Before making offensive or defensive maneuvers, it’s important to run through all the scenarios of what might happen. But when those moves involve massive aircraft carriers and multi-thousand-person crews, it can be a cumbersome, unrealistic task to always rehearse plays and train personnel live.
This is the domain of the The Modeling, Virtual Environments and Simulations (MOVES) Institute, an interdisciplinary academic center at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) that works to make it easier for military groups to wargame and practice maneuvers through combined simulation strategies and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI). The institute fosters an open environment for its faculty to explore topics important to the Navy and DOD at large.
“The main thing is to allow people to go off and find problems,” says MOVES Director and NPS Research Associate Professor Dr. Imre Balogh.