The US military (and other too) use simulation, modeling, and analysis tools to help design all sorts of activities and equipment. Examples at http://jasp-online.org/model-simulations/ * I used ESAMS (Enhanced Surface-to-air Missile Simulation) and CODER (COnceptual DEsign Representation) to help flesh out design details for various US Air Force avionics platforms. ESAMS is a tools to help evaluate missile / aircraft scenarios. CODER is a discrete event simulation tool for designing and evaluating aircraft cockpit automation.

The RAND Corporation is a group that uses games and simulation to better understand many subjects (policy, healthcare, education, etc). See https://www.rand.org/search.html?query=games

This podcast episode from RAND shares an example of how they use gaming tools: https://www.rand.org/multimedia/audio/2017/03/23/the-serious...