Modeling the Chaos of Battle

Modeling the Chaos of Battle

Imagine this scenario — Allied forces cling to a sliver of beachhead, seemingly a hair's breadth away from disaster, outgunned by a phalanx of enemy armor and artillery closing in for the kill.


But the enemy's confidence fades in the static of jammed radio frequencies and broken supply lines. His army, large yet badly trained and led, disintegrates as the nimble Allies with their state-of-the-art weapons and communications systems overtake them. Instead of being driven back into the sea, the Allies drive forward into the capital.

This hypothetical wargaming situation reflects the US military's vision of future warfare, in which the country's Armed Services increasingly embrace cutting-edge technologies to help achieve the advantage over adversaries.

But as battlefield technologies and strategy become more complex, wargaming techniques must also keep up. Booz Allen Hamilton's Integrated Gaming System — driven by the Entropy-Based Warfare model — is designed to do just that. Internet-based technologies combine with advanced strategic planning capabilities to help make the gaming experience richer and more realistic.

Putting the focus on decision making

The goal of Booz Allen's simulation and modeling professionals was to develop a comprehensive wargaming architecture that both made the gaming process more rigorous and allowed players to focus on decision making. The Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) uses the Integrated Gaming System to conduct its Army Transformation Wargames and "rehearse" sophisticated maneuvers and discover mistakes ahead of time — in the classroom instead of during battle.

The Entropy-Based Warfare model is the strategic heart of the system and allows players to approach conflict differently. Developed jointly by the firm and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and unveiled in 1997, it's a computerized tool capable of modeling the full range of military actions (including conflict in the air, sea, ground, space, and cyberspace domains) in a single, integrated manner that better represents future warfare.

An improvement over earlier models

Earlier wargaming models could not fully capture the dynamism of advanced programs — like the Army's Objective Force and Future Combat Systems — that rely on Internet-based communication and coordination and have the maneuverability and stealth of a light force.

"For many years wargames were fought primarily with stickers on wall maps and PowerPoint," says Larry Hamby, Booz Allen's Integrated Gaming System program manager.

But the manual nature of these games restricted players' ability to access information. And, says Mark Jacobsohn, Booz Allen's Entropy-Based Warfare program manager, "Players couldn't conduct their detailed planning in a timely manner or capture data quickly and store it electronically for re-use in the future."

Wargaming

The Army begins a game by designing a possible conflict scenario set several years in the future. The scenario could be anything from another Persian Gulf War to a peacekeeping mission. Information about the scenario is loaded into the tools that make up the Integrated Gaming System. Then, teams representing friendly and hostile forces play out the conflict using the resources, reference materials, and 3-D simulation capability that the system puts at players' fingertips. Players see the operation progress — or not — on their computer screens.

Booz Allen made the Integrated Gaming System highly customizable. "It easily allows for scenario-specific orders of battle ranging from Corps-size units down to individual Special Operations Forces teams, and up to 64 individual sides in a game," says Jacobsohn. "It also has a point-and-click interface, so it's more user-friendly than previous simulations."

And the Integrated Gaming System can execute 30 days' worth of moves in less than 3 hours, and record them electronically for post-game assessment and future what-if excursions.

But firepower isn't everything

The challenge for Booz Allen was devising a model that uses more than firepower to determine victory. Previous DoD simulations were attrition models that awarded victory to the side with the biggest guns. "But in a real battle, success doesn't rest on firepower alone," says Vice President Mark Herman, the author of the Entropy concept and the Entropy-Based Warfare model's designer. "There are other factors that historically have allowed small, well-motivated forces to dominate larger, unmotivated opponents."

And that's the role of Entropy-Based Warfare, which factors in entropy — "the tendency for everything — from our universe to our kitchens — to become more disorganized over time," says Herman. "On the field, lots of variables can interfere with best-laid plans, such as morale, weather, and logistics, which are key factors usually ignored in most campaign models. Entropy-Based Warfare allows us to bring them in and replicate the real-life chaos of battle."

For instance, adds Jacobsohn, "Old wargaming models can't show the capabilities of a light and maneuverable force. But Entropy-Based Warfare can introduce such things as differing levels of technology, stealth, and cohesion that can make the difference against a firepower-based model."

Rolling the virtual dice

Many popular board games use dice to determine moves, so that your chances of landing on any one square entail at least some luck. In simplistic terms, Entropy-Based Warfare also uses dice (electronically rolled by the computer) to introduce any number of events or unexpected challenges, as in real battle. This means no one team can stack the deck.

By modeling wargames in this way, battlefield leaders see what they need to win, yet learn to plan for the possibility of things going wrong. Says Jacobsohn, "the Army has been able to rigorously test its new concepts and plans against the chaos of battle, and be better prepared if/when the time comes to use them."