I am not aware of the War College doing a Custer Battlefield Staff Ride. What you describe is the standard format for all staff rides done by CGSC and the War College. Custer Staff Rides have been done on horseback, an option added by I Corps at Lewis McChord Joint Base.
.”I am not aware of the War College doing a Custer Battlefield Staff Ride...” [centurion316, post 173]
It wasn’t a staff ride.
It was a classroom exercise using subscale models of the landscape, vegetation, and forces engaged: they were called sand table or tabletop exercises as I recall. Something wargamers used to do quite a bit of, before better computer simulation made higher video fidelity possible. Which led to more-interesting gaming of all sorts.
When I was a cadet, there were several clubs devoted to the pastime (which figured in classroom lessons as well). One roommate would set up entire platoons & companies of what were essentially toy soldiers, testing assumptions and recreating specific battles.
Regret to report I cannot recall the publication in which the article on the exercise appeared. The key point was that the instructors deliberately sanitized the specifics in advance, to hamper the students when it came to figuring out what actual battle was being reenacted, thus negating any tendency toward prejudgment. And the only noteworthy outcome was that the students ended up making the same decisions that the real officers did on the day of the actual battle in 1876.
A staff ride on real live horses must have been of special interest. I’ve heard about lots of staff rides, but in actuality most could be termed “walks.” Or the groups proceed in modern vehicles.
I never went on any - was never enough of a fast burner, nor sufficiently politically connected, to attend any senior service schools.