.S. Army and the larger Joint Force. Check out the highlights from this conversation on-line at: https://lnkd.in/e6sW9YMm #KnowYourEnemy #ArmyModernization #AWC