UK Fight Club

A new club of thinkers within the UK armed forces are revolutionising the military’s attitudes towards simulation training. Guest Writer Captain Oli Elliot (British Army) reports.

It is a popular trope in war literature that the new recruit dives for cover as soon as they hear artillery while the old sweats remain standing as the shell didn’t sound like it was coming their way. These old sweats are acting on intuition, they weren’t trained on what to listen for, but due to their time in the trenches they have developed this intuition. Intuition often plays a role in warfare; veterans of the UK’s operations in Helmand often talk of ‘having a feeling’ that they shouldn’t go down a certain route and, having decided not to take that route, it would turn out later that day that there were IEDs laid along the route that they avoided.

In his book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ the psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman argues that intuition should very rarely be used in decision making. His book is recommended reading for students attending the Junior Command and Staff College (Land) in order to reinforce the argument for why the combat estimate should always be used rather than just trusting our gut. However even Kahneman argues that people can trust their gut instincts so long as they have developed intuition, and that they will only develop intuition if three criteria are met. First, that there is some regularity in the world that someone can pick up. Second, they need immediate feedback. And third, they need a lot of practice. [1]

Tactical Situations

It is a contention held by many that these three criteria exist in tactical situations. It would require a whole series of articles to discuss whether there is any regularity in warfare, but it can be argued that small scale tactical situations consist of finite events happening in a finite area. They are not as complicated as trying to predict the weather or stock market which represent the irregular worlds that Kahneman advises against using intuition. In tactical scenarios we receive instant feedback (such as the fall of shot of the incoming artillery they heard). And when it comes to low level tactical activity on operations soldiers get a lot of practice. But what about prior to operations: are Kahneman’s three criteria being met during training?

The first certainly is, but there is a view among a number of middle ranking commanders that there isn’t enough instant, realistic, and meaningful feedback. All tactical commanders in training know that their attack is going to end with them on a knee with their notebook out (probably in the rain) scribbling down their instructor’s opinion on what went well and what needs to be improved upon. This debrief is likely to include points on whether they followed current tactics, techniques and procedures, they’ll probably be told whether their assaulting section was quiet in the FUP and whether they could have given more succinct instructions. In the early stages on training feedback on the mechanics of a tactical drill is useful but as training develops, this type of feedback is probably not going to fully develop the intuition that junior commanders need. Part of the challenge is that in order to get realistic and instant feedback we need to be fighting a thinking and proactive enemy who is trying to outsmart. Without this we won’t know whether we chose the correct approach route for the assault, how many casualties we actually would have taken, and whether we would have won the tactical engagement.

It has been suggested that a lot of the British Army’s training is not dissimilar to a rugby team who has developed new moves and are practicing them against unmoving tackle bags. At the end of the training session the coach can give feedback on whether they carried out the moves in the way that they had planned but what the team cannot find out is whether these moves will actually work against an opposing team. And by the time they play their first game and find out the moves don’t work it will already be too late. The challenge is thus to work out how the Army can train its junior tactical commanders with enough repetitions and realistic feedback for them to actually develop intuition in how to win? And almost as importantly, how can the Army do this without breaking the bank?

Accessibility

Part of the answer is the UK Fight Club. A group of soldiers and officers from across the UK military (and a couple of NATO nations’ exchange officers) have come together with elements of the wider defence training community and are working to improve the UK’s use of simulation training and make it more accessible. The UK Fight Club is a new innovation to harness the collective ideas of a broad spectrum of thinkers. It is not attached to any part of the UK armed forces and does not sit within any command structure. It is a club, set-up in March 2020 and as news of the club’s existence has spread, people from all ranks and all parts of the defence sector have signed up to rethink how the British Military can better use simulation.

The club’s members include soldiers and officers from all three arms, members of foreign armed forces, UK civil servants, UK politicians and members of the UK defence sector who create the simulation training that the military uses. These diverse backgrounds are helping the UK Fight Club to work on a variety of projects due to the huge wealth of knowledge that the different members bring to the club.

