Make Them Fight! If You Want a More Lethal Military, Have Generals Compete in Wargames

Benjamin Jensen 

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The lights dim, and the screens flicker to life. Across the room, a dozen general officers lean over virtual terrain maps, eyes scanning for anticipated enemy movements tied to intelligence feeds as they look for candidates for possible pulse strikes. Each general is fighting another general, guided by only an AI staff assistant and a playbook with decision points and tailored options in lieu of a long operational plan. There is no staff circus churning out endless amounts of PowerPoint briefs. No legion of contractors running white cells and resurrecting their inner dungeon masters as they throw dice and debate overly complicated combat adjudication tables. It’s more Thunderdome than Title 10 and global games of old.

One general tries to pull the enemy out of position using deception. Another gambles on a high-risk, high-payoff multidomain deep strike against command-and-control nodes. There are no referees—just results. A publicly visible leaderboard ranks all officers in the room by their ability to synchronize effects and outfight a thinking opponent.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s what should happen when we talk about preparing our senior leaders for war. It describes a modern kriegsakademie built not on endless seminars, lectures, and games too big to fail, but actual competition. In this professional fight club commanders are forced to prove they can actually fight against someone trying to beat them.

While Washington is filled with calls to cut the number of generals and consolidate headquarters, these measures will prove insufficient to increasing lethality barring a deeper change to modern military culture. Cutting billets won’t make the joint force better at its core mission—fighting and winning wars—if the officers who remain don’t regularly compete, rehearse, and prove they can outthink and outfight a capable adversary. The core question we should be asking is simple: Do our senior leaders fight enough to understand advantage in modern war? Being the best marksman or top gun graduate when you’re young is no guarantee you have what it takes to fight large formations in multiple domains.

The sad truth is that senior officers spend more time navigating policy meetings than practicing the art and science of war. Without a culture of competition—of trial by simulated fire—we risk fielding a military led by assistant managers of violence rather than warfighters. Lethality isn’t a budget line or a briefing slide; it’s a habit built through pressure, repetition, and the humility of losing in a safe-to-fail environment.