CMU-ISRI-05-139
Institute for Software Research International
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University



CMU-ISRI-05-139

Detailed Comparison of America's Army Game
and Unit of Action Experiments

Mike Schneider, Kathleen M. Carley, Il-Chul Moon

August 2005

Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems
CASOS Technical Report

CMU-ISRI-05-139.pdf

Keywords: Organizational Theory, Computer Game, Simulation, Military Experiments, Unit of Action, America s Army, Command and Control


America's Army game and Unit of Action experiments are simulations of military units. America's Army is a simulation of a squad level military organization, and the Unit of Action experiments simulate the brigade/battalion level command and control structure. Studies of both these domains reveal that configuring and organizing a unit is important in enhancing its performance. Thus, we may argue that there is a fundamental similarity between the game and the experiment. In this paper, we compare the two simulation analyses in terms of their initial features, results, and recommendations. The comparison of the initial features suggests that both domains use similar explanatory variables, and the comparison of the results shows that the findings of these domains also correspond in many ways. Finally, we investigate different ways of capturing implications in both domains, and based on that, discuss future research issues for the Unit of Action experiments such as developing an ideal communication network or policy by adopting a research method used in the America s Army analysis.

23 pages


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