Courtesy Photo | Command and General Staff Officer Course Staff groups 14C-D meet during a review of...... read more read more
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas – The Army’s Transformation Initiative has thrust the force into one of the fastest modernization efforts in decades.
Headlines are full of buzzwords like “Artificial Intelligence”, “Acquisition Modernization”, “Counter UAS”.
The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College turned a buzzword into a necessity for professional military education with recent success using a student-instructor created AI-enabled wargame recently tested in a single-day exercise.
Maj. Anthony Joyce, alongside fellow instructor, Lt. Col. Timothy Williams, believe AI integration is more than a curriculum focus, it’s a way of shaping the Army’s future.
Joyce explained in a little over a week, at zero cost, an AI-enabled wargame was created that has career-influencing impacts for students.
“We’re effectively transforming CGSS from a just a schoolhouse into a no-code AI software development hub for the Army,” he said. “This empowers graduating officers to arrive at their new units as immediate change agents, equipped with tangible, ready-to-use solutions.”
The wargame AI-agent, or exercise-specific programming was built using readily available tools like Vantage by five students and instructors.
The AI-enabled wargame consisted of several main components:
While AI remains an emerging PME multiplier, CGSS instructors recognize students and faculty have significantly varying AI experience.
To ensure the exercise focused on how to efficiently use AI in an operational planning wargame, students and faculty received two hours of basic AI instruction.
The instruction provided an overview for using AI, prompt construction, and human override of outputs.
For Cpt. Regina Ebell, who was part of the student team who created the AI agent, her AI use had been “casual” with no prior experience with military application.
“What was most valuable for me was learning that you don’t just ask one question and accept the first answer. We had to learn to focus the model through a series of increasingly precise prompts testing, refining, and tailoring the outputs to our staff’s specific needs,” Ebell explained. “That iterative process was really the ‘aha’ moment: understanding that AI is a partner you need to guide, not a magic box that you turn loose and trust blindly.”
Trained, and guided by the AI agent creators like Ebell, 32 students across two staff groups, including international officers, tested courses of action using the AI-enabled wargame in a single-day scenario.
AI allowed students to explore COAs and adjacent outcomes over nine full turns of the exercise, a five time increase from standard dice-driven wargames, which averages about two turns per exercise day.
Each turn, thanks to the AI-agent, allowed students to input relevant information related to their COAs and receive outputs, to include visuals, about a page and a half in length.
These outcomes were reviewed and analyzed by students, with clarifying information put back into the AI-agent.
Even with secondary, redefining prompts into the AI-agent, turns only averaged about 20 minutes, allowing more learning opportunities as more COAs and their respective effects on the scenario’s environment were explored.
This expedited nature of data outputs would typically take hours of manual computation and analysis by a staff. The data outputs exposed details critical to decision making that human work may have missed.
The exercise’s outcomes moved beyond the predictability of increased number of turns and created deeper doctrinal understanding and application amongst the future field-grade leaders.
The AI agent not only uncovered blind spots in COAs and respective outcomes, but delivered battlefield success influencers not previously considered, encouraging more adaptive, and creative thinking as students lead through those AI-discovered variables.
Maj. Seth Lavenski, who managed output formatting and overall AI agent refinement, explained AI is not new, and the power it can have to increase tempos, improve mission readiness, and enhance expertise must be recognized and understood, especially by students like himself.
Completing the Command and General Staff Officer Course places certain expectations on graduates, and AI knowledge has been added to that already long list, he said.
“Our formations expect us to drive modernization, not catch up to it,” Lavenski said.
Lavenski acknowledged the transition from a company-grade to a field-grade officer requires students to be aware of and understand not only basic leadership competencies but also the importance of using expertise gained through PME to drive meaningful change.
He credited his instructors for the opportunity to fully engage with generating impact through education. “The experience reinforced that innovation thrives when leaders empower teams to experiment, learn, and iterate toward better solutions,” Lavenski said.
The experiment and its associated solutions were captured by the AI-agent team in a co-authored article outlining these multi-layered results and why it is demonstrated proof to why AI must be integrated within professional military education.
According to Ebell, the article was a necessity after seeing the successful integration of a buzzword technology into PME.
“I wanted to help capture and share what we actually did in the classroom – how we used AI as a practical tool to improve and accelerate our planning, not just as a buzzword,” she said. “My classmates and I saw very quickly that even with limited prior experience using AI, we could meaningfully integrate it into a traditional staff process and get real value out of it.”
Aside from the curriculum-based outcomes, the AI-enabled wargame highlighted common themes that, according to the students responsible for building it, could drive impactful change for the Army.
Cpt. Tyree Meadows, who was the lead developer for the prompts used throughout the scenario, is no stranger to AI, using it frequently in his daily life.
The use of AI within his military education illuminated a key factor for him: this AI exercise isn’t just a check in the block lesson, it’s a deliberate effort to generate career-long skills.
“AI is not something you can simply offload thinking to. Leaders must understand how it works, when its appropriate, how to critique outputs, and how to maintain a human in the loop,” Meadows said. “Without experimentation and training in PME, leaders will enter key positions unprepared to maximize these tools – or to recognize when not to use them.”
Maj. Jody Colton, simulations officer and member of the development team, was looking for outcomes to implement in his next assignment.
“In my mind, I am trying to envision how this tool can complement what my functional area is working hard to achieve with Next Gen Construction in the Synthetic Training Environment,” Colton said.
Echoing his co-creators, Colton explained AI skills gained throughout the wargame build are critical and go beyond the game’s demonstration of how it can improve decision speed.
“This feels like jumping on a moving train moment. If PME does not incorporate emergent technology, even if it must do it in stride, we will miss the train,” he said.
Williams and Joyce explained the AI-agent wargame exercise is something easily replicable and in direct support of joint warfighter doctrinal outcomes.
Similarly, in academic year 2025, CGSC’s School of Advanced Military Studies launched its own experimental, multi-day practical application of AI module.
Also student developed, the module had similar educational outcomes in developing students’ AI-skills and it’s application to the art of war.
The replicable nature and demonstrated PME impacts within CGSS and SAMS places CGSS as a leader in AI-implementation not only at America’s School for War, but across military education.
The article written by the students and instructors can be read here: https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/01/16/ai-enabled-wargaming-cgsc/
| Date Taken: | 01.16.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 01.16.2026 15:03 |
| Story ID: | 556344 |
| Location: | FORT LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 28 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, More than a buzzword: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College leads PME AI-integration, by Sarah Hauck, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
