Should fratricide and accidents be simulated in wargames?

[Dr Zaius]

It's a well known statistic that the majority of deaths on any battlefield are the result of friendly fire incidents and accidents, not enemy fire. These two factors can seriously sap a unit's strength over time and also destroy a lot of equipment. Yet wargames traditionally have ignored the difficulties of coordinating units, setting up boundaries and phase lines, civilian casualties, and friendly fire/accidents.

Given their importance, shouldn't wargames attempt to simulate these factors, or is this going beyond the normal scope of what the game is trying to do?

 

[JAMiAM]

It's a well known statistic that the majority of deaths on any battlefield are the result of friendly fire incidents and accidents, not enemy fire.

The majority on any battlefield? I find that a little hard to swallow as a general rule. Some substantial proportion to be sure, but I doubt it's always the majority.

Given their importance, shouldn't wargames attempt to simulate these factors, or is this going beyond the normal scope of what the game is trying to do?

Perhaps in some highly technical simulation, it might be appropriate, and it would be dependent upon the scale that such a simulation attempts to recreate. Small scale actions, with distinct support assets and more tightly governed C&C rules, might gain something in adding this to the mix.

Large scale gaming, is more abstracted and thus "losses are losses" regardless of who caused them. The relative force quality modifiers that a particular system uses can be adjusted to account for discrepancies between the average number of FFC that each of the particular combatants inflict.

 

[Dr Zaius]

The majority on any battlefield? I find that a little hard to swallow as a general rule. Some substantial proportion to be sure, but I doubt it's always the majority.

There are some exceptions at the extreme ends of the spectrum, but generally speaking deaths due to enemy fire do not make up the lion's share of the deaths on a battlefield. This is less true in wars more than 100 years ago, however, deaths due to disease make up a huge portion of deaths in earlier wars.

The military breaks down deaths in several categories. Enemy action, disease and sickness, accidents, friendly fire incidents. I should have used the term "casualties" instead of deaths, although it still applies. If a soldier sufferes a broken back due to falling off a truck that soldier isn't a combat death, but is still listed as a casualty.

Modern safety programs within the US military services are extremely active and keep meticulous records of every incident broken down by severity level. Class D, class E, etc. Leaders at all levels are responsible to report incidents/accidents when they happen. This was much less true prior to 1990. Records during WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam often skew statistics towards enemy action due to inefficient programs and a general lack of safety awareness. There were also political considerations and egos that fed this mentality. In today's military every leader at every level is fully aware of the safety program and how to document incidents. The bottom line is that it is next to impossible to get accurate statistics on the true ratio of accidents and friendly fire vs enemy action casualties in older conflicts. As a general rule these earlier military forces were largely indifferent to safety and chaulked up fratricide incidents to the "shit happens" category. Commanders now understand that disease, accidients, and friendly fire are almost always a bigger threat to their soldiers than enemy fire.

An injury is defined as any intentional or unintentional damage to the body resulting from acute or chronic exposure to mechanical, thermal, electrical, or chemical energy or from the absence of such essentials as heat or oxygen. In the past 20 years, injuries in the Armed Forces have been responsible for more deaths, disabilities, hospitalizations, and outpatient visits than any other cause:

• Deaths due to injuries were responsible for 75% of military personnel deaths from CY 1980-1993: 50% of all deaths were due to unintentional injuries, primarily caused by motor vehicles, and another 25% were caused by intentional injuries (suicides, homicides, and hostile actions).

• Disabilities due to musculoskeletal (orthopedic) conditions were the leading cause of disabilities for all military services in FY 1994 and 1995. During just one month, December 1994, injuries accounted for nearly half of all disabilities compensated by the Veterans Administration and the resulting compensation costs of $347 million.

• Hospitalizations due to injuries and injury-related musculoskeletal disorders were the leading cause of hospitalization for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, and the second leading cause of hospitalization for the Air Force in 1994. During Operations Desert Shield and Storm, nonbattle injuries were the leading cause of hospitalization for Army personnel.

