Exercising war: How tactical and operational modelling shape and reify military practice

From the ‘lost art’ of drill to tactical training

If we look at Western European military history, we find that medieval sources speak of exercitatio (Lat. ‘exercise’) as an important prerequisite for fighting battles. At the time, the term largely implied boys of noble heritage learning to ride and use swords and shields (Delbrück, 1982: 638–640). The practices of medieval warfare – how to raid, organize troops, and attack towns and castles – were mainly learned in the field. However, during the latter part of the Middle Ages, there is evidence of collective military training. The first known military ordinance was laid down in 1473 by Charles the Bold in an attempt to establish forms and procedures for training (Nicholson, 2004: 114–119). Moreover, famous mercenary units during the 15th century, such as the Lansquenets, were trained using pikes in tactical formations (Delbrück, 1985: 8). Their battlefield reputation gradually led to more systematic training, as evident in a report by Paulus Jovius from the Great Italian Wars (1494–1559) on exercise ‘to follow the colors, to keep step by the drumbeat, to move forward in column and to turn, to form the snail, and finally to strike the enemy with great skill and maintain the formation exactly’ (Delbrück, 1985: 17).

In the early modern period, military training and exercises became gradually more complex. Delbrück calls this era ‘a renaissance of a lost art’, as new drill techniques drawing on classical Roman warfare were developed all over Europe (Delbrück, 1985: 157, 189; see also Martin, 2005: 238). In particular, Vegetius’s classic De re militari, which emphasizes physical exercises and weapons instructions for the individual soldier and collective training on how to march and maneuver (Vegetius, 1996: 9–27), was widely read. In the 17th century, military exercise became increasingly instrumental, and the idea of training the individual soldier, then the smaller units, and finally the larger units, gained in importance. Drill technique reached its apex during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the arduous training regimes of Frederick II that enabled the Prussian army to deploy and maneuver faster than opponents. Ironically, in the long run, the devotion to drill made the Prussian army inflexible, as they were bound to techniques that limited them to enacting the maneuvers from the training ground on the battlefield (Bousquet, 2009: 76; Colin, 1912: 109–110).

In France, during the first half of the 18th century, military training mainly related to the elementary manuals of arms and marching. Such manuals emphasized tactical formations that enabled men without prior knowledge to assume position, forming battlefield arrays. During this time, drills were simplified and movements became more uniform, indicating the end of regimental autonomy in the field of tactics and training. In particular, the Comte de Guibert (1743–1790) initiated the military transformation from infantry drills to more dynamic battlefield maneuvers. Much of his thinking outlined the need for fire training and field maneuvers in realistic conditions, and was adopted in the French Grande Armée prior to the Napoleonic Wars (Foucault, 1991: 158; Quimby, 1956: 80–81, 106–117). Realistic small-unit training was carried out at the time, but Guibert insisted upon the same type of conduct for large armies in order ‘to train the troops for the kind of war which one envisaged’ (Quimby, 1956: 163). This led to annual large-scale training camps centered on tactical practice. While such camps had been held since the beginning of the 18th century, until this point they had primarily been festive occasions of ritual and parade. In contrast, the emerging camps included officers and troops and were serious affairs focusing on battlefield practices (Quimby, 1956: 4, 163–167), thereby shaping future warfare.

When reviewing the drill books, ordinances, and regulations of Western militaries in the eras that follow, one notes that the material covered in the manuals of the 19th century largely consists of the practice and application of tactical principles. The manuals outline how maneuvers are composed and performed, how to stand and at what intervals, how to march, how to shoulder arms, load, and fire, etc., as well as the application of those principles by a larger unit moving in files or lines, wheeling forward and backward, charging, forming squares to resist cavalry, and so forth (Malton, 1860; Torrens, 1824). However, there is also a gradual development in the remits of these practices. During the 20th century, there seems to be a shift towards more comprehensive and uniform training manuals. While the focus on the individual soldier maneuvering and firing as part of a unit is still present, we find more detailed descriptions of the functions and tasks that soldiers are supposed to carry out. These manuals emphasize various aspects of health and personal hygiene, appearance and courtesy, camp expedients, and clothing, not to mention practices of night, trench, and mine warfare (McCoy, 1917; Moss, 1917). ⁴ Nevertheless, during the latter half of the 20th century, we also see a gradual standardization of field manuals, to provide techniques for individual and collective combat training (see US Department of Defense, 1975).

