America and China can go to war one day and no one knows what this war will look like the superpower. How can the armies survive on a battlefield eager for so many fatal weapons like hypersonic missiles and Hunter-Killer drones?
Responding to these questions is the genesis of “coastal command: Indo -Pacific”, a board game that depicts the fight between American and Chinese forces around 2040. Based on the Fleet Marine Force – a tactical level training simulation for the US Marine Corps – “Littoral Commander” is now used by the US Naval Academy and various American and foreign military schools.
The game is now available for the general public for around $ 75. “Co -command coast” is part of a genre called “serious games”, which are educational tools to teach complex materials such as health care and foreign policy. The idea is that games offer more immersive experience than PowerPoint manuals and conferences.
“Co -commander” is intended to illustrate what emerged as the node of modern war: the “chain of kill” in which the sensors locate and identify the enemy, developing targeting data that operators use to attack the enemy target before it does the same. Consider it as a more realistic version of the game of “Battleship”. Already in the Ukraine War, the F2T2EA process (finding, repairing, following, targeting, engaging and evaluating) has become crucial as Russia and Ukraine take place to accelerate the connection-plane connection.
“The game to its deepest heart concerns the F2T2EA process, whether kinetic capacities such as missiles and drones, or non -kinetic capacities such as electronic warfare and cyber,” said Sebastian Bae, “co -commander coast”.
“Co-command coast” resembles paper war games which date back to the 19th century that Kriegspiel used by the German army to form staff officers. The units are evaluated for firepower, the beach and speed. The players alternate take action such as the movement, the launch of combat (resolved with a matrix at 20 sides). and replenishment. According to the scenario, the victory conditions include the destruction of enemy units, grasp the soil or prevent the enemy from taking a territory.
An “influence counter” reflects the way in which popular support can affect a campaign – for example, destroying at least three enemy units in a single turn, or if the enemy makes a missile attack against friendly units in a city (probably injuring civilians), then influence counters move in your favor, causing advantages such as additional resources.
The board game “Littoral order” plays scenarios based on cards like that of China and Taiwan. With the kind permission of Sebastian Bae
“COLDER COMMANER” is delivered with several cards, including the RYUKYU Islands (including Okinawa), the Strait of Taiwan, the Philippine Island of Luzon and the Strait of Luzon, and the Strait of Malacca between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. There are also several scenarios, such as fighting for a Key island or trying to prevent enemy ships from going through a strait; Players can also design their own battles.
American forces include maritime infantry platoons, supported by amphibious combat vehicles, rocket artillery, air defense and logistics, as well as destroyers and submarines of the US Navy. They are faced with mechanized infantry and mechanized recognition platoons of the navy of the Chinese people’s navy, supported by light tanks, howitzes and rocket artillery, air defense and logistics units, as well as by destroyers, frigates and submarines.
This battle order reflects the numerous small-scale fights in an American-Chinese war. Rather than the armies massaged or the huge fleets that fought in Midway or Okinawa, a new Pacific War would probably be waged by relatively small but heavily armed amphibious units that are fighting to establish missile bases, aerodromes and listening publications on the strategic islands. Indeed, the US Marine Corps has radically reorganized for this mission by adopting the conception of Force 2030. The navies have lost their bulky tanks and created mobile coastal regiments armed with anti-navire missiles, which can prohibit Chinese warships passing sailable sails such as the Strait of Luzon and Malacca.
Games like “Littoral Commander” are intended to stimulate thought and imagination, rather than creating an infallible plan to defeat China. “It is not a representation of Warfare of the Future, because I cannot predict the future and no game,” said Bae, a former marine sergeant and veteran of the war in Iraq who now designs war games for the Center for Naval analysis reflection group. “I created the” Littoral commander “to be an intellectual sandbox so that people explore, engage and learn about capacities. How these capacities work and what challenges and opportunities they can offer.”
The “coastal coastal” players count on cards like this for strike and recognition capacities. With the kind permission of Sebastian Bae
“Co -command coast” illustrates the panoply of current and future capacities through 200 “joint capacity cards”, with separate American and Chinese decks. Cards include drones, bombers, cyber operations and signal information, mine fields, special forces raids, naval shots and other extras that players buy using a limited number of “order points”. The mechanism is somewhat game – the battal commanders do not obtain B -52 strikes on demand – but the practical effect is to allow players to experiment with a wide variety of capacities. “As a tactical leader, you only get a small ribbon at some point,” said Bae. “But I wanted the players to think, plan and assess how and what they needed to execute their plan.”
Winning to “Littoral order” means mastering some key variables. The most important thing may be the most important is to detect the enemy: as the Ukraine war has shown, which can be seen may be destroyed. The counters on the “Littoral commander” card are considered “hidden:” Flipted upside down so that the opponent cannot see if it is a infantry platoon, a battery of missiles – or a dummy piece simulating the fog of war.
The dilemma is that the hidden units cannot be drawn. However, they lose concealment when they draw, or when their locations are identified by enemy recognition platforms or ground troops. Thus, the “Littoral commander” becomes a hide-and-seek competition, where the fighters try to locate enemy troops for missile strikes. While selecting their own forces of enemy recognition or, if identified, changing position to disappear.
As the Ukraine war has shown, long -range fires dominate the modern battlefield. The missile and artillery units in “Litoral Commander” have a power and scope of huge households, but the combatants have only a limited number of guided ammunition. The same goes for air and anti -missile defense units, which have a limited supply of interceptors. Players must decide carefully not only when shooting their weapons long -range – and losing concealment – but also if you have to spend ammunition or save them for future battles. Choosing the right joint capacity cards is crucial: for example, Chinese drone swarm cards CH-901 offer additional long-term strikes, while the American space satellite reveals hidden Chinese units.
BAE has already published a commercial suite – “Commander Littoral Baltic States” – with extensions provided for Australia, Japan, Norway and other nations. In addition to teaching military professionals, he hopes that these games will educate the general public.
“I want people to learn various abilities in modern war and how they interact,” said Bae. “Like how to have a long -range missile means nothing if you cannot find the enemy and how sequencing and timing are important in the types of actions that you do at the tactical level.”
“I wanted to make the game accessible to my professional community, which is the Ministry of Defense,” said Bae. “But I also wanted normal people to understand our community better.”
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy Magazine and other publications. He has a master’s degree in political science of Rutgers Univ. Follow him Twitter And Liendin.
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