Over at Foreign Policy, John Arquilla - the professor and chairof the defense analysis department at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School - writes about Game Theory with regards to the state of our Navy and recent overly-confident statements by our own President.  Instead of using complex algorithms, Professor Arquilla uses games we all know - Battleship and Stratego - to demonstrate the lack of strategic understanding at the highest levels of the Obama Administration.

...In the finalcandidates' debate last week, President Obama delivered a telling, somewhatsnarky zinger in response to Governor Romney's call for naval expansion: "Thisisn't ‘Battleship.'" He then went on to school Romney about how having someaircraft carriers and submarines means we don't need more ships. The governorhad no adequate reply.

But the fact ofthe matter is that the old "Battleship" board game -- not the more recent movieflop that was somehow based on it -- offers exactly the right metaphor todescribe strategic affairs in the information age. "Battleship" does so bycapturing the distilled essence of naval operations today: the hider/finderdynamic...

Read the whole piece here.

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It's worth remembering that in that game, the aircraft carrier can survive five hits.