That military exercises find a reference point in combat-oriented training is hardly surprising and chimes well with historical and recent accounts of war. Consider one observer of the Spanish war in Holland in the 16th century, who notes that warfare consists of ‘fights, encounters, skirmishes, ambushes, an occasional battle, minor sieges, assaults, escalades, captures and surprises of towns’ (Jones, 2001: 206). This view echoes in the history and study of tactics, essentially understanding warfare as the sequencing of battles and engagements in time and space to maneuver and concentrate troops and firepower as quickly as possible on the battlefield (Clausewitz, 1976: 97; Tuck, 2014: 3–4). The idea that warfare is essentially characterized by combat or fighting can also be found in the study of war more broadly (see Barkawi and Brighton, 2011: 136; Bousquet, 2009: 240; Owens, 2016: 285). Yet, importantly, a number of studies have also noted that the West in general, and the USA in particular, often emphasize a combat-oriented view that separates warfare from its potential strategic or political dimensions (see Angstrom, 2018: 319).

The emergence of operational exercises

Alongside combat-oriented training, another important dimension of military exercises emerges at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. This staff-oriented dimension is focused on procuring information by preparing plans, translating them into orders, transmitting them to the troops, and supervising their execution (Hittle, 1961: 2–4). Military staffs were common even in ancient times, but were normally disbanded in times of peace. This changed after the Seven Years’ War, when the French army for the first time in modern history chose to make the staff a permanent part of its peacetime military organization. Others followed, in order to enable a system of operational learning, facilitating the ability to march, manage supply, quartering, engineering, and topography, amid the increased size of armies (Antal, 1995: 3; Rothenberg, 1980: 208–209). The development of the staff function gradually gave rise to command-post exercises, training the staff to manage simultaneous movement, deployment, and the coordination of divisions and corps in an ‘imagined theater of operations’ (Holder, 1994: 182; see also Tuck, 2014: 78). As noted by John Antal, ‘the creation of the Napoleonic staff system was the genesis of today’s modern military staffs. The Napoleonic staff system was based on function, with staff directorates in charge of operations, logistics and personnel’ (Antal, 1995: 3, emphasis added).

As the following sections drawing on interviews with respondents with long experience in modelling exercise environments and practices explore, function-oriented thinking has permeated contemporary military exercise imaginaries. This tendency can be understood as a consequence of the ways in which bureaucratic structures have influenced military organizations. Zygmunt Bauman (1989, 2006) has emphasized how military organizations are based on a strict division of labor, where practices of war are separated into functional tasks isolated from their political and ethical ends and consequences. One consequence of such separation is that wars become increasingly planned and waged in relation to organizational needs and administrative logics. For example, after World War I, many Western militaries gradually began to conceive of war as an ‘immense organizational problem’, largely focused on coordinating and managing not only weapon systems and resources but also the sum total of society (McAllister Linn, 2007: 140, 190–201).

While war-gaming and tactical discussion and maneuvers were a frequent part of military exercise in the 19th century, the introduction of computer simulations during the Cold War allowed the military to envision realistic large-scale operations. As nuclear war could not be field-tested, exercises became increasingly hypothetical (Davis, 2007: 69; Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2000: 164; Lewin, 2012: 41). Cold War exercises often incorporated political, management-related, and economic factors, and set the stage for role-playing dramas on a global stage. Key to these exercises were attempts to incorporate forecasting and preemption into training to create anticipatory experiences (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2000: 189–194). To some extent, both tactical and operational training and exercises are necessarily about anticipation, as to plan for war involves trying to foresee, act upon, or prevent what may happen. We find anticipatory practices in the classical literature when Vegetius (1996: 66) urges commanders to train soldiers ‘so that nothing unfamiliar might meet them in the stress of battle’, and when, during the Crusades, knights trained their horses to use less water in anticipation of desert warfare (Nicholson, 2004: 124). We also find them in the transition from classical to modern war in the late 18th century, when the training practices of the French army were designed to anticipate a future, large-scale war based on conscription and new logistical and organizational structures (Quimby, 1956: 163); or, prior to World War I, when the German General Staff crafted the Schlieffen Plan, used during the initial phase of the war, by repeated war-gaming sessions (Lewin, 2012: 52). Nonetheless, it was not until the start of the Cold War and the introduction of computers focused on modelling conflict that anticipatory thinking became integral to the exercise environment.

