Our brigade staff was undergoing an evaluation exercise. Our mission was to attack the enemy line, and seize a designated key terrain feature. We developed three courses of action. This is where group think hit us. Two courses were complicated to execute, but gave us an excellent chance to succeed. The third option was much simpler to execute, but seriously violated a few of the principles of wars. The third option sacrificed Mass and Maneuver for Simplicity. But, the principle staff officers and the commander felt the third option could be successfully executed. When we went though a computer based exercise to evaluate our plan, we were easily stopped by the enemy with great loss. Discussion during the after action review highlighted that either of the other options would have probably succeeded. Some kind of automated double check would probably be very useful to verify the output of your decision making process.