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Robert J. Murray, former Under Secretary of the Navy and the first Director of the Naval War College’s Center for Naval Warfare Studies, regretted that he could not write an article about war gaming for our special issue on education and training. He was too busy winding up his affairs at Newport and preparing to assume his new duties as Director of National Security Programs at Harvard. Would he have time, during a visit to Washington, to sit down with the Proceedings editor-in-chief and managing editor for an interview? He would. The three men talked in an empty Pentagon office in July, and what follows is what they talked about.
Proceedings: As you know, the October Proceedings is a special issue devoted to Navy education and training. What do you see as the Navy’s educational challenges?
Murray: The biggest educational challenge I see for the Navy in the decade ahead is educating the junior officer to have a Navy-wide perspective, and the senior officer to have a joint multiservice perspective, and all officers to have a war-fighting perspective. This seems to me to be the Navy’s most important education problem—not a new problem, but a problem. How do you get naval officers to think across the Navy and then across the other services and the allies? That’s the challenge. We develop excellent captains of ships. We need to develop more captains of war.
Naval officers have tremendous technical demands on them to be competent in their respective areas of specialty— antiwarfare systems, antisubmarine systems, aviation, submarines, or whatever. They seldom get a chance to look across the Navy. Also, the natural juices of competition run strongly—too strongly—among the various Navy communities. The Navy needs to strike a better balance between technical education and education for war fighting, and to lessen competition among communities in favor of a broad team spirit.
The junior officer in the Marine Corps, it seems to me, starts off well, and better than his Navy counterpart in this regard. All new Marine officers— regardless of where else they’re going —begin by going to the same six- month Basic School together. They develop a very mission-oriented point of view there. The aviators don’t do their thing, while the support folks do their thing, while the infantrymen do their thing. It’s a mission point of view, and everybody has to get in step and figure out how to do the mission best.
The Army has a good system for building senior officers. The Army spends a lot of time educating the “whole man,” so to speak, to produce the well-rounded senior officer who thinks in combined arms terms and knows how to put the forces together.
The Navy would do well to steal these ideas and make them its own. Plagiarism is a well-developed art in government; in five years, no one will remember where the ideas came from anyway.
Of course, the Navy personnel system does not naturally welcome
changes. Personnel systems never welcome changes. “We have no officers to spare,” is a common answer to new suggestions. We have about 52,000 line officers today, compared with about 65,000 in 1968. This is about a 20% reduction in line officers between those years, but in those years, we had a 40-50% reduction in the size of the operating fleet. So you would expect there might now be more officers available. But still the personnel system tells us “We have no officers to spare for educating the whole man! This is changing now, slowly but significantly- because the CNO has taken the system by the scruff of the neck and said “produce.”
The CNO understands that combined arms wins more battles than intra- and inter-service rivalry. 1 think that is the message behind the Memorandum of Understanding recently completed between the Air Force Chief of Staff and the CNO concerning joint U. S. Navy-U. S. Air Force operations. It's also, I believe, one of the reasons why the CNO is putting such an emphasis on education for war fighting and better use of the Naval War College for this purpose.
Proceedings: There has been much recent interest in the Naval War College, but historically it has not been an essential part of a naval officer’s career. Does the Naval War College have an important contribution to make in the education of naval officers? Murray: Yes, it definitely does. But historically the Navy has not recognized its value, as you suggest. Many good officers have gone to the Naval War College, but they went of their own choosing; they do not go, or have not gone in the past, because the personnel system has sent them there. The Navy has not regarded war college education as an essential part of a naval career.
Now, in my opinion, having a war college that deliberately trains people who aren’t going to be the future leaders of the Navy, rather than those who are, is very wrong. It ought to be changed, or it ought to be closed. Fortunately, it is being changed.
Three really good things have happened in the last two years. The first, by then-CNO Admiral Tom Hayward, was the establishment of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies (CNWS), and in particular, its Strategic Studies Group- In the past two years, three officers of the small, chosen group were selected for flag officer, and several more were
promoted from commander to captain. They also have had excellent assignments since leaving the Strategic Studies Group. More important, these officers have contributed significantly to naval strategic thought.
The second thing happening at the War College is the expansion of the war-gaming responsibilities. The war gaming center is quickly becoming the principal place for debating issues of strategy and grand tactics within the Navy.
The third exciting thing is that Admiral Jim Watkins is sending postcommand officers to Newport as students. These are officers who are in the Navy’s upward mobility scheme of “ . . . you first have to discard the term ‘naval strategy,’ and even its slightly more modern variant, ‘maritime strategy,’ and talk instead about the naval contribution to national strategy.”
things, men who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow’s Navy.
It would be easy to cast a cynical eye on these activities and say, “Oh, the War College has been a fad before, and it’ll fade again.” That may prove to be the case. But, on the other hand, Admiral Watkins—who was a Chief of Naval Personnel—is doing things now with the system that makes it more likely—the best chance ever, probably—that the War College will be used the way it ought to be used to the Navy’s benefit. Personally, I am an optimist. I’m betting on Watkins.
Let me say one more thing. The Naval War College is probably the best of the war colleges. The quality of the education is very high. The faculty is excellent. A good example of that is that outside universities give 21 credit hours toward a master’s degree for Naval War College work. I don’t think there is any other war college that gets 21 credit hours for its educational courses.
