[ELI5]How do war games work? How do you get points or win?
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**TL;DR, most of the time, the outcome is predetermined. It’s not about “winning,” it’s about identifying and improving where you’re weak.**
I can only speak to these in a US Army capacity, but there are many types of war game. But, at the end of the day, you’re testing your systems and your training; however, the end result is almost always predetermined.
Every unit has a specific list of tasks that they, as a unit, are responsible for being able to execute. And that applies to every level, from the 7th Army all the way down to your platoon, everyone has “their” list. So when your brigade packs all its things up and goes down to a training rotation, it will be evaluated on those tasks. And to make sure that happens, every unit gets assigned an “Observer/Controller” (commonly called OC) who has a background in that job to watch as their assigned unit performs those tasks and makes notes.
The purpose of the war game is to try to make the situation where the units are performing these tasks resemble actual combat as closely as possible so that the OC can give the most accurate evaluation to the commander and the troops so they can go back to their home station and, theoretically, adjust their training to improve on their weaknesses.
But in order to make sure that every item on the list gets filled out, the “game” itself has to be highly controlled. These war games aren’t just dropping two units into opposite ends of a box and telling them to fight. The “enemy” (called OPFOR) is highly, highly controlled in order to make sure that the evaluators can be in the right place at the right time for all the major events and give the most accurate evaluation possible. There are things that happen organically, but all of the major events are preplanned to some degree or another.
I’ve been on 8 or 9 of these rotations and, in the last few, spent time in my brigade’s tactical operations center as well as have buddies go out and be OCs; so I’ve gotten to peek behind the curtain a little bit and it’s actually very impressive to see what the OC team and the OPFOR have to juggle in order to make things happen.
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