Posts
Enjoy it while you have it.
Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise … cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military “transformation”—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more powerful weaponry and tactics.
Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, used old methods to evade Blue’s sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications. … In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces’ electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. … Another significant portion of Blue’s navy was “sunk” by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue’s inability to detect them as well as expected.
At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue’s ships were “re-floated”, and the rules of engagement were changed. … The war game was forced to follow a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory. …
HT: Robin.
On the other hand . . . how come none of our actual adversaries ever manage to pull anything like this off? In practice, our enemies excel, not at lightning victories, but in wearing us down over years with low-intensity methods like IEDs.
2 comments:
Happy July 4 to you Dr. Phi.
Interesting post...the total technological asymmetric threat. Not technologically advanced and capitalizing on it.
Cruise missiles and a flotilla of small go-fast boats? Sounds like Iran.
As for howcome our adversaries haven't done this yet, perhaps it is because we haven't given them the opportunity...we've been in their faces on land, not at sea. We haven't gone up against a true blue-water naval power since WWII.
The only reason our adversaries haven't chosen to do this is because they don't want to. The threat is seriously overblown. you cannot ever watch a TSA agent at work at the airport and think that there is any terrorist threat anywhere in the world. Most of America's generals in Afghanistan have families living in the USA wihtou securoty fences and armed guards 24-7. If anyone on teh other side cared about this at all, they haven't shown it.
Post a Comment