Army Investigates Civilian Wargames

[Hans]

This article was at the Strategy Page

March 13, 2004: The U.S. Army (more specifically, the National Simulation

Center) is trying to find out how many troops are using commercial (bought

in a store) wargames for training. In army lingo, these are called COTS

(Commercial Off The Shelf) games. Among the things the army is trying to

find out are;

- What games are being used?

- What organizations are using the games?

- How are the COTS games being used (classroom instruction, exercises,

informally in day rooms, etc)?

- What TLOs (Terminal Learning Objective)/ELOs (Enabling Learning

Objective) are being addressed using these games? TLO and ELO are

buzzwords used in army training to describe lessons to be learned and

information and actions used to make that happen.

- Feedback on the success of using COTS games for training.

- How the games were acquired local purchase, private purchase, etc.)?

Include games developed under Army supervision/contract such as America's

Army, Full Spectrum Warrior and Full Spectrum Command.

The army also wants to hear what uniformed users of wargames think about

the potential for using COTS games in training (pluses and minuses).

This is an informal effort, but shows how important commercial games are

becoming in training troops for combat.

If you are in the army, and have some experience with COTS games, send you

comments (before May 1, 2004) to lindstrc@leavenworth.army.mil. webpage

[BigDork]

I'm in the AF, don't I count too?

[Stalin's Organ]

No you don't - you're a big dork!!