Six Rules for Wargaming: The Lessons of Millennium Challenge ’02
Six Rules for Wargaming: The Lessons of Millennium Challenge ’02 by Gary Anderson and Dave Dilegge, War on the Rocks
For over a decade, those of us who teach wargaming and red teaming have used Millennium Challenge ‘02 (MC ‘02) as a poster child for how not to design or run a wargame. Micah Zenko offered the most comprehensive account to date of MC ’02 earlier this week here at War on the Rocks. The game was conducted by the now-defunct Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and the credibility of the command never recovered. One of us (Gary) was a member of the MC ‘02 red team and extensively researched it in preparing his course on alternative analysis at George Washington University. The other (Dave) was a member of DoD’s Defense Adaptive Red Team in support of MC ‘02.
The game was an attempt to test three JFCOM concepts: effects-based operations, rapid decisive operations, and standing Joint Force headquarters. All three were tested in smaller venues and had such significant issues associated with them that independent analysts recommended they be scrapped altogether. JFCOM’s response was to get rid of the independent analysts and have its own give them better answers…
