Warcon: a wargame construction toolset for military simulations

The use of wargames in the Air Force curriculum to date has been hindered by the significant amount of time and effort required to develop new wargames, as well as by drastically varying interfaces that impose a steep learning curve on the student. We describe an ongoing effort to develop an advanced wargame construction toolset, called Warcon, that will empower Air Force instructors to create small-scale instructional wargames that embody modern warfare principles. The aim of this toolset is to make the authoring process accessible to a wide range of instructors, via an intuitive visual interface and advanced authoring assistance that eliminate the need for programming. The toolset will feature a customizable adjudication engine with advanced features for modeling effects-based operations, psyops, Military Operations Other Than War, and other aspects of modern warfare. The toolset will present students with a standardized interface, allowing them to build experience with one wargame that will carry to the next, thereby enabling them to focus on the content. Using the proposed toolset, Air Force instructors will be able to design and deploy new wargames into their teaching curriculum more rapidly.