Letter of Marque 3: Two Brief Periods of Wargaming at the Naval Academy

"A start for someone else's solution"

Wargaming in the Navy has usually taken place at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, however, it appeared briefly only twice - in the late 1960s under a civilian professor, and in the 1980s under the Professional Development (ProDev) Division. Each was different in its approach, the first a solitary effort using basic tabletop design methods and the second an attempt to organize something for the midshipmen using new computers. The reason both are known was because of the work of archivists and their preservation of documents so that this story can be told. I’ll incorporate just a few of the images of a lot of the documents from the Nimitz Library’s Special Collections and Archives that I took while researching this topic a while back for a specific reason told at the end of this post.

Thanks to Nimitz Library’s Special Collections archivist David D’Onofrio, the extensive papers of Professor William Russell, a history professor from 1946 to 1973, shed light on the first use of wargames in the classroom.  Russell found value in having midshipmen design wargames around their course material. While Russell discussed the idea in class of employing a wargame, 1/C Bob O’Rourke ’67 began working on one because he had played the board game Gettysburg from which he drew on the structure of probabilities, positions, supporting arms, and an outcomes table.  This new game about counterinsurgency and guerilla warfare in Vietnam was intended for the company- and battalion-level. He used field manuals and interviews with Academy instructors who had recently served in Vietnam.  And he did so from the hospital where he part of the semester on a knee surgery. The game was eventually titled Operation QUICK STRIKE.  For his work, he was awarded the Marine Corps Association Prize at graduation which included a .45 caliber pistol he used to qualify at Quantico.

            Players were either Insurgents or the Government.  While the goal of the Government in the game was to gain the loyalty of villages and decrease insurgent forces, the role of the Insurgents was to “observe the effects of coercion and counter-coercion on village loyalty using terror, impressment, recruitment, and protection.”  Students quickly learned the implications of the war.  Before the game, students wrote, they made assumptions because the US had size, mobility, and weaponry advantages.  The game taught them that “until the U.S. forces can find and fix the insurgents, they can exercise no advantage whatsoever.”

            One of the players, Mike Williams ’67, recalled that Russell would have them read Herodotus, Thucydides, and other classics. “Russell gave me a deep appreciation for the power of logistics [during these games] such as asking how the horses would be fed. The second thing he taught us was that innovation wasn’t always big like the atomic bomb, but smaller things like stirrups that changed wars.” Williams’ three-page assessment of the game is also among Russell’s archive collection. “The guerrilla,” he wrote, “possessed a major tactical advantage in being able to disperse at will over the countryside and avoid detection by mingling with the civilian population.”

Another student, Ken Estes, wrote “The relevance of this activity to today’s situations is self-evident. It would be well to note, however, that Vietnam is neither the first nor likely to be the last counterinsurgency operation that this nation will face in its history. The need for the [military] to comprehend this type of warfare is paramount.”

            Of the many student notes to Russell is one from Alan Kettner, ’67, who studied the problems of communications in the game and offered ideas.  “Maybe,” he wrote, “it’s the start for someone else’s solution.” Soon after training at Quantico, O’Rourke and Kettner served together in Vietnam.  Kettner was killed in action on April 13, 1968 near Hue.

(following, critique from student Mike Williams, future Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps)

Professor Russell’s wargaming courses:

Nearly two decades later, midshipman found another opportunity as Professional Development offered early computerized wargames.  As early as 1978, OP-03 (Surface Warfare) and the Surface Officer Warfare School wanted to meet for “a discussion of wargaming procedures with members of the Division of Professional Development.” In early naval warfare classes, “96% of students felt that war gaming was a valuable tool in the course of instruction.” Officers weighed the use of computers versus table top games.

During the summer of 1984 midshipmen in the Naval Warfare and Tactics Seminar expressed “an overwhelming interest in participating in computerized wargaming”.  As a result OP-03 purchased a fleet version Navy Tactical Game (NAVTAG) for use at the Academy and was also intended for officers teaching at the Academy to remain current tactics and threat analysis. The first NAVTAG was installed in August with a ribbon cutting by Vice Admiral Robert Walters (OP-03) and Superintendent Rear Admiral Chuck Larson.  Within a month, 25 companies were indoctrinated on the system with 13 actively wargaming.  By November, the program had 14 qualified game directors with seven more in training. Schwartz reported to Larson, “the enthusiasm with which this system has been received is truly amazing. Both midshipmen and officers are finding time to become involved on a personal level.” Unlike Russell’s class, this effort was voluntary for the midshipmen.

