Simulation and Wargaming

Epilogue

Andreas Tolk

In the prologue, we formulated the challenge to bring human creativity and intuition of wargames closer together utilizing the power of computation provided by simulation systems. Did we get there? Surely, the contributions in this volume provide some impressive visions, from the use of latest technology, such as visualization tools for immersive presentations of simulation as well as resulting data, to providing common ontological representations allowing the application of artificial intelligence techniques, to the increased use of analysis and latest simulation methods to support them. There are examples of successful applications in several domains, demonstrating the new dimension of warfare. But are we truly growing closer together? Or were simulation and wargaming never divided in the first place? Is it perhaps simply a matter of perspective?

Wargamers always were interested in getting better support. From the introduction of movement and attrition tables in the beginning to the use of physics‐based simulation models to compute effects, wargamers accepted help, but as Seth Bonder presented in his address on Military Operations Research, Science, and Models: Some Lessons Learned during the 68th Military Operations Research Society meeting in Colorado Springs in June 2000: “[It is] not models [that] produce new insights, but the analysts with ten to fifteen years of experience in the respective domains.”

Computer scientists know this very well, and ...