Wargame Articles

Late Twentieth Century Professional Military Games by
John Curry

The computerisation of wargaming by the military has been a gradual process. Even today, manual wargames are being used and some are never likely to be computerised (such as staff college exercises, planning games, Tactical Exercises Without Troops and some low level training games).

Although many professional wargamers have kept uptodate with the trends in civilian wargaming, largely the civilian wargaming industry has been ignorant of the parallel developments with their military counterparts.

As part of the History of Wargaming Project (www.johncurryevents.co.uk), I decided to find and obtain permission to reproduce some of the military wargames and produce them in an 'oven ready' format ready to be used. This article outlines 3 sets of wargaming rules used by armies; 1 Canadian, 1 British and 1 American. This work is only partially completed as I have yet to produce the British army desert wargame, the NATO skirmish game and I have not found the Chinese army's wargaming rules currently in use (someone must have a translated set!).

CONTACT!

There were alerts, on both sides, when the cold war started to move towards being a hot war. The author remembers one occasion in the early 1980s, when the UK Territorial Army (active reserves) in the UK one weekend found itself deploying to Germany instead of the expected weekend peacetime manoeuvres.

The rules were for fighting 1/300 scale tank dominated battles in Europe against the Russians. There were designed to be played by serving soldiers, not civilian wargamers, so the rules were written to be easily understood and had the innovation of cards for every type of unit to act as aide memoire. These cards showed movement distance, chance of hitting and other key information.

It is interesting to note that the rules bear some resemblance to the Wargame Rules for Armoured Warfare, 1950-1985, as published by the Wargames Research Group (better known as WRG) in 1979. Indeed, the editor of the rules, Capt Donnelly, acknowledged their influence on the development of CONTACT!

The sequence of play and the movement rules were very similar those in WRG, but the fire/ movement system was simplified. The direct fire procedures had been modified and the game used percentage probabilities based on operational research instead of the 6 sided dice. Releases of secret information from the cold war show that in most cases, the WRG figures were close to the true figures.

The indirect fire system was clearly derived from operational research. The CONTACT! artillery system played well and provided one of the great training strengths of the game. It demonstrated that artillery support took time and that the artillery of the 1980's rarely killed armoured vehicles when using high explosives. However, the great strength of the artillery was to neutralise virtually any target area.

In the rest of the rules there are a number of simplifications to the WRG system. These were introduced to help maintain playability and pace of the game as the target audience was serving officers. For example, the game was based on the assumption that the elements (units) would always use the most appropriate weapon and ammunition for a given target. Soldiers wanted to know the effect of the tank overall, not ponder whether to use HESH of APDS. Infantry were assumed to fire at armour with their M72 and small arms against infantry.

The rules were regularly used for military training courses, with great success. They also influenced other low level tactical training wargames used in British and the American Army.

Dunn Kempf

If one was to write a history of wargaming, there would be a number of landmark sets of rules that were the inspiration for wargamers to copy and change them to create whole series of new games. One of such rules was the original Kriegsspiel rules of Baron von Reisswitz. Created in the early 19th century, the rules were endless modified into military and civilian wargames . Another such set were the Peter Pig's toy soldier game 'AK47', simulating the wars in Africa in the middle of the 20th century, the rules have been adapted (with and without acknowledgement) for many periods including space games, ancients, medieval, Vietnam, the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Another such set was the Dunn-Kempf, The American Army's Tactical Wargame (1977-1997).

The intellectual inspiration for the Dunn-Kempf game came from the work of Phil Barker et al. and the WRG 1970-75 Modern Warfare rules. However, the combat tables were replaced with classified military data and the WRG rules were modified to reflect the American Army's understanding of warfare. The rules were also substantially rewritten with a view to making them more accessible to the average army officer or senior NCO using them.

The game was developed by Captain Hilton Dunn and Steve Kempf in 1975 while they were students at Fort Leavenworth. They wanted to 'to help generate plausible and complex tactical situations for small unit commanders to have to resolve against aggressive opponents'. The game was such a success that after extensive testing, the Combined Army Centre at Fort Levenworth, packaged the rules into boxed sets with GHQ micro armour tanks, terrain boards, maps and other game accessories. 500 Dunn Kempf Game Sets were distributed throughout the army commands around the world.

