MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs hosted the National Guard’s Presidio Endeavor wargame at the Armed Forces Reserve Center, March 11-12.
The inaugural event brought together participants from the Wisconsin National Guard’s joint Army and Air staffs, Wisconsin Emergency Management, U.S. Northern Command and the National Guard Bureau.
Ryan Kennedy and John Griese, wargame designers and facilitators supporting the National Guard Bureau’s Wargaming and Analysis Branch, led the turn-based, scenario-driven event.
“Wargames like Presidio Endeavor are great idea generators,” said Griese. “They provide planners and commanders a low-risk forum in which they can try out new ideas and concepts.”
Griese noted that National Guard members are well-practiced in supporting civil authorities during natural disasters while also maintaining combat readiness.
“The Presidio Endeavor scenarios challenge their ability to handle these dual missions simultaneously, and over extended periods of time,” Griese said. “It forces a state's joint force headquarters to sort out ways to mitigate risk, generate and sustain combat power, and potentially uncover opportunities in what I call the ‘state-strategic’ space.”
Primary participants representing 12 military and interagency functional areas occupied a main table, surrounded by a gallery of observers. Among them was Lt. Col. Orrin Viner, the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
Viner described the wargame as an opportunity to test the organization’s decision-making processes and plans in a complex, high-stress scenario.
“Within this demanding fictional environment, our resources were stressed to the breaking point,” he said. “It allowed us to identify key points of friction requiring immense effort and senior leader decisions.”
Viner said conducting the event annually will help refine best practices and expand participation across the force.
The integration of Wisconsin Emergency Management’s Response Planning and Support Section supervisor, Drew Werner, added a multiagency coordination element to the scenarios.
“The single greatest benefit of WEM's participation is gaining a comprehensive understanding of interagency expectations,” said Werner. “Specifically, how federal and state government, our military partners, and civil authorities expect to coordinate during mobilization, which directly informs and strengthens our planning efforts.”
Werner added that WEM also benefited from the opportunity to rehearse domestic operations procedures alongside the National Guard — procedures applied just three days later when local Soldiers were mobilized during a severe blizzard to assist the Wisconsin State Patrol in reaching stranded motorists.
The Presidio Endeavor wargame concluded with a hot wash, allowing for in-depth discussion among facilitators, players and observers.
“The point with wargaming is presenting a scenario that gets people to think, act, react, then talk about the outcome and what they'd do next time to generate a different outcome,” said Griese. “It's a really effective and useful visualization exercise and an activity that is as old as war itself.”