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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8835071" data-attributes="member: 6779310">I suspect ROTC's rapid growth in the 1950's and 1960's really helped; tactical wargaming has been part of USN training for officers since the 1890's, when it started using a customized version of Kriegspiel, and a miniatures naval wargame since at least the 1950's (seen photos of play at both NWC and USNA - it gets revised by Cdr Larry Bond, USN, in the late 1970's, and a civilianized simplified version of same is released in the 1980's by GDW as Harpoon. (Note that Tom Clancy was a playtester for the GDW version, and has implied being one of the outside testers for the USNA Naval Wargame version...) Note also: The USNA Wargame has not replaced the USN version of Kriegspiel; it has augmented it, as both are in use in USN training. As are computer simulations, and even full up mechanical simulators for a variety of interesting situations.Noting that ROTC in US colleges isn't exclusively contracted students - first two years are allowed to anyone meeting the physical standards. And both AROTC and NROTC use the respective academies' simulations as part of training, or at least, through the 90s did so, and appear to still do so. I doubt the USNA Wargame is still the version Cdr. Bond revised - it has undoubtedly been revised by his successors at the USNA & the NWC. Having played the mid-80s USNA wargame and the Harpoon boardgame, the latter is clearly a light version of the former. Miniatures wargaming was encouraged in the 60s (when my dad was in AROTC) and 70's (when a few friends of mine were in AROTC and NROTC) at several of the schools; I'm told Anapolis (USNA) and West Point (USMA) have extensive figure sets for classroom use.</blockquote>

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