• Outpatient visits due to injuries are generally the result of injuries and musculoskeletal disorders associated with physical training and vigorous operational activities. These injuries have a significant impact on readiness. A fracture can account for over 100 lost duty days, and a simple sprain can result in several weeks of limited duty; either would restrict deployability.

Injuries are the single most significant medical impediment to readiness of the military. Not only do injuries impact the strength and ability of our Armed Forces to effectively respond to their mission, they levy tremendous annual costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars against the operating budgets of all the services.

How does this relate to wargaming? Shouldn't there be a chance that green troops will call down artillery fire on the wrong hex? How about a precentage chance that vehicles will break down during long marches. Aircraft are certainly not immune as aviation accidents make up the majority of all class A accidents within every branch of the military service.

 

[KG_Norad]

For me that depends on the game. Some games like CS which are more like a board game no.

I think in Steel Panthers (I am still new to this game so correct me if I am wrong) if a unit is in the same hex as an enemy unit and other units of yours that are outside the hex fire into that hex there is a chance you can take friendly fire...can anyone confirm this? If that is the case I think that works very well and I like the way it works.

I think team matches of CM would be fun if you could accidently fire on unidentified or incorrectly identified team members.

With ATF I think it would be fun as well.

But I am not sure if I would be happy with the computer randomly making the decision to fire on friendly's in ATF or CM. I think haveing to order your unit to shoot at something not completely identified would take the pain out of it, as you would only have yourself to blame!

Michael

 

[Priest]

I would say no, in most instances "friendly fire" is just a tragic accident, but, it really doesn't have a significant effect on the battle.

 

[JAMiAM]

Don,

I'm of the opinion that the facts with regard to recent history and performance of the US Armed Services are actually very atypical, when compared with how the rest of the world fights, and has fought wars for the last several thousand years...

 

[Dr Zaius]

Don,

I'm of the opinion that the facts with regard to recent history and performance of the US Armed Services are actually very atypical, when compared with how the rest of the world fights, and has fought wars for the last several thousand years...

You might be surprised to learn that other miliary forces suffer accident rates that makes those of the US military pale in when conducting comparable training. The reason most other armies don't suffer great numbers of casualties during training is because their training is typically unrealistic, limited in scale and scope, and infrequent. These forces suffer horrendous casualty rates when engaged in actual combat.

As a senior Army instructor this was a class I used to teach. You will have a very hard time finding any sort of reliable data on accidents/fratricides and accurate casualty rates during combat. The US military does have very reliable information of this type on foreign forces, but that's starting to get into a sensitive area. The bottom line is that the US publicizes most every accident, releases the names within a reasonable amount of time, and the vast majority of these incidents become public records. Most armed forces around the world do not do this. As I said earlier, they do not train with the same intensity and/or frequency and when they suffer accidents it isn't advertised. Most governments have serious difficulty explaining to their people the true number of combat deaths they have suffered, and the true number of casualties/accidents. They simply won't do it.

As I said, I used to teach this material and I've seen the accident rates for some other nations. As an Army aviator I was always aware of how many of my friends and subordinates I have lost in accidents. The accident rates in most other armed forces made me cringe!

There is little accurate data on the subject, but if it were possible to see the true accident/friendly fire vs enemy action rates for the US Civil War it would probably make you sick.

I agree JAMiAM, the US military is atypical when it comes to accidents and the ratio of soldiers killed by enemy fire. In most other armies it's far worse.

 

[Wolfe Tone]

My Dad was in the Irish Army during the War. The Irish Free State was neutral so the Army saw no action. That did not stop my Dad getting a wound though as a fellow soldier bayoneted him in the back in a barrack room fight!
The worst incident to befall Irish soldiers was an accidental explosion in a training incident in which 17 soldiers died with many more wounded. A friend of my father’s was badly wounded and traumatized, so badly he afterwards murdered someone.
We were also bombed by the Germans on a few occasions by accident they said! The worst was the North Strand bombings of 1941, which left about 30 dead and hundreds wounded in Dublin.
Another one was:
The next events occurred on Friday, December 20, 1940. The first began after 7 PM when residents of Dun Laoghaire, in south Dublin, claimed to have seen flares in the sky followed promptly by bombs falling and exploding. More fell moments later near Sandycove Railway station. Three people were injured during this.

