Sorry if this has already been mentioned elsewhere (seems like it should have been) but I thought it might interest some here.
This story from * The Guardian * describes how the U.S. military set up a huge war game to practice for a potential war in Iraq, but the wily Viet Vet who played Saddam won handily. So the U.S. un-sunk its boats, un-drowned its soldiers, and declared the play-war a success.
For crying out loud. I wish this had been reported more fully. The Military’s defense of “that would never happen!” doesn’t work anymore. As was demonstrated last year, anything can and does happen in war, and if the military doesn’t want to suffer enormous losses, they’d better take that warning seriously. So no more cheating at the war games, 'kay?
Eh, yikes. That’s one scary story. I’m open to other interpretations, but from the looks of it, it seems like the top brass, using 13,000 troops, couldn’t outsmart a 64 year old Vietnam vet, and then decided to cheat in order to claim “victory”.
Yeah, that’s the sort of people I’d trust my sons life to when they send American troups to Iraq. Of course, I don’t have a son, and I’m not American. But still, WTF?
When you imagine the orgaisation and time(read money) required to organise this excercise, then its not unreasonable for the top brass to want to ‘revive’ casualties.
The best way to run this would have been to have the flexibility to ‘reset’ the excercise to zero and then run again using the new data, but this would mean that the rules would have to be written in, along with the logisitical ability to move back to the start.
The result is not necessarily all that important.
Other aspects of the excercise would be training operatives to run their equipment over an extended period under wartime watchkeeping pressures.
It would be to run rarely used emergency directives, check for things as mundane as the availability of spare parts, the ability to organise large movements of men and material, and to put key staff under pressure to see how they handle it, as well as to check out possible future talent, on both sides of the wargame.
American soldiers are so superior to the Iraqi’s that we don’t need to assess Saddam’s capabilities before joining battle. Anyone who hands us our ass on a paper plate is obviously a cheater who doesn’t know that even wars have rules. This so called “general Paul Van Riper” is not a team player.
In 1942, before the Midway campaign, the Imperial Japanese Navy had doubts about its outcome. So they staged a wargame to see what they could expect. And lo and behold ! They lost several carriers to minimal losses to the US Navy. Of course such a result was not possible, so the judges decided that several of the carriers were not really “sunk” and they juggled the final results until they reached one they “felt” was more appropriate. Pleased with themselves, they launched the operation.
On June 4 1942, the US Navy scored one of its most important victory ever, turning the tide in the Pacific.
Wargames aren’t only about winning. A loss provides as much information as a win. But sitting on your ass for 13 days of a 14 day scenario after you lost would be pretty damn stupid.
This is true - but ignoring the lessons that you might have learnt is worse!
The ‘cheating’ bit doesn’t matter - it is the bit about the referees telling the Red team what their tactics must be that should concern. It doesn’t seem like the Blue forces could cope if they were faced with the unexpected…which is precisely what good battle tactics are aren’t they?!
I don’t expect them to give up when they’ve lost - it is reasonable to bring their personell and equipt. back to life and try again, but they should go back to where they started, as ** casdave ** suggests. And they can’t suddenly change the rules, as they did, and expect it to be a valuable exercise. The problem is that once they lost, they started putting rediculous constraints on Van Riper, like forbidding him to use motorcycle messengers to trasmit warplans, in favor of the telephone.
Yes, by replaying it, they could have learned very important lessons from their mistakes. But to do so, they’d need to try to mimic how things would happen in the real world. It isn’t just about winning. It’s about learning. And if they get all huffy and say, “Van Riper’s being a bugger! Iraq would never do that!” they’re blinding themselves to the real dangers.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they got anything out of the exercise. Perhaps this is a a sensationalist story, and I am misinterpreting what happened, but it looks to me as though the military has, as usual, closed its mind to any war tactics it doesn’t understand.
And they hailed it as a victory. Which was pretty far from accurate.
NPR did a story on this IIRC a few weeks ago. Their conclusion was the same as many people in this thread, namely that it would be ridiculous to spend millions of dollars to keep ships floating around without participating in the exercise, but that Van Riper had handed the military its ass. Supposedly, this guy is known as quite a free-thinker in the services.
I’m not too worried. If we ever did invade, and any tactics that Van Riper used were used, then I expect that many people in the military command structure would have their heads handed to them.
Did Van Riper make his battle plans public? Some middle eastern dictators would doubtless want them if so.
Agree with the general trend of the thread. The point of military wargaming is to find your weaknesses. Starting over is no big deal, as long as you aplly what you’ve learned. It is complete BS, though to put unrealistic expectations and demands on the “enemy” so that you always win.
That and where can I get a PC version of this wargame?? That would make CivIII look like Pong.
Oh, of course sitting on your ass for 13 out of 14 days to the tune of a quarter billion bucks is nonsensical.
But why publish this game as a “victory”? Why not come out and say, “during three similations over a two week period, we won two sessions and gathered valuable information from all”? I mean, you know this is going to come out, and it makes you look like the kid that can’t sand losing at marbles rather than the harsh, competitive superpower you want to look like.
