Can an online wargame help solve the military’s fossil fuel dependency? The U.S. Navy is betting that it might.
Here’s the scenario: It’s 2022 and a blockade has formed in the Bering Strait, a key U.S. pathway to oil resources in the Arctic. But the Navy is unable to respond due to an oil shortage.
This is the plot of energyMMOWFLI, a new interactive gaming program launched by the Navy. The game asks players across the globe to invent clean energy solutions to help the Navy complete this faux, futuristic mission without fossil fuels.
The best ideas will be considered for adoption by the Office of Naval Research and other Navy partners.
“Energy efficiency is very important to the warfighter, yet it’s usually one of the last things we think about,” said Larry Schuette of the Office of Naval Research told the Navy’s information technology magazine. “The fewer times a truck, tank, ship or airplane needs to be refueled, the greater the operational tempo. At the end of the day, it’s all about warfighter effectiveness: the greater the energy efficiency, the higher the effectiveness.”
EnergyMMOWGLI, which stands for Energy Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet, was developed by the Office of Naval research in conjunction with the Naval Postgraduate School and the Institute for the future, a nonprofit research group based in California.
Players can register online at https://mmowgli.nps.edu/energy.
Photo credit: U.S. Navy