Editing Military exercise (section)

==History==
[[File:Kaiserparade 1909 Karlsruhe.jpg|thumb|German pre-[[World War I]] military exercise ''Herbstmanöver'' in southern [[Germany]], autumn 1909 ([[Wilhelm II, German Emperor|Emperor Wilhelm II]] second on the left)]]
The use of military exercises and war games can be found to date back to as early as the early 19th century, wherein it was the officers of the [[Prussian Army]] who created the contemporary, tactical form of wargames that have since been more widely used and developed by other military conglomerations throughout the world. Non-tactical forms of wargames have existed for much longer, however, in the forms of tabletop games such as [[chess]] and [[Go (game)|Go]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Glick |first1=Stephen P. |last2=Charters |first2=L. Ian |date=1983 |title=War, Games, and Military History |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/260304 |journal=Journal of Contemporary History |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=567–582 |jstor=260304 |issn=0022-0094}}</ref>

The modern use of military exercises grew out of the military need to study warfare and to [[Historical reenactment|reenact]] old battles for learning purposes. During the age of ''[[Kabinettskriege]]'' (Cabinet wars), [[Frederick II of Prussia|Frederick the Great]], [[Kingdom of Prussia|King of Prussia]] from 1740 to 1786, "put together his armies as a well-oiled clockwork mechanism whose components were [[robot]]-like warriors. No individual initiative was allowed to Frederick's soldiers; their only role was to cooperate in the creation of walls of projectiles through synchronized firepower."<ref>[[Manuel de Landa]], ''[[War in the Age of Intelligent Machines]]'', p. 127, Swerve Editions, New York, 1991</ref> This was in the pursuit of a more effective army, and such practices made it easier to look at war from a top-down perspective. Disciplined troops should respond predictably, allowing study to be confined to maneuvers and [[Command and Control (Military)|command]].

[[Prussia]]'s victory over the [[Second French Empire]] in the [[Franco-Prussian War]] (1870–71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the [[wargame]] ''[[Kriegsspiel]]'', which was invented around 1811 and gained popularity with many officers in the Prussian army. These first wargames were played with [[dice]] which represented "friction", or the intrusion of less than ideal circumstances during a real war (including [[morale]], [[meteorology]], the [[fog of war]], etc.).[[File:MCWC-wargame-Lacey-13-cropped.png|thumb|A wargame at the U.S. [[Marine Corps War College]], 2019]]

21st century militaries still use wargames to simulate future wars and [[modelization|model]] their reaction. According to [[Manuel de Landa]], after [[World War II]] the [[Command, Control and Communications]] (C<sup>3</sup>) was transferred from the military staff to the [[RAND Corporation]], the first [[think tank]]. Around the mid to late 20th century, computer simulated war games were created to replace traditional war gaming methods with the goal of optimizing and speeding up the process and making it possible to analyze more complex scenarios with greater ease. In 1958, the Naval War college installed a computer war game system where their traditional war gaming activities were held. The system was called the Navy Electronic Warfare System, and cost over $10 million to install.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Derian |first=James Der |date=1990 |title=The Simulation Syndrome: From War Games to Game Wars |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/827835 |journal=Social Text |issue=24 |pages=187–192 |doi=10.2307/827835 |jstor=827835 |issn=0164-2472|url-access=subscription }}</ref> The change from traditional war gaming methods to electronic computer simulated ones meant that the value and accuracy of a war game simulation was less dependent on skill and individual experiences, and more dependent on quantitative data and complicated analysis methods.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ghamari-Tabrizi |first=Sharon |date=2000 |title=Simulating the Unthinkable: Gaming Future War in the 1950s and 1960s |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/285834 |journal=Social Studies of Science |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=163–223 |doi=10.1177/030631200030002001 |jstor=285834 |s2cid=143079407 |issn=0306-3127|url-access=subscription }}</ref>[[File:M113 during Reforger '83 in Stockhausen (Herbstein) Germany.JPEG|thumb|[[M113 armored personnel carrier|M113 armoured personnel carriers]] passing civilian traffic in [[Herbstein]], [[West Germany]] during [[Exercise Reforger|Exercise Reforger 83]]|alt=]]

[[John von Neumann|Von Neumann]] was employed by the RAND Corporation, and his [[game theory]] was used in wargames to model [[nuclear dissuasion]] during the [[Cold War]]. Thus, the U.S. [[nuclear strategy]] was defined using wargames, "[[Uncle Sam|SAM]]" representing the U.S. and "[[Ivan the Terrible|IVAN]]" representing the Soviet Union.

Early game theory included only [[Zero-sum (game theory)|zero-sum games]], which means that when one player won, the other automatically lost. The [[prisoner's dilemma]], which models the situation of two prisoners in which each one is given the choice to betray or not the other, gave three alternatives to the game:
*Neither prisoners betrays the other, and both are given short-term sentences
*One prisoner betrays the other, and is freed, while the other gets a long sentence
*Both prisoners betray each other, and both are given mid-sized sentences

This model gave the basis for the [[massive retaliation]] nuclear doctrine. The [[zero-sum fallacy]] and [[Cooperative game theory|cooperative games]] would be theorized only later, while the evolution of [[nuclear technology]] and [[missiles]] made the massive retaliation nuclear strategy obsolete.<ref>Concerning the use of military wargames, see [[Manuel de Landa]], ''War in the Age of Intelligent Machines''</ref>