The Edge Wargaming the Unexpected “The
war with Japan had been reenacted in the game room here by so many
people and in so many different ways that nothing that happened during
the war was a surprise - absolutely nothing except the Kamikaze tactic
toward the end of the war; we had not visualized those.” Nimitz’s remarks at the Naval War College in 1961 presage the modern usage of wargaming and simulation and the challenges their use pose in light of the current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The comments highlight both the strength and weakness of simulation. On one hand, these tools can give us powerful insight into the potential salients of future combat. Moreover, they allow us to comprehend the huge complexity of modern war. Imagine the challenge that Nimitz faced in World War II--fighting a battle over a quarter of the earth’s surface with hundreds of combatant ships and millions of sailors, soldiers, and Marines with communications no more sophisticated than HF radio, Morse code, and ship couriers. But the mental models he and his staff developed in the “game room” allowed them to grasp the essential elements needed to win the war. Yet, his tools also failed him because they did not force him to step outside the box of Western culture. Moreover, as Mathew McCaffrey points out, the Japanese had also wargamed the war and knew they would lose, forcing them to behave very differently from our assumptions: “The Marines refined their wargame techniques quickly. Within a few assaults they were getting results that were so close to actual casualty count and “island secure” times that one Marine called it, “eerie.” Yet the wargame for the next landing was way off on both counts. They adjudicated as before, and used the same methods to estimate Japanese strength. Why then was the game so wrong? It was due to a Japanese wargame. The story of this Japanese
wargame answers a still bigger question, “after the Japanese were
hopelessly outnumbered in 1944 and 1945 why did they keep on fighting?”
When the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his staff
returned to Japan they were taken to a secret location outside Tokyo.
There they played the U.S. side in a rare Army/Navy wargame. In that
wargame Japan lost the war. Now what? Japan evolved a new strategy.
Japan could not win but she could kill Americans. These Japanese
leaders believed if they could kill enough Americans the nation would
grow war weary and give Japan better terms. Hence the doctrine, inflict
the maximum cost on the Americans in time and blood.” Nimitz, as an American and son of Texas, admittedly did not imagine the development of a force made up flying suicide bombers. However, to the desperate Japanese, it fell well within their military and religious code of honor. The Kamikaze, or “divine wind,” were introduced in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 when the Japanese were clearly losing the war. Though their materiel impact was not large (a total of 34 ships destroyed during the war), they had a huge psychological effect. There is no doubt that the fact that Japan possessed over 24,000 Kamikaze pilots by the summer of 1945 contributed to the decision to use the atomic bomb. (See http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Pearlman/pearlman.asp) Japan knew it would lose the war; the navy chief, Admiral Yamamoto, said it point blank. But the generals who ran the government could not face the disgrace of backing down to Allied pressure (and the oil embargo.) The strategy was always based on the idea that Japan could kill enough Americans that the U.S. would seek peace and not total victory. The objective was not to defeat the U.S. head on, but to bleed the American will to fight. However, the Japanese completely misunderstood American resolve. The changing Japanese tactics
against the Marine amphibious operations were purely pragmatic and an
acceptance that U.S. firepower made defending at the The Japanese didn’t come up with the Kamikaze concept until 1944, so no one could have foreseen it. The Germans proposed a similar “flying suicide bomb,” but never got it into service. One could say the German U-Boat service was a suicide operation, as they suffered over 90 percent fatalities. Admiral Yamamoto is a good
example of how cultural differences influence strategic thinking. He
had lived in the U.S. (and learned to play, and enjoy, poker) and knew
that the Americans would never settle. There were Americans (including
military officers) who had lived in Japan and spoke the language and
were consulted on Japanese psychology But the Japanese were so different that it took nearly a year before Americans accepted that they were fighting people from a quite different culture. The Japanese had not adopted an “asymmetric” style of warfare; they were simply fighting “Western style” as they interpreted it (highly trained, carefully selected professionals using irreplaceable gear of varying quality in an attempt to fight a few “decisive” battles and end it quick, because Japan did not have the resources for a long war.) Since September 11, 2001, we have re-learned many of the same lessons. It was and continues to be difficult for us to imagine or anticipate aircraft hijackers committing suicide -- an anathema to Western belief in the dignity of human life. Though suicide bombers have been a constant concern for force protection since the bombing of the Marine Barracks Beirut in 1983, they were often seen as the exception rather than the rule. However, the Israeli (and our own) experience with suicide bombers and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) show that what we perceive as the irrational should be expected. For example, was the swift dissolution of the Iraqi Army in March of 2003 a consequence of our plan and their ineptness or a planned precursor to guerrilla war? Hence, war is more than a manipulation of order of battle or a mechanical exchange of forces. The key to using simulation in this regard is to get in the opponent’s head. This sort of role-playing requires an immersion in the culture, history, and doctrine of a potential enemy. Military leaders at all levels should develop an appreciation of the world that goes beyond military journals. This will be more difficult to do as operational tempo denies time for education outside the military environment. Moreover, it’s mandatory to develop a cadre of expert “Red Teams” that are steeped in tactics and doctrine and personalities of an enemy. This has been used successfully at the National Training Center with the world-class OPFOR (Opposing Force) model. Finally, it also requires the strategist to “know thyself” and to constantly challenge potential biases. Hence, the power of the after-action reviews (AAR) process. If leaders cannot be candid about their own weaknesses and failures, then the simulation becomes more hallucination than visualization. |