Proceedings: After leaving your job as Under Secretary of the Navy, you were appointed to be the first director of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies in July 1981. What is the Center for Naval Warfare Studies?
Murray: In July 1981, nobody knew what the Center for Naval Warfare
Studies was to be, including me. It grew out of conversations I had with flag and general officers in the Navy and Marine Corps, including the CNO and the Commandant. We saw we did not have enough naval officers who were thinking broadly enough about war-fighting issues. And we certainly had nothing that we could call naval strategy. There were lots of ideas, but there was nothing that we could call all-encompassing as to how the Navy would operate in war. We didn’t even have a system for producing such a concept. In other words, naval strategy was a mystery for many folks— certainly for most defense civilians.
So Admiral Hayward decided that we ought to have such a place as the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, and Secretary of the Navy John Lehman said it was something he believed worth doing and would support. So I went to figure out what a Center for Naval Warfare Studies should be.
The centerpiece of CNWS is the newly created Strategic Studies Group, comprising eight officers—six Navy and two Marines—at the 0-5 and 0-6 levels. They are men of considerable operational experience, drawn from all warfare communities, assigned to CNWS for one year to develop better ways for naval forces to contribute to national strategy. One year is not a long time to do this, but I wasn’t interested in building career strategists; I wanted to give naval officers a chance to think through war-fighting issues and then go back to the fleet and spread the word.
We also included in CNWS two existing War College organizations.
The first was the Center for Advanced Research, created by Captain Hugh Nott in 1974, which for the last decade has been home-base for War College officer students doing research on tactical and strategic issues. We have tried to give this research work high priority and high visibility, so that good ideas get used.
The second existing organization incorporated within CNWS was the War College Press. We wanted our work published. Most is now published in a new series of classified papers,
The Newport Papers, the creation of Frank Uhlig, the Director of the War College Press, whom I am happy to have “stolen” from the Naval Institute.
Finally, Admiral Eddie Welch, then President of the Naval War College, suggested that we include the Center for War Gaming within CNWS. He believed the war-gaming center wasn’t being used constructively enough for the Navy, and here was a chance to connect the officers who were going t0 produce new ideas with the officers who had a means of testing ideas and arguing issues on a grand scale throug gaming.
The CNWS has developed in a very successful way, and has already established itself, I believe, as a place that produces helpful ideas for the Navy and Marine Corps—indeed, for the defense establishment. The main reasons for success have been three; first’ from the outset, we have had the support of the CNO and the Commandant, and the other flag and general officcrs’ but we have not had rudder orders or specific tasking from them—we’ve been free to develop our ideas; second, we have not been squirreled away if Newport, but have worked closely wit OpNav and HQMC and the fleets in pursuing our ideas, so that we have drawn heavily upon the knowledge an perspectives of others; and third, I bn a small, but tremendously creative directing staff for CNWS, and we became a good team.
What is the Center for Naval Warfare Studies? It’s a place that helps naval forces put it all together, intelleC tually, so that the naval contribution t0 national strategy is as constructive a contribution as possible. It’s also an exciting place for duty.
Proceedings: Getting the war-game facility turned over to you—did this cause any problem?
Murray: There were natural worries within the War College at the outset that CNWS and in particular the wider war-gaming responsibilities might take something away from the Naval War College. I was not as good as I could have been in alleviating these concerns- But in any event, I think we give as much if not more time to war gaming in the curriculum as ever has been done. And certainly we have played a big role in helping create more interes ing and useful war gaming for War College students. Officer students like war games, because that’s one way they can argue the issues in a broad context with some relatively real-won constraints upon them. They get a chance to put their ideas into practice and also to assume roles and responsibilities of officers more senior than themselves.
We have also tried to contribute to the War College in other ways. Ideas of the Strategic Studies Group are shared with War College students, so there is interchange. There are joint seminars involving student officers an officers in the Strategic Studies Group- and I have participated in student classes. We also make our work avaua
These are mutually supporting tasks, and they would require prompt, off-’[I]' sive action. The best defense remains a good offense, and a successful offense' in the modem era, requires close coop eration among all naval warfare communities, with other services, and wi the allies. We need not worry excessively about ship vulnerability; ships were vulnerable well before the Falk- lands Conflict. We do need, however, to ensure that we deploy and fight °uf forces in ways that bring continually greater pressure on an enemy, that s F away his defenses while preventing n from organizing an offensive campal?n of his own, and in this way help con tribute to war termination on satisfactory terms. This is the essence of a combined arms approach to war fig*11 ing. If the Soviet Union sees we are capable of such a stalwart defense, perhaps we can avoid war altogether- We have today a Navy that, with modest strengthening, is capable, m opinion, of carrying out its missions- We need not wring our hands and say “woe is me.” We have maritime supe
ble for inclusion in the curriculum as may be useful. So a lot of the normal, human worries at the outset have already evaporated.
When we look back, after a period of three, four, five years, I believe we will see there has been an appreciable addition to the teaching side of the Naval War College from the work of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. Proceedings: Admiral Welch’s volunteering to put war gaming under your organization would seem to have helped you move into the Naval War College environment.
