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Wargaming at the Naval Postgraduate School

Published in Journal of Cyber Security and Information Systems
Volume: 4 Number: 3 - Modeling and Simulation Special Edition: Wargaming
Authors: Jeff Appleget, Fred Cameron, Robert E. Burks and Jeff Kline
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NPS On-Campus Wargaming Activities

Warfare Innovation Workshops

Originally sponsored by the Navy Warfare Development Command and the Consortium for Robots and Unmanned Systems Education and Research (CRUSER), the Warfare Innovation Workshops have kicked off the NPS Warfare Innovation Continuum since 2010.

The NPS Warfare Innovation Workshop uses seminar wargaming techniques and design thinking for NPS officers and system command engineers to consider how they would design and/or employ new capabilities in hostile environments. How players employ forces and view risk are assessed with a programmed force and again with a force with new technologies included. Innovative employment of new technologies from the synergy between early- to mid-career officers and early career engineers have been the basis for Navy system design and concept development like the Advanced Undersea Warfare Systems (AUWS), undersea docking stations, air UAV swarms, and distributed fleet. The ideas generated from the Warfare Innovation Workshops are further developed in the year-long Warfare Innovation Continuum, a NPS federation of classes, capstone projects, theses, and research work usually involving 400 faculty, students and sponsors.

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 Warfare Innovation Workshop participants discuss technological solutions for employment.

Global ECCO

Global ECCO’s (Education Community Collaboration Online) mission is to build and strengthen the Combating Terrorism Fellowship Program’s (CTFP) global alumni network of Combating Terrorism experts and practitioners through innovative and engaging technologies and techniques that both enable and encourage collaborative partnership between individuals, nations, organizations, and cultures. At NPS, Global ECCO has utilized computer and web-based technologies to develop engaging strategic games to educate players about counter-terrorism tactics. The strategic games teach the methods and mindsets of terrorist tactics as well as how to contend with them as opponents face off against each other in a virtual online environment. This strategic gaming environment facilitates thinking about terrorism and combating terrorism issues and provides an effective framework for discussing related concepts. Global ECCO has developed multiple strategic games including concepts focused on Asymmetric Warfare, Terrorism Finance, Social Network Analysis, Cyber, Counter Insurgency, and Countering Terrorist Ideologies.

MMOWGLI

The MMOWGLI project was originally sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for the United States Navy. The goal of the project is to explore the potential of a Massively Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI), with a variety of themes, to expand engagement in military and non-military strategy development for complex geopolitical problems. The platform is designed to support large numbers of distributed global players working together on idea generation and action planning, with an eye towards surfacing innovative outlier strategies. Several dozen games, workshops and courses have used the MMOWGLI platform.

Red Teaming and Red Celling

The Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development, Department of Energy, the Commander Naval Surface Forces, and the State of California are four past sponsors of red teaming and red celling activities at the Naval Postgraduate School. Leveraging the operational experience and technical education of NPS students, these classified efforts focus on technical red teaming future systems and or red celling emerging blue concept of operations. These activities employ wargaming techniques to frame the students’ perspective of defeating blue systems and result in recommendations to increase blue system resiliency or modifications to Blue concepts.

