IDK about Iran, but the US ran a wargame for the Iraq war before they did it, and they had a pretty capable American commander running the fake-Iraqi side, and he absolutely fucked up the fake-Americans and then they stopped it and rewound and said he wasn’t allowed to do the things he did the first time around and that time the US won.
All the strengths and weaknesses of the US military brass on full display all in one little anecdote 🙂
And yes guerilla warfare will fuck up any military that relies on money and technology, but in particular the US is especially vulnerable to it for a couple different reasons, I think
The MC Fatwa from /r/warcollege needs to be brought over to Lemmy.
No mercy for the heretical Millennium Challenge posters. If you’re credulously posting this as an example of how Iranian motorcycle messengers driving ICBM equipped rowboats can beat carriers, you really need to do more reading on this topic. The faithful are commanded to shun these individuals and we will send them from our lands, inshallah.
Van Riper was told to cut that shit out because he basically cheated. His “motorcycle couriers” operated exactly like radio communications, transmitting orders instantly with no loss or disruption. The US fleet was placed miles offshore by the simulation because of peacetime shipping lanes instead of at standoff range like in a real conflict. His “missile boats” were a bunch of fishing boats and yachts carrying AShM larger than the boats themselves. He blanketed paratrooper LZs with chemical weapons because he knew where they were dropping ahead of time.
Then after being told to stop, he went crying to the media instead.
I looked this up. This is the reddit post, and this is the interview that it links to. I’d recommend reading the actual interview even though it’s a little technical, instead of getting it through 3-4 layers of telephone-game from people who may or may not know what they’re talking about or how to spell Van Riper’s name.
I, honestly, couldn’t completely make sense of the interview because of how deep into the details Kernan goes. I do note that he strongly disagrees with the thing I said that the second run of the simulation was railroading a certain particular result, and goes into some details of problems in the simulation that Van Riper then exploited, but he also says this:
I’ll be straight up with you. I was the reason why Paul Van Riper was at Joint Forces Command. He’s a very controversial individual. He is a good warfighter. I admire and respect him very much. I brought him in because he is controversial.
We were looking at it from an experimental concept perspective. He was looking at it from an exercise perspective. So I think if you – you know, if you neck it down and look at it just from his perspective, an awful lot of what he had to say was valid. But if you look at it from what we were trying to accomplish in the way of setting conditions to ensure that the right objectives were satisfied, the experimental objectives, it’s a much bigger picture, broader picture.
Now maybe that’s just him being diplomatic and supportive not wanting to throw the guy under the bus. And like I say, I don’t know enough about the details to really talk about what he’s saying in terms of picking out details of what I was saying that’s wrong. But to me it sounds like on the overall point, he’s saying the same thing that me and @[email protected] were saying: Van Riper was trying to win, blue team was trying to run a productive simulation, and those aren’t exactly the same thing and they had to override him on some things to make the exercise into the second one of those things. But that doesn’t mean he’s completely wrong with everything he did.
The guy got to make his point; I’m sure they’re going to adjust some things in their strategy because of things he did. At the same time, you’re gonna go talk to congress or the president or something and lay out what you want to do, and they’re going to ask, okay what’s the prediction for what’ll happen? And you say well sir we actually did a little war game for it, and the Iraqis crippled most of our ships and the landing failed and we’re still in the Persian Gulf for the most part but it’s mostly a big clusterfuck at this point. So we’re good to move forward, right?
Part of the goal of IRL war games is to give the troops themselves experience. You don’t get much training in if you only run one situation or if all your situations fail to use a troop type.
In the situation you are talking about, things were learned from the first scenario. Then they ran the scenario again under different conditions to learn more things and train troops more.
Not really. They disallowed specific tactics that the red team had used to win, told them they had to turn on their radars at certain points (so that the fancy electronic countermeasures would work), told them they couldn’t shoot down planes during a particular attack, things like that. For the most part the things that were different the second time around were artificial constraints on the red team.
Ryan McBeth responded to this exact thing. The short version of his answer was that the first run through showed the red team won. That information was written down and learned. With the main lessons now learned, the wargame was restarted under different conditions to allow the other troops to train who weren’t used in the first run. A bridging team that just ‘dies’ in the wargame doesn’t get to hone their valuable skills in the most realistic situation they will ever be in short of people actually getting shot. So, you want subsequent runs to include the bridging team, and all the other teams that were not used in the first run.
Restarting wargames under different situations and with different restrictions is expected and normal.
told them they couldn’t shoot down planes during a particular attack
Correct. This allows those pilots to get experience doing what they were trained to do. Those individual pilots don’t learn shit if they were told they ‘died’ and immediately return to base and sit on their ass the entire exercise. You need a followup run where they get to do their thing.
Yeah, I agree with all of this. I said basically what you just said (with a lot less detail / citation) in my comment that starts “I mean I get it” (which I just recently edited to expand it a little).
I understand why they did it. I’m not saying it wasn’t productive to do. I actually think the way it played out probably made it extremely productive to do, and it’s to the US military’s credit that that type of outcome can even happen, as opposed to most authoritarian structures where the red team would just understand that they’re “supposed to lose” and wouldn’t even try to do something like Riper did. You don’t have to have the final “official” outcome be a blue team loss in order for everyone to learn valuable lessons from it.