Murray: It was his idea, and it has proven to be the right idea. Admiral Welch was always tremendously supportive of this whole activity. He was very interested in enlivening the War College, and he, too, shared the vision of the Navy doing more war-fighting thinking. He and I, and the key staff members—Commanders Ken McGruther and Jim Hinds, Dr. Tom Etzold, Lieutenant Colonel Bud Hay, and later Captain Frank Julian— invented CNWS together.
Proceedings: You say the center is concerned with naval strategy. There has been much disagreement in the past decade about the most useful role for naval forces. How would you define naval strategy?
Murray: That’s a hard question. When 1 first came to the War College, I said, “If there’s one thing we’re not going to do, it’s write the definitive naval strategy. Too many people have tried and failed. And if we fail too, the whole venture is lost. So we’re going to work at it, but we’re going to make no promises as to what we will deliver.” But after two years, we are delivering an agreed-upon strategy.
I think, frankly, you first have to discard the term “naval strategy,” and even its slightly more modern variant, “maritime strategy,” and talk instead about the naval contribution to national strategy. This is what policymakers are interested in. For romantics, this is perhaps hard to do, but it is the right perspective. Otherwise we will continue to have—as we have had for the past two years—debilitating debates about whether the country should rely upon a maritime strategy (Navy) or a continental strategy (Army), when either one would be a false choice. A strategy that counts on winning at sea while losing on land is no strategy. A strategy that attempts to win on land without also winning at sea is untenable.
So what we need is neither a maritime strategy nor a continental strategy but a national strategy that has ample and balanced proportions of naval, land, and air forces, organized so that it can achieve national objectives, or more accurately, alliance objectives.
The relevent naval question, then, is: how should naval forces contribute to such a strategy? The answer, in my opinion, after two years of study, “Creativity requires flexibility and a willingness to hear things you don’t always like without shooting the messenger.”
riority. The trick is to make sure we keep it.
Proceedings: Is the Strategic Studies Group making a contribution to nava strategic thinking or, in light of what you’ve said, to the naval aspects of national strategic thinking?
Murray: Well, 1 think the Strategic , Studies Group is making a large con bution to naval strategic thinking, an in the broader context you just mentioned—namely, national strategy- * ^ Strategic Studies Group is composed members from each of the major nav communities—carrier and land-based aviation, submarines, surface warfare officers of varying specialties, Marine infantry, and Marine air. They bring ^ together a diversity of perspectives a tremendous operational backgrounds- They have approached their work ft® the point of view of “How can I he*P make the Navy contribution greater- —not, “How can I sell more P-3s, more submarines, or get more ammo for Marines?” They’ve also been ecumenical about the other services- They’ve looked at the other services and said, “How can we help them an where can they help us?”
We find, for instance, that if yoU employ Marines in a certain way the)[II][III] make a very nice connection between the land and air activities over land* and the seaward activities. Marines a a good combined arms outfit.
We also find that the Air Force would be tremendously important f°r the maritime campaign, but not so much in sinking Soviet ships, which 1 many respects is the least of our problems. What the Navy would really need from the Air Force is what air forces do best—fight and destroy opposing airplanes. If the Air Force can do that, then the maritime campaign looks much better, and so do the land and air campaigns. And we find that if we use the Navy and the Marine Corps imaginatively with the Air Force and allied air forces, battles on land and sea both benefit from the so-called “synergistic effect” of working together. For example, we found an area—though I won’t mention what area—where the current plan was to retreat, and in the work of the Strategic Studies Group it was determined that it might not be necessary to retreat. If we fought there and won—and our analysis suggested this was possible—then there would be important benefits for both land and sea campaigns.
The Strategic Studies Group has looked at naval forces worldwide and looked at how they could fit into strategy and accomplish a war-fighting mission. The goal is to deter, but if that fails, our forces must know how they can fight and win. So the members of the Strategic Studies Group look at ways to win. They do it in sufficient detail so it’s not simply a discussion of theoretical battles against a hypothetical enemy in an abstract environment. They look at the real potential enemy and at the prospective war-fighting environment, using the best intelligence and a close examination of our own capabilities, peeling it back far enough so that we know if we are likely to succeed or fail.
Newport is not, of course, the war planning center for the Navy. It is, however, one place where naval officers get together and try to produce better ideas. To get the better ideas, we talk to a lot of people. We have not remained in Newport, scribbling away, producing definitive naval strategy from our own ideas. We have gone around the world and collected every good idea we could find, examined them closely, threw in some of our own, packaged them, tested them in war games, and then sent them back to the fleet and said, “Here, what do you think of this?”
In sum, the members of the Strategic Studies Group have done what I was unsure could be done two years ago— they developed a naval strategy, or at least, a clear definition of the naval contribution to national strategy. So I say, yes, the Strategic Studies Group has made an important contribution to naval strategic thinking.
Proceedings: The Strategic Studies
Group obviously examines many of the Navy’s problems. How are the tough kinds of analysis, which you know to be unpopular, received?