Perhaps no example better illustrates the employment of models to anticipate future warfare than the Vietnam War. James Gibson has outlined how the USA fought a war in Vietnam based on the assumption that technological superiority and organizational skills would bring victory. One consequence was the emergence of a ‘managerial war’, where killed soldiers were seen as ‘production costs’ and battlefield consequences as ‘debit and credit’ calculations. To Gibson (1986: 14–27, 121), the managerial dimension illustrates a closed, self-referential military universe in which war becomes ‘a matter of correctly managing a series of technical variables’ (Gibson, 1986: 105). After Vietnam, the US military experienced various attempts to introduce creative thinking into training and practice (Öberg, 2018). Yet, despite increased emphasis on creativity, the closed and self-referential aspect of warfare did not disappear. To a great extent, particularly from the 1991 Gulf War onward, the Western military imaginary has been striving to enact war in accordance with a bureaucratic and administrational logic (Baudrillard, 1995: 34–45, 61–77; Nordin and Öberg, 2015: 403–406). In exercise milieus, the emphasis on organizational components has led to administrative meeting processes becoming increasingly valued as part of how to conduct war (see Malm, 2019: 145). Furthermore, as Paul Virilio has noted, the production of the means for war, such as logistical structures and weapons production, has created a potential for war that is as much enacted in its preparation as it is in real battles. Arguably, this creates a situation where training is not only about the repetition of real or virtual battle practices, but also an important aspect of a perpetual preparation for war (Virilio, 2008: 103–104, 166). Training commanders to plan, coordinate, and synchronize military operations therefore also models warfare as a set of practices that loops indefinitely.

The integration of tactical and operational models into war through training is evident in the military adage ‘train as you fight, fight as you train’. As an example, consider the famous US Air Force ‘Flag’ exercise series created in 1975, in which the air forces of the USA and other NATO member-states are brought together for training exercises that usually involve over 500 aircraft and 20,000 air force staff annually. The Flag series created a training model for air-combat missions. As Brian Laslie (2015: 73, 184) notes, ‘the framework of Red Flag could be taken and integrated into any operational plan’, and ‘the training . . . changed the way the [US] air force waged war’ (for a more in-depth discussion on training and the transformation of US warfare post-Vietnam, see McAllister Linn, 2007: 200–201). This points to how military exercises do not merely represent an approach to future conflict but strive to directly integrate themselves as a model for the execution of warfare. The research on exercise environments speaks of a military belief that events and situations during war can be modelled systemically in ways that make it possible to apprehend patterns of behavior and evaluate conditions ahead of time (Bishop, 2009: 49; Bousquet, 2015: 14). One important aspect of such modelling is the way it gives rise to the idea of a totality, where the model is commonly used to identify key features of particular systems (Bousquet, 2009: 138; Weisberg, 2013: 4–5). In literature on military exercises, the modelling of exercise environments and practices has been described as constituting a ‘microcosm’ (Ghamari-Tabrizi, 2000: 176) with a ‘hermetically closed’ ambience (Dawson, 2007: 170). As we will see in the analysis that follows, both the tactical and the operational dimension can be understood in such a manner.

To summarize, the history of warfare indicates that military training and exercises have developed from individual- and experience-oriented techniques to tactical and operational practices. After the Cold War, exercises constitute an anticipatory space in which the tactical and operational dimensions meet, often described as a whole, a closed system, or a microcosm, that helps to shape future practices of war. While there are accounts that indicate that simulated training generates and overshadows practices of war (Baudrillard, 1993: 60–67, 1995: 29–30; Der Derian, 2015: 22–23), these accounts do not provide answers to questions about what kind of logics the tactical and operational dimensions constitute or what exact consequences they may have. In moving from what has been a historical and theoretical review of military training and exercises, then, the remaining part of this article will address such questions empirically through an interview study with professionals tasked with modelling training and exercise environments and practices.

