An approach to effects based modeling for wargaming

Effects-based operations (EBO) are proving to be a vital part of current concepts of operations in military missions and consequently need to be an integral part of current generation wargames. EBO focuses on the producing effects from military activities, as opposed to the direct result of attacking targets. Alternatively, the emphasis of conventional wargames is focused on attrition-based modeling and is incapable of assessing effects and their contribution to the overall mission objectives. For wargames to be effective, they must allow users to evaluate multiple ways to accomplish the same goal with a combination of direct, indirect and cascading events (actions). The focus of this paper is to describe the development of a methodology for the implementation of EBO concepts into modem wargames. The design approach was to develop a generic methodology and demonstrate how simulation objects can incorporate EBO capabilities. The authors will illustrate the application of the methodology utilizing an EBO scenario example, which was developed to test the system.