Murray: Well, we certainly have had no shortage of arguments. But, a big area of controversy that we have not walked directly into yet is program and force structure. I have not tried to say, “You need three more carriers,” or “three less carriers,” or “Buy 50 more submarines.” I have deliberately stayed out of program issues so that we could concentrate on developing an overall concept of naval operations—a strategy—from which, later on, program decisions could be drawn. Until we had developed such a strategy, I did not wish to get into partisan programming arguments, not only because it would disrupt what I was trying to do, but because initially I didn’t have any good answers to programs questions; I had my opinion about the value of individual programs, but no unique perspective from which to offer recommendations.
We have had, however, plenty of controversy over issues of strategy. We have had many good debates. But they have been fair debates. No knives are between our shoulders. In fact, that’s one of the useful things that the Strategic Studies Group has been—a Navy- Marine Corps-wide debating society!
So, have we been into controversy? Yes. Have we been into programs? No. Proceedings: The CNO has emphasized the importance of war games and has supported a significant role for war gaming within the Center for Naval Warfare Studies. What does the wargaming center do? What is your view of the current capabilities of the wargaming center?
Murray: The war-gaming center is the center for Navy war gaming at the battle group level and above. It is the place where the Navy is asking itself, “How do the forces fit together—first, at the tactical level, then at the theater level, and then worldwide?” Its basic purpose is to examine the larger tactical and strategic issues of deterrence and war fighting. Its charter is to work with OpNav and HQMC, with the fleets, with the Tactical Training Groups, and with others in and outside the Navy and Marine Corps—other services,
OSD, the allies—to conduct these larger level games.
Two years ago, when I came to the War College, I looked at the wargaming center and asked the question you just asked me, “What does it do, and what is it for?” Basically, the answer was: “It is a place for training naval officers, both students at the War College and Atlantic Fleet staff officers.” I asked to see the records of games, the “lessons learned” over the past decade. There were none. The only systematic attempts to learn lessons were those done by the Atlantic Fleet.
This surprised me. I remembered Admiral Ike Kidd telling me about the importance of war gaming for the Navy, of his father’s experience with war gaming at Newport in the 1930s, and of his own strong efforts as CinC' Lant to use the war-gaming tool. I also remembered reading Admiral Nimitz’s recollections of his pre-V/orM War II time at Newport, and how, when he became CinCPac at the begin ning of the war, he sent for the ”leS' sons learned” at Newport which he built into the Pacific campaign plans- So I had expected to find a very liveb war-gaming center. I found an interest ing center, but not a lively one.
I found that officers at the wargaming center provided umpiring services but did not themselves have much opportunity or incentive to thins through the issues of war fighting on a sustained basis; that the war-gaming center was rarely used to test real warfighting concepts and war plans, but mainly for training students; that the games played seldom considered . . Marine Corps issues beyond their in'11 movement, or land and air engagements at all, even though it was imp°s sible to get any true measure of the value of naval forces without doing s0, and that the war-gaming center didn 1 work with all the Navy, only the EasI Coast Navy. These were real problem* Change was needed if war gaming 'va!’ going to be a useful tool for the Nav>' in developing strategic and tactical concepts. Something had to be done. Something was done.
Between January and June 1982, '*/e developed a new charter for the war-
“The Soviets have their rigidities, but they’re better at looking at the broad p>c” ture than we are. We need to be much better at it.”
the*1 °*Fcers t0 design the game, write dra SCe/lar'°> analyze the results, and theW ®e inclusions, and then argue inclusions anew in subsequent rec ^ would develop a careful Ninv °Ur work’ so the future rec 'If65 cou^ always have available a or for pondering, a source of ideas
The government must act. 0u can’t just sit passively saying, ‘Yes, I hear all at> but I don’t care whether we buy three Ill0re carriers or ten more submarines.’”
the right direction, in my opinion, in the last year. But we have a long way to go, and it will take two more years before the war-gaming center is really achieving its potential. Of course, none of this was possible without the support of the CNO and the fleet CinCs, and without the strong leadership and backing of the then-VCNO, Admiral Bill Small. But it has the backing of the Navy, and now the real challenge is for us at Newport to deliver.
I think that answers one part of your question, but I have talked so long I forgot the second part. . . . Proceedings: Current capabilities and what the war-gaming center can do. Murray: It can do a great deal for the Navy. It’s already starting to do that. It’s going to take a couple of years to really get all this new momentum assimilated in the nautical stomach, to get the juices running right, the computer data base and models up to speed, to be certain we can rely on the software, to iron out a satisfactory schedule for the long term, etc. Then we’ll have a system established.
The officer who reports in at the war-gaming center now—by the time he leaves in two or three years—will have the best education as a fighting naval officer of anybody in the Navy.
He will have looked across all fleets in varying conditions to see how the communities fit together, where their strengths and weaknesses are, and how the strengths of one can overcome the weaknesses of the other. This is obviously not a substitute for shipboard experience, but officers already get that. I’m talking about taking an experienced seagoing officer and widening his horizons.
This is something the Soviet Union appears to do much more effectively than we do. The Soviets have their rigidities, but they’re better at looking at the broad picture than we are. We need to be much better at it.
There’s one other point I’d like to mention. We are now playing a professional Red team, if you will. Unlike the other services at the moment, and unlike ourselves at some time in the past, we’re now bringing together the best available intelligence and having it played by people who really know the Soviets. It is no longer a matter of “invent your own Russian,” or “You’re the Russian today, and I’m him tomorrow.”
