DA4470 Designing Operationally Oriented Research Studies
Decision-makers need tabletop exercises, crisis simulations, and wargames to help them visualize and describe modern strategy, operations, and campaigns. Good strategies start by first visualizing and describing competition, then developing ideas to increase your chances of winning and analyzing your ideas in a competitive environment. Any research — from historical cases to trend analysis and quantitative models — that helps decision-makers recreate this competitive clash of wills provides a simulation against which to develop strategy and operational campaigns. The course aims to help students understand how to use wargaming, focused on contemporary operational concepts and threats, to create and analyze relevant operational campaigns to achieve strategic objectives. The course provides a wide range of research design concepts enabling students to develop a wargame to support research on critical issues. Students will develop an understanding of the links between strategy and operational campaigns, how operational concepts flow from an individual's definition of competition and victory, and how the choices of others influence these concepts in a competitive environment. In applying research design to operational planning, students will understand the unique features of the various design methods and how they can best use them for operational/campaign planning analysis. During the course, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of strategic planning, operational theory, and wargaming methodology - including the research, design, development, execution, and analysis of their own designed operationally oriented effort.
Lecture Hours
4
Lab Hours
0