Military exercise

For the civilian hobby, see Wargame.

Peruvian Army military exercise

USS Kitty Hawk kicks off Exercise Valiant Shield, the largest war games of the US Navy since the Vietnam War.

A military exercise or war game is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat. This also serves the purpose of ensuring the combat readiness of garrisoned or deployable forces prior to deployment from a home base.

War games involving two or more countries allows for better coordination between militaries, observation of enemy's tactics, and is a visible show of strength for the participating countries. According to a 2021 study, joint military exercises within well-defined alliances usually deter adversaries without producing a moral hazard because of the narrow scope of the alliance, while joint military exercises outside of an alliance (which are extremely rare) usually lead to conflict escalation.

Exercises in the 20th and 21st centuries have often been identified by a unique codename, such as Cobra Gold, in the same manner as military contingency operations and combat operations like Operation Phantom Fury.

Military exercises are sometimes used as cover for build up to an actual invasion such as in the case of Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine or it can provoke opponents at peace to perceive it as such in the case of Able Archer 83.

Types

Soldiers from Britain's Royal Artillery train in a virtual world, 2015

Military exercise in Ystad, Sweden, 2015

Command Post

A Command Post Exercise (CPX) typically focuses on the battle readiness of staffs such as a particular Unified Combatant Command or one of its components at any level. It may run in parallel with an FTX or its equivalent, or as a stand-alone event for headquarters staff only with heavy emphasis on simulated events.

Field

Historical names for the field exercise, or the full-scale rehearsal of military maneuvers as practice for warfare in the military services of the British Commonwealth include "schemes," while those of the military services United States are known as Field Training Exercises (FTX), or, in the case of naval forces, Fleet Exercises (FLEETEX). In a field exercise or fleet exercise, the two sides in the simulated battle are typically called "red" (simulating the enemy forces) and "blue", to avoid naming a particular adversary. This naming convention originates with the inventors of the table-top war-game (the "Kriegsspiel"), the Prussian Georg von Reisswitz; their army wore Prussian blue, so friendly forces were depicted by the color blue.

Multiple forces

Several different armed forces of the same nation training together are described as having a joint exercise. Those involving forces of multiple nations are described as having a combined exercise or coalition exercise, also called a bilateral exercise if based on security agreements between two nations, or a multilateral exercise if multiple nations.

Simulation

Main article: Military simulation

Other types of exercise include the TEWT (Tactical Exercise Without Troops), also known as a sand table, map or cloth model exercise. This type of exercise (in recent years assisted by computer simulation) allows commanders to manipulate models through possible scenarios in military planning. This is also called warfare simulation, or in some instances a virtual battlefield and in the past has been described as "wargames." Such examples of modern military wargames include DARWARS, a serious game developed since 2003 by the US DARPA agency with BBN Technologies, a defense contractor which was involved in the development of packet switching, used for ARPANET, and which developed the first computer modem in 1963. Military's operations and training have included different scenarios a soldier might encounter with morals and different ethics. In one military operation soldiers are frequently asked to engage in combat, humanitarian, and stabilization roles. These increase the ambiguity of a role one may encounter and challenge of ethics. This will also lead the military personnel to have to make a difficult call in challenging circumstances. Even in difficult situations and conditions, military personnel still has to follow rules and regulations such as: 1) when the right thing to do is not immediately clear; 2) when two or more important principles or values support different actions, and 3) when some harm will result, regardless of the actions taken (Defense Ethics Program, Department of National Defense, 2012). These simulations involve crude living conditions, sleep deprivations, time limit, and either lack or ambiguous amount of information.

A subset of simulated exercises is the Table Top Exercise (TTX), typically limited to senior personnel stepping through the decision-making processes they would employ in a crisis, a contingency, or general warfare.

NATO exercise codenamed A Certain Sentinel, in Nuremberg, Germany January 1986.

"Reforger 86 in Nurnberg, West Germany 1986

History

US Navy aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious carrying out military exercises

German pre-war military exercise Herbstmanöver in southern Germany autumn 1909 (Emperor Wilhelm II second on the left)

US Army Europe soldiers on winter maneuvers in Germany during Operation Warsteed 87, in 1987.