Now we’re trying to get a much more reliable Russian view—based on the best of what we know. While still not perfect, at least we’re now playing war games against what we think are current Russian strategies and tactics, and against what we believe to be their weapon systems’ capabilities. Proceedings: And the more you get people playing on such a Red team, the better they’re going to be, I would imagine, when they return to the Blue team.
Murray: Even just watching strategy unfold, even if they’re not on the Red team, as such, they see certain behavior patterns and certain things going on, certain consequences of actions— that’s instructive. You can’t help but come out with a better appreciation of what Soviet capabilities are really like. Proceedings: What is a war game? Murray: Well, that’s a good question. I’d say a war game is a place to test ideas and gain insights. It’s a place to do analysis from a unique vantage point.
It’s the only place where you can see forces on a very broad scale and get a sense of global proportion. It is not a place that gives you certain answers to things. If there’s anyone who scares me, it is someone who goes to one war game and thinks he’s learned the answers to his problem, whatever the problem is. A war game doesn’t have that capacity.
On the other hand, if there’s anybody who frustrates me, it’s the guy who thinks he can get nothing out of war games and doesn’t want to take the time to bother. War games are another form of analysis, an almost unique form of analysis. But you have to link it to other things—operational savvy, analysis you do in other ways, etc.
A good war game has three ingredients. The first is careful preparation.
You don’t just walk in and play a war game; a lot of thought and study has to go into setting it up. What is it you want to learn from the game? This has to be thought through in advance; otherwise, you’re wasting a lot of time just trading opinions. Its utility is not in trading opinions, but in arguing issues seriously.
Second, you need good intelligence.
If you’re playing with bad intelligence, with an episodic, quixotic appreciation of the other fellow’s capabilities, then it doesn't come out right. You can learn the wrong lessons.
Third, you need good people. Good people play good war games. Indifferent people play badly.
So, good preparation, good intelligence, and good people make a good war game. You can’t walk in, press a button, and presto, the answer comes up. If you approach a game in that way, you get the kind of answer you deserve.
Proceedings: Is there a product or
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outcome derived from the war-gaming results?
Murray: There are two kinds of products. One, of course, is the experience of the officers who have lived through the war games, and that’s an important product. A war game is a way to communicate with people, to discuss issues. And that has a lot of effects when people go back to wherever they came from.
People come in from the labs, for example, and achieve, in the course of a good war game, a better context for thinking about their particular research and development responsibilities. Their problem, let’s say, is developing a new missile system. When they leave us at the war-gaming center, they have a sense of how it might be employed to their best advantage. From an engineer’s point of view, he can start figuring how to optimize the missiles for those kinds of circumstances rather than some more abstract model. And the other players learned about the potential of that missile system.
The second product is the game report. It is available for further analysis, for putting back into future war games, for considering by the fleet staffs, etc.
Proceedings: Available to whom? Murray: Available to whoever has a need to know and access the classification level of the particular war game. Proceedings: How does one know it exists? Does one have to know what’s going on at the War College? Or is there something you send out like a summary message at the end of the global war game, such as “The Naval War College just completed its annual global warfare game?”
Murray: Several ways. One, the officers who have just been in the game have gone back to their many posts and stations, and they have something to say about their war-gaming experience to other people, and so many people who are interested pick up on it.
Second, people know that there are war games at the War College, and we are now starting to write lessons learned, so they ask whether we played any games on a particular subject or not and if we have any reports.
Third, we brief people. As a matter of course, we will send a road show around on certain games.
Fourth, on things that are very interesting, we send the game report to the folks we think would be interested.
Fifth, the reports go in the library of the War College and are made generally available to officers.
I’m overstating some of this to a certain extent, because we’re just starting to produce these things. I mentioned we didn’t have any reports. The mice had eaten them or something since Nimitz’s time—so we don’t have a lot. We’re just building our capabilities. We have reports on each so-called “global war game,” which has been run for the last five years, because the global war game is a Newport invention, and therefore we wrote and maintained reports on them. As we are starting to gain capabilities in analyzing and writing reports, we’re producing more of them, and these will be available. So if you wait two years, you’re going to see a lot more available than you do today.
Proceedings: How does war gaming contribute to the formulation of naval strategy and policy?
Murray: I think in the way I’ve just mentioned. We’ve gone over several ways. There’s one other way I might add, and that is we are trying to work with OpNav now to see what the role of war gaming can be in the planning, programming, and budgeting system (PPBS) process. And at the moment all I can say about that is that war gaming helps give you a context for thinking about naval missions and purposes from which you then have to draw your own conclusions. Maybe it can go farther, but we’re at the experimental stage now, and nobody’s sure how useful it will be. No one in recent memory—at least in the last 25 years that I’ve been in the government—has ever satisfactorily determined how the “If there’s anyone who scares me, it is someone who goes to one war game and thinks he’s learned the answers to his problem, whatever the problem is.” can provide insights valuable for pro; gramming purposes, that is, for helping choose among competing programs, o the basis of which programs contribute the most to our deterrence and warfighting posture.
Proceedings: It appears you have bui a great foundation and that your team would start to drive planning at some point. The major weakness would seem to be that if it doesn’t drive what is currently fashionable, then the whole process starts eroding.
