The History of Wargaming Project
The project aims to make the largest possible collection of wargaming books and rules available to the modern reader. Ranging from second editions of wargaming classics, to professional wargaming rules used by the military and innovations in current wargaming.
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Professional Wargaming
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Thomas Allen's War Games Professional Wargaming 1945-1985
04 July 2015 by Thomas Allen Edited by John Curry |
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'Totally fascinating, this book will be the standard work on the subject' Tom Clancy, author of the Hunt for Red October. In closely guarded rooms in the Pentagon, in think-tanks and colleges throughout the USA and Europe and deep in the heart of the Kremlin, games are being played. Games with stakes like no other — the fate of the world. Super-sophisticated computers are used to rehearse the wars of the future from small-scale Middle Eastern conflicts to total Armageddon. The results of the WAR GAMES, secret until now, are startling - and alarming. Human players will not step over the nuclear threshold—so the Pentagon has devised games in which computers are the only players In the most realistic war games, NATO always loses to the Soviet bloc The US Navy never allows its aircraft carriers to he sunk in any game or exercise WAR GAMES draws on never-before-published secret material to take us into the closed world of those who play at destruction, showing how the games have developed and how they are played. WAR GAMES sees the world's future through the eyes of our leaders. And it is a vision that is grippingly readable and revealing - and ultimately terrifying. The book is available from Amazon and other online stores. |
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| Supporting Material for Thomas Allen's War Games Review by Zachary Irwin, Humanities and Social Sciences Div., Behrend College-Penn State Univ., Erie 1987 quoted in the library journal Allen, author of Rickover, has written a solid nontechnical introduction to the development and use of military simulation. He includes abundant anecdotes and information drawn from various levels of the "war gaming hierarchy." Of particular interest is the 1982 game "Ivy League" simulating a full-scale nuclear exchange, an exercise whose details were "leaked" as a "demonstration of Washington's ability to react to a decapitating attack." Some readers will find the book alarming; others will take comfort in Allen's description of the professionalism of the strategists and their efforts to"validate" the games' results. Although the absence of a conclusion is regrettable, this is recommended for public and academic libraries. |