One of UK Fight Club’s main areas of enquiry is into the use of commercial off-the-shelf computer games for military training. These games provide commanders with the opportunity to plan and deliver convenient and inexpensive training. Some units are now regularly fighting opposed tactical actions which allows them to do enough repetitions and gain immediate realistic feedback so that their commanders can actually start to develop tactical intuition.

The main game being used is Battlefront’s Combat Mission: Shock Force 2 (which is now available through Slitherine’s Matrix Games and Steam platforms). This game allows one person to play against one opponent or the computer in a fairly realistic simulation. The game is scalable, but experience has told us that the battles become unwieldy once they are above company/squadron size. UK Fight Club’s interest in Combat Mission: Shock Force 2 is going to be exploited by the club in two ways.

First it will be used to look at our doctrine. For analysis of doctrine to be valid it needs to be conducted in a realistic environment with a large number of repetitions. UK Fight Club is currently fighting through a series of scenarios created by club members which present commanders with realistic and challenging representative scenarios. And then after the fight the members discuss the tactical actions on an online forum where they compare how the mission went, what they would do differently, and ask the other members for feedback. These discussions are not only improving the tactical ability of each member, but they also provide the club with a large amount of data on the effectiveness of UK doctrine which, after analysis, could be used by the Land Warfare Centre. The second way that use of Combat Mission: Shock Force 2 is improving the UK military is based on its simplicity of use. British Army units are arranging their own events and incorporating simulation into their training routines on a far more frequent basis than was the norm when operational tours of Iraq and Afghanistan were coming along thick and fast. These virtual training events see commanders pitting their tactical abilities against other members of their units and receiving instant realistic feedback on both planning and execution. The frequency with which some units are using the game means that they are achieving Kahneman’s stipulation of ‘a lot of practice’ and may actually be developing tactical intuition.

Combat Mission: Shock Force 2 has, thus far, fulfilled the club’s needs; the simulation is detailed, realistic, easy to learn to operate, and can be run on a personal laptop, although the fact that the game can only be used by one person against one other person is a limitation. UK Fight Club is therefore looking at and experimenting with other games that allow greater collaborative action.

The Defence Virtual Simulation (DVS), based on BISim’s VBS3, is of course being used and UK Fight Club is providing a forum for units to discuss how to better realise the potential of DVS. Some club members have used War Game: Red Dragon as this gives the user the option to connect a number of computers together and play the game as a team. Other games from the Slitherine stable, such as Command and Flashpoint Campaigns are also being looked at. In parallel Dstl are also working with Slitherine and are using their games to enhance their analytical capability and the two activities are linked through the presence of Dstl analysts in the UK Fight Club council.

Partners

Other parts of the UK Fight Club are partnering with the simulation and defence industry to improve the types of simulation training available to the army. Some members are working alongside a company who are developing virtual reality goggles while other members are improving the simulation software that units use during training so that it will become more realistic. UK Fight Club is in discussion with academia looking at ways to improve how psychology is simulated in computer games. Because it sits outside of any command structure UK Fight Club is extremely agile and provides it members with the freedom to explore new avenues and talk straight to professionals within the simulation industry about what the military needs.

The UK Fight Club is new and voluntary and already has over 350 members. The club provides a forum for professionals to discuss the use of simulation within the profession of arms and it has recently hosted a series of webinars about the use of simulation for military training and has hosted inter-unit simulation fights.

In summary UK Fight Club encourages adversarial training that enables learning through adversity. It allows people to fail as well as win, and to learn from both. Increased use of games and simulations will help continue the normalisation of wargaming. And it will empower soldiers and those on the staff to support better analysis. People looking to get in touch with the UK Fight Club can follow them on Twitter @UKFightClub1 or can email the group mail box: Army-FightClub-Mailbox@mod.gov.uk.

[1]

Emily Zulz, 16 Nov 2018, Daniel Kahneman: Your intuition is wrong unless these three criteria are met, accessed 10 Sep 20,

https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2018/11/16/daniel-kahneman-do-not-trust-your-intuition-even-f/