Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Netculture
ISBN: 9780415996600
Google: RTPmwwL63iwC
Amazon: 0415996600
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

Putting Theory Into Practice

CGSC students progress through a series of course modules nested from Joint Task Force level down to battalion level. In the first module addressing the Joint Task Force, students plan the campaign and the role of the land forces in it. In the second module, on the Combined Land Force Component Command, students plan operations as the land forces within the Joint Task Force campaign they planned in the first module. In the Division Module, students focus on division operations as a unit within the Combined Land Force Component Command planning they performed in the second module, and then execute part of their planning in a division exercise. The outcome of that exercise, in turn, provides part of the starting scenario for the fourth module, on brigade and battalion Stability and Reconstruction Operations. The Joint Task Force and Combined Land Force Component Command modules culminate in planning exercises. The Division Module culminates in a four-day execution exercise using the commercial wargame Decisive Action (2001). Both the exercise and Decisive Action demonstrate the highly successful application of the concepts explained above to a real-world exercise.

The exercise places students in key divisional staff roles. They must translate the mission they wrote in the Combined Land Force Component Command module into a plan for the division’s actions, planning the coordination and synchronization of all of the division’s assigned assets including forces from other branches and countries, and deciding how these activities will affect the upcoming stability and reconstruction phase of the wider operation. Then, in execution, they must assess the current state of the battlefield, compare that to the way they thought it would look, and adjust what must be done in order for the operation to succeed. Ideally, they should learn to anticipate what will happen, rather than merely reacting to what is happening, and thus learn to solve problems before they occur. Despite the pressure of events and their peers, they must retain and demonstrate critical and creative reasoning throughout the exercise.

A real-world division staff would have several hundred people to do these jobs. CGSC provides parallel but separate division-level exercises to every 64-student section. Each student section consists of a mix of military branches (armor, infantry, quartermaster, etc.), sister service officers (Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard), and several officers from foreign militaries. Ten students operate the simulation: six as commanders of the division’s maneuver, fire, and support brigades, three (usually intelligence branch, and thus specialists on enemy force actions) to command and operate the Red Team (the opposing force), and one Functional Area 57 student as the technical lead for the simulation.7 The remaining fifty or so students are the primary learning audience and are assigned key command and staff roles.

Despite the huge size of the group, there is no guarantee that there will be a student providing expertise on any given staff function, and they certainly are not supported by the hundreds of people who would be present in the real world in various subordinate positions, both in the staff itself and among their subordinate units.

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