Red leader

Marine Gen. (ret.) Paul Van Riper has joined the chorus of retired generals calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.

You may remember Gen. Van Riper from "Millennium Challenge 02" -- the largest war game ever staged by the U.S. military. The game, involving some 13,500 troops at a cost of around $250 million, was essentially a dress-rehearsal for the invasion of Iraq. Van Riper led the "Red," enemy, team.

And he won.

Or he would have won, if the game hadn't been rigged. For instance, he outfoxed the "Blue" (American) generals, sinking much of the American fleet in the Persian Gulf. So they called a time-out and a do-over to refloat the fleet. Just like in a real war.

The Army Times reported in 2002 on Van Riper's complaints that the game was rigged:

Van Riper, who retired in 1997 as head of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, is a frequent player in military war games and is regarded as a Red team specialist. He said the constraints placed on the Opposing Force in Millennium Challenge were the most restrictive he has ever experienced in an ostensibly free-play experiment.

Exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue, and on several occasions directed the Opposing Force not to use certain weapons systems against Blue. It even ordered him to reveal the location of Red units, he said

“We were directed … to move air defenses so that the Army and Marine units could successfully land,” he said. “We were simply directed to turn [the air-defense systems] off or move them. … So it was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be.”

Retired Ambassador Robert Oakley, who participated in the experiment as Red civilian leader, said Van Riper was outthinking the Blue Force from the first day of the exercise.

Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, negating Blue’s high-tech eavesdropping capabilities, Oakley said. Then, when the Blue fleet sailed into the Persian Gulf early in the experiment, Van Riper’s forces surrounded the ships with small boats and planes sailing and flying in apparently innocuous circles.

When the Blue commander issued an ultimatum to Red to surrender or face destruction, Van Riper took the initiative, issuing attack orders via the morning call to prayer broadcast from the minarets of his country’s mosques. His force’s small boats and aircraft sped into action

“By that time there wasn’t enough time left to intercept them,” Oakley said. As a result of Van Riper’s cunning, much of the Blue navy ended up at the bottom of the ocean. The Joint Forces Command officials had to stop the exercise and “refloat” the fleet in order to continue, Oakley said.

By all accounts, Van Riper is a wily general, but his approach to the Millennium Challenge shouldn't have been all that surprising to people in Washington -- a city that is, after all, named after a general who defeated a superpower by fighting asymmetrically. ("Asymmetric" is the current buzzword for the no-duh realization, as old at least as the Book of Judges, that it doesn't make much sense to go toe-to-toe in open battle with an obviously superior army.) But not only was the Pentagon braintrust flummoxed by Van Riper in the war game, they were just as surprised, months later during the actual invasion, when Iraqi insurgents began employing many of these same tactics. This was, they said, just another one of those calamities that "no one could have predicted." Except that everybody had.

(More on the Millennium Challenge rigging from Slate's Fred Kaplan and from Julian Borger in The Guardian.)

According to Fox News (in the C&L video linked above), the Bush administration is responding to Gen. Van Riper's comments by trying to identify who he has been talking to among active members of the military so that those officers can be punished and silenced. That's Bush 101: if a problem has been identified don't try to fix it, just retaliate against whoever identifies it.

Comments

[Laertes]

In defense of re-floating the fleet, what are they supposed to do? Say "Okay, good one. Guess we're done here. Everyone go home."

Seems to this civilian that the correct response is to say "oooo, good one" and make a note and then float the fleet and keep playing.

[JeffL]

I'd at least, you know, acknowledge that Red Leader won one.

And think about promoting him.

Maybe a cuppa tea? A nice raise?

[Zork]

@Laertes: The problem is that they didn't reset the exercise to *before* Red Team's tactic, and say, "Okay, now how can we beat this tactic?" Instead, they said, "Okay, Red Team isn't allowed to use that tactic, now let's pretend they didn't, and carry on." That's stupid. And it killed people.

[Erick Oppeen]

Gary Brecher commented, at length, on this on his "War Nerd" column at www.exile.ru. I disremember the date on the column, but a search of the War Nerd archives will turn it up.

Brecher said that the reason the brass went so ballistic over this, instead of promoting Van Riper, was that his tactic showed that against an enemy that has modern anti-ship missiles, big surface ships of the sort the Navy loves are nothing but big fat targets. Even if 90% of the incoming missiles get shot down, if you've got thousands of the things coming in, your fleet is...how you say...toast.

[Peatey]

Thanks Erick Oppeen, here is the December 2002 article link and relevant paragraphs:

What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won't last one single day in combat against a serious enemy.

...

