Anduril announces Roadrunner, jet-powered VTOL drone

> What often decides the outcomes of battles are the accuracy of ships’ air defenses and how many missiles they have onboard.

I always do wonder how realistic these war games actually are?

They (at least the war games that are public) always assume at least one or both sides are near 100% competent with their systems.

The Ukraine war has at least showed that that is not the case, the best example perhaps being the sinking of the Moskva, or the multitude of times Ukraine has managed to pierce Russian air defenses (who, mind you, has the most AD of anyone).

I'm pretty certain that a lot of these war game scenarios, of played out in real life, wouldn't play out the same way. There'd be miscommunication, technical issues with equipment, massive total surprise on both sides and so forth.

Many attempted attacks always succeed over many defensive moves in the end. So the OP strategy is to have abblative proxxys capable of rolling the sisyphos dice up the bell curve.

Counter to that are decoys, lots of them.

I don't think war games are meant to actually predict outcomes (even if media etc often wanna draw those conclusions). Rather it is to create scenarios to plan for and then it makes sense to ask "if the chinese act perfect when it comes to their systems and doctrine, how do we counter that?". If you can respond to someone acting perfectly you can probably also respond to someone with less skills.

Also to practice the response, you have people with roles that are extremely hard to practice because they involve mass-coordination that rarely happens in reality but you still want them to have some prior competence at. The goal is often to make their simulated experience ‘realistic’ even if the model is fraying at the edges. All models are wrong but some are useful and all that.

I bet the operators on the front lines are pretty much 100% competent with their systems. But the people at the top are not necessarily competent with their tactics. And how could they be? The weapons systems on both sides change every war. e.g. nobody predicted how the war in Ukraine would turn out.

> I always do wonder how realistic these war games actually are?

The YouTube ones? No they’re entertainment. They talk a lot about the limitations of the software they use. For example, they say simulated hypersonic missile are likely much less accurate than they are in the game. But I think there’s plenty to glean from them.

> I always do wonder how realistic these war games actually are?

> They (at least the war games that are public) always assume at least one or both sides are near 100% competent with their systems.

Uhhh... that's not a wargame.

A wargame is when you send actual commanders into the actual field, with their actual troops, and roleplay a scenario.

Yeah, there's walkie talkies that go back to HQ where the top-level generals are rolling dice saying "That unit, you got shot, pretend you're dead", and such, but war-games are a scenario to test your generals, admirals, and chain of command. And often times, require physical movement of the lowest level troops.

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But at a minimum, you're testing the commander's reaction times in these scenarios.

Those kind of war games are extremely expensive.

More often it’s run like Age of Empires, just with modern units and 3rd party judges.

I presume that when its a big "X loses in Wargame!!!" stories that go around the press... they're at least choosing the expensive wargames, as you'd put it.

Like, I know that F22 fighters actually flew and were being tested vs RADAR systems in a recent wargame. Obviously no one shot anyone, but its not exactly cheap to run this equipment.

Still, its good roleplay / practice for the pilot (and their commanders and crew), so its absolutely worthwhile. Even if the whole wargame ends up being an unrealistic piece of crap, its still worth excersizing / practicing / drilling the fundamentals

I think you'd enjoy the story of HSwMS Gotland.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-games-swedish-ste...

https://navalpost.com/hswms-gotland-vs-uss-ronald-reagan/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSwMS_Gotland_(Gtd)