MILITARY LOGISTICAL COMPUTER SIMULATION EXERCISES: A LITERATURE REVIEW
American armed forces according to popular conception are characterized by high technology weapons systems and high technology support systems (Powell, 1992, p. 370). The older perceptions of the military services as places where Murphy's law (if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong) is the order of the day, and wherein the admonition "hurry up and wait" is an article of faith are passe. Are they really! A mild assessment of the Operation Desert Shield deployment prior to the Gulf War was that the exercise demonstrated a "need for realistic training in harsh conditions" (Lenorovitz, 1990, pp. S1 S2). A more realistic assessment of the problems faced by the military forces in preparing for action through the exercises to maintain combat readiness is that such training, particularly training involving the computer simulation of hostile environments, is often ineffective because computer simulation models are required to "conform to political requirements" (Dunnigan, 1988, p. 314). In other words, large scale military exercises frequently fail because they are based upon unrealistic politically based assumptions, as opposed to everyday reality. The truth likely lies at some point along the continuum formed by these polar assessments.
The research study for which of which this literature review is a part is concerned with large scale, computer simulation military logistical exercises. The objective of the research study is to identify the reasons that such exercises are
frequently unsuccessful. Factors related to such reasons will be investigated in the research study. The review of the literature presented herein is not designed to identify the reasons that large scale, computer simulation military logistical exercises are either successful or unsuccessful. Rather, this review of literature is designed to provide information relative to military...