That trick of sending messages by motorbike is a good example of a move that gets lots of publicity and sounds smart but doesn't mean much. OK, you send your messages by bike. For starters, that means they move at 30 mph, unlike radio messages, which are almost instant. That's a huge disadvantage. And what happens if your biker gets strafed? No message-or a captured message. I'd be happy to fight an army that had nothing better than motorbikes to communicate with.

But what van Ripen did to the US fleet...that's something very different. He was given nothing but small planes and ships-fishing boats, patrol boats, that kind of thing. He kept them circling around the edges of the Persian Gulf aimlessly, driving the Navy crazy trying to keep track of them. When the Admirals finally lost patience and ordered all planes and ships to leave, van Ripen had them all attack at once. And they sank two-thirds of the US fleet.

That should scare the hell out of everybody who cares about how well the US is prepared to fight its next war. It means that a bunch of Cessnas, fishing boats and assorted private craft, crewed by good soldiers and armed with anti-ship missiles, can destroy a US aircraft carrier. That means that the hundreds of trillions (yeah, trillions) of dollars we've invested in shipbuilding is wasted, worthless.

...

We may be lucky a little while longer, as long as we take on losers like Iraq. But what about Iran? The Iranians aren't cowardly slaves like the Iraqis. They're smart, they're dedicated, and they hate us like poison. Imagine how many "small aircraft and boats" there are along the Iranian coastline. Imagine every one of those craft stuffed full of explosives and turned into kamikazes. Now add all the anti-ship missiles the Iranians have been able to buy on the open market. If you really want to get scared, add a nuke or two.

...

Now try shifting the scenario to a US-China fight off Taiwan. The Chinese have it all: subs, planes, anti-ship missiles-Hell, they SELL that stuff to other countries! I'll say it plain: no American carrier would last five minutes in a full-scale naval battle off China.

[Edward Liu]

"Asymmetric" is the current buzzword for the no-duh realization, as old at least as the Book of Judges, that it doesn't make much sense to go toe-to-toe in open battle with an obviously superior army.

A quote from a nice, popular movie illustrates this point beautifully:

"I'd kill you in a fair fight!"
"That's not much of an incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?"

It seems that a criteria to be a general or an admiral in the Pentagon is to thoroughly and completely not understand this lesson.

[mmack]

The first time I read about Millenium Challenge '02 on www.counterpunch.com, I was instantly reminded of the Japanese Navy's planning for the Battle of Midway:

"During the month of May, war games were held on the Yamato [The Japanese Navy's "Super Battleship"], simulating the attack on Midway Island. On the large tables portraying the Pacific, the movement of ships and their actions proved to be almost too easy. And even when there was a problem, it was quickly discounted. For example, on one occasion, a test situation developed where Midway's land based aircraft struck the Carrier Strike Force even as Japanese planes were pounding Midway.

Following the rules of the wargame, the Umpire rolled the dice and came up with nine hits on the Japanese carriers, enough to sink two of the fleet carriers. Admiral Ugaki, moderating the games, overruled the umpire and allowed only three, thus losing only one carrier with another sustaining minor damage. In this way, the Imperial Fleet won victory after victory over the hapless Americans. Of course rolling dice and changing the outcome could not give an accurate portrayal of the real possibilities of such a confrontation."

Those of us who follow history remember how that battle turned out for the Japanese. Sounds like some of our senior level commanders suffer(ed) from a case of "Victory Disease".

[Erick Oppeen]

This is the sort of thing that makes me wonder just how many illusions our military carries around with it. And how we'd do against a large, motivated, skilful enemy *cough Iran cough cough*

As far as pointing you to the Brecher article goes---I'm always happy to help.

[Peatey]

Erick, do you know any other war-nerd type of free web resources? I'm almost done reading the archives and I need another military stuff to keep me occupied! :)

[wintermute]

Peaty: I always enjoy skimming through SpecWarNet.com...

[Edward Liu]

I got rather quickly addicted to DefenseTech, which mostly focuses on the technology behind warfare (and which also covered the Charlie Foxtrot that was Millenium "Challenge"). It's also a lot less jingoistic than a lot of other similarly minded blogs and is willing to admit that military force is sometimes not the best solution to a problem. I wouldn't pay much attention to the comments, which generally don't have those same traits, but the blog owners are good about updating posts if someone in the comments makes a particularly cogent point.

If nothing else, you'll get to see a pic of a dog with a camera strapped to its head if you search long enough.

[LL]

I second Defense Tech; it rocks

[Erick Oppeen]

You could try www.strategypage.com --- it's run by, IIRC, James Dunnigan, the guy who wrote _How to Make War_ and other how-war-works books. In RL, he works as a wargame designer, but that forces him to be up on his toes on the subject---these days, wargames are Serious Business in the military, and if he gets things wrong, he _will_ hear about it. At length.