Despite their name, Tactical Decision Games (TDGs), as they’re called, aren’t just a form of recreation. They can exert a powerful and lasting effect — changing a person’s mental model. This post describes my own experiences and transformation.

The Twilight Ambush

It was a simple scenario set at twilight. A squad is moving west to east on a path through hilly terrain when suddenly it is ambushed by the enemy. The first two fire teams are pinned down. You are the leader of the third fire team, and your unit is not pinned down. You can see that the fire is coming from a hill to the north of the path, just ahead. What do you do?

I posed this TDG to a class of U.S. Marine Corps NCOs (noncommissioned officers), and one of them, a tall, burly sergeant, immediately volunteered his answer: “I’d tell my men to follow me, and we would go charging up the hill to attack the force that was attacking us.”

I have never been in the military, and have minimal expertise, but even so, this tactic seemed very risky. I nodded supportively at him and called on someone else who, fortunately, had a much better idea, to lead his men up the neighboring hill just west of the enemy and use that position to drive the enemy off. And that got me off the hook and ended the game that night.

But years later, in a conversation about what to do when you have walked into an ambush, I mentioned the doctrine I had heard that you are supposed to immediately assault the force attacking you. My colleagues, experienced and sophisticated Marines, laughed. Yes, they said, this had been the doctrine maybe 150 years ago when people were using muzzle-loaded rifles. It might take 20-30 seconds to reload, so you really did have a chance to overpower the enemy. Today, with automatic weapons, that old doctrine was ridiculous, although it was still taught (traditions are hard to abandon). In that instant, I realized why the burly sergeant had answered the way he did. And I appreciated my own incompetence about not questioning him and ferreting out his rationale and his mental model. I had a chance to actually have an impact, and I had blown it.

The Helicopter Ambush

While working on the Command Post of the Future project sponsored by DARPA, I participated in a TDG crafted and facilitated by Keith Holcomb, a brilliant retired brigadier general. It was another simple set up. Our platoon was tasked with defending a clearing in a forest where the enemy was expected to land a helicopter-borne force. The map showed that there were three clusters of trees surrounding the clearing. This was really easy, and I volunteered to offer my solution first. I would simply place one of my three squads at the edge of each clump of trees, hidden from view and ready to triangulate fire into the clearing without hitting each other. Holcomb played the enemy. He had no idea what my approach was, and no reconnaissance to learn where my squads were.

That didn’t stop him. He simply ordered a pre-landing artillery barrage centered on the tips of each of the three clusters of trees, wiping out my entire platoon. I had fallen into Keith’s trap, choosing the obvious approach and making myself painfully predictable. I was so intent on forming my own plan that I never bothered to consider the adversary’s perspective. It still hurts.

Enemy Over the Bridge

This was the very first TDG that John Schmitt published in the Marine Corps Gazette, starting the whole TDG movement 35 years ago. I didn’t play or facilitate this TDG, but I have watched it several times. The scenario is that a Marine battalion is moving into an assembly area behind friendly lines in preparation for launching an attack across a secure bridge into enemy territory the next morning, only to discover that there are enemy forces in the supposedly secure assembly area and the bridge is not under friendly control after all. What do you do? For many Marines, it seemed like a no-brainer. They were told to go to the assembly area; there is an enemy in the assembly area; attack the enemy in the assembly area.

Except that the assembly area didn’t really matter. There was nothing inherently important about that terrain. What mattered was the bridge. As long as we did not control the bridge, the enemy could continue to flow forces across to our side of the river. What mattered was taking control of the bridge to block the enemy. Only a few decision makers realized the bridge was critical and the assembly area was now irrelevant. A steady diet of TDGs like this actually seemed to have changed the mindset of the Marines

Learning an Ambush Script the Hard Way

John Schmitt and Keith Holcomb prepared an ambush TDG for new lieutenants at The Basic School, the six-month course that all Marine Corps lieutenants attend. Another simple scenario — the enemy consists of five vehicles moving down a road from north to south. There is an obvious kill zone, an open area allowing you to fan out your forces and triangulate fire once the enemy gets into the kill zone. Seems so easy. Yet, of course, John and Keith had a few tricks in mind.

In the first variation they had the five enemy vehicles spread out so they weren’t all in the kill zone at the same time. Do you hit the first ones? But then the others are tipped off and are going to come after you. Do you let the first ones pass? Now they’re behind you and you’re in danger of being cut off. Either way, you’re in trouble. On top of that, the scenario included another Marine platoon preparing an ambush on a road to the east, and the radio reports came in that they had triggered their ambush too soon and were being attacked. The young lieutenants never wondered why their sister platoon might have triggered their ambush prematurely. If they had, they might have avoided falling into the same trap.

The TDG included several more of these surprises. The young lieutenants knew that there would be tricks. They even had hints each time from the sister platoons to their east and west. It took them several iterations through the scenario before they started to anticipate the kinds of things a clever enemy might do. They learned that ambushes aren’t simple. They deepened their ambush tactics. After a few painful lessons, they eventually got smarter and more adaptive. Many said that this had been the most valuable experience they had had at The Basic School.

Conclusion

This is the impact that scenario-based training such as TDGs can have. Admittedly, not every experience will be mind-blowing. Most TDGs cause you to tweak your mental models and improve them a bit. But every once in a while you’ll have an experience like I did in these four examples, when the experience shatters your existing mental models and forces you to create completely new ones. It won’t happen every time, but when it does, it can leave a lasting impact.