The modern battlefield requires split-second decision-making, seamless coordination among distributed teams, and processing vast amounts of information, all under extreme pressure:
As I have learned over the last year, as an advisor to August Interactive, a gaming studio, these are exactly the skills that well-designed military gaming programs can develop and refine.
Unlike traditional military wargaming — which typically involves structured, turn-based exercises on maps or models to explore campaign plans and strategic concepts — the gaming discussed here draws heavily on digital interactive platforms, including modified commercial titles and purpose-built military simulations. These environments — ranging from real-time strategy games to tactical shooters, flight simulators, and cyber-themed games — emphasize rapid continuous decision-making, high-pressure coordination, and immersive skill development. While both approaches aim to sharpen judgment and prepare leaders for complex scenarios, this form of military gaming leverages the speed, interactivity, and scale of modern gaming technology to cultivate competencies that are difficult to replicate in traditional wargaming formats. And they are also more engaging and fun, which is a good thing.
The U.S. military should formally embrace and invest in advanced digital gaming as a core training tool, leveraging its ability to build critical cognitive, coordination, and technical skills for modern warfare.
[…]
I visited the gaming center at West Point last spring. I was impressed with the setup and technological capabilities, but I was even more impressed by the insights shared with me by combat-experienced officers and non-commissioned officers overseeing the program. The positive impact on cadet leadership development was remarkable: improved communication skills, quicker decision-making, and faster adaptability to change. Notably, many intercollegiate athletes there are involved in military gaming.
The Russian meatgrinder approach appears a bit old fashioned in that regard.
It may be impossible for them to escape the “bomb the entire country into rubble” approach while stuck in the abattoir style of warmaking.
Not very relevant unless you play a lot of wargames involving robots, but possibly of interest to the readers who often wargame Taiwan scenarios:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtC-QxsSyYM
Playing online chess, the most common blunder I see is split-second decision-making. This very likely also applies to warmaking whether or not real lives are involved.
Redgrave, the Russian style of “See that hill, don’t come back unless it’s to tell me you’ve taken it” ground the WW2 Germans into meat.
The Soviet meatgrinder approach ended in 1945. Today, Russia has a modern army with modern tactics, and the US does not.
In fact, considering the appalling losses suffered by the Ukrainians in both the 2023 Counter Offensive and the Kursk Incursion, both of which were planned and led by the US/UK, it is clear that it is the US/UK which still relies on meat grinder offensives. The Somme 1916 lives on at West Point and Sandhurst.
If I wanted advice on how to conduct a military operation, I would ask the Russians and send the soy boys to their rooms without supper.
Seeing as how the Russians have, on average, suffered 1/3 the casualties of the Ukrainians while being on the offensive against trenches, mines, and drones says they really know what they’re doing.
Bob Sykes: “If I wanted advice on how to conduct a military operation, I would ask the Russians and send the soy boys to their rooms without supper.”
“Do what works,” shall be the whole of the doctrine.
Already is a red flag.
«Real-time strategy game» usually is a misnomer, and perhaps an oxymoron.
RTS games generally fall under one of the two setups (even the same game on different maps):
A) Puzzle, when resources are very limited, so the game is slow and all about using the resources as efficiently as possible. Or
B) Mouse-wank fest, when enough of resources are delivered that the advantage is in using them quickly (or in bootstrapping resource extraction ASAP, then using up).
Which the lucid part of RTS crowd (specifically Netstorm players, curiously) have noticed long ago.
Also, RTS are generally optimized to be a game for fairly stupid AI (necessarily so, otherwise AI sucks outrageously), thus a human player ends up basically emulating AI — going through “building order”, etc.
None of the above, of course, is strategy.
What strategy there is, seems to be playing head games and rock-paper-scissors on a map. Because that’s where the edge is after the opponents are equally conditioned to moving a mouse through the relevant sequences.
Bob Sykes says:
Kursk probably wasn’t. Rather, a case of desperation. It was a lunge toward a nuclear powerplant, presumably to run nuclear blackmail and/or get the suzerain involved more. The latter didn’t receive it all that well either… until it was repainted as “territory negotiation chips”.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-8624-shaky-start-of-zelenskys
When this didn’t work, what the Orange Revolution state was left with? An all-or-nothing operation that failed to achieve much, and too many forces stuck in a narrow salient. Which looks like a bad enough situation already. Add the need for showy “results” to convince sponsors to not write it off just yet, plus habit of doubling down, and this could only end very poorly.