Warfare as tactical practices

The present section and the one that follows it outline how professionals conceive of the modelling of training and exercise environments and practices by drawing extensively on interview material. To a large extent, military tactics represent the history of the gradual development, coordination, and encounters of weapon systems, enacted through the functions and use of particular arms (such as light and heavy infantry and cavalry). The use of weapon systems involves considering the advantages of combining them, along with their respective strengths and weaknesses (Jones, 2001: 39–45). Consequently, it is no surprise that tactical military exercises are modelled explicitly after weapon systems, their maneuvers, and the delivery of fire. Tactical exercises often involve tabletop gaming or simulators, as well as shooting at designated firing ranges with real weapon platforms while moving actual units in the terrain. One interviewee explains the purpose as improving ‘the ability to reach a goal with a specific military activity’ (Interview 11). This ability is called ‘military function’.

As outlined in the previous section, military organizations are based on a division of labor according to which practices of war are separated into such functions, which leads to the creation of various tasks and rationales. For example, the function ‘fighter pilot’ is about controlling and guiding an airplane, practicing air-to-air operations to close in on and kill an enemy, suppressing enemy air defenses, or the choreography of deep strikes (Laslie, 2015: 42–43). If the function were a submarine, it would exercise how to access targets, and if it were a minelayer, the crew would practice how to deploy mines or how to operate the vessel safely. However, as another respondent emphasized by mentioning ‘the art of mooring’ of a ship, practices may also imply the way particular functions, such as operating a vessel, are broken down into smaller tasks (Interview 13). One war-game designer with long experience from both military training and education emphasized that functions are an important aspect of tactical war games, as they provide a practice-oriented role for the training audience (Interview 1). Consequently, military exercises do not create a practice of war, but many practices, which are conditioned by military functions.

Tactical exercises position military functions in relation to space, such as jungles, deserts, forests, hills, or arctic milieus. Urban Resolve, a large recurring US urban-warfare exercise, focuses on simulating a ‘real-world geography, structures and culturally relevant population behaviors’ (Bryan Axtell, quoted in Graham, 2010: 202). To support such exercises, mock cities are constructed as models of real urban milieus with the help of ‘military corporations, theme-park designers, video game companies, Hollywood set designers and special effects experts’ (Graham, 2010: 183). As one respondent stated, an important aspect of the tactical dimension is exercising a unit’s assigned military function by providing soldiers with practical tools and tasks to help them understand ‘what they are’ and ‘what they need to do’ to ‘keep the [military] machine going’ (Interview 5). Another respondent with a background in war-game design pointed to how tactical war games aim to model an environment in which military functions work as parameters, and practices translate into hands-on tactical decisions and maneuvers that unfold from these in real time, or near-real time. The respondent explains:

[T]here is a tactical environment that we recreate through war games, and the functions are the building blocks. [For example,] artillery is a crucial aspect of land warfare, and if you subtract it the whole environment changes; if you exercise in an environment without artillery, [the soldiers] will get a view of land warfare that lacks relevance, and they will behave in a way that won’t work in reality. (Interview 12)

The modelling therefore directly constitutes the way in which practices of warfare are conceived in the tactical dimension:

As a first step, we show the building blocks of a tactical environment . . . for example, to introduce helicopters, how they work, and the units that challenge them. We show the whole picture and let [the training audience] play, do things, solve simple tasks . . . In the next step we connect it to a context and let them do a mini operation . . . we link planning devices to conduct in a [battlefield] environment, to understand why one plans . . . Then we add command . . . Finally, in the last phase we make it even more realistic and connect them to a staff structure. (Interview 12)

