How we win wars.

[dutch508]

It all started one day when Centurion Vacerius was order to go to Rome and take part in a Capabilities Needs Assessment wargame. Vacerius had served 26 years in the legions from soldier to Primus Pilus and thought he would not be a very good person to take part in this exercise, saying so to his commander.
“Come now, Vacerius,” spoke the legate, “Who better to talk military capabilities than one who’s served in the ranks for so long?”
And, so, come on fine warm Monday Morning, Vacerius traveled along one of the many roads build by the legions and soon found himself in Rome. Having checked into a local hotel he then traveled to the military headquarters and checked in.
“ So glad you could make it down, Centurion. Have you gotten a room yet? Excellent. We will start early tomorrow morning and begin the wargame.” The senior officer didn’t so much speak to Vacerius as at him. He was sure regardless of his answers the officer would have said the exact same thing.
“What is it that we are doing here, sir?” asked the Centurion.
The officer blinked his eyes in silence. “Were you not briefed?”
“No, Sir. Other than to report here that is.”
“Well fine then. It will all be clear in the morning, you know.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh…I’ll need 21 silver per day for food.”
“uh…”
“Yes. We will be feeding you and you need to pay. Just sign on this form and we’ll take it out of your pay.” Vacerius knew better than to argue and so signed the chit. It didn’t matter that he could eat at a local restaurant for half that, the legion said eat here for this much and so he did.
Early the next morning Vacerius returned and found his seat in the large meeting room. Well, he didn’t really until he pointed out he didn’t have a seat to one of the facilitators and volunteered to go home. As eat was soon found and the briefings on what they were to accomplish began.
Five hours later they began their work.
The mission was simple: take a look a current legion structure in regards to what gaps existed in various situations, and then come up with solutions to those gaps.
Or, at least, it sounded simple.
The first gap was, “The Centuries lack the capability to receive, analyze and record orders from higher and pass them down to lower units.” Vacerius looked at this and thought, “I’ve dealt with this for the last 26 years. I know exactly what we need.”
He stood, “We need a bigger trumpet system to relay the orders better.”
The crowd erupted, “We can not make a bigger trumpet, it would weigh too much.”
“A bigger trumpet would change the tones it currently makes and so we’d need more training to understand what the sounds meant.”
“A bigger trumpet means more brass. More brass costs more money through transport costs, manufacturing costs, slave costs in mining the ore, trees cut to fuel the forge, more axes to cut the trees, more slaves to cut the trees, more…”
a voice cut through the discussion from the head table. “A  bigger trumpet isn’t in the futures plans.”
That ended further discussion. For a moment.
“I’m not sure what he means by a bigger trumpet system. Is he saying a bigger trumpet or a bigger system of trumpets across the century organization?”
“If we add more trumpets we’ll need more trumpet players which takes away war-fighters.”
“Where would the extra trumpet players be located in the ranks? That’s my questions.”
“If we add more players that’s more food which means more wagons carrying food, more oxen to drag the wagons, more food for the wagons, more wear on the road requiring more repair…”
“There is no requirement for more trumpet players in the futures legion.” The head table again stopped all conversation.
“We could send a runner.”
“We do that now.”
“A faster runner?”
“That could work.”
“How would a faster runner make the Centuries record orders better than they do now?”
Vacerius looked around in confusion. Was this sort of discussion supported to make a better legion? What did the number of slaves cutting wood have to do with the effectiveness of the orders transmission process?
A older looking citizen stood, “We could make the wax-boards two inches bigger on each side.”
“The boards would be heavier.”
“They would then be too big to fit into the dispatch pouches.”
“Bigger boards would need more wax.”
“Where do we get wax from anyway?”
“We’d have to have more tress cut down to make the bigger boards and that leads to..”
“We’ve already discussed that line of thought.”
The room was silent.
“Besides,” a voice started again, “Centuries do not analyze the orders from the Legates, they follow them.”
“Are we saying that this gap is not a valid gap?”
The voices murmured amongst themselves as Vacerius sat back in amazement.
“This is not a valid gap.” They agreed. Two hours had gone by.
Vacerius shook his head in amazement, ‘How do we ever win any wars.” He thought to himself.
“Good work, people. Only 43 more gaps to go.”