Murray: Exactly. And that’s why I wanted to work on the basic ideas for naval forces rather than enter the
programs. If you have an agreed con- cept—and by “agreed,” I mean agree at the political as well as the military level—then you can draw your own conclusions about specific programs.
I can tell you what I think naval forces
me for a while, and then you, as the programmer, can figure out what specific program decisions are needed to support the concept. If you conclude you need three less carriers, that’s okay. But if you can’t tell from the concept whether three less or three more are needed, then the concept isn.
good enough. That’s the basic idea it. We need to provide good ideas before bad ideas become fashionable
a formal institutional link to PPBS, beyond providing ideas. War gaming hasn’t reached the point where it cafl say with assurance, “Produce produc ‘A’, not product ‘B’.” I haven’t f°utl how to do that yet. But we’re trying- Eventually, of course you have to draw conclusions even from impeneC analysis. The government must act- You can’t just sit passively saying, “Yes, I hear all that, but I don’t cars whether we buy three more carriers °r ten more submarines.” We are trying to help provide a basis for better choice, a basis for drawing conclusions, both in operational and progfaI” ming terms. That’s what we are all about at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.
Proceedings: Can war gaming really reflect future reality? Is it sensible to rely on war gaming to provide ans about important issues of war and peace? .
Murray: 1 guess the answer is that can’t reflect future reality perfectly, there is no vehicle that can. Also, m1 tary officers and civilian defense off*
war and peace, and this is a tool that helps them do it. If you draw too muC out of it, as I said earlier, then that s
it 1C10US- If you draw too little out of think60 ^°U *°Se an opportunity to ouoht constructively about issues you go t l° about. You don’t
of J1 War or achieve peace on the basis „jvar~garning results, but hopefully it
will fM°U '^CaS t^lat’ *n rea* w°rid. Iesse P you achieve more peace and
you,War you get t° war> adv Ve 3t 'east bought about it in hel a0Ce' h doesn’t reflect reality, but it Proo ^1'-e ^°U 'ns'ghts into reality.
SVst eedings: Recently a new computer cent601 WaS *nstal'ed at the war-gaming has severa' remote sites. How
ggmjn'^kt'huology influenced war
he[*^ra^: h'rst, the remote sites will fleet SITeac* war gaming to all the t0 jS’. ecause they will make it easier fr °'nteractive gaming. The fellow **awaii won’t have to journey to Won’^0/1' fellow from London can °aVC t0 come here. Sixth Fleet gam^° l° Ij0ndon *f he wants to play a it rather than come to Newport. So ier f ma*ce access to war gaming eas-
(,0r commanders.
(ja[e^0nd’ technically, if you get your clea aSe 'I will allow you to InrushaW3y sorne °f the factual under- Sovio.aS. you argue the issues. Do the
d0 ** have this capability, and how viCeey vvorh against your system and t0Versa? You are electronically able and th6S!> battle damage quickly, cour 31 S 3 t‘mesavmg device. Of Use f6’ computer is not of much critg1 • y°u haven’t met the other three tion na * 'Mentioned of good prepara- Ple ’p=0od intelligence, and good peo- tor j e°P*e are the most important fac- qUal|' a g°°d game. Much turns on the garni/ °* °H'lcers assigned to the *hj Sinter and the seriousness with Pr0Cp lV.ey approach gaming. g°als f,ngs: What are the long-range what / t^le war-gaming center, and reach C!*anges> >f any, are needed to fund' la°Se goals, i.e., equipment,
Personnel, and authority? How the _Ss u' have you been in achieving ohic, fCessary support to meet these MJ hves?
1° answer the last first, conv'6 • n very successful so far in cente'nc'ng CNO that the war-gaming disc/ 0U^bf to have the broad charter I oUsh|SSed’ that no competitive facilities be u$-to he built, and that we ought to Navy"1^ center to talk and argue of it . ide. He’s agreed. Indeed, much auth'S h*s own vision. We have ample eqUj r,ty- We have almost enough fund Hent’ are somewhat under- caiiy "fe’re short of personnel. Basi- c0nim0Ur ideas and responsibilities and hments are running ahead of our support. Our logistics train has got to catch up with us or, as it was for Napoleon, it’s going to get mighty cold for us next winter.
Proceedings: Is the main emphasis in the games conducted at the Center on naval campaigns, or do the games consider combined arms concepts including land, air, and amphibious operations?
Murray: Increasingly we’re working into combined arms. We’re putting in our minds and on our computers the land and air forces. I mentioned that naval forces have two missions—sinking the enemy fleet and supporting key land-air battles. It’s hard to figure out how well you do in those missions unless you also understand what’s happening in the rest of the world, on land and in the air. If you don’t know what’s going on in the land and air battles, how can you weigh the value of the projection forces, especially carrier air and Marines? Are the carriers important? Are the Marines important? If you don’t know what’s happening on the land and over the land, you can’t judge. Do air strikes matter? Did a Marine brigade weigh in the battle or didn’t it? What was the consequence of that air battle for the maritime campaign? And so on.
