Air Force – Godot Creative

AIR FORCE.

Translating National Strategic Decision Making to a virtual space.

In 2012, Godot joined our long-term partner The Regis Company in developing a multi-day simulation-based training for the US Air Force, translating their National Strategic Decision Making textbook and process into an asynchronous, interactive experience.

Our group’s focus for the project was on content, multimedia, and storytelling. We brought the learner into the created world of critical recommendations, complex courses of action, and dynamic, realistic scenarios from dirty bombs at the Canadian border to guns, bugs, and drugs arriving in our ports by cargo ship.

GODOT.

A story of conflict told through personal experience and deep academic perspective.

The Cuban Missile Crisis provided a real-world narrative of strategic decision making to tie the simulation’s learnings to historical application. To tell the story, we reached out to renown academics who had both studied the Crisis and lived through the period.

These were our voices.

Dr. Francis Beer, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Colorado

Dr. Gregory Young, Professor University of Colorado, former Commander in the US Navy, former Dean at the Air War College

Dr. Ole Holsti, George V. Allen Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Duke University

Dr. Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University

Dr. Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev, Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev

Structured around COAs.

Strategic decision making on an international level is not a simple calculus. No individual is saying, “I think we should do X, Y, and Z.” Rather, endless potential courses of action (COAs) are constantly being analyzed, filtered, and adjusted to fit the dynamic process of decision making, weighing pros, cons, and causal effect.

After creating the various realistic scenarios, briefs, and news articles, Godot visualized the mission briefs and infection points in the simulation to add a layer of “Hollywood verisimilitude” to the simulation.