Consequently, tactical exercise environments are modelled to make it possible to practice and coordinate platforms and functions. Ghamari-Tabrizi (2000: 183) has noted that, in training settings, the idea of ‘combat forces as troops’ disappeared during the Cold War, in favor of ideas of ‘fighting units as weapon systems’. Indeed, most practitioners in the tactical dimension emphasize that warfare, in essence, means enacting practices through a particular weapon platform. The respondents also saw the importance of realistic weapon platforms for tactical exercises. For one respondent, an exercise was mainly about handling the weapon platforms (Interview 9). Another respondent reiterated this view by arguing that ‘[W]eapon platforms determine what one can do’ (Interview 8). Yet another respondent concurred, stating that ‘it makes sense to exercise with the type of weapon platforms one has. To know the limitations and to use them in the best way’ (Interview 10). Finally, one respondent (with specialist knowledge of helicopters) argued that an important objective of exercises is to model according to the exact capacities of platforms: ‘so, when they say “send the helicopters”, if you don’t know how fast they are, it is not realistic . . .’ (Interview 6). In this way, the military exercise anticipates an integrated whole of multiple practices based on weapon platform–oriented functions. Consequently, seen from within the tactical dimension, war becomes modelled on (but not limited to) engineers, artillery, anti-aircraft, armor, naval task elements, airborne troops, medics, special forces, mechanized infantry, helicopters, reconnaissance, and their functional components. In this way, practices work as tasks and ends in themselves, thereby effectively looping the training audience with function-oriented thinking.

Warfare as tactical environment

We have seen how warfare consists of particular functions that impact the battlespace. This subsection will examine how practitioners understand the characteristics of the tactical battlefield to analyze what kind of warfare it shapes and reifies. It is important to note that viewpoints on what the tactical battlefield implies differ depending on a soldier or unit’s function. For example, in the maritime environment, each soldier

has a task depending on one’s function as part of the whole. If your task is to operate a sonar and observe the seabed, then that is your environment, your responsibility, and you are looking for perhaps mines, mini-submarines, or something else. It doesn’t matter if you find something or not. You are in the midst of your environment . . . (Interview 11)

This indicates that a maritime battlespace environment consists of function-oriented glimpses. These fragmented viewpoints are merged into what is called a recognized maritime picture that detects, identifies, and tracks units via sensors to create an integrated image that is assembled at a higher tactical level (so-called situational awareness). Although situational awareness in the maritime environment differs from the air or land environment – since a submarine is not the same type of sensor as a reconnaissance plane or a soldier wearing night-vision gear – the logic is the same in each case; namely, the battlespace is taken to consist of a mosaic assembled through what particular military functions see and do. As one interviewee pointed out regarding the notion of seeing, ‘there is no unitary view of reality . . . . [I]f you speak to an anti-aircraft officer and a pilot they will have very different views of what war is’, and many soldiers tend to overvalue or promote their own function in relation to the whole (Interview 12). Function-oriented training is often enabled by virtual facilities – for example, scenarios on how to conduct convoys and ambushes and how to learn standard operating procedures (Mead, 2013: 108–110). Today, for example, an air force pilot is increasingly taught how to fight in the air in a virtual world from which future events may be derived (Budd and Adey, 2009: 1366–1370).

The functional viewpoint creates a microcosm of combat practices that intersect or overlap, as in the way amphibious forces, which often focus on mobile combat with naval targets by the use of land components and forward air controllers, link together a number of functions when waging war. One respondent explained tactical practices as the ability to handle weapon platforms in short time-frames and give simple, realistic orders that work in reality (Interview 10). However, another interviewee argued that training can create self-referential practices revolving around functions, as, for example, when both sides reduce their role to chasing weapon platforms:

In an earlier game, we used artillery radars . . . . Both sides realized that if we take out the opponent’s radar, they can’t shoot as much . . . As soon as one radar lit up, the opponent tried to neutralize it . . . When one side eventually lost their radar, they were close to giving up the whole battle. (Interview 1)

