A history of United States military simulation

The history of simulation and combat modeling associated with the military, and with military actions, is as old as the human race. Since humans began competing for resources, those involved have used simulation techniques of some form to better understand conflict and increase their chances of procuring favorable outcomes in those conflicts. This paper provides a historical perspective on the use of simulation in defense particularly in United States military planning, analyses, and training. This perspective starts by describing the simple table-top, thought exercises and proceeds through the development of ever more sophisticated methods to arrive at the modern United States military simulation environment, which involves everything from laptop applications, through large-scale simulation models, to the advanced distributed simulation architectures currently in use for demonstrations, training, and analytical purposes.