Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper's own hodgepodge of troops, ships and planes was similar in organization and capability to Iran's actual forces. Van Riper's success in blunting a simulated American assault could reveal how Tehran might fight in the real world.
"The exercise was called Millennium Challenge 2002," Blake Stilwell wrote for We Are the Mighty.
It was designed by the Joint Forces Command over the course of two years. It had 13,500 participants, numerous live and simulated training sites, and was supposed to pit an Iran-like Middle Eastern country against the U.S. military, which would be fielding advanced technology it didn't plan to implement until five years later.Micah Zenko provided some context in a piece for War on the Rocks. "The impact of the [opposing force's] ability to render a U.S. carrier battle group — the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy — militarily worthless stunned most of the MC '02 participants."
The war game would begin with a forced-entry exercise that included the 82nd Airborne and the 1st Marine Division. When the blue forces issued a surrender ultimatum, Van Riper, commanding the red forces, turned them down. Since the Bush Doctrine of the period included preemptive strikes against perceived enemies, Van Riper knew the blue forces would be coming for him. And they did.
But the three-star general didn't spend 41 years in the Marine Corps by being timid. As soon as the Navy was beyond the point of no return, he hit them and hit them hard. Missiles from land-based units, civilian boats, and low-flying planes tore through the fleet as explosive-ladened speedboats decimated the Navy using suicide tactics. His code to initiate the attack was a coded message sent from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer.
In less than 10 minutes, the whole thing was over and Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper was victorious.
The shock compelled exercise planners to rig the rest of the war game for U.S. forces.
[Joint Forces Command commander Gen. Buck] Kernan received an urgent phone call from [exercise planner, retired Army general Gary] Luck: "Sir, Van Riper just slimed all of the ships." Kernan recognized that this was bad news because it placed at risk [Joint Forces Command's] ability to fulfill the remaining live-fire, forced-entry component of the exercise — a central component of MC '02.That and other interference by exercise planners made Van Riper "furious," Zenko wrote.
The actual forces were awaiting orders at Fort Bragg, off the coast of San Diego, and at the Fort Irwin National Training Center. Kernan recalled, "I didn't have a lot of choice. I had to do the forcible entry piece." He directed the white cell [exercise planners] to simply refloat the virtual ships to the surface. [Army general B. B.] Bell and his blue team — now including the live-fire forces operating under his direction — applied the lessons from the initial attack and fended off subsequent engagements from the red team.
Not only had the white cell's instructions compromised the integrity of the entire process, but also his own chief of staff — a retired Army colonel — was receiving conflicting orders about how his force should be deployed. When Van Riper went to Kernan to complain, he was told: "You are playing out of character. The OPFOR would never have done what you did."Of course, in a real shooting war no one can tweak the rules to preserve an American advantage. If Iran actually were to deploy Van Riper's brutally effective tactics, it just might inflict even more damage than Van Riper's own hamstrung forces did in their simulated, and rigged, war.
Van Riper subsequently gathered the red team and told them to follow the chief of staff's orders. The independence that he believed a red team must be granted to do its job had been corrupted. Six days into the exercise, he stepped down as commander and served as an advisor for the remaining 17 days.
During that time, the blue team achieved most of its campaign plan objectives by destroying the OPFOR air and naval forces, securing the shipping lanes, and capturing or neutralizing the red regime's WMD assets. The OPFOR was capable of partially preserving the red regime, but it was substantially weakened and its regional influence was much diminished.
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Principled: Trump-appointed counterterrorism director Joe Kent resigns in protest over US war with Iran
In a massive break from President Trump and MAGA, Joe Kent, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), announced his immediate resignation on Tuesday, citing irreconcilable...Refusing to go along with government dictates was not received well in Nazi Germany, or later in the Eastern Bloc. Even a refusal to serve in the army got you barred from all universities and the associated careers.
Unfortunately most Westerners are faithless, cynical and opportunistic materialists, who go along with almost all a government decides - as long as they feel no immediate pain.
The never understand how others can view things differently, and why people like the Russians, Chinese or Iranians don't simply roll over and submit under threats of violence...
I must have some of their blood running through my veins
But several decades of intensive brainwashing has made most of them into cynical, egotistic and materialistic sociopaths. A society that cheers on it's own demise and collapse.
Someone should tell Mr. Trump that.
Then there were Kingdoms, run by Kings.
Now we have countries...
You cannot negotiate with them. They will break any agreement, law, deal, rules or anything else to suit their needs.
There is zero honor in the whole system. The systemic rot is complete.
The house has begun to collapse.
A military force is usually a large organisation, and mostly busy with itself in peace times - both with training (and exercises like this), and lobbying its sponsors to keep the status quo or even grow.
But the ultimate control comes from the political top - after all, war is a political tool. And in times of looming conflicts, politicians taking over the decisions. This is to be expected, as war is a tool to achieve political means.
However, here is where the rubber hits the road. If the selected government officials have any regard for the welfare of the country and it's citizens, they will try to avoid harm and damage to their system as much as possible. But if they are sponsored and controlled by the MIC or brought into their position by arms manufacturers in the first place, they will be obliged to keep the profits flowing, even at the cost of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of soldiers and citizens.
Long story short, we will soon find out that Trump and Netanjahu (or his replica) are not so different from Zelensky. The latter sacrificed about 6 million Ukrainians for the goals of his shady overlords, according to some estimates.
I was being a little too vague. The US is always the first to break the treaty, law, rules, anything in their way. They prove it each time.
In the war game, the US side, once again broke all the rules and cheated.
Their generals behaved like the politicians.
This mentality is now systemic, politically and militarily.
It will play out, as you say, long story short and in the end...America will fall, because of it.
This assures a war gets started whenever the shady figures behind the POTUS want one.
However, this also assures epic failures as we are about to watch in realtime ... Although this has no direct consequences. Like tweaking the parameter setup in a climate simulation until you get the results your superior expects - being it "anthropogenic climate change" or "defeating Iran".
The consequences only hits them hard when they expect the same results in the real world.
But first, several thousand US servicemen need to die. Until then, nothing will change.