LECMgt 2020: A year in review
Introduction
2020 has been a unique experience for all of us. The year began in a familiar fashion with a list of projects waiting to begin. By March, it was clear that nothing we had planned was going to occur as we expected. Contracts were canceled or indefinitely delayed. In-person conferences were replaced by webinars. After nearly fifteen years of traveling the world LECMgt was locked down and self-quarantining. Online appearances replaced travel. Research, studying, and writing took on new importance. As we move into 2021, we are excited about exploring some new opportunities and expanding our capabilities.
Barbara Mason CEO
Webinars
Fight Club
Fight Club is a joint NATO Rapid Reaction Force and UK Ministry of Defense project. The goal of Fight Club is to reintroduce wargaming to the profession of arms throughout the NATO alliance. Fight Club sponsors a webinar series featuring experts on conflict simulations and wargaming. Dr Mason spoke about hybrid wargame design. This webinar was exciting because it involved live participants engaging from around the world. Fight Club is a cutting-edge initiative that we are excited to support.
Georgetown University Wargame Society
The Georgetown Society is a collection of academics, students, and some of the foremost wargame practitioners in the country. Georgetown University hosts a webinar series designed to expose its members to experts in the conflict simulation world. LECMgt team members did two webinars for the Georgetown webinar series. Roger Mason did a presentation on wargaming hybrid warfare. Joseph Miranda, LECMgt’s chief wargame designer, spoke about the history of cyber wargames.
New Publications
Dr. Mason was asked to write a review of the new Ashgate Research Companion to Military Ethics edited by James Johnson and Eric Patterson. This important book is one of the clearest and most detailed explorations of military ethics in the past fifty years. The review was published in the fall 2020 Volume 19 of the Journal of Military Ethics.
Conferences
Nearly every 2020 conference we had planned to participate in eventually cancelled due to the pandemic lockdown. Before the national lockdown Roger Mason spoke at our first and last conference of 2020.
Shepherd’s Conference 2020
This conference brings church leaders from around the world to Los Angeles to discuss biblical scholarship, preaching, and worship. Roger Mason was asked to provide two presentations on developing security programs for faith centers. In two days, 1600 pastors and lay leaders were trained in developing and operating security programs to protect their congregations.
Emergency Management
Our emergency management activities included writing, developing a template for
Covid-19 after-action reports, and emergency planning in Africa.
Blog articles
Redefining Mission Critical: Managing simultaneous disasters.
In 2020 emergency managers focused on responding to the global pandemic. Unfortunately, the presence of a global disaster does not prevent local emergencies. This blog article explores techniques for handling emergencies during the pandemic.
Emergency Planning for Humanitarian Aid Organizations
Humanitarian aid organizations bring comfort and care to people throughout the world.
The people in greatest need are often in some of the most challenging and hazardous locations. This article provides an outline for developing an emergency plan that
protects aid workers and their operations.
Protecting Your Faith Community: Building a successful security team.
Faith centers are supposed to be welcoming places for prayer and reflection. The Recent incidents demonstrate faith communities can be inviting targets to persons intent on causing mayhem. This article explains how to develop a security team that provides safety while balancing the need to quietly support the activities of their faith center.
After Action Reports
After action reports are an important way to gather information about events and incidents. These reports provide a foundation for post-incident analysis and future improvement. LECMgt developed a Covid-19 after action template for a large organization with numerous subsidiaries.
Kibuye Hope Hospital
Kibuye Hope Hospital is located Kibuye, Burndi. The hospital asked LECMgt to help update their emergency planning. The hospital and medical school are a branch of Hope Africa University. The 170-bed hospital provides surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics/gynecology, radiology, ophthalmology, and emergency room services. To gather information, we employed a combination of online interviews, research, and documentation review. We are excited about the possibility of visiting the hospital in 2021 to complete this important project.
Wargaming
Our 2020 wargaming activities involved publishing a commercial game, playtesting, and writing.
Streets of Shadows
Our game about World War II occupied Paris debuted in the fall. We want to thank Hollandspiel Games for bringing our concept to life. Streets of Shadows was designed by Roger Mason and Joseph Miranda with some great development assistance by game designer Eric Harvey of Accurate Simulations. This was a three-year project from initial design, preliminary playtests, to commercial development.
Playtesting
In 2020 LECMgt playtested wargames for Decision Games and Accurate Simulations. We covered topics from the War of 1812 to a hypothetical conflict in Mongolia between Russia and China. The playtests analyze the protypes and tested game mechanics.
Blog Articles
Dr. Mason prepared three articles to support our webinar presentations on hybrid warfare.
This article introduces the concept of hybrid warfare and explains the basic techniques for designing wargames to simulate it.
Wargaming Hybrid Warfare Part II: Modeling Time and Action
One of the trademarks of hybrid warfare is overwhelming opponents by disrupting their actions. A key part of this strategy is impacting the time needed by defenders to respond. This article discusses techniques to simulate these real-world tactics in a wargame.
Wargaming Hybrid Warfare Part III: Complexity, Networks and Emergence.
Hybrid warfare involves complex, non-linear systems impacting networks. The results are unpredictable outcomes that emerge from the interactions. This article describes these interactions and offers methods for inserting them into a game design.
Investing in the Community
LECMgt is part of our local community. One of our most enjoyable connections is helping to sponsor the Moorpark Symphony Orchestra (MSO). The MSO is a community orchestra made up of professional and talented amateur musicians. The orchestra’s motto is “serving the community one note at a time.”