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bewbies posted:Is there one of these that covers the War Plan against the evil British Empire? There's a tabletop wargame on the subject: link. They also have a game that covers the war against those devilish Canadians.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:26
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I mean on the instant-speed-motorcycle couriers thing, again Riper didn't come up with that, it was part of the scenario's rules. That there were issues with the timelines is yeah a thing, but again it comes down to how Control tried to mitigate the issue (since simulating thousands of motorcycle couriers is a lot of work...)  As that snippet notes, Blue also had 'cheats' - their missile launchers had infinite ammo. https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Joint_Staff/12-F-0344-Millennium-Challenge-2002-Experiment-Report.pdf There's always going to be limitations in such an exercise.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:31
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Reminds me of Megagames in the civilian world. Just big huge dynamic things with a lot of players trying to come up with ideas of what to do over a framework of mechanics. Except it's a lot less tense when it's mainly for fun as opposed to being a serious exercise you're spending a lot of money on and expecting to get a lot of serious, workable data out of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN71v9H_gg8
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Oct 28, 2019 17:46
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Solaris 2.0 posted:Oh...you. I mean... in this hypothetical scenario are you blessed with all the knowledge of what will happen? Theres quite a lot of things you could immediately implement that would make significant impact on the axis ability to wage war. Definitely not win the war outright, but you could almost certainly drag it into 1946 or 1947, at which... the same end result most likely. The more interesting scenario ( and we've had this discussion before ), is if you were given command with all knowledge of future events, in 1935 or 1939, if you could 'win' the war. Saint Celestine fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 17:47
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SlothfulCobra posted:Except it's a lot less tense when it's mainly for fun
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Oct 28, 2019 17:48
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SlothfulCobra posted:Reminds me of Megagames in the civilian world. Just big huge dynamic things with a lot of players trying to come up with ideas of what to do over a framework of mechanics. Except it's a lot less tense when it's mainly for fun as opposed to being a serious exercise you're spending a lot of money on and expecting to get a lot of serious, workable data out of. The report gives the impression that they did get a lot of workable data out of it (though, of course it would say that). The problem is basically that Van Riper conflated the proper Red Force attitude he was meant to have (win by all means possible) with the idea that what mattered in the game was who won, and continued to try and lawyer it afterwards.
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Oct 28, 2019 17:48
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Gulf war - Desert Shield and Desert Storm The First Gulf War is a very significant war for a number of reasons, some of which are very well known, others perhaps less so. The first and most important consequence of Gulf 1 is that it really serves as the capstone of the Cold War, this is going on against the disintegration of the USSR and the eastern bloc. Had this happened say a decade earlier (cast aside the Iran-Iraq war for a moment) with the Kremlin hardliners in power and we are suddenly in a much more precarious situation, if the US starts pushing back then its really almost taken as read that the USSR will have to respond on the other side. However now there really is almost no USSR left to push back. Starting really from this point and lasting at least a decade we get the completion of the Pax Americana. That is the completing and expansion of the system of alliances and understandings that would keep the world relatively speaking stable for the next decade. If you want to cause trouble then you need to consider how the US will respond, because nobody can or will stand on your side any more. It finally got the US properly in the door in the Middle East where previously they had been kept at varying degrees of arm’s length. Though whether that is a good thing is something which is open for debate. The second is that it created the impression of what many people thought of until even today as what war should be like, relatively bloodless to fight because of overwhelming technological edge enjoyed by one side over the other. My pet theory is that this perception leads directly to mistakes like the second Iraq war, and the rather charming idea of clean regime change executed from the air in say Libya or Syria. That as a possibility is really, I think, raised by the overwhelming success of GW1. It is something that the people involved in fighting would not necessarily all agree