Allied Command Transformation is actively developing its Audacious Wargaming Capability, leveraging the expertise of the Joint Warfare Centre to incorporate warfare development activities into collective training and exercises.
Allied Command Transformation is working to develop its Audacious Wargaming Capability as part of its effort to better understand the challenges facing the Alliance’s Military Instrument of Power. It also seeks to enhance the delivery of collective training and warfare development at the operational and strategic levels to ensure NATO’s readiness and future capability development. In doing so, these efforts contribute to Allied Command Transformation’s commitment to enabling Multi-Domain Operations, deterrence and defence of the Euro-Atlantic area, and increasing the Alliance’s understanding of opportunities and threats across all domains.
The Joint Warfare Centre, based in in Jåttå, Norway, plays a key part in implementing Allied Command Transformation’s priorities by providing training for full spectrum, joint operational- and strategic-level warfare. Subordinated to Allied Command Transformation, the Centre supports the missions of Supreme Allied Commander Transformation as well as Supreme Allied Commander Europe by contributing to the overall warfighting readiness of the NATO Command Structure and NATO Force Structure through collective training and exercises. It also contributes to warfare development during these events by ensuring adherence to NATO joint operational doctrine and standards, implementing experiments and new concepts, and supporting the delivery of the NATO Lessons Learned process.
Whilst the Joint Warfare Centre delivers higher command and staff collective training for three- and four-star NATO headquarters, it can also harvest a huge dividend in warfare development and innovation. Exercises may be the most conspicuous aspect of what we do, yet it is our role in joint and combined warfare development at the operational and strategic levels that offers enduring benefit to the Alliance.
Colonel Neil Wright (British Army)
Former Deputy Chief of Staff Exercise, Training and Innovation Directorate
Joint Warfare Centre
The collective training and exercises organized by the Centre offer unique opportunities to develop NATO talent and maximize transformational efforts to improve NATO’s interoperability, capabilities, and operational effectiveness. A key line of effort in this respect is the provision of NATO’s Computer-Assisted Command Post Exercises for both non-Article 5 Crisis Response and Article 5 Collective Defence Operations. The Centre plays a critical role in enabling these exercises, and is the only NATO organization that creates, maintains, and develops synthetic battlespace scenarios used for many National and NATO Joint Force Command certification exercises.
A recent addition to the Joint Warfare Centre’s remit is its wargame design capability, which became operational on May 18, 2022, following a two-year developmental phase. In addition to contributing to the development of a robust, NATO-wide Audacious Wargaming Capability, the Centre’s efforts in this area also contribute to the NATO Warfighting Capstone Concept. In particular, it helps military leaders develop Cross-Domain Command skills by delivering fictitious but realistic exercise settings and scenarios that push their problem solving skills in a complex and dynamic security environment. In doing so, the Centre provides a highly responsive, low-cost, and low-impact alternative to other training activities and helps provide a cognitive foundation upon which to guide future training.
Currently, the Joint Warfare Centre’s Wargame Design Branch can build and deliver up to eight custom-made wargames per year to NATO Commands. These wargames can be stand-alone events or integrated into Centre-directed large-scale command post exercises. The Centre developed and delivered its first large-scale wargame in November 2022 in support of the annual logistics-themed wargaming exercise ‘Joint European Time-Phased Force Flow Deployment and Sustainment Series.’
The Joint Warfare Centre was established on October 23, 2003 as an integral part of the new NATO Military Command Structure, which was launched at the 2002 Prague Summit. Upon its establishment, the Centre contributed to two of the five NATO transformational processes described in NATO Military Committee document, MC 324/1, dated 16 May 2003, which were: (1)Training and Education, and (2) Joint and Combined Concept Development, Experimentation, Assessment and Doctrine. The Centre achieved its Full Operational Capability in 2006, with its state-of-the-art training facility coming online for its first training event in 2012.
