Multinational Maritime Security Exercise 2018

The Multinational Maritime Security Centre of Excellence (MARSEC COE) held its annual Maritime Security Exercise at the Turkish Navy's War Gaming Center, Golcuk Naval Base, Turkey (about 100 km east of Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara). 18 nations and 6 departments of the Turkish governemt, including the Office of the President, participated.

The task of getting all of the diverse organizations actively involved in the flow of the exercise was masterfully executed by having a number of maritime security senarios running at the same time. Cyber play was introduced via a very clever training tool developed by a team of Turkish academics based in Izmir. Space-based maritime situational awareness was scripted by "yours truly". Terrorist activity was inserted by an experienced Turkish person working with NATO on that problem. The excellent graphics of the war gaming center helped keep the game in focus. The main objective, to get everyone working together and exchanging ideas as to how the various problems could be addressed, was very clearly accomplished.

Participants left feeling very good aboput the week spent in Golcuk. By week's end we all had learned a good bit about how other nations approach maritime security problems, and had made many new friends from nearly every corner of the globe.

My first wargame was the 1982 Global War Game at the Naval War College run by that master wargamer Bud Hay, USMC. I worked in that center for the next 3 and 3/4 years where I was responsible for the accurate play of Space, SOF and EW (including cyber), (ours and theirs). We held about 45 war games a year. Toward the end of my tenure there I designed and led a series of four C3CM wargames (3 at NWC and one at Johns Hopkins APL) dealing with Space and Cyber, the first such games held anywhere to the best of my knowledge.

In 1995 I was hired by Johns Hopkins APL to work in their Warfare Analysis Laboratory to assist in runng the technology focused war games APL calls WALEXs. I spent almost five years in that role. Many great insights were developed out of the war games in those two venues, including the testing of the Reagan administrations's Maritime Strategy which some claim was the straw that broke the back of the Soviet Union. My first war games at APL were funded by the Ballistic Missile Defewnse Office (now the Missile Defense Agency) and dealt with how to counter long range ballistic missiles. My responsibilty in those games was the accurate introduction of space system capabilities. The fact that we and the Japanese now have ships deployed off Korea with that specifric mission is a testament to the usefulness of those first war games.

Counting those times, plus the year I spent war gaming at the Naval Airwarfare Evaluation Center at Pax River, MD, and my two years at the Joint Electronic Warfare Center as the head of the analysis branch, I have war gamed in something approaching 300 games, in something like a dozen venues. All that being said, rarely have I seen the objectives of the war game exercise so completely accomplished. MARSEC COE, Well done!

If you get invited to next year's event, go!

#earthobservation #maritimesecurity