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From: allen%codon1.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Edward Allen;345 Mulford;x2-9025)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: submarine warfare
Message-ID: <7017@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 1 Jun 89 03:09:02 GMT
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From: allen%codon1.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Edward Allen;345 Mulford;x2-9025)

Regarding the report from a practice wargame in which the Nimitz took six
torps and was claimed by the refs to only be impeded 20%, I don't know if
the particular incident is true, but it fits with what I've read on Navy
wargames.  Specifically there was a recent article in one of the civilian
wargame magazines about how people who design entertainment wargames have
fared when going to work for the government on official "training"
wargames.  The impression they got was that whenever apparent realism
conflicted with standard military dogma, oops, I should say doctrine,
realism got short shrift.  For example, it was a rule in any game designed
for the Navy that U.S. CVNs are unsinkable, period.  This  rule is
patently ridiculous, but the powers that be want it that way because
they'd look bad if our carriers tended to get lost in their games.  I
expect such reasoning was at work in the case of the Nimitz ruling you
cite.  Another example was the Firefight game designed by SPI for the Army
and public release.  Many of the unrealistic features in that game are
there specifically because the Army wants its planned responses to be
simulated even when they conflict with reality.  For one example, the
designer did a terrain analysis of the area of Europe in which a lot of
our Army would potentially be fighting and as a result put in a lot of
brushy terrain on the map, which had the effect of cutting the length of
lines of sight to typically 500 to 1000 meters over much of the area.  The
Army guys involved with development made him remove the brush because it
would make ATGMs less useful, and part of the Army's intent was to show
their doctrinal point of ATGMs dominating the battlefield when opposed by
large columns of Soviet tanks.
    If this is how the military runs its exercises and simulations in
general, its pretty scary.  You're going to teach a lot of wrong and
dangerous things if the whole point of the exercise becomes to reinforce
preconceived ideas, and not work towards the truth wherever possible. 

Ed Allen (allen@enzyme.berkeley.edu)