So you see, we can’t any longer think only of sea battles. We have to think in terms of combined operations, and therefore we’re getting into the combined arms business in a big way. We’re helped dramatically by the faculty at the War College, which is a combined arms faculty, and by the student body. There are Army and Air Force officers and civilian professors on the faculty, as well as a considerable number of students from all four services, plus the Coast Guard. The Naval War College has a real combined arms capability, and we are drawing on these officers and professors to produce more combined arms work.
The global war game this summer, for instance, was an excellent example of a combined arms effort, for which we worked many months in preparation of the air-land campaign models— helped importantly, 1 might add, by Major General Richard D. Lawrence and the Army War College.
Proceedings: With the increased emphasis on war gaming at the Army and Air Force senior service colleges, as well as the National Defense University, what is your view of the future relationship between the Naval War College and the Navy’s sister service colleges and government agencies? And to what degree has any of this been formalized?
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th^\’ same start-stop dates with
^urravMt^ar ,Colle8e?
st dy* It isn t so much the start ar.u fer^ ^ateS the war colleges that dif-
student
s year—where he is in the
such
incre;
assignments will be viewed as
center of CNO and CinC interest
urray: The Navy is generally .fgarded as dragging its feet on any- ln§ that’s “joint,” and to some * ent this is true. But we are trying to °rk with the other services in the ^ar~gaming business. We helped the ^ational Defense University start its o ar'gaming activities last year and put a joint war game with them. The rmy War College has been very help- ^ to us. As I mentioned, General awrence has made available much of s data and some of his people to help understand the air-land dimensions. e Army and the Air Force war col- t0^ave a tradition of working gether in gaming as part of the stunt curriculum. We do not. Also, our tinv1CU*Urn's different than theirs—the cln8 °f't—so it’s difficult to make a Co-ecti°n between the Naval War in t 6^e anc^ °ther services’ colleges So ennS j°int student war gaming, the We don’t have a formal link with ex 01 • we are working informally in ai^l*ning combined arms issues. I it h WC Can and should do more. But w- as to worked out, obviously,
•[-, Presently conflicting schedules, th^ 3re Practical obstacles to it. But a ,e s a spirit that’s more cooperative prm°re helpful now. roceedings: Are you saying the Air , r^e and Army are not on the same as it is what’s going on in the tafUrSCS’ and the kinds of courses he’s joil^at makes it difficult to do bod* War ®aiTI'n8 among the student les. So far, it has seemed more inf 1Ca' t0 Pursue joint gaming on an ers<)rni‘d basis, involving the research- stud°>* t*le War codeges rather than the
^roeegdjfgj.. jj()w successfu] have you °n in getting superior quality naval argS°nnel assigned to the center, and ,,, SUch assignments viewed as career- chancing?
c Urray; 1 would say reasonably suc- s. ,tu* and increasingly successful, and
CNr>aS'nsly career-enhancing. If the suPports the War College, and Qfr gaming, and the Strategic Studies to becomes attractive to people
act 6 ^art ^at—the place where the
im °n *S anc* where professionally at th'rtant 'ssues are argued. So being
Cerracts many good officers. Also, offi- pr keep a sharp eye on who is getting int ITl0ted as a barometer of top level erest. Last year, I had one officer promoted to flag rank. This year, out of two captains in contention for flag promotion, both were promoted. So enthusiasm is building for assignment to Newport. My telephone rings more often. We are getting good people, and I believe we are going to get more of them. If this proves not to be true, then you’ll see the demise of this endeavor.
Proceedings: Where is war gaming going in the next five to ten years? What steps have you undertaken to ensure that the Center for Naval Warfare studies and its war-gaming center maintain pace with modem strategy, tactics, and weapon systems?
Murray: Where it’s going is, I hope, in the direction it’s already headed: as the Navy-wide vehicle for arguing new strategic and tactical concepts, working with the other services and the allies in testing ideas, and communicating broadly within the Navy and Marine Corps about warfare issues. As long as it is a place that communicates, it’s going to be in touch with the latest strategic issues and will continually modernize itself. It’s got to be a place that’s in touch with Washington, with the operating fleets, with the intelligence community, with the labs, with the other services, with the allies. The steps I have taken to be sure we keep pace are essentially to create a modus operandi that ensures the center is working on things the CNO and CMC care about, and doing it in close discussion with other parts of the Navy and Marine Corps and the wider DoD establishment.
This has been relatively easy to do because Newport has no particular ax to grind. It doesn’t prefer destroyers over carriers, or carriers over submarines, or submarines over P-3 aircraft.
It argues issues with relative dispas- sion, and brings together people of varying perspectives to see how we can combine our wisdom and produce better results.
For example, we examined the Soviet bomber force. It’s a problem.
We wanted to figure out how to defeat it, not how to wring our hands about it. We brought in operators, people from industry, the labs, the intelligence community, the tactical fighter groups of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the Aegis system people, and we had them sit down in Newport for several days or we visited them, and we argued the issues. And then we spent a year looking at Soviet aviation more broadly, at Soviet future fourth- generation aviation. We put together the best available talents and allowed each to contribute from his own perspective; and then we analyzed the tactical, strategic, and technical implications of particular Soviet systems for us. We’ve worked a number of such issues in the past two years.
This takes initiative; it takes people who are willing to be free-wheeling and run with things, who are willing to argue. That is the kind of people I have had to work with. My life’s been easy; all I’ve had to do is encourage them along productive paths.
