WARCON: A Wargaming Construction Toolset for Military Simulation

The wargames employed for Air Force curriculums to date suffer from (1) varying interfaces that require repeated learning for each wargame use, (2) non-trivial development time to simulate modern warfare, and (3) rigid adjudication engines that narrowlyfocus on force-on-force conflicts. We propose to develop a comprehensive wargame construction toolset that will empower Air Force personnel to create wargames in accordance with modern warfare doctrine. The toolset seeks to present students with astandardized interface, allowing them to build experience with one wargame that will carry to the next, thus allowing them to focus on the content. The toolset will enable military SME's, developers, and students to rapidly generate wargames throughmixed-initiative assistants, intelligent interfaces, and visual authoring tools. The toolset will feature an adjudication engine with advanced features for modeling gradual or delayed effects, effects-based operations, psyops, etc. We will determinerequirements for such an engine. We will explore the wargame authoring process and determine how a mixed-initiative collaborative assistant can recognize user tasks and assist. Finally, we will absolutely prove the feasibility of our ideas through thedevelopment of a proof-of-concept, limited prototype, which demonstrates critical aspects of the toolset. A wargaming toolkit will prove of great advantage for rapid development and deployment of simulations and games for education, analysis, or entertainment. End users of the toolkit are empowered to author and run their own customizable scenarios.