Just don’t use guerilla tactics lol. I completely agree with you, but that notorious war wargame exercise where fake Iran stomped the USN comes to mind. And, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
I’m not sure I understand your issue with the wargame? Is it because the USN lost to Iran in the wargame? It’s pretty well understood the US stacks the odds against themselves during wargaming. Something about you learn more from losing than winning
Also if it’s the wargame I’m thinking of, it had a ton of controversial issues like the simulator not properly simulating ship defenses, or the simulation allowing rowboats to be equipped with ICBMs
It was a huge operation based on a whole bunch of new software and also on actual live personnel doing their part in the overall plan in person; it was wild.
E.g. I don’t fully know the details but based on what I was reading today it kind of sounds like they couldn’t position the ships where they actually would be for an operation, and they couldn’t turn the auto-defenses of the ships on, because there was a bunch of civilian shipping in the area and they had to run their whole operation without the defense computer being active because otherwise it might get frisky and decide to blow up an oil tanker or something.
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 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?
Just don’t use guerilla tactics lol. I completely agree with you, but that notorious war wargame exercise where fake Iran stomped the USN comes to mind. And, you know, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
I’m not sure I understand your issue with the wargame? Is it because the USN lost to Iran in the wargame? It’s pretty well understood the US stacks the odds against themselves during wargaming. Something about you learn more from losing than winning
Also if it’s the wargame I’m thinking of, it had a ton of controversial issues like the simulator not properly simulating ship defenses, or the simulation allowing rowboats to be equipped with ICBMs
I’m not seeing the problem
It was a huge operation based on a whole bunch of new software and also on actual live personnel doing their part in the overall plan in person; it was wild.
E.g. I don’t fully know the details but based on what I was reading today it kind of sounds like they couldn’t position the ships where they actually would be for an operation, and they couldn’t turn the auto-defenses of the ships on, because there was a bunch of civilian shipping in the area and they had to run their whole operation without the defense computer being active because otherwise it might get frisky and decide to blow up an oil tanker or something.
Oh look a civilian airliner
I like this version
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
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?