The original Dunn Kempf boxed sets included a typical US 'Blue' force with 17 M60A1 main battle tanks, an M113A1 personnel carrier, a mechanised infantry company with 15 M113A1s, three 81mm tracks, 2 M113A1 TOW carriers, nine rifle squads, six M60 machine gun teams, and 12 Dragon teams. Additional forces were included depending on the units using the model. For example, an armoured unit might have 4 additional TOW APC's, four 4.2 inch mortar carriers, a REDEYE ground-to-air missile team, 10 Sheridan M551 light tanks, a pair of armoured vehicle launched bridge units, an M88 tank recovery vehicle, an M578 light recovery vehicle, two M559 POL tankers, a pair of M561 Gamma Goat cargo vehicles and a pair of AH 1-G TOW equipped attack helicopters.

A typical OPFOR (Opposing Force) would consist of a tank battalion of 31 T-62 medium tanks, three BTR-50 personnel carriers and a pair of BRDM armed with Saggers, a motorized rifle company of 10 BMP personal carriers, nine rifle squads. They might also have three additional BRDMs with Saggers, a pair of ZSU-57-2 anti aircraft vehicles, six light trucks, nine additional T62 tanks, three PT-76 light recce tanks, a pair of Recon BRDM-2 and two HIND - A Helicopters.

Units were encouraged to supplement the kit with commercially bought tanks from the commercial manufacturer GHQ.

One of the secrets to the games success was the level of customisation that took place. The terrain boards were always made to resemble the area the units would deploy to. For example, the game at Fort Irwin in California had a terrain model for the National Training Centre (NTC). I received emails from soldiers who served in Germany who found it very useful to rehearse using the terrain board, then go out and carry out exercises over the real terrain shown on the model.

Another aspect of the rules was the extent to which they inspired different units to modify them to meet their own needs. While keeping the underlying rule set, the rules units expanded the parts most relevant to them. The US Army Infantry School (USAIS) at Fort Benning changed the scope of the game to focus more on the infantry squad/ tank platoon level to meet their needs. The III Corps Simulation Centre used an 'armour heavy variant' Servicing 1st Cavalry Division and 2nd Armored Division (as well as other II Corps units), that variant had an impact on a significant portion of the US armoured forces. This variant was also used by the 49th Armored Division (Texas National Guard) just down the road in Austin.

In addition to the various units of the American army adaptation the game, the rules had a significant international impact. The Canadian's produced a variant of the game to meet their own needs . The game was also used in Australia for simulation and for training. The British Army experimented with the rules and interestingly enough, the game was even played by the Russians . However, I speculate that the WARSAW Pact played the game to better understand the American view of war rather than as training tool in its own right.

The last mention I have found for the game being used for military training was at an American Armour conference in 1997, but the game has stayed in the archives of many units.

The British Army Wargaming Rules (1956)

These rules were originally published by the War Office as an Operations Research tool to explore different tactical approaches to fighting a defensive war in Germany at the operational level in the 1950s, including provision for the use of nuclear weapons.

These rules have only come to light because of the efforts of the great wargamers, Bob Cordery (http://www.colonialwargaming.co.uk/), found them in a dusty archive and released their significance. He kindly gave permission for the rules to be distributed to a wider audience via the History of Wargaming Project.

The main author of the rules was Lt. Col. G. W. H Field who had served in the R. Leicester's and had fought as part of 29 infantry Brigade in the Korean War. However, there was input and play testing by large numbers of other, unnamed individuals, with combat experience.

During World War II Britain pioneered the use of operational research (OR) to maximise the efficiency of scare military resources. The most famous important output was perhaps the decision to largely withdraw the RAF from France (in order to preserve it for the battle over Britain) and the most well known was the use of OR by Coastal Command in the anti-U Boat operations during the Battle for the Atlantic.

