Naval Wargaming as a Teaching Tool for Warship Design Engineers

There is growing interest in the use of wargaming as an educational tool. Typically this has been used to train military personnel or students of defence or international relations, with a focus on the decisions made during a conflict. Wargaming offers several advantages as a pedagogical tool, in particular that it immerses students in a decision-making process in a way which can help develop deeper understanding. UCL has been using wargaming as a teaching tool within its Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering MSc programs for several years. They are used to develop student awareness of the naval domain, to explore the sensitivity of warship capabilities to various design choices, and to informally assess the capability of students’ final capstone designs. This requires wargames which reflect the impact of detailed design decisions like watertight subdivision, damaged stability performance and arrangement of auxiliary supplies and distribution networks. Since no commercially available wargames could be found that offered sufficient granularity in those areas, a family of architecture-focussed wargames was developed in-house between 2015 and 2021. These games were used in teaching seminars, in student study groups and in informal class-wide wargame nights at the end of design exercises. This paper presents a summary of the UCL wargame development program and draws out lessons learned and suggestions for educators considering a similar approach.