Wargaming – What is it?

February 3, 2023 - Defence Stories

A wargame is a warfare model or simulation whose operation does not involve the activities of actual military forces, and whose sequence of events affects and is, in turn, affected by the decisions made by players representing opposing sides.  It leverages a 'safe to fail' environment to enable an analysis of competitive human decision making. Commanders and staff can examine and learn alternative strategies and tactics at any desired level of detail, with outcomes that guide further examination.​

The Canadian Joint Warfare Centre (CJWC) provides leadership, advice, design, execution capability, and analysis at the Joint Operational level in wargaming across organizations. CJWC is a member of the global defense wargaming community and is uniquely positioned to find integrated solutions to complex inter-organizational problems.​

The centre has developed a joint wargaming course in order to increase the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) knowledge and use of wargaming at the operational and strategic levels. The aim of the course is to train CAF members and Department of National Defense civilians on the use of wargaming to support human decision making. The course consists of lectures on the theory of wargaming and practical examples of where wargaming could be utilized. The course is conducted by staff from the CJWC and upon successfully completion, members will have the fundamental knowledge and skills necessary to act as the liaison between professional wargamers and their organization in an operational or strategic level headquarter.

Within the CAF’s history, wargaming had been mainly used in command post exercises and staff college training.  There has been a recent resurgence in interest for using wargaming as a tool to help understand the increasing complexity of warfare and a renewed potential for conflict against near peer adversaries.  There are new challenging domains to understand - space and cyber, and technological advances in weapon and sensor systems that will affect strategies and tactics. 

Historically, wargaming has been used both during and before conflict to improve the professionalism of officers and personnel.

Wargames can be used for many applications, including but not limited to:

a. Training/Education - Games focused on conveying known information.

b. Expanding Awareness - Games focused on helping players understand the process.

c. Organizational/Processes - Games focused on organizational conflicts and/or process issues.

d. Research - Games used for exploratory experimentation and where data is collected for research purposes.

e. Capability Development - Games focused on assessment and analysis of new capabilities, and

f. Analytics - Games used as a vehicle for deep analysis of an issue.

If your organization is interested in conducting a wargame in order to help solve or clarify a problem, then contact the CJWC as they may be able to help.