Authors

Jeff Appleget
Jeff Appleget
Dr. Jeff Appleget is a retired Army Colonel who served as an Artilleryman and Operations Research analyst in his 30-year Army career. He teaches the Wargaming Analysis, Combat Modeling, and Advanced Wargaming Applications courses at NPS. He also teaches week-long Basic Analytic Wargaming Mobile Training Team (MTT) courses, with the most recent offering conducted in Adelaide, Australia for DST-Group (the Australian Government’s Defence Science and Technology organization). He is the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC) Chair of Applied Operations Research at NPS. His research interests include Irregular Warfare and Stability Operations modeling, Amphibious Operations modeling, Wargaming, Combat Modeling, and Integer Programming. He was a member of the NATO SAS-091 Specialist Team (2012 Research and Technology Organization Scientific Achievement Award winner) that developed metrics to support decisions for the transition of responsibilities from ISAF to the Afghanistan Government. His other major awards include the Richard W. Hamming Faculty Award for Interdisciplinary Achievement (2016), Army Modeling and Simulation Office Analysis Award (2011), Dr. Wilbur B. Payne Memorial Award for Excellence in Analysis (1991 and 2003), Simulation and Modeling for Acquisition, Requirements, and Training (SMART) Award (2001 and 2003), and 1990 Concepts Analysis Agency Director’s Award for Excellence. He served on the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Board of Directors from 2000-2004.
Fred Cameron
Fred Cameron
Mr. Fred Cameron joined the Canadian Department of National Defence in 1974 upon graduation in mathematics from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He recently retired after more than 35 years as an operational research analyst. He has since been appointed a scientist emeritus by the Centre for Operational Research and Analysis in Ottawa. During his career, Mr. Cameron provided operational research for all three Canadian military services. From 1976 to 1978 he supported NORAD in its North American air defence mission. He then spent three years in the Netherlands with NATO, with a focus on air operations in the European theatre. From 1983 to 1988 he led the OR team in Victoria, British Columbia supporting Canada’s west-coast navy, and had close collaboration with analysts at US Third Fleet on naval operations in the northern Pacific. His introduction to army problems came in 1988 with assignment to the Directorate of Land Operational Research in Ottawa. From 1998 he led an OR team in Kingston, Ontario dealing with future concepts for the Canadian Army. Mr. Cameron deployed to Macedonia and Kosovo in 1999 to provide OR support to the Commander of the Canadian Contingent in KFOR. Mr. Cameron has been an advisory director of the Military Operations Research Society since 2009.
Robert E. Burks
Robert E. Burks
Dr. Robert E. Burks, Jr. is a Senior Lecturer in the Defense Analysis Department of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research form the Air Force Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Operations Research from the Florida Institute of Technology and a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the United States Military Academy. He is a retired logistics Army Colonel with more than thirty years of military experience in leadership, advanced analytics management and logistics operations who served as an Army Operations Research analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, TRADOC Analysis Center, United States Military Academy, and the United States Army Recruiting Command. He has led multiple analytical study teams responsible for Army Transformation (organizational change) issues and his work includes applying analytical methods to develop solutions for complex problems in support of the Combined Arms Support Command, the Army’s sustainment think tank and premier sustainment learning institution. In addition, he has served as the technical expert on studies involving deployment, equipping, manning, training, and logistics operations of military forces in multiple theaters of operation. He currently teaches the Modeling for Decision Making and Statistics Courses at NPS. His research interests include Irregular Warfare and Stability Operations modeling, Information Operations modeling, Wargaming and Agent Based Modeling and Simulation. His recent major awards include the Military Leadership Award (2013), Joint Service Warfare Award (2013), Military Operations Research Journal Award (2011) for developing analytical methods for solving the Theater Distribution Problem, and the Omar Bradley Fellowship for the Study of Mathematical Sciences (2011).
Jeff Kline
Jeff Kline
CAPT Jeff Kline, USN (ret) is a retired naval officer with 26 years of service, two ship commands, and time as a naval analyst in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Jeff is currently a Professor of Practice in the Operations Research department and holds the Naval Postgraduate School‘s Chair of Systems Engineering Analysis. He teaches Joint Campaign Analysis, executive risk assessment and coordinates maritime security education programs offered at NPS. Jeff supports applied analytical research in maritime operations and security, theater ballistic missile defense, and future force composition studies. He has served on several U.S. Naval Study Board Committees. His NPS faculty awards include the Superior Civilian Service Medal, 2011 Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) Award for Teaching of OR Practice, 2009 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Homeland Security Award, 2007 Hamming Award for interdisciplinary research, 2007 Wayne E. Meyers Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering Research, and the 2005 Northrop Grumman Award for Excellence in Systems Engineering. He is a member of the Military Operations Research Society and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science.
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