I remember my mother pointing out the spot in the road where these bombs fell when we were on our way to McDonalds. She was a schoolgirl at the time and two of her brothers were with the British Army.

 

[Tim McBride]

TOAW can and could simulate all this. Breakdowns are already simulated by units losing equipment during movement. To represent fraticide one can simply aplly a mild pestilence factor.

 

[Dr Zaius]

TOAW can and could simulate all this. Breakdowns are already simulated by units losing equipment during movement. To represent fraticide one can simply aplly a mild pestilence factor.

TOAW actually does simulate breakdowns etc. That's one of the only wargames I can think of that does.

 

[screamer]

iirc cm has friendly fire in night fights.........

 

[KG_Norad]

SPWAW is supposed to simulate breakdowns as well.

 

[SkyVon]

SPWAW does simulate friendly fire....usually caused by nearby arty or mistaken air attacks.

 

[Prester John]

It's a well known statistic that the majority of deaths on any battlefield are the result of friendly fire incidents and accidents, not enemy fire. These two factors can seriously sap a unit's strength over time and also destroy a lot of equipment. Yet wargames traditionally have ignored the difficulties of coordinating units, setting up boundaries and phase lines, civilian casualties, and friendly fire/accidents.

Given their importance, shouldn't wargames attempt to simulate these factors, or is this going beyond the normal scope of what the game is trying to do?

I to find this statement very hard to accept. I have not been able to find a breakdown of battlefield (as opposed to combat zone) casualties for Australian forces in general but significant battles in Vietnam, such as Coral and Long Tan do have a well researched list of casualties and their causes as related by eye witnesses. In those battles direct enemy offensive action was clear and away the most significant cause of death.

 

[Prester John]

I'm not sure where this thread is going. As I read further down references are made to casualties during training, and non-battle casualties, and a suspicious reference to "other military forces". As a soldier who has served in one of those other military forces as a peace time soldier (and not as a member of the SAS or Commandos, they can speak for themselves), all of our battalions casualties were non-friendly fire accidents. This is in part due to a limitation on training which doesn't place soldiers carrying live rounds in a position to accidently fire on our own troops without deliberately voiding safeguards. Munitions can and do malfunction during live fire exercises, but casualties are not the result of deliberate targeting of friendly positions in the belief that they are valid (exercise) enemy targets ie friendly fire.

And to head another aspect of this thread off at the pass, non-battle deaths due to disease and such, have always been the most significant statistic in the combat zone (and communication zone). Non-battle deaths normally exceed battle deaths, of which friendly fire deaths are a small fraction, so even in the combat zone you have more to fear from snakes, dysentery and malaria than friendly fire.

Anyhow none of this is to say that awareness of friendly fire is not important, but if you wanted to survive a war in the last 100 years, the most important thing you had to look out for was not your mates mistaking you for the enemy.

 

[T. Heikkilä]

I think that those things should be added to games. Though ive noticed that in Steel Panthers you can pretty easily waste your own men...

 

[Dr Zaius]

And to head another aspect of this thread off at the pass, non-battle deaths due to disease and such, have always been the most significant statistic in the combat zone (and communication zone). Non-battle deaths normally exceed battle deaths, of which friendly fire deaths are a small fraction, so even in the combat zone you have more to fear from snakes, dysentery and malaria than friendly fire.

That's what I just said. Fratricide makes up only one - reasonably small - percentage of total deaths. You are quite correct, deaths due to disease, accidents, etc make up the majority of casualties.

