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USJFCOM Co-Sponsored Wargame Begins At Naval War College

Navy Newsstand

Story Number: NNS031006-12

Release Date: 10/6/2003 2:59:00 PM

From U.S. Joint Forces Command Public Affairs

NEWPORT, R.I. (NNS) -- The Navy and U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) co-sponsored wargame, Unified Course 04, kicked off Oct. 6 at the U.S. Naval War College here.

According to wargame organizers, Unified Course 04 (UC04) continues to refine the standard for future collaboration and partnership between military services and Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) on joint force development.

UC04 will focus on countering adversaries' anti-access capabilities in the year 2018. It will also feature an array of objectives that support both USJFCOM's and the Navy's spiral development for the Joint Operations Concepts.

"That we have a series of co-sponsored wargames in which all of the services are coming to co-evolve their ideas under a common joint context is itself part of the power of the experimental campaign plan and part of the novelty of the approach.

Rather than wait until each service determines their own ideas and trying to merge it into a joint concept in the end, we are really taking a radical approach and trying to co-evolve the concepts from the start," said JFCOM's director of experimentation Army Maj. Gen. James Dubik, during a recent media roundtable.

"This is an exercise in all of us working together, and there is a lot of power in that."

This is the second in a series of events where a military service has entered into partnership with USJFCOM to explore its future operational concepts. In April, USJFCOM partnered with the U.S. Army to conduct Unified Quest 2003.

With a wargaming department that celebrated its centennial more than a dozen years ago, the Naval War College supports a gaming schedule of approximately 50 games a year. These events support internal college needs and externally generated requests, which can come from various sources, including defense and Navy departments, operational commands and civilian agencies.

War games are used to study a wide range of issues, from space to anti-submarine warfare, from unconventional warfare to global war, from advanced technology to political-military relationships.

"We are posing some highly challenging battle problems in order to create operational situations that force the most intense and close interactions among future concepts from each of the stakeholders in the war game," said Naval War College Wargaming Department Chairman Prof. Kenneth Watman.

"Only in this way can we really understand the potential conflicts, as well as the hidden opportunities for synergy that these concepts possess.

"War games, properly designed and executed, provide a unique method of uncovering issues that would otherwise remain obscured to operational planners," said Watman.

UC04 runs through Oct. 9 and will conclude with a senior leadership seminar in Washington, D.C., Oct. 17.