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Imagining Beyond the Imaginary. The Use of Red Teaming and Serious Games in Anticipation and Foresight

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The Red Team Defence demonstrates the Ministry of the Armed Forces' desire to appropriate new foresight tools. Thus, brain games or serious games aim to bypass the weight of the military hierarchy, the standardisation of thoughts and cognitive biases in order to avoid strategic unthinking.

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Military pieces on a map illustrating the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Military pieces on a map illustrating the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
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Corps analyses
In September 2022, The New York Times revealed that the successful Ukrainian offensive on Kharkiv had been prepared in a series of wargames conducted that summer. Given this success, further wargames have been undertaken with a view to a possible Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring. This rise in the popularity of wargames, which come in various forms, is due to their ability to immerse participants in a situation, helping them to become aware of their strategic and tactical blind spots and to identify their own vulnerabilities by putting themselves in the enemy’s position. The ability to anticipate crises and foresee conflicts is essential in order to maintain the initiative and ultimately win out. Thus, the aim of defense foresight is to understand the different forms future wars might take (asymmetric, hybrid, high intensity), the weapons systems that may be employed (drones, high-velocity missiles), and the factors that could trigger them.
 
The use of wargames or scenario analyses to facilitate anticipation and foresight goes hand in hand with changes in the relationship between military and political leaders and civilians, who no longer hesitate to hold the former to account when they have failed to foresee a crisis. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck thus refers to the paradox of a society that is keen to predict the future because of its aversion to risk and the fact that it is now much more difficult to foresee what might happen in the short term due to very rapid technological developments. The modern world generates both risks and progress, and the inability to foresee strategic ruptures carries significant political costs, which explains why politicians set so much store in anticipation and foresight.
 
The initiatives launched by Florence Parly after being appointed French minister of the armed forces in 2017 included promoting experimentation in new cognitive tools. Beyond the issue of technology, the aim was to rethink information management within the ministry in order to make it more agile and cross-cutting. In addition to a significant budget allocated to innovation in the 2019–2025 Military Programming Law, the Ministry of the Armed Forces has drawn inspiration from methods often originating in other organizational cultures, such as start-ups and the private sector, in order to improve its creativity and accelerate its adoption of digital technology.
 

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Imagining Beyond the Imaginary. The Use of Red Teaming and Serious Games in Anticipation and Foresight

Decoration
Author(s)
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Héloïse FAYET

Héloïse FAYET

Intitulé du poste

Chercheuse, responsable du programme dissuasion et prolifération, Centre des études de sécurité de l'Ifri

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amelie-min.jpg

Amélie FÉREY

Intitulé du poste
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 A soldier watching a sunset on an armored infantry fighting vehicle
Security Studies Center
Accroche centre

Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.

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From Cuba to Ukraine: Strategic Signaling and Nuclear Deterrence

Date de publication
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Accroche

Strategic signaling—the range of signs and maneuvers intended, in peace time, to lend credibility to any threat to use nuclear weapons—is back.

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Return to the East: the Russian Threat and the French Pivot to Europe's Eastern Flank

Date de publication
13 June 2024
Accroche

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, has flung Europe’s Eastern flank into a new phase of strategic confrontation. It has had a major effect on France’s position, which was previously somewhat timid, leading it to significantly reinforce its deterrence and defense posture in support of the collective defense of Europe, in the name of strategic solidarity and the protection of its security interests.

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Military Stockpiles: A Life-Insurance Policy in a High-Intensity Conflict?

Date de publication
06 December 2022
Accroche

The war in Ukraine is a reminder of the place of attrition from high-intensity conflict in European armies that have been cut to the bone after three decades of budget cuts. All European forces have had to reduce their stocks to the bare minimum. As a result, support to Ukraine has meant a significant drain on their operational capabilities. A significant amount of decommissioned systems were also donated, due to the lack of depth in operational fleets.

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France’s Place Within NATO: Toward a Strategic Aggiornamento?

Date de publication
27 June 2023
Accroche

With a rapidly deteriorating security environment, a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, internal disputes exploding into public view, and questions being raised about the scope of its security responsibilities, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) seemed to be in dire straits at the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

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Military pieces on a map illustrating the territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
© Shutterstock

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Imagining Beyond the Imaginary. The Use of Red Teaming and Serious Games in Anticipation and Foresight