            Rudimentary by today’s standards, the computers employed symbology on the Navy Tactical Data System (NTDS) requiring participants to memorize and apply NATO and Warsaw Pact platforms, systems, and capabilities.  More terminals arrived in 1985 and 1986 in Luce Hall, G-2, the Naval Tactical Gaming Center.  Mark Vandroff ’89 recalls giving up study time to go to Luce for two or three hour scenarios with one midshipmen hitting the keystroke commands as the others developed the responses. “NAVTAG gave me a couple of skills,” he said. “As a Lieutenant in the fleet, they didn’t believe I wasn’t a prior enlisted intelligence or information specialist since I understood the red order of battle.”

            In September 1985, Larson reported to Walters that the terminals were steadily increasing usage, a Soviet Threat Awareness Seminar had been added, and that the NAVTAG systems “have been an unqualified success.  [More] would capitalize on that success and afford continued exposure to a maximum number of midshipmen.” NAVTAG was not as sophisticated as the game Harpoon. There wasn’t much graphic interface, but it could issue basic maneuvering commands and launch and recover airplanes. It helped students learn visual recognition for NATO and the Warsaw Pact. One student said it helped him be more conversant that the typical aviator in Soviet recognition and capabilities.

            A competition soon evolved with each company providing teams. The April 1985 competition lasted nearly ten hours.  Bob Proano ’86 joined upon a suggestion by Lieutenant Mike Schwartz, the Director of Wargaming in ProDev (Professional Development). “NAVTAG was conducted at a classified level which was kind of a big deal for midshipmen in a locked, secure room.  Probability and statistics theory from my class helped in playing the game.”  Students in that classified environment learned actual weapons ranges. During his first class year, Proano’s company won the competition.  Ten wrist-bands later, he still uses the watch that was presented to him by the Class of 1928 which sponsored the competition. Based on its success, OP-03 suggested the Academy start a liaison effort with NROTC units.  In October 1986, Penn State’s NROTC unit spent three days in Annapolis in the first intercollegiate NAVTAG competition. The Navy Tactical Gaming Center was located in Luce Hall at the Academy in room G-2.

The genesis memo for NAVTAG:

Superintendent Admiral Charles Larson memo to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Surface Warfare on NAVTAG:

NAVTAG’s Timeline:

Recommendation to the Commandant to create a Tactician Award:

The third era of wargaming at the Naval Academy is ongoing. Several years ago, Dr. Marcus Jones of the History Department and I, in my then capacity as Director of the Naval Academy Museum, started a new wargaming effort with the intent to keep it to tabletop games to get mids thinking from the bottom up on how to design games to think about problem sets. We set up a temporary game room in the museum (which the NHHC museum staff didn’t like) and eventually found a more suitable place in the basement of historic Mahan Hall.

Thanks to Sebastian Bae who helped us tremendously, two semesters of a course on wargaming design was offered to midshipmen. Fifteen were in each class. They were broken down into five teams of three. During the semester they selected a war, operation, campaign, or battle and then spent the semester designing a game. At the end of each semester, we called in wargamers - both civilian and military - who critiqued their final exam. Here’s a short video to give you a sense of what the midshipmen produced: Spring 2022 Semester

Through a small grant from the Office of Naval Research, we also worked with outside gamers. We selected the top four games and had them made available online through VASSAL. Those games, Queen of Pirates, The Soviet-Afghan War, Guadalcanal, and the Battle of Actium are now available for the other midshipmen and the general public here.

Today, wargaming has expanded, such as with plebe sea trials, thanks to other officers and civilians who are helping our midshipmen understand not only wargames but the thought processes behind them years ahead of when they will attend the war college.

Let’s hope this history is preserved and sustained. And thanks again to the archivists without whom we couldn’t tell the above story.