Wired News: When War Games Meet Video Games

Wired News: When War Games Meet Video Games: "War games that consider these scenarios are not new for the military, but they have never been attempted on such a grand scale, according to Blank. For instance, the simulation that JFCom is currently testing allows enemy forces (the 'red team') to hide up to 3,000 operatives in any of 65,000 buildings. The opposing 'blue team,' meanwhile, controls about 300 agents who use various tools to track the enemies.

The trick to keeping all this in motion is running the program on two Linux-based supercomputers, one at the Maui High Performance Computing Center in Hawaii and the other at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, and using concepts borrowed from artificial intelligence research to allow many of the characters in the simulation to make their own decisions without human input. This allows JFCom to run the simulations with only 30 or so human players at a time. These players consist mainly of retired military leaders and contractors who consult for the Department of Defense."