Description:

Colin Marston and Graham Longley-Brown will summarise the forthcoming UK Ministry of Defence Influence Wargaming Handbook. The purpose of the Handbook is to explain how wargaming can be used to examines influence. It also explores how influence effects might be better represented within wargames. Affecting the behaviours of target audiences is central to all defence and security activities across the continuum of competition, which spans cooperation, through rivalry and confrontation, to armed conflict. At present, the representation of influence and behavioural effects in our methods, techniques and data is poor. Developing methods and techniques, including wargaming, to represent effects below the threshold of war, such as influence effects, is a high priority. Wargaming is recognised as, ‘a powerful tool…that can deliver better understanding and critical thinking, foresight, genuinely informed decision-making and innovation.’ While that is certainly true of ‘conventional’ wargaming, typified by force-on-force and kinetic activity, the representation of influence effects within wargames is of more variable quality. Wargaming is particularly suited to examining influence – but it must be done well or it carries risk. ‘Influence wargaming’ is an evolving discipline that needs to be developed. It is essential that influence effects are better represented within wargames to inform our understanding of the information environment and, in particular, audiences.

Bio:

Colin Marston is a Senior Principal Operational Researcher at the Defence Wargaming Centre (DWC), which is part of the UK MOD’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). Colin has designed, executed and analysed a range of wargames across defence and security, and he was a co-author of the UK MOD Wargaming Handbook and has authored numerous articles on professional wargaming. Colin was deployed as an Operational Analyst in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he served in the Army Reserve (Infantry). He is a Fellow of the OR Society (FORS) and has a BSc (Hons) in Physics with Astrophysics. In addition, Colin is a co-founder of the Connections UK professional wargaming conference.

Graham Longley-Brown has wargamed since aged six. A British Army Officer since 1986 (and still in the Reserves), he has used wargaming for professional purposes throughout his career, often as a lone champion for the technique. He was the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College Directing Staff Subject Matter Expert for wargaming from 2000-2002. Since leaving the Regular Army in 2003, Graham has consulted on all-matters professional wargaming. He has designed and delivered wargames at UK, European and Gulf State Staff Colleges, for the UK Army (at all levels), RAF, Royal Navy and Royal Marines, the NATO Joint Warfare Centre, UK Force Development and experimentation, Dstl, the American, British, Canadian and Australian Armies Programme, the Royal Brunei Armed Forces, the Pakistan National Defence University, the US Army in Europe and others. He is the leading developer of the Dstl/Cranfield Rapid Campaign Analysis Toolset (RCAT) manual simulation. He is a published author on professional wargaming: he was lead author for the MOD Wargaming Handbook; wrote the Course of Action Wargaming section for the UK Army's Planning and Execution Handbook; and his own Successful Professional Wargames: A Practitioner’s Handbook. He is a co-founder of Connections UK.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/influence-wargaming-handbook-tickets-524664865737