The Germans were the great wargamers of World War II, but on the British side extensive effort was put into measuring and quantifying many aspects of warfare to inform the training of officers. Many of the tables in these rules reflect that effort. The rules contain 'norms' for march rates, unit density, casualty rates, planning times, durations of engagements etc are based on operational experience in The Second World War and Korea, and so are of interest to rules designers for earlier periods of the twentieth century as well. These rules were not just a work of theory, they are a work of reference about operational warfare between 1940- 1970.

Key design features (with thanks to Martin Rapier for his contribution to this section of the article)

Unit representation is at the battalion level (with the possibility of breaking down into batteries/squadrons for some types of troops) and formations are brigades, divisions and corps. Turns are hours and the game envisages multi-day engagements.

Movement and combat is regulated by a grid of 2km squares, the game is intended to be played on maps or models of the terrain suitably gridded up. Movement rates vary with troop type, whether the units are in contact, whether roads are available etc but the vast range of different terrain types seen in many wargames are not present, going is either 'good' or 'bad'.

The main emphasis in the game is on planning times to carry out particular tasks, especially planning for battles, digging in, changing unit posture (defensive, offensive, taking cover etc) and the players pre-commit their units to the various activities in advance.

Some activities take a great deal of time indeed, infantry conducting a full divisional attack require a minimum of 24 hours planning time. This gives the game a unique flow, as players are more concerned with planning what they want to do, than the mechanics of executing their plans. In many ways it is like John Salt's planning game from COW 2006 writ large.

It also means that in fluid situations, getting inside the enemy's decision loop is actually possible and their whole situation is eroded as they can't respond quickly enough. Conversely, long periods of time can elapse without anything apparently happening at all, just like real life but very unlike many wargames where every turn is frantic activity.

Combat is very abstracted, almost cursory. The sizes of the engaged units are compared, and simple charts referred to for different types of attacks (infantry assault, tank battle, meeting engagement etc) which gives a probability for the attack to succeed.

One nice twist is that the duration of the battle is unknown, but even battalion sized attacks can take a few hours before the players get the results. Losses are derived from the outcome of the combat, a complete reversal of most wargames practice, successful participants taking lower losses than unsuccessful ones. Losses are also determined on a per unit basis, so a higher unit density results in more casualties, again contrary to common wargames practice.

This system is very similar to that used in Jim Wallman's big operational game rules, and also my own operational rules (ahem, ahem), as well as Phil Yates's little known 'Operation Brevity'. It models the tension between generating sufficient firepower at the point of contact, with the possibility of mass casualties as the attacker density goes up.

One thing the rules do not do is differentiate between unit quality, but it was relatively simple to apply Dupuy style CEV modifiers to the combat results.

Unit posture is important, when deployed for defence they can see enemy activity in adjacent squares (or further if on high ground) and interdict enemy movement with fire - effectively a form of Zone of Control. Units formed up for movement can obviously move, but they can't see into adjacent squares nor can they fire into them until they have deployed.

When deployed for defence the unit occupies the entire square, but units formed up for attack can 'stack' two infantry units in a square plus up to two armoured units as well. It takes time to change between modes, and in particular it takes a lot of time to dig in effectively (24 hours for maximum protection), so once units are dug in, they don't have a great incentive to move.

It is possible to take over friendly or captured enemy entrenchments, but this also takes time. This is critical as the combat charts make counterattacks against captured positions extremely dangerous before they are consolidated. The maintenance of reserves to conduct such counterattacks is therefore encouraged, although poor planning can render them ineffective.

Computer Games

In the 1990's, the rules were superseded by various computer based games, starting with CAABS Computer Assisted Airland Battle. The latter was basically a computer assisted version of the Dunn-Kempf game. Now the American army uses predominantly computer based war games; civilian examples include Tac Ops and Brigade Combat Team Commander . The tools for computer games are so good, it is easy to set up a multi-player game with almost any number of units on almost any terrain. However, such computer games do have issues, but this is not the place to debate the advantages and disadvantages of computer models versus other forms of military training.

Conclusions