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Several parallel events did lead to the development of this compendium on wargaming and simulation.

In December 2017, the United States Marines Corps (USMC) conducted a two‐day workshop on the future of wargaming in the light of the plans to set up a new USMC Wargaming Center. The rapid change of technology accessible by opponents as well as useful to improve own forces’ and allies’ capabilities requires a better support for experts when developing new concepts or new structures to fight in such a complex environment, with the objective of enabling the best USMC planning process. This “5th generation USMC Wargaming Center” shall not break this focus, but add more capabilities to it, using the latest technologies, including but not limited to simulation, artificial intelligence, data science, and visualization. Out of question was that the human mind is and must remain the center of wargaming. Reducing wargaming to computational analysis would lead to results that are too limited, as human innovation and creativity are pivotal components of the process. Nonetheless, models, methods, and tools are needed to refine conditions, inform decisions, and clarify factors to identify issues, substantiate findings, and indicate directions. Decision tools, scenario tools, adjudication tools, and synthesis tools must support the human mind in the wargaming process. Industry and academic partners presented methods and tools pushing the limit of what has only been theoretically possible toward what is now practically feasible. These discussions contributed to initiate this book: how can such new methods and tools enable the next generation of wargaming?

Unfortunately, one of the titans of military operations research, Dr. Stuart Howard Starr, born on 29 January 1942, passed away on 17 March 2018. Many authors have been influenced by his research results and works, some as colleagues, others as scholars or even students, but all as friends. Stuart was often ahead of his time and introduced innovative ideas and concepts early, any many of them would need years to get fully understood to finally make it into the mainstream approaches. Examples are his early works on cyber warfare when computers were just being introduced to military headquarters to support command and control with digital means, and the command and control assessments for the new operations of the armed forces after the end of the Cold War, asking for command structures that just today are seriously evaluated to be introduced in the armed forces. His vision on a more prevalent role of simulation solutions enabling rigid wargaming was driving us, the editors, as well as many of our contributors. We therefore decided in agreement with all participants to dedicate this volume to his memory.

Finally, the recent findings of complexity theory showed the need for better support of decision‐makers. They need training and evaluation environments presenting the same complexity observed in reality, and they need decision support that helps to detect, understand, and govern complexity, in particular emerging behaviors typical for complexity. Organizations such as the International Counsel of Systems Engineering (INCOSE) identified many simulation related methods and tools in their primer for complexity, and these insights should drive military decision‐making as well: We need simulation to represent complex environment as well as to detect and manage it in our command and control processes. Using the latest simulation methods in support of wargaming is therefore a must.

The result of these parallel events is a compendium that shows the state of the art of wargaming and tools that allow the implementation of the vision of a fifth‐generation wargaming center. Although the original ideas are rooted in the USMC initiative, the insights presented here are neither limited to the Marines nor the United States. Methods and tools are generally applicable to support decision‐making in complex environments, applied to defense challenges. However, the focus of our description lies on the methods, not the application domain. In addition, some chapters provide the historical context to better understand where we are going, and some give application examples to showcase the complexity of the decisions and the power of available solutions. Overall, we hope to contribute to the discussion about decision‐making in complex environments, and how simulation and related other computational support can realize the vision of a wargaming center for the challenges of our times.

Andreas Tolk, Hampton, Virginia

Curtis L. Blais, Monterey, California

Chuck Turnitsa, Newport News, Virginia

December 2019