U.S., Japan Deepen Interoperability at Northwest Pacific Wargame
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MONTEREY, Calif. – The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) led a team of military professionals, academics, and defense experts through a complex two-and-a-half-week wargaming event in Kanagawa, Japan, earlier this year, aimed at strengthening bilateral maritime operational effectiveness among U.S. and Japanese forces.
The Northwest Pacific (NWPAC) wargame brought together more than 600 participants from the Japan Self-Defense Forces, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and supporting organizations across government, industry, and academia. Held annually, this iteration of the wargame was a fully comprehensive exercise representing a new level of coordination among allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region.
“While we plan, operate, and execute with Japanese defense forces every day in the Western Pacific, dynamic wargaming refines the planning and teamwork required to provide for our common defense against future and developing threats,” said Vice Adm. Fred Kacher, commander, U.S. 7th Fleet. “NPS brought together the right talent and capability to enable us to rehearse how we fight, building confidence and strengthening our interoperability with our Japanese teammates.”
The wargame was planned and executed by a cross-disciplinary team from NPS with a focus on analyzing command structures, evaluating decision-making under uncertainty, and testing future warfighting concepts. Faculty and students from the NPS departments of Defense Analysis; Operations Research; Defense Management; National Security Affairs; Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute; and Physics worked directly alongside military planners to generate both qualitative and quantitative interdisciplinary assessments for operational sponsors.
“This isn’t just an academic exercise,” said Jason Perry, NPS NWPAC wargame director and a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel. “Our approach to designing wargames allows us to integrate graduate education and applied research in support of operational planning and decision making, with real implications for U.S. and alliance force posture and interoperability in the Indo-Pacific region.”
This year’s wargame demonstrated how NPS uniquely bridges operational imperatives with academic rigor. Many of the scenarios were designed in partnership with Japanese defense leaders, including planners from the Maritime Staff Office and educators from the Maritime Command and Staff College. Operational U.S participants from U.S. Pacific Fleet and U.S. 7th Fleet were active throughout the game, from scenario development to post-event analysis.
“NPS is in a unique position to serve as an intellectual connector by translating academic models into operational recommendations and helping our allies do the same,” said Perry.
Warfighting scenarios were built around operations, activities, and investments frameworks to stress current organizational constructs, surface coordination gaps, and assess the potential of emerging technologies. Teams explored multi-domain operations involving naval, ground, and air elements, with an emphasis on unmanned systems, contested logistics, and alliance interoperability.
Central to this effort was a focus on creating realistic operational problems where participating units must generate coordinated responses stressing bilateral decision making and increasing shared understanding at every level of command.
U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hunter Marner, a 2023 NPS graduate and executive director for the NPS Wargame Center, said this year’s game marked a significant advancement in the series, featuring fully integrated joint participation across all warfare domains and doubling the participant size compared to the previous year.
“NPS collaborated with several technology industry partners to incorporate non-traditional sea denial into the vignettes and implement a model and simulation-supported adjudication process,” said Marner. “This approach combined traditional game methods with modern capabilities, enhancing analytics across the naval education enterprise. We evaluated not only how we fight, but how we plan, communicate, and adapt in dynamic environments.”
The NPWAC wargame with Japan demonstrated NPS’s unique value of combining applied research with professional military education. Many NPS students served as embedded analysts developing insights that simultaneously advanced their military education and thesis work while also providing immediate value to the wargame.
One of the NPS students on the joint team, U.S. Army Maj. Ryan A. Bilyeu, worked as a data collector for the NWPAC wargame observing and ascertaining why players were making critical operational decisions.
“After years of hearing about wargames from senior leaders, I had no concrete idea what that actually meant,” said Bilyeu. “This gave me a foundational understanding of how it can shape plans, doctrine, resource management, and fiscal allocations. U.S. and Japanese forces worked through operational processes, resource priorities, and national interests to solve overlapping national security problems.”
U.S. Air Force Maj. Sean Grindlay, another NPS student on the team, shadowed players to document decisions, techniques, and interactions. He said the NWPAC wargame immersed him in a real-world exercise which provided an unparalleled opportunity for hands-on learning.
“The academic course and subsequent wargame armed me with a deep understanding of wargaming, providing a foundation for future staff and command billets,” said Grindlay. “I organized daily breakout sessions with participating subject matter experts to discuss these questions and seek actionable solutions. Additionally, engaging in the wargame provided nuanced insight into a priority defense initiative. I am prepared to grapple with these challenges in the future.”
Behind the scenes, NPS leveraged custom modeling tools, simulations, and real-time data collection platforms to evaluate the implications of operational decisions. The technologies supported a team of subject matter expert adjudicators and analysts to measure key metrics such as force effectiveness, decision timelines, and sustainment feasibility across different scenarios.
NPS worked closely with a range of industry partners to explore how technologies might support player experience, move adjudication, data cataloging, and data analysis. One of those industry partners was Valkyrie Enterprises to advance the modeling and simulation Joint Theatre level Simulation-Global Operations software (JTLS-GO); they will continue to work with NPS to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into the collected wargaming data creating more accurate scenarios and results for NWPAC Wargame ‘26.
Insights gained directly informed the strategic discussions that followed. Throughout the game, periodic in-stride assessments and post-move reviews helped shape the recommendations presented to senior leaders, ensuring operational outcomes were grounded in data as well as doctrine.
Flag and general officers attended the final event, a facilitated after-action review (AAR). The AAR allowed these decision-makers to review game findings related to force design, operational risk, and alliance readiness, which are all key components of Indo-Pacific deterrence strategy.
“NWPAC is a wargame, but it’s also a mechanism for advancing regional security,” said Jeff Appleget, NPS senior lecturer in the Operations Research department and a practitioner who has taught and applied wargaming in both academic and operational settings for many years. “By bringing together the analytical capacity of our wargame staff and the warfighters of U.S. and Japanese forces from across the security enterprise, we are helping shape future concepts and capabilities that are both innovative and grounded in reality.”
As the Indo-Pacific region continues to be a focal point for global security concerns, activities like NWPAC wargames demonstrate the evolving role of education, research, and analysis in support of operational readiness. NPS plans to incorporate lessons learned from the event into curriculum development, ongoing research, and future iterations of the game.
“The value of the NWPAC wargame isn’t only what we learn during the game,” said Perry. “It’s what we carry forward into NPS classrooms, into research, concepts of operations, command centers, and into alliance coordination mechanisms. NPS’ approach to wargaming is about principles and practice with real-world impact.”
Lessons learned from this year’s NWPAC are being integrated into the planning process for the 2026 NWPAC wargame, and participating teams will gather at NPS in December to complete final preparations.
NPS, located in Monterey, California, provides defense-focused graduate education, including classified studies and interdisciplinary research, to advance the operational effectiveness, technological leadership, and warfighting advantage of the naval service. Established in 1909, NPS offers master’s and doctorate programs to Department of War military and civilians, along with international partners, to deliver transformative solutions and innovative leaders through advanced education and research.
Date Taken:
11.18.2025
Date Posted:
11.18.2025 18:41
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551644
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MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA, US
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