Ho’okele Mua II, a Wargame About Climate Change and Operational Risk in INDOPACOM

This report describes the development and execution of a climate change game for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). The game was intended to support planning by allowing players to explore the extent of operational risk that climate change could impose on the joint force in the Indo-Pacific region in the 2040s. The authors designed the game in two parts. In the first game, participants explored their perceptions of operational risk in each of a series of vignettes focused on supporting a broader, joint force mission. The vignettes covered consequential climate hazards for a variety of operations and operating locations. In the second game, participants made operationally informed, climate-based adaptation decisions from a constrained set of resources, decided on a course of action to respond to a large-scale conflict in the region, and experienced the consequences of their earlier decisions on the course of a conflict with a near-peer adversary.

In conducting this wargame, the authors found that climate change could accentuate existing challenges for the joint force. Since conflict involving a near-peer adversary is already a stressing scenario in which success is by no means guaranteed, even mild degradation from climate hazards could make a pronounced difference in warfighting outcomes. Not all climate effects will be insurmountable, but some of what the joint force relies on to fight a conflict in the near term — including locations, concepts, and investments — might not be viable options in the longer term in the absence of concerted investment, including cooperation with partners and allies.