The modern use of military exercises grew out of the military need to study warfare and to 'reenact' old battles for learning purposes. During the age of Kabinettskriege (Cabinet wars), Frederick the Great, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786, "put together his armies as a well-oiled clockwork mechanism whose components were robot-like warriors. No individual initiative was allowed to Frederick's soldiers; their only role was to cooperate in the creation of walls of projectiles through synchronized firepower."

This was in the pursuit of a more effective army, and such practices made it easier to look at war from a top-down perspective. Disciplined troops should respond predictably, allowing study to be confined to maneuvers and command.

German Army soldiers during exercise Joint Resolve 26 in Bosnia.

"Reforger 86"-The Return of Forces to Germany January 1986

"Reforger 86"-The Return of Forces to Germany January 1986

The stunning Prussian victory over the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the game Kriegspiel, which was invented around 1811 and gained popularity with many officers in the Prussian army. These first wargames were played with dice which represented "friction", or the intrusion of less than ideal circumstances during a real war (including morale, meteorology, the fog of war, etc.).

21st century militaries still use wargames to simulate future wars and model their reaction. According to Manuel de Landa, after World War II the Command, Control and Communications (C³) was transferred from the military staff to the RAND Corporation, the first think tank.

Von Neumann was employed by the RAND Corporation, and his game theory was used in wargames to model nuclear dissuasion during the Cold War. Thus, the US nuclear strategy was defined using wargames, "SAM" representing the US and "IVAN" the Soviet Union.

Early game theory included only zero-sum games, which means that when one player won, the other automatically lost. The Prisoner's dilemma, which models the situation of two prisoners in which each one is given the choice to betray or not the other, gave three alternatives to the game:

• Neither prisoners betrays the other, and both are given short-term sentences
• One prisoner betrays the other, and is freed, while the other gets a long sentence
• Both prisoners betray each other, and both are given mid-sized sentences

This modelization gave the basis for the massive retaliation nuclear doctrine. The zero-sum fallacy and cooperative games would be theorized only later, while the evolution of nuclear technology and missiles made the massive retaliation nuclear strategy obsolete.

List of military exercises

Current and recurring

• Green dagger (US-UK-Netherlands-UAE-Canada)
• Balikatan (Philippines-US)
• Croix du Sud (France-Australia-New Zealand-US and others)
• Malabar (India-US)
• Talisman Saber (Australia-US)
• Varuna (India-France)
• Cobra Gold (Thailand - US and 25 others)
• Exercise RIMPAC (Australia, Canada,the US and others)
• Kernel Blitz (USN, USMC, biannual, amphibious warfare)
• Green Griffin (NATO, annual)
• Dynamic Manta (NATO, annual, ASW focus)
• Locked Shields (NATO, annual, cyber warfare)
• Saber Guardian (NATO, annual)
• Baltops (NATO, annual)
• Dynamic Mongoose (NATO, annual)
• Vostok 2018 (usually only Russia, but China and Mongolia have participated; about every 4 years; Russia's eastern exercise)
• Zapad Exercises (Belarus and Russia, about every 4 years, Russia's western exercise)
• Caucasus 2020 (usually only Russia, about every 4 years, Russia's southern exercise)
• Center 2019 (Russia, about every 4 years, Russia's central exercise)
• Ocean Shield (Russia, annual, naval exercise in the Baltics and Arctic)
• Cold Response (Partnership for Peace)

Former, significant

• Able Archer 83 (NATO)
• Exercise Reforger
• Operation Brasstacks (India, 1986-1987)
• Millennium Challenge (2002)
• Fleet problem (1923-1940)
• North China Military Exercise (China, 1981)
• Resolute Dragon (Japan and the US, 2021)
• List of NATO exercises

See also

• Aggressor squadron
• Maneuver warfare
• Flanking maneuver
• Live fire exercise
• Pincer movement
• Simulation

External links

• Complete 911 Timeline: Center for Cooperative Research—Military exercises up to 9/11