The functional view of the battlefield also affects how interviewees demarcate tactical space. That is, the battlefield used in practice is conceptually cleared of everything but military functions. The environment is modelled to enable an encounter between two armies (‘blue’ and ‘red’) in ways that are not deemed ‘too complex’ and that allow for using available weapon platforms. As one respondent highlighted, the blueprint is the classical demarcated battlefield devoid of civilians. Games tend to involve a very short scenario description centered on a military task. Discussions that characterize the tactical dimension revolve around questions like ‘What casualties are we allowed to take?’, ‘How many units do we have left?’, or ‘Have we fulfilled our tasks?’, while questions that involve ethical or political aspects of casualties, or questions regarding the nature of the tasks, are left out. In war-game design, phenomena that go beyond military functions, such as civilians, are commonly included in the tactical dimension as markers that occupy roads or stand in the way of combat, or simply disappear altogether (Interviews 1, 10). One respondent emphasized that, as battlefields always have civilian components, all exercises necessarily factor them in (Interview 9). Nevertheless, from listening to a number of the respondents, it becomes clear that most practitioners prefer to think of civilians and other factors as nonexistent, as obstacles, or simply as part of a functional worldview. Consequently, the tactical dimension constitutes a martial gaze. The social world, seen from the perspective of this gaze, endures and becomes through the remits of rifle scopes, range finders, or bomb sights. Moreover, it is refracted through the speed of weapon systems, screened out through a plethora of sensors, and assembled through grid reference systems or other militarized striation (Bousquet, 2018: 17–20).

The tactical dimension of warfare is grounded in double-sided ‘blue-on-red’ warfare, which implies that both sides are enacted. As one respondent notes, all scenarios for the tactical dimension are necessarily dynamic (Interview 4). The battlespace is intense, short-term, and unfolds in a closed circuit of real-time or near-real-time duration. The battlespace relates to questions of instantaneous speed: who shoots first, who kills the quickest, or who moves most decisively, through the application of particular military functions (Interview 1). The most scaled-up tactical exercises may involve a battlefield environment wholly modelled to anticipate future real-life situations. One respondent explained:

For units that are ready to deploy, the preference . . . would be to send them through a series of work-up exercises where they exercise different parts. Some of it is just about the tactical troops moving at the same time in the same location and making sure that they know how to expect behaviors. Such as like a well-practiced [American] football team [that has] worked together so many times that they can anticipate how another person responds given the circumstances . . . . For an organization that is preparing, in a year or two, to move into . . . a real-world situation, it is critical that they start figuring out what to do, and to be able to anticipate how other people think and react. (Interview 6)

The gradual scaling up and assembling of functional viewpoints speaks to how the tactical dimension works both to describe and to constitute the military life-world (see Ansorge, 2010: 362).

To summarize, the tactical practices of military exercises center on what is known as military function, often enacted in relation to a particular weapon platform, either in a more general sense (e.g. how to operate a fighter jet) or broken down into smaller components or micro practices (such as loading fuel into a fighter jet). According to the respondents, the purpose of exercising is to provide practical tools and introduce a cognitive mindset for the training audience to model ‘what they are’ in war. This encourages the training audience to enact agency by embodying a platform. Warfare in the tactical dimension is shaped by an integrated system assembled from fragmented functional viewpoints, and for the training audience this particular mosaic becomes characterized by a predetermined order of battle and movements and the delivery of fire between military platforms. The tactical dimension anticipates a martial becoming, where war occurs as a short-term clash at a demarcated battlefield between weapon systems in real time. However, it does not consider to what extent acting on the world through the scope of military functions also constitutes this becoming.

Warfare as an operational process

The previous section outlined how professionals conceive of the modelling of a tactical dimension through training and exercise environments and practices. This section proceeds by focusing on the operational dimension, in particular the modelling that takes place during command-post exercises. Large-scale command-post exercises may occur simultaneously in a number of countries, with each host country often containing exercise locations with thousands of participants. While the settings may differ, NATO exercise environments tend to resemble office spaces, with rooms holding 10–15 officers simulating various units. The exercises are conducted on virtual networks, and the rooms typically have laptops aligned in rows, dominated by large screens with imagery from the tactical dimension and whiteboards filled with planning directives, meeting schedules, and flowcharts. Overall, the interviewees agree that command-post exercises model an environment in which warfare is conceived as the operationalization of an organizational process. In essence, the most important practice in the operational dimension is submitting to a planning methodology. Many respondents emphasize that the operational dimension requires ‘process-oriented thinking’ to learn to operate as a staff (such as writing orders or planning actions). The focus is on processes rather than the quality of products. Exercises unfold in accordance with an operational rhythm within which one goes to meetings and delivers products. For example, it is considered better to hand over a target list, even if the analysis behind it is flawed, than not to hand it in at all (Interviews 3, 4 and 9).

