Scaling Defense Acquisition Through Distributed Wargaming Frameworks

The Department of Defense faces a critical disconnect between its industrial base capacity and the realities of large-scale conflict, a gap exacerbated by the lack of persistent, evidence-based planning between government and private sector stakeholders. Recent simulations conducted by academic and defense institutions reveal that senior leaders rarely engage in the necessary cross-sector coordination required to prepare for national emergencies, relying instead on rhetorical commitments that fail to translate into actionable acquisition policy.

Effective acquisition reform demands more than high-level strategic gaming, which often operates at an abstraction level that obscures granular industrial constraints. A monolithic approach, vesting responsibility in a single think tank or research center, risks missing the specific, load-bearing responsibilities inherent to individual service branches. Balanced investment strategies only emerge when services capture their unique operational requirements and subject them to rigorous, standardized joint wargaming methodologies.

Evidence from prototype wargames conducted in 2025 demonstrates the utility of integrating AI-enabled modeling with service-specific acquisition planning. These exercises, which focused on operational logistics and industrial base sustainment, identified critical misalignments in war reserve materiel that had previously escaped institutional notice. Such findings underscore the necessity of bottom-up data collection to inform the broader, department-level acquisition reforms required for protracted conflict.

Standardizing these efforts requires a structured annual framework where services assess identified operational concerns before merging results into a larger institutional series. Without foundational games at the service level, the Department of Defense lacks the defensible insights needed to benchmark its procurement systems against actual combat requirements. This distributed model allows for the mapping of industrial capabilities against specific legislative and budgetary timelines.

Acquisition wargaming must evolve beyond simple combat-focused attrition studies to encompass the interconnected network of procurement, depot maintenance, and life-cycle management systems. The Marine Corps Logistics Command’s September 2025 exercise highlighted that the most significant sustainment bottlenecks often occur during theater preparation, rather than during active engagement. These early-stage failures in prepositioning and regional sustainment frameworks represent the primary risks to long-term force readiness.

Service-level analysis provides the necessary fidelity to identify where specific war reserve materiel is misaligned with the demands of modern armed conflict. By forcing these issues into an operational context, planners can expose the limitations of current reporting programs that often obscure the true state of readiness. These discoveries provide the empirical basis for the Office of the Secretary of Defense to issue targeted acquisition recommendations that address specific capability gaps.

Systemic reform depends on three distinct analytic approaches: force sustainment analysis, system sustainment evaluation, and supply chain stress testing. By examining whether specific capabilities can be repaired or regenerated across the competition continuum, the military can better identify where critical components and processing capacity are most vulnerable to failure. This granular data provides the necessary input for modeling tools that predict the timing and impact of acquisition interventions.

The integration of physics-based performance data into these simulation environments allows for a more accurate assessment of how procurement decisions influence military effectiveness. By mapping wargaming results to industrial base capabilities, policymakers can create a more responsive acquisition system that activates specific industrial activities precisely when needed. This shift from reactive procurement to proactive mobilization planning is essential for maintaining a credible defense posture.

The efficacy of these reforms depends on the ability of the Department of Defense to institutionalize these findings within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, ensuring that service-level discoveries inform joint acquisition policy. Future milestones will depend on whether Congress mandates this partnership-based approach to link operational outcomes directly to budgetary and legislative action. Leaders should monitor the transition from isolated, combat-focused studies toward a persistent, service-led wargaming architecture that prioritizes supply chain visibility.