As long as the Center for Naval Warfare Studies stays that kind of a place, it’s going to be an exciting place for officers to be. It’s going to be a place that makes a contribution to the “ . . . having a war college that deliberately trains people who aren’t going to be the future leaders of the Navy, rather than those who are, is very wrong. It ought to be changed, or it ought to be closed.”
country and to thinking about defense issues, and it’s going to be lively and in touch with the future as well as the past and present.
So the trick will be to keep it this way, to keep it exciting. Creativity requires flexibility and a willingness to hear things you don’t always like without shooting the messenger. Of course, most organizations tend to get a little bureaucratic. Rules pop up like dandelions in the spring. The budget gets tighter. Overseers proliferate. Legions are formed to “coordinate” your every thought, so that nothing can emerge from you which is dangerous to the status quo. Then things become too hard to push through the red tape, so people stop doing them. The excitement wanes, good people leave, and rigor mortis sets in. Taps is played. Sometimes this happens quickly; sometimes it takes awhile. It all depends upon the leadership.
But I see no threat to the vitality of CNWS. It has the whole-hearted support of the CNO and CMC and the new President of the Naval War College, Rear Admiral Jim Service. It has a tremendously able staff. It is not verging on rigor mortis but, on the contrary, is likely to blossom more fully in the next three years. The next several years will be terrifically exciting. And that will be good for the Navy and the Marines, and for the country.
The third mission is the general war mission. This is the mission, fortunately, with which we have least experience. It is the subject we have spent much of our time examining in the last two years. How do naval forces make the greatest contribution to deterrence or, if necessary, to winning in global war? And how can they do this without the use of nuclear weapons?
Again, the two main naval tasks in general war would be familiar to Mahan; sinking the other fellow’s fleet, and supporting key land-air battles.
gaming center and a new scheme of ^ operations. Henceforth the center won work with all the fleets, not just the Atlantic Fleet. We would work with 1 numbered fleets as well as the higher headquarters. We would argue real-I|,c questions of strategy and tactics, test real war plans, and develop new concepts of operations. We would use out
on |-e P*n8 deter or fight. We brought relne a new computer, and ordered c '*te stations so that we could have head 301 comrnun'cation with the fleet So ^Uarters for gaming purposes, and ame c°uld play interactive games ^ork^ f-hnCs. We developed a did fr?2rarn so that the analyses we Cou,^e the war-gaming center and ,] 6 'ncorP°ratcd in future games, coul'i k3S tkat emerged in the games line . subiected to outside, or off- q ’ ana|ys>s- The Strategic Studies strat^ garnes are a good example. The resp6^*^ concePts are thoroughly <jCsjUrc^lecl beforehand. The game thet;ri tbe environment within which prep arne's to be played—is carefully select, Game Participants are
_ ji a trom many parts of the globe
Qua-?1 ^Presentation, marines from fare pC° S Advanced Amphibious War- gen rouP> people from the intelli- staffs C°mmunity and from Washington from i.?xPerts ‘n particular systems the >• a°oratories, etc. Then we play stratp3me’ askinS ourselves, “Does the to8ether? Does it work?” MUr^ngs: Did it hold together? rjght^t U held together, yes. Exactly
game eW y°U cant rely on a single ea^ ' We play three or four games
the v,yCar Just to explore concepts of Sok8ic Studies Group. we’r "tese are the kinds of things
P'ayedm8' Last December> we
Pacif the Frst war game with the an, 0'cFleet insofar as I can tell within com;116 S mernory. We’ve tested real yearng?ncy plans with CinCLant this the St 6 Ve ar8ued new concepts with d°nera*e8'c Studies Group. We’ve We’v °taer sPecial games. All in all, onre added 30% more game time to ^chedule this year. e have really picked up speed in
first “P,” the planning “P,” in the PPBS, could be made useful in choosing between competing programs.
Robert McNamara threw the planners out the door when he became Secretary of Defense because he thought the plans were exceedingly poor. He was right. Since then it’s not been fashionable to worry about the first “P.” The idea seems to be, “Just concentrate on the program and getting the program and budget right, and don’t worry about how much you’re going to use this stuff.” Again, I’m exaggerating a little bit—but not much.
We’re trying to help make that first “P” more useful, to see if war gaming
would be quite familiar to Mahan and to most professional sailors. Naval forces still contribute in the three traditional ways: by establishing a military and naval presence in areas of interest, by responding to crises, and by helping deter or if necessary fight a general war.
The first two missions are missions with which we have much experience, and for which naval forces are peculiarly well suited, because of their combination of power and mobility.
The former makes naval forces militarily significant in many circumstances; the latter makes them capable of going to the many places in the world in which we have interests, and always under national control. Moreover, naval forces can be over the horizon, and not sitting on someone else’s territory, and this greatly alleviates political concerns.
[III] remember speaking with one Middle East leader just after the fall of the Shah of Iran. He was very concerned about what the future held for the Persian Gulf area and what we were going to do there. I told him there were 25,000 American sailors and marines over the horizon, that they had a lot of military capabilities, and we had a lot of interest in his country and in the area. He was impressed with the weight of naval power, and rightly he should be. It is pretty hefty in regional terms.