What I was disagreeing with was your assertion that they just changed the conditions. They changed around the parameters and rules underlying the situation, specifically to railroad the simulation into a particular outcome. Even if I understand why that happened I can still point it out and think it’s notable, no?
IDK about Iran, but the US ran a wargame for the Iraq war before they did it, and they had a pretty capable American commander running the fake-Iraqi side, and he absolutely fucked up the fake-Americans and then they stopped it and rewound and said he wasn’t allowed to do the things he did the first time around and that time the US won.
All the strengths and weaknesses of the US military brass on full display all in one little anecdote 🙂
And yes guerilla warfare will fuck up any military that relies on money and technology, but in particular the US is especially vulnerable to it for a couple different reasons, I think
The MC Fatwa from /r/warcollege needs to be brought over to Lemmy.
Van Riper was told to cut that shit out because he basically cheated. His “motorcycle couriers” operated exactly like radio communications, transmitting orders instantly with no loss or disruption. The US fleet was placed miles offshore by the simulation because of peacetime shipping lanes instead of at standoff range like in a real conflict. His “missile boats” were a bunch of fishing boats and yachts carrying AShM larger than the boats themselves. He blanketed paratrooper LZs with chemical weapons because he knew where they were dropping ahead of time.
Then after being told to stop, he went crying to the media instead.
I looked this up. This is the reddit post, and this is the interview that it links to. I’d recommend reading the actual interview even though it’s a little technical, instead of getting it through 3-4 layers of telephone-game from people who may or may not know what they’re talking about or how to spell Van Riper’s name.
I, honestly, couldn’t completely make sense of the interview because of how deep into the details Kernan goes. I do note that he strongly disagrees with the thing I said that the second run of the simulation was railroading a certain particular result, and goes into some details of problems in the simulation that Van Riper then exploited, but he also says this:
Now maybe that’s just him being diplomatic and supportive not wanting to throw the guy under the bus. And like I say, I don’t know enough about the details to really talk about what he’s saying in terms of picking out details of what I was saying that’s wrong. But to me it sounds like on the overall point, he’s saying the same thing that me and @[email protected] were saying: Van Riper was trying to win, blue team was trying to run a productive simulation, and those aren’t exactly the same thing and they had to override him on some things to make the exercise into the second one of those things. But that doesn’t mean he’s completely wrong with everything he did.
Sounds like the dude played to the rules of the exercise and not the intent. He’s a d&d power gamer that ruined the campaign.
There was always that one kid, you’re like “I got you!” and then he’s like “nuh uh no you didn’t…” and makes up some shit
I mean I get it
The guy got to make his point; I’m sure they’re going to adjust some things in their strategy because of things he did. At the same time, you’re gonna go talk to congress or the president or something and lay out what you want to do, and they’re going to ask, okay what’s the prediction for what’ll happen? And you say well sir we actually did a little war game for it, and the Iraqis crippled most of our ships and the landing failed and we’re still in the Persian Gulf for the most part but it’s mostly a big clusterfuck at this point. So we’re good to move forward, right?
Part of the goal of IRL war games is to give the troops themselves experience. You don’t get much training in if you only run one situation or if all your situations fail to use a troop type.
In the situation you are talking about, things were learned from the first scenario. Then they ran the scenario again under different conditions to learn more things and train troops more.
Not really. They disallowed specific tactics that the red team had used to win, told them they had to turn on their radars at certain points (so that the fancy electronic countermeasures would work), told them they couldn’t shoot down planes during a particular attack, things like that. For the most part the things that were different the second time around were artificial constraints on the red team.
Ryan McBeth responded to this exact thing. The short version of his answer was that the first run through showed the red team won. That information was written down and learned. With the main lessons now learned, the wargame was restarted under different conditions to allow the other troops to train who weren’t used in the first run. A bridging team that just ‘dies’ in the wargame doesn’t get to hone their valuable skills in the most realistic situation they will ever be in short of people actually getting shot. So, you want subsequent runs to include the bridging team, and all the other teams that were not used in the first run.
Restarting wargames under different situations and with different restrictions is expected and normal.
Correct. This allows those pilots to get experience doing what they were trained to do. Those individual pilots don’t learn shit if they were told they ‘died’ and immediately return to base and sit on their ass the entire exercise. You need a followup run where they get to do their thing.
Yeah, I agree with all of this. I said basically what you just said (with a lot less detail / citation) in my comment that starts “I mean I get it” (which I just recently edited to expand it a little).
I understand why they did it. I’m not saying it wasn’t productive to do. I actually think the way it played out probably made it extremely productive to do, and it’s to the US military’s credit that that type of outcome can even happen, as opposed to most authoritarian structures where the red team would just understand that they’re “supposed to lose” and wouldn’t even try to do something like Riper did. You don’t have to have the final “official” outcome be a blue team loss in order for everyone to learn valuable lessons from it.
What I was disagreeing with was your assertion that they just changed the conditions. They changed around the parameters and rules underlying the situation, specifically to railroad the simulation into a particular outcome. Even if I understand why that happened I can still point it out and think it’s notable, no?