War Games

by Thomas B. Allen

Startling and disturbing, this is an up-to-date look at today's high-tech rehearsals for war. Political scenarios, military strategies and frightening, true-to-life maneuvers--all the games played by today's leaders are here, based on information gained through the Freedom of Information Act.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Gaming, Games

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Thomas B. Allen's writings range from articles for National Geographic Magazine to books on espionage and military history.
He is the father of Roger MacBride Allen.

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, if very mid-80s look at the role of war gaming in the defense establishment. Allen managed to FOIA a number of typically classified Pentagon simulation, and these transcripts, along with interviews of the major players and a few made-for-TV public war games with actual politicians, provide a fascinating overview of how the United States trained for political and military crises, up to and including global thermonuclear war. Allen's history leaps around a little bit, from the kriegspiel of the Prussian general staff, to pre-World War 2 tabletop naval exercises, to the serious computer simulations of the Rand corporation, and the similarities and differences between military games and hobbyist publishers like Avalon Hill.

The major problem with this book (aside from being a period piece), is that Allen vacillates between three perspectives on war gaming. The most charitable is that they are uncannily predictive and effective tools for preparing for the real world, training government officials to deal with terrorism and political crises, and revealing rigidity and weakness in real mobilization plans. Less charitably, they're a way for a cadre of mid-ranking officers and academics to pretend that they're doing something useful, when really they're just pushing around chits on a board. The array of gaming centers is a waste of resources, but hey, it's a rounding error compared to aerospace procurement boondoggles. The worst perspective is that the games are dangerous lies: based on unverified models, full of outright errors in rules and worldview, biased to support ever higher military budgets, justify an unwarranted sense of American superiority, and a dangerous lack of concern for triggering an actual nuclear war.

All of these perspectives are to some extent true, and I wish Allen had done a better job contextualizing them, but this is still a great little book for any one interested in the use of serious games, of the late Cold War. My favorite little anecdote is Col. Trevor Dupuy, one of the deans of wargaming, explaining how to calculate out the Theoretical Lethality Index for a sword (23) and a one megaton airburst (695,385,000) based on a long series of multiplied statistics based on... guesswork.

[Graeme · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but rather dated, book on the use of War Games in Cold War America. Written in the mid 80s but even so some interesting insights into the perceived value of wargames and their possible problems.

Also there was a mobilization exercise called "Nifty Nugget" which was apparently one of the most useful of all the games they ever played.

So there's that.