The practice has indeed become the norm within the armies. The “Kriegsspiel” (war game, in German) was developed in the 19th century by the Prussian army to train its officers in combat tactics. And since then, almost all of the world’s headquarters have used it. With the prospect of a possible return of major conflicts between major nations, the war game “has really come back to the fore for five to ten years, and especially in the Army, we have been working intensely on it for two or three years”Colonel Sébastien Chênebeau explained last November during an international war game meeting organized by the École de guerre-Terre.
About 40 hours per year of “wargame” were introduced in 2022 in the course of the institution’s trainees. “The goal is to prepare for a conflict without having to deploy all the troops on the ground. It’s saving time, money, allowing yourself to fail so you can learn from it and improve. It has the advantage of being a very low-cost operation preparation method with excellent performance”according to Colonel Chênebeau.