Talk:Military simulation

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Yours truly AlexNewArtBot 00:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Material/Materiel
I changed material back to materiel because I wanted the military meaning of the word, and linked it to the Wikipedia article on the same - hopefuly that should prevent further confusion ;-) EyeSereneTALK 21:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Globalise tag
Tag removed - it was added without discussion on this page & the editor hasn't responded to my invitation to open said discussion. The article was written with a global perspective in mind (I'm not from the US!), but much of the available reference material is from the US - mostly I think because (1) this is where Simulation is most used, and (2) it is easier for authors to get relevant documents declassified. Of course, I'm open to any suggestions for improvement... EyeSereneTALK 18:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Failed GA
Hi, I have failed this article's GA nomination on grounds of lack of citation and style of writing. At the moment the whole article reads like a brain-dump or textbook-dump on the subject rather than a well-structured encyclopedia article. That's not to say that there's not a lot of good content in the article, but its not ready for GA nomination. To explain in detail: Many thanks - PocklingtonDan (talk) 15:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Over-reliance on a single source - this is a biggie. I don't have a copy of the Allen text but the article gives the impression that its entire structure, not to mention entire paragraphs of un-cited anecdotes, are pulled directly from a text. The article needs to lose its reliance on this single source by finding its own structure and incorporating a much greater variety of sources - in particular there must be primary sources (military works on military simulation) rather than books written on the subject for mass-market civilian consumption.
 * You state "Many professional analysts object to the term wargames" as an informal name for the entire genre, but then it seems to be used more formally in the spectrum diagram to refer to a specific subcategory of military simulation - I think the article text and smiluation spectrum diagram need to be brought into closer cohesion
 * I would say that the lead paragraph is too short and fails to summarise the entire article as it should do.
 * The whole article reads prescriptively rather than descriptively, which may be a reflection of the nature of the main source cited. ie many passages are similar in form to "Ideally military simulations should be as realistic as possible". This article as per wikipedia guidelines should not be a how-to guide for designing military simulations, but an outline of what military simulatations are, who uses them, why they are used, how they are used etc. I think to prevent this constant reference to what should be done in simulation theory, the article might be better layed out narratively, from the origin of military gaming through to modern theory and interpretation, removing the emphasis the current article has
 * "Heuristic or stochastic?" - section titles should not be questions
 * There is a lot of good content in the article but the entire thing needs restructuring in my opinion, the section headings are confusing, and there is no flow throughout the article. I would seriously consider restructuring as a historical narrative of origins -> development -> modern theory -> difficulties and criticisms of modern theory

Stuff and sense
I added this:
 * "(This was true in the planning of OPERATION AI .)"

this
 * "which some later American models discarded. "

this
 * " In addition, it allowed umpires to weight the outcome, consciously or otherwise. "

this
 * "It also resembles simulations prepared and broadcast by ABC-TV's "Nightline". "

this
 * "A situation common in sophisticated civilian games.

this
 * "the modeller's assumptions ("rules") must adequately reflect reality, or the results will be nonsense accurate to five decimal places."

this
 * ” Given the historical outcome, it's evident the dice were not so improbable, after all. ”

this
 * ”.Not unlike what Nicholas Palmer in Gamer's Guide to Board Wargaming called adding a fashionable fantasy touch of a "Sprouts wings" spell. ”

this
 * ”(and he almost always does), “

this
 * ”intelligence” & “ (leadership) “ to “training, morale, and personalities come into play”

Hope it's some help. I've seen "Nightline"'s simcast, but I've no idea when it ran; it was quite a few years ago...

Some thoughts on restructuring
I agree with the GA failure. One major critique with the article is that within the NATO "military simulation" community a lot of current source materials refer to what is now commonly known as the "LVC" categories of "military simulation". "LVC" stands for Live, Virtual, and Constructive categories of simulation. "Live Simulations" generally refer to simulated scenarios with live people using real equipment (aka military exercises), but which may also include quantitative instrumented range-based data insertion or collection. "Virtual Simulations" generally refer to simulated scenarios with live people operating simulated equipment (Flight Simulators, Navy Bridge Simulators, Army Vehicle Simulators for example), in both networked and non-networked configurations. "Constructive Simulations" refer to simulated scenarios with simulated people conducting simulated behaviours. This article seems predominantly concerned with one particular sub-category of military simulation, namely "Strategic Constructive Simulations", and therefore it gives me an unbalanced feel.

That subcategory however is quite often still referred to as "wargaming", especially when it refers to the sub-sub category of constuctive simulations that rely on stochastic attrition models. So, the objection to the "wargaming" label cited within the article may not even be due to some sort of professional critique or recent political correctness ("war is not a game"), but rather the more recent and continuing situation that there are few actively used military simulations in this narrow category. The "military simulation" field has drastically changed since the dawn of low-cost computers to include all of the above categories, along with several detailed sub-types. In my opinion, the article does not represent the current situation regarding "military simulation" very well, and would probably require a major refactoring to bring such a structure into it, in a meaningful way. Given the article's current length, I'm not confident or energetic enough to be bold and go at it, but there's my 300 words worth about the topic if someone wants to pursue that approach.

ThreePD 00:03, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed
I fully agree with all the above comments ;) A major restructure/rewrite is on my to-do list, but if anyone wants to jump in... EyeSereneTALK 13:04, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

good RS for basic fact of Wargames
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/21/what_do_militaries_actually_practice_during_war_games Weaponbb7 (talk) 15:57, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Simulation of thermonuclear bombing of American cities
During the Cold War, the Strategic Air Command's 1st Combat Evaluation Group deployed radar bomb scoring units from Barksdale Air Force Base on board military railroad cars to score simulated thermonuclear bombing of cities in the continental United States. When all of the B-52s black boxes accomplished the preset magic the designers intended, there were no targets anyplace on planet earth that could not be obliterated with unerring accuracy....Maier References

--Pawyilee (talk) 17:44, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting, thank you :) Please be bold and add it to the article if you like. EyeSerene talk 11:24, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I patched it in at the end of the article, but someone more capable than I should work it into the text above. Radar bomb-scoring of simulated nuclear bombardment evolved from actual ground directed bombing, and then back again in Operation Menu. See also Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles and Drone attacks in Pakistan, which amount to "Ender's Games" for adults. --Pawyilee (talk) 04:07, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Ocean Venture 81
Can I write an article for this exercise (if there is not one already). The transatlantic phase was censored by the press for perceived failing and the second phase directly preceded the Invasion of Grenada. We also have good pictures already to include! If we don't have it somewhere, can I put it together? --Tefalstar (talk) 19:35, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

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