One of the many little feuds going on in the upper ranks of the U.S. Navy has to do with training officers how to fight, or not, as many believe. It comes down to how many training exercises and wargames (simulated, on a computer, exercises) should be scripted (few decisions), or "free wargaming." At the moment, most of the exercises are scripted. That is, the major activities in the exercise are contained in a script, and the participants cannot deviate from those major plot points. This is done largely because of the large number of exercises that are run, at all levels (from a part of the crew, up to a task force with many ships) to make sure everyone knows the many, and often complex, procedures everyone must go through to get the job done. Running a ship, and ships operating together, is a very complex business. So these exercises (often called drills at the lower levels) are necessary. But a minority of captains and admirals insist that, without training exercises that allow the unexpected, and the opportunity to deal with it, commanders won't really be ready for combat. This is "free wargaming," where a scenario lays out who is involved (and with what kinds of ships, equipment and land based material), what the objectives ("victory conditions") are, and then lets the commanders have at it. Many commanders find this messy and unconvincing.
Scripted games surely have a role to play in testing specific situation or systems to see if they can cope in that specific situation. If you want to test how your air defenses will handle a spasm of enemy missiles and aircraft attacking, you rather must script the enemy to launch a spasm of missiles and launch an air attack.
But free wargames are surely absolutely necessary to test the leaders who must fight a war. Scripts should be for tactical situations. Free wargames should be for admirals.
So if an enemy ever succeeds in Pearl Harboring us with a surprise opening attack that cripples our local naval forces in the short run, never let it be said that our Navy didn't practice to receive that defeat many time with their refusal to plan for surprise by an innovative enemy. We'll just call a foul and those sunken ships and dead sailors will reappear for a do-over.
