The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) has signed video games company Slitherine to develop wargames for educational purposes.
It said the Royal Navy is already trialling one of the games for developing combat strategy skills.
This is the first step under a two-year contract worth up to £1.5 million with the company, that has previously developed popular consumer wargames such as Command and Flashpoint Campaigns. These include large maps of simulated battlefield areas and modelling of combat operations.
Dstl said the games are more user-friendly than traditional analytic tools and can be used military decision support use.
It quoted its principle analyst, named only as Nick, saying: “We’ll use these tools with our own data and scenarios to provide better ways of visualising military problems.
“The benefits are accessibility and ease of use, and the amount of existing users there are. For example, we’ve been able to train users quicker by going out to Dstl staff who have played these games and training them to use them in a professional capacity.”
He added that there are some things the games cannot be used for and that the organisation would continue with its own simulation modelling.
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
