Cold War Nuclear Wargaming 1947-1991

 

During the Cold War, more accurately known as the First Cold War from 1945 to 1991, wargames were a staple in the military, political, and industrial sectors. This book delves into a seldom-explored area of literature: nuclear wargaming. It features a variety of professional wargames from that period, including Tom Schelling's classic crisis game set in Cold War Berlin, which often incorporated nuclear war scenarios, Dr. Paddy Griffith's strategic nuclear wargame, and decision-making games for political leaders facing the ultimate choice of whether to resort to nuclear options in response to a Warsaw Pact invasion of Europe. Additionally, it includes extracts from tactical nuclear wargaming rules used by the British and American military in their land wargames, as well as a civil defence exercise addressing the challenges of local government managing the transition to war and the immediate post-strike period.

This book is a unique contribution to the professional wargaming literature and is published by the History of Wargaming Project

Matrix Games Come of Age

 

“Does anybody know when the Geiger counter were last serviced?”

The war in the Ukraine has changed the discussion of modern warfare to include the use of nuclear weapons. An option for Russia is to use nukes to try to introduce shock and awe into the campaign, to turn Ukraine into a failed state and/ or to shock NATO into not supplying more munitions. This does not suggest the idea is sensible, but it is possible. Russia has them and Putin might order their use.

When Putin said he was putting the Russian nuclear forces on “special alert” a lot of things starting happening in the UK, including wargames. After the initial shock, bewilderment and checks whether Putin’s words were just fake news, local authorities started to leap into action (relatively speaking as local authorities are somewhat ponderous concerns). They started asking questions and finding old dusty plans on the shelves at the back of the archives. “How long does fallout last for?” “Where can we house a hundred thousand refugees?”. Local authorities are starting to consider questions from the last Cold War in some hasty exercises.

Our armed forces have also reacted; submarines went to sea. Establishment guards had their pistols put back in the armoury’s and replaced with assault rifles (plus 80 rounds). They even went to the firing ranges to zero their weapons and put some rounds down. Pistols look good, are nice and light, but do not cut it if you think enemy special forces might actually assault your position.

On the wargaming front, a lot has been happening as well. The method of Matrix Games has been challenged on the grounds of the lack of scientific rigour (not enough rules, maps, hexes, combat results tables etc…), but also by those who prefer unstructured discussions as the path to understanding (all wargames are rubbish brigade). The academic evidence is that the various variants of matrix games help impose a structure on narrative gaming, and are therefore better than unstructured narrative games.

Despite the detractors, some hastily developed matrix games are being used. They are fast to develop and take less than 2 hours to play. Useful to crystallise the stakeholders aims and objectives. Scenarios rotate around how NATO should react to: nukes being used in Ukraine, nukes being used adjacent to the Polish border with fallout over NATO member’s territory, a nuke being dropped in the North Sea, Wolverhampton being destroyed etc…

Reality will always different from any wargame, so how are they useful?

1.       Playing them iteratively develops a playbook of options that can be used in such crises.

2.       It builds the relevant language of conflict amongst the advisors.

3.       It develops the crises team in time efficient manner.

4.       It practises the decision maker’s advisors with unfamiliar scenarios.

5.       It can also be used to signal Russia about bad things that would be triggered by their actions.

In short, playing some Matrix Games increases the change of the right people making the best choices in incredibly difficult situations. As always, though, so much depends on the quality of players and facilitators. Who would have thought that a method of gaming in the hobby space some 34 years ago would make the transition to the professional space, and is a (small) part of our conflict response? Matrix Games have come of age.

Where have all the nuclear wargames gone?

The world keeps changing and the war planners of the UK are now facing an old threat. On the extremes of the normal distribution of potential futures is a limited nuclear strike on major British cities. London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester. 

Of course, it would take an unexpected confrontation rapidly escalating into war in which the other side, faced with loosing, using a limited nuclear strike. Inevitably old nuclear weapons, poorly maintained launched by a reluctant armed forces (who would not their home country to be nuked until the rubble of their cities glowed) would not be a comprehensive attack, but some warheads would explode and some cites would be partially devastated. There is even the possibility that an American ally, such as the UK, would be the target of the strike. This would make the point to NATO while hoping the USA will not then use nuclear retaliation just because an ally was hit. Would they risk Washington because Milton Keynes had been blown up?

While the UK obviously has the strategic warfighting plans from the Cold War, what it does not have is a complete collection of the wargames run at regional and sub regional level. During the Cold War, game after game was run about managing the situation up to, including the attack and post-strike recovery. The last alert was in 1991 during the 1^st Gulf War. A cadre moved into the bunkers, small arms were issued, landmines and barbwire were moved to the key sites. The bunkers would have been operational within 1 hour and fully manned in 4, perhaps less. 

However, the Cold War was over and Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister decided that the UK was no longer under threat of attack and dismantled the bunker system. The problem is the local warplans that had been developed over the decades were largely typed, but a few were produced using the early word processors (Word Star etc…) and they were largely lost. Some no doubt reside in the secret government archives which exist around the UK (but not in Scotland), but with few archivists and practically no librarians, the archives are stuff full of the good, the bad and the ugly in impenetrable mountains. 

I remember seeing a few selling on ebay and I came across a few in long ignored filing cabinets in bunkers, but I have no copies. 

So if anyone has hidden away regional and sub regional plans from these wargames (or exercises) about how society would be managed when facing the worst, do let me know. At the moment I have none and I would like to produce a book documenting these lost wargames from the Cold War.