The interviewees state that operational exercises focus on ‘how, not on what’, and center on ‘getting the staff going’ and ‘making clear when to deliver’ so as to create a ‘self-generating’ process. The purpose is to build a ‘battle wheel’ (i.e. a daily staff routine) (Interviews 1, 7 and 11). One respondent explains: ‘it is not about coming up with good solutions [to military problems]. It is . . . about getting a staff to function. Meetings are held and the outcomes are reported’ (Interview 1). Depending on which aspect of the staff one is assigned to, this includes collecting intelligence for analysis, being in charge of planning the military operation, producing material for decisionmaking, and controlling how future events and situations will unfold. The purpose of the exercises is to make soldiers subject to particular aspects of the battle wheel, and events deemed to fall outside of the planning routines are neglected, as the process is often considered more important than reality (Interviews 8, 11). The respondents emphasize that operational exercises integrate the training audience into ‘a whole’ (Interviews 4, 11). One respondent explains:

The more specialized the staff components are, the more they tend to get caught in their own world and lose sight of what’s outside, of the whole: what happens at the side, on the ground. . . [T]o disseminate information is amongst the most difficult thing there is’. (Interview 10)

Consequently, much as in the tactical dimension, where the totality of this ‘whole’ is conceived in relation to functional weapon platforms that are both ends and means of the battle, the microcosm of the operational dimension is centered on the organizational components of the battle wheel.

Warfare as operational environment

This subsection will outline how the operational environment is modelled as a comprehensive, effects-oriented, and scripted totality. As one respondent put it, the main difference between the tactical and the operational environment is often mistakenly considered to be one of scale, which induces some to think of the operational environment as a larger version of the tactical battlefield (Interview 12). However, its focus is different, as it consists of a ‘composite of the conditions, circumstances, and influences that affect the employment of capabilities’ to enable warfare (US Department of Defense, 2011: xx). In exercises, the ‘composite of conditions’ is generally modelled as temporal processes. The operational environment is enacted in past time (through reports and feedback on what has taken place) and future time (through planning and execution). Future time is separated into ‘current’ (the coming 36 hours), ‘mid-term’ (usually 3–10 days), and ‘long-term’ (more than 10 days), and different parts of the staff deal with each (Interview 4). As one respondent argues, the goal is to model a rhythm for training audiences that draws on the tactical decisions in real time to manage the three future-oriented temporal aspects of the operational environment (Interview 12).

Some of the respondents touched on how operational exercises attempt to anticipate the future that unfolds via military methodology (Interviews 3, 6). As I have noted elsewhere, warfare on the operational level often strives to preemptively intercept events and acts that interfere with military planning (Öberg, 2016: 1134). Moreover, it has been noted that the US military aims to anticipate future warfare through its long-term planning procedures (Angstrom, 2018). However, one respondent stressed that there are substantial differences between the short-, mid-, and long-term planning skills displayed during military exercises. The respondent argued that, to the training audience, current operations are like an attention magnet, as one has one’s finger on the trigger and gets to be a part of the shooting, or of saving lives. Long-term, strategic planning, on the other hand, is allegedly considered difficult by the training audience and is usually poorly modelled – so poorly that the respondent would prefer it to be omitted altogether (Interview 13). This indicates that, as military exercises work to develop techniques to anticipate the future, they arguably do so with a focus on the present/near future.

We saw in the previous section how agency in the tactical dimension is enacted and practiced through weapon platforms. Most interviewees agreed that during operational exercises the choice of weapon platforms matters less. In the operational dimension, a more comprehensive model enters, often described in terms of ‘effects’. According to an effects-oriented perspective, what matters is not so much the number of bombs delivered or targets destroyed but the ‘desired outcomes’ of situations, acts, and events (Hunerwadel, 2006: 57; Malm, 2019: 190–193). The point of the operational dimension is to think of the short-term effects achieved in a theater of operations. As one respondent speaking about strategic communication put it when asked whether it matters which weapons platforms one has: ‘No, they are only the means to create effects . . . . How these effects are delivered is unimportant for what we are doing’ (Interview 3). One interviewee stated that:

To me you can work with anything . . . [because you are interested in the processes]. We actually had the idea that we could play on public servers and public platforms using zombie armies or stuff like that. But it is too hard to sell to higher echelons. (Interview 5)

