Documentation of wargaming for modification of the amphibious forces

The amphibious battalion was established in the 1990's with the main purpose to attack and defend terrain in coastal regions. Prior to the 2010 half-time modification the prerequisites were changed and a review of the battalion's requirements was needed. The naval operational analysis group was engaged in the review work. This report is a documentation of the group's methodological support. The analysis was concentrated to three weeks during May to November. The first week an overview of the goals for the force unit was performed. The second week focused on war gaming with one scenario and two different combinations of the unit. The war gaming activity was followed by a SWOT analysis of the alternatives. During the third week seven objects were penetrated in more detail and conclusions were made. Finally a review of the units' requirements was made and a new set of requirements was suggested. In this report following activities are described: generation of reviewed so-called "standard missions", instructions for war gaming including ROE, analysis of war gaming and object analysis. The basis for the review of the standard missions was gathered from the set of required abilities for the amphibious battalion which are stated in the development plan for the Swedish Armed Forces, FMUP 2009. To provide the design requirements three types of missions were generated by morphological analysis. The war gaming was performed as a semi open game. The scenario setting was an international mission where the amphibious battalion formed one task group. Two unit alternatives were evaluated and analysed with a SWOT-tool. The opponent was a conventional force with low standard together with irregular forces. After the war gaming conclusions were drawn and a number of objects for further analysis were selected. Those were: logistics, weapon capability, intelligence with/without diving boat, intelligence with/without UAV, the coastal rangers company missions, the organisation of the battalion command and lastly protection. The methods used proved to be a good support for analysing important uncertainties in the design of the amphibious battalion. The good result is due to the great commitment of the participants during all analysis moments.