with, because they saw the actual nitty gritty of it and understood why things worked the way they did, but that is more a view espoused by people who write about wars than those who were actually there. The third is that its really a culmination of 20 years of reform and reconsideration in the US about how wars should be fought. It finally banishes the spectres of Vietnam that have been hanging around for so long. Vietnam is where we will be starting the narrative about the US, but not staying long, it has such an outsized effect on the way people thought and acted that some concepts need to be brought up. It was a sea change in how war was fought on but that was a culmination of a very long institutional period of reform that lead up to this point. The equipment we see in concept will date back a long time and the reason it works so well is because it has been being developed for such a long time. PGM’s for instance were really first used in any number in Vietnam and they were proven there, but now we start to see them really used in bulk. All the high-ranking US soldiers involved served in Vietnam and most of them had very strong opinions about what had gone wrong. The Goldwater-Nichols act would have a significant impact on what we call now Jointness The fourth thing is that it is a superhuman feat of logistics. Before GW1 the closest major US base to Saudi Arabia is in Diego Garcia. There are minor presences in Bahrain and the UAE. Starting from that point there would be an influx of nearly 800’000 troops from other nations into the KSA, nearly 700’000 of those would be US troops, they would conduct an air campaign which rivals the combined bombing of Nazi Germany and the US bombardment of North Vietnam for intensity and keep those troops in the theatre for 7-8 months. They would do so while largely avoiding serious incidents with the local population whose culture at that time can best be described as completely incompatible. In combination with the refugees from Kuwait, large quantity of guest workers from all over the place that would arrive in the KSA there would be nearly a million-extra people, swelling the population of the nation from 17 to 18 million in a very short space of time and the achievement is staggering to think about. Dramatis Personae Just to briefly bring up the key figures and their responsibilities and why they will come up. This is far from a complete list but represents who I believe to be the most important. Arabian Peninsula Norman Schwarzkopf  Stormin' Norman (Right) Joint commander of the coalition overall and commander of the non-Arab contingent of the coalition. Was appointed as head of CENTCOM in late 1988, CENTCOM being the relevant US command. He had spent part of his childhood in the middle east which rendered him better able than most to negotiate the prickly sensibilities of the Arabian nations. Khalid bin Sultan Al Saud  Joint commander of the coalition and commander of the Arab contingent of the coalition. Established the KSA air defence force in its modern incarnation force and served as its commander from then onwards until the outbreak of the gulf war. Had studied at various US military academies and at Sandhurst and was a graduate of the US Air War College. He was vitally important because of his Royal position as a prince, this left him able to get the KSA bureaucracy moving in a way that others of less station were far less able to, this combined with his experience abroad left him very suitable for the role he would take. Chuck Horner Commander of CENTAF (air component of CENTCOM) since 1987. Would be the man responsible for the development and execution of the air war and control of all coalition planes in the area. Gus Pagonis Head of all logistical operations in the gulf war, the first new American to arrive in the KSA after the decision was made to send troops to the area. Peter de la Billere Commander of the UK forces in the region, he is particularly relevant given his long career in the SAS left him understanding of the role of special forces and he would persuade the hostile Schwarzkopf (who had bad experiences of SF from Vietnam) to use them in the Scud Hunts which would prove far more effective than air interdiction. Saddam Hussein Honestly in the context of Desert Storm he is one of the only Iraqi’s who matters. Iraq had regressed since the end of Iran-Iraq and it seems that Saddam would exercise an iron grip on proceedings. Doubtless there was far more that went on than any of us will ever know but it focuses on Saddam. Off the battlefield. Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud  King of Saudi Arabia, the man who is responsible in a large part for fighting the war against the Saudi religious extremes who wanted the US out. Sadly we know very little about what actually went on there except from the perspective of the western commanders who witnessed the results, because I bet its fascinating. Colin Powell Colin Powell (Left) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Schwarzkopfs superior officer. Would be highly involved in the Pentagon infighting which accompanies the entire affair. Dick Cheney Secretary of Defence and therefore the civilian most involved with the running of the war and its presentation to the US public. John Warden Head of the Deputy Directorate for Warfighting Concepts (XOXW), a USAF strategic planning department who would produce the original concept plan for the strategic bombing campaign over Iraq. There is a very intriguing bureaucratic battle in the USAF between tactical and strategic air support which he gets taint deep into. Mikhail Gorbachev I have no need to introduce Gorby as a man, but he does pop up now and again as a key person who is attempting to get Saddam out of Iraq peacefully, with limited success, however his manoeuvres will play a large part in why the war was launched when it was. Why did Saddam invade Kuwait? Territorial grievances So as I alluded to many times previously, the roots of this war lie in the Iran-Iraq war and before, however I don’t think went over the specifics. The first comes from the creation of Iraq and Kuwait as states. Both were carved out of the Ottoman empire at various times, that is not to say that they were entirely artificial creations, or that Saddam had a consequent “valid” claim on Kuwaits land. (Anyone who talks about the valid claim of a people to a land in the modern era, when the people who live there don’t want them is to put it mildly, a bit of a knob). Kuwait was absorbed from its semi-independent state into the Ottoman province of Basra in 1871 though it remained largely self governing in most regards. The Ottoman province of Basra was joined to the Ottoman provinces of Mosul and Baghdad in order to create Iraq in 1921 in the breakup of the Ottoman empire in the aftermath of WW1. However previous to that in 1899, Kuwait had become the protectorate of the UK, which detached it in effect from the Ottoman empire from then forth. The Ottomans never renounced their claims to it before it collapsed however. Iraq would recognise the independence of Kuwait and its borders in 1932 when they signed a treaty. In 1961 Kuwait would be granted independence and would be recognised by the UN and by the Arab league as a sovereign nation, Iraq then threw a shitfit and withdrew from the Arab league in protest and threatened to invade. However in 1963 they would recognise Kuwaiti independence at the generally recognised international borders. However they would request modification to the northern borders of Kuwait, particularly with regards to Iraqi access to the sea south of the Faw peninsula. This particular problem had haunted Iraq who required cooperation from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to fight Iran. Its oil pipelines particularly had to cross other nations and when Syria cut off Iraqs oil in iran Iraq the nation was hurt very badly, Iraqs only truly major port was Basra which lay quite some distance up the Shatt-Al-Arab and was not accessible all year round due to river silting. They however were rebuffed by Kuwait who refused to grant them the territory they requested. Monetary and societal concerns  Identified oil reserves. Iraq was utterly and cripplingly in debt, prior to the Iran-Iraq was the nation was developing well and had reached comporable levels of development to much of Europe, there was schooling, public works, social safety nets and all they might desire. However all this ground to an absolute halt. Its GDP per capita had dropped by about a third since the start of the war and had undergone no growth since. Iraq in 1989 was worse off than it had been in 1979. Iraq was faced with a bill of $60bn for reconstruction and a debt of roughly $70bn for purchases made in the course of the war. Iraqi foreign income was of the order of $15bn or so from oil and practically nothing else. From this it had to rebuild its country, service its debts and import vital materials for its people. It was also suffering from a dearth of available foreign credit since the end of the war. It was suffering from an inflation rate of around 40% and it badly needed a way out of the hole it was in. Iraq had a current production of around 2.6mn barrels per day (MBPD), similar to Iran (in an OPEC compromise reached after the end of the war), Saudi Arabia had around 5.3 and Kuwait around 1.7. Iraq in taking control of Kuwait would have gained comparable production to Saudi Arabia along with around 22% of worlds identified oil reserves. Broadly to get enough income to survive in 1990, Iraq needed to export at full chat, around 3MBPD and the price of oil needed to be sufficiently high that it could extact enough money for it, that price war around $25 per barrel. This would give Iraq $27bn a year, enough to maintain its army for $9bn, import essential foodstuffs and other materials for $12bn and service its debts for $4bn and have $2bn for reconstruction. So long as the price of oil stayed high. Iraq succeeded at getting a sufficient export quota from OPEC. However Kuwait and the UAE would both repeatedly exceed their production limits, this caused a drop in income for all OPEC stats who also all started cheating on exports to make up for lost revenue, which lead to a vicious cycle and the absolute collapse of the price of oil from $25 per barrel down to $14 in June of 1990. This cratered Iraqs income to $13bn, which wasn’t enough to maintain its military and service its debts, let alone import necessities. So Iraq went to OPEC and the Arab league, Saddam said that he was having economic war conducted upon him and