The specialized domains are modelled by using teams with psychologists, computer linguists, and media specialists. The battle wheel also consists of legal, political, and gender advisors, whose roles are often reduced to discussing tasks at hand. In general, the respondents maintained that, ideally, the advisory functions are ‘proactive’ and willing to be able to work as support for warfare rather than ‘naysayers’ (Interviews 3, 4, 9). In contrast, one respondent with experience of acting as an advisor argued that military exercises are often caught in a ‘hierarchical mindset’ with ‘very well-defined processes’ and that it is difficult to push them out of a military planning mentality (Interview 2). Ashley Dawson (2007: 169–171) has described the military exercise environment as being ‘hermetic’, with participants being unwilling or unable to confront the consequences of military presence. As noted earlier, in exercise environments there is a constant risk of getting caught in one’s own world and losing sight of what’s outside. One example of such a closed environment is the modelling of advisory roles as ‘proactive’ and ‘helpful’, while idealizing a willingness for legal and political advisors to facilitate function- and process-oriented warfare. ⁵ The fact that command-post exercises are explicitly focused on integrating and embodying legal or political reference points further emphasizes how the microcosm of training integrates other social dimensions.

As the previous section illustrated, the tactical exercise dimension is modelled to enable blue-on-red encounters in real time. In contrast, the operational dimension is characterized by scripted scenarios. This means that the training audience will play the blue (NATO) side, while the other sides, and the overall progress, are scripted. One respondent argued: ‘we are thousands of people . . . so in this highest level of exercises you need the script. You need to keep the tracks moving’ (Interview 5). A limited dynamism is provided by so-called injects – scripted events that are used by exercise controllers to push along a scenario narrative or sow confusion among the training audience (see Anderson and Adey, 2011: 1104). When injects occur, they are to be absorbed into the process of warfare and acted on, but acting on them will not change the overall scenario. The attempt to predetermine practices is also part of crisis management exercises, and summarized well by Claudia Aradau when she states that ‘exercises . . . rehearse in a ritual play that which has already been set out as inevitable’, thereby creating a milieu in which the training audience relies on mimetism to follow procedures and perform ‘the right’ gestures (Aradau, 2010: 4, 5; see also Lawson, 2011: 41–44).

The scripting illustrates how operational warfare, in repeating military processes, creates inward-looking and self-referential practices. Some respondents emphasized that injects model an environment in which it is very difficult to make an impact: ‘it is all about connected series of events, where discrete acts are not important’ (Interviews 1, 11). During the interviews, many of the respondents shared stories of how acts that upset the script were erased by exercise control. Some respondents also voiced a strong dislike of the scripted scenarios. One interviewee noted that, in his experience, the operational dimension used to have double-sided, blue-on-red scenarios, where the respective staffs fought each other, but that this has gradually disappeared, as scripted scenarios have become the norm, indicating an operational environment that is ‘highly predictable’, ‘run by gaming’, and full of ‘box-ticking’ responses (Interview 10).

The differences between the two environments and the different practices that they model and idealize suggests a tension between tactical and operational training that reflects differences between combat-oriented and staff-oriented views of warfare. In part, this tension stems from attempts to place the battlefield into the larger context of a campaign or theater of operations (House, 2001: 250). However, among some of the practitioners, the emphasis on the operational dimension as part of military exercises speaks to how operational warfare impinges on and swallows the tactical dimension. One respondent discussed how operational exercises, with their focus on administrative processes, are considered uninteresting, and how many soldiers instead prefer practicing on their respective platforms (Interview 1). Another respondent lamented that the modelling of warfare in exercises have been negatively impacted by injects, scripting, and self-referential practices (Interview 10).

To summarize, operational practices of warfare are staff oriented and structured around submitting to the ‘battle wheel’: the operationalization of organizational routines, consisting of flowcharts and meeting schedules. As such, the operational dimension works as a self-generative process where one enacts agency by causing effects. The environment is an imagined theater of operations mainly consisting of anticipatory temporal rhythms and horizons, the most important of which is the current time horizon that programs short-term planning. In particular, the modelling centers on the present moment as a horizon for thinking and acting, thereby creating a temporal horizon where that which occurs now or in the near future risks taking precedence over all else.