The breath of the field of wargaming may be most easily grasped by examining the range of difference between wargames in selected attributes.
Consequences
The consequences of wargames vary from influencing decisions effecting millions of lives and billions of dollars to providing an enjoyable and educational evening of entertainment.
Security Classification
Some wargames are not only very highly classified but very close hold as well. In some cases the fact that the US is conducting a wargame on a particular contingency is considered extremely sensitive. At the other extreme, one of the attractions for the military use of commercially produced wargames is that as they were typically produced by civilians without clearances, from unclassified sources they can be freely shared with allies and coalition partners.
Level of Warfare
Some wargames are conducted to explore elements of national strategy, others to refine theater campaign plans, while still others explore tactical alternatives.
Cost
Wargames like Red Flag and Schriever (Air Force Space Command’s premier space and cyber wargame) involve hundred of individuals and require hundreds of thousands in dollars in incremental costs. Other wargames involve members of a single platoon and incur zero incremental costs. The cost of commercial wargames vary from over $100 for some new titles to less then $10 for may used games.
Time
Both the time to conduct a wargame and the time depicted by a wargame vary widely.
Time to Execute:
Planning cells conducting crisis action planning may only have a few hours to conduct a wargame for each of three candidate courses of action. Air Staff elements conducting Title 10 wargames typically take two years to progress from their Initial Planning Conference, through the wargame itself (called the capstone), to the approval of their final report.
Time/Duration Depicted:
A wargame of an air to air combat may depict an engagement lasting less then a minute, while a wargame exploring national strategy may depict decades of time.
