Computer games helping to train commanding officers.

• Author: Peck, Michael
• Position: Transforming Training

The U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., has trained 600 students using computer simulations designed for video-game enthusiasts.

Such methods would have been unthinkable in the old days of paper-map exercises. Even with modern Army simulations such as Corps Battle Simulation (CBS) and Joint Conflict and Tactical Simulation (JCATS), hundreds of instructors and computer operators would have been needed to give meaningful training to a handful of students.

This year, 600 of the 1,600 majors taking brigade staff training at the college played TACOPSCAV, a PC-based hobbyist war game designed by a former Marine intelligence officer. The civilian version sells for about $25.

The comparison with the military's huge, expensive simulations is staggering. A CBS exercise to train division staff might require 400 or 500 participants, according to Jeff Leser, head of the college's Digital Leader Development Center. The problem is that only a few of the participants will actually be running the simulated division, while the rest will be busy controlling the division's subordinate brigades and battalions. That's because the software has minimal artificial intelligence. Participants must use mouse and keyboard commands to laboriously input instructions for every maneuver unit, friend or foe. Thus, putting together a multi-division exercise would be an administrative nightmare.

As for JCATS, at a June brigade staff exercise observed by National Defense, there were 40 students, split into two brigade staffs, on the second floor of a college building. On the floor below, sitting before banks of terminals, were seven instructors, 26 support staff (mostly retired military officers hired for the exercise) and 10 students drafted to control subordinate battalions. The brigade staff students telephoned their orders to the control room, where operators executed them on their computer screens. Add up the numbers, and you have more than 40 staff running a simulation for 40 students.

Contrast this with TACOPSCAV across the hall. There were 15 sections of about 40 students each. Supporting these 600 students were about 100 instructors and staff.

The TACOPSCAV students were broken down into four-person teams, with one sitting at the computer issuing instructions, while the others assumed the roles of brigade staff. Each team was cycled through a series of four-hour scenarios. Set in an overall context of U.S. intervention in a...