Issues and Insights from the Army Technology Seminar Game

An account of a Technology Seminar Game that brought together military operators and civilian scientists and technologists to examine future Army force development issues The Army’s Spring 1998 Technology Seminar Game was designed to advance the Army After Next (AAN) process by bringing together military operators and civilian scientists and technologists to examine future force development issues. It used 15 mini-scenarios extracted from previous AAN games. For each scenario, an overall mission and required force capabilities required to achieve that mission were identified beforehand. A set of System Cards, used in the game as a means of achieving the required capabilities, was also preselected. The cards included information about the specifications of a particular system and the technologies that could be used to build those systems. System Cards were thus the fundamental component of the game, linking systems and technologies to the required force capabilities. The players’ involvement included examining the preselected cards, revising and/or adding new cards, and then cross-evaluating them with the intention of identifying the most important critical technologies of the future. The authors believe that while these scenarios can reveal many useful issues and insights with regard to technology’s role in achieving future AAN force objectives, they do not extract the most value from such exercises. The linkages between force capabilities, systems, and technologies need to be sorted out more clearly, and the game organizers need to decide what kinds of discussions will produce the required information.