Case Study

The Art of Wargaming

Washington, D.C.

The Department of Defense regularly faces complex challenges regarding future technology and international competition and threats. Wargaming provides leadership with comprehensive insight into diverse mitigation strategies.

To respond effectively to complex global challenges, leaders must fully apprehend the nature of future uncertainty and its causes and effects across multiple operational and functional areas.

SPA aligns wargaming structure with analytical objectives that span planning, requirements, concepts of operation, and acquisition. We gather the topic’s stakeholders and subject matter experts to ensure programmatic accuracy. Our wargamers provide detailed, relevant scenarios, expert facilitation, and appropriate modeling and simulation tools to support game objectives.

The result of our approach is clarity about the challenge, along with insights that identify capability gaps and potential technology mitigations. The SPA Wargaming toolset enables leadership to make better-informed decisions while building consensus among program-critical stakeholders.

Wargaming Highlights

Illuminating Technology Pathways

SPA’s Emerging Disruptive Technology Wargame Series helps the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering identify future investment strategies. Directed energy weapons and Artificial Intelligence are two recent examples.

Re-baselined over $200M

SPA’s Long Duration Logistics Wargame focused on U.S. Air Force logistics and sustainment in wartime. Insights, findings, and outcomes supported strategy development and funding redirection.

Future Surface Combatants

SPA’s Future Surface Combatant Wargame highlighted capability requirements for the Navy’s new family of warships and shipbuilding programs, including numbers of ships, unmanned and manned, and new and different concepts of operation.