RogerBW's Blog: Time to declare a new wargaming period

For convenience, wargamers tend to split history into periods with broadly similar weapons and tactics.

Ancient (up to 500 AD)
Medieval (500-1400)
Renaissance (1400-1700)
18th Century
Napoleonic
American Civil War
19th Century
World War One
World War Two
Modern

Obviously there's room for argument (there's an awful lot of variation among the conflicts of the 19th Century that are neither Napoleonic or ACW), but I suspect most people would accept this broad categorisation.

I think it's not quite right any more.

More specifically, I think that the modern battlefield isn't a lot like the battlefield of the 1950s or even the 1980s. Specifically: every soldier, or at least every section, now has GPS, and usually access to a working radio. Bowman may still leave the bloke on the sharp end _B_etter _O_ff _W_ith _M_ap _A_nd _N_okia, but at least he has the Nokia. Chances are that the section or the platoon commander can talk directly to artillery or air support in the area. It's a communications revolution that's meant the most important cargo for logistics is no longer bullets but batteries.

The styles of conflict have changed, too. They're less likely now to be inter-state with the possibility of great-power backing for one or both sides: much more usually, it's a state versus an independence-seeking group within that state, or a state versus some other non-governmental actor in its own territory or elsewhere.

Other equipment is different too. Chances are, before the end of the Cold War, one side was using American or British kit, while the other was using Soviet. Now they might both have hardware from the same side, or even a mixture: the Luftwaffe may have dumped most of the Soviet aircraft it inherited on reunification, but it kept its MiG-29s until 2003.

And then there's the matter of drones, not just the UAVs that are in the headlines but ground- and water-borne and even underwater unmanned craft. I don't think I've even seen a wargame system that covers these yet.

So my modest proposal is to split the current "Modern" period into "Modern" and "Cold War", with a boundary somewhere around 1990. Let's not be like the art world, where "Modern" became so tied to a specific style that it became outdated and was superseded by "Post-modern".

Though the idea of post-modern wargaming does have a certain appeal.

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