In a tactical wargame there really is no reason to attempt to model any of this. It's probably beyone the scope of the game, and even if it was within the scope of the game it's questionable whether it would make it more enjoyable. Friendly fire is another story. It's uncommon to have friendly fire incidents that take such a toll on a unit that they disrupt normal combat operations, however, it can and does happen from time to time. US forces were bombed two consecutive days in a row at the beginning of Operation Cobra. Several hundred men were killed including a General officer.

In wargames of tactical scale it might be appropriate to simulate the chance that artillery will land in the wrong spot or something like that. The other stuff isn't applicable.

In a wargame of operational or strategic scale things begin to look quite different. Breakdowns of vehicles as they move long distances, disease, sickness, and accidents all nibble away at a unit's effective strength. TOAW simulates almost all of this and scenario author's can add additional realism with the editor. Poorly trained forces and forces with low morale will almost certainly have more accidents and destroy more equipment than highly trained or veteran forces. TOAW does a good job of covering this aspect of warfare, but it is largely absent from other wargames.

Is this a good thing? Well, that's hard to say. Most wargames assume that every unit is at 100% strength 100% of the time unless a soldier is lost due to enemy action. An absurd assumption to say the least. Units will always have more soldiers out of action due to sickness, disease, accidents, AWOL, and administrative activities than they do due to enemy fire. That was just a true with Napoleon's army as it is today. How many of Napoleon's men were killed by the Russians compared to how many died from sickness and the cold?

True, TOAW does an good job simulating all of these abstract factors, but then TOAW also covers things like the effects of electronic warfare, communications, etc. Most other wargames ignore these critical aspects of the battle as well.

I guess the question boils down to this: do you want your wargame to be a simulation of tactics, firepower and maneuver and nothing more, or should it try to incorporate the more abstract elements that directly effect the outcome of the battle? Simply put, wargame or war simulation?

There's no right or wrong answer here. I'm just floating the question to see what the reaction would be. :freak:

 

[Wolf]

You can take friendly fire in the CS games from both Artillery and Air.

 

[Gary Owen]

I think that if you're going to model fratricide in a wargame, you should give the player some way to reduce or overcome it. If you can't control it as a player, why pay attention to it? But the complexity of appropriately rewarding the pro-active gamer with reduced fratricide would seem to be immense. I can't imagine the algorithm that evaluates the effectiveness of manuever control measures, proper use of echeloned radio nets, fire control discipline, player drafted rules of engagement (although, I'd love to actually tell a game to not fire "til you see the whites of their eyes."), etc.

 

[kbluck]

I do think there is a slight error of conclusion here.

It is certainly true to say that "During Operations Desert Shield and Storm, nonbattle injuries were the leading cause of hospitalization for Army personnel." However, this is not at all the same as the apparent assumption, that such nonbattle injuries also predominate during the course of a typical battle. For example, two of the leading causes of evacuations during Desert Storm were sports injuries and pregnancy. Does anybody think soldiers were tossing footballs and getting nookie while actually engaging the enemy? Of course not.

The fact is, *most* soldiers never partipate directly in combat, even when they are deployed in an active combat zone. This is becoming more and more true as "tooth to tail" ratios continue to skew towards the tail side.

Most wargames, however, concentrate only on the actual "shooters" involved in actual battles, ignoring the hordes of support troops and the long periods of hurrying from place to place, working like oxen to resupply, maintain, and dig in, and waiting around for something to happen. During actual battles, it is safe to say that the leading cause of casualties for the direct participants is enemy action, by far. During the "not shooting" times, it is not surprising that noncombat causes take precedence, and since these times make up the vast majority of the time for individual soldiers, even for combat troops like infantry, it is not surprising that noncombat casualties predominate in the aggregate, even during wartime.

All that said, I do think wargames, especially tactical games concentrating on individual systems, should take into account the "friction" factor of breakdowns, accidental injuries, and other disruptions like desertions or simply getting lost. How detailed this needs to be should be a function of the game's overall abstration level. But the general rule is, operating in the field, even without enemy contact, inevitably causes attrition, and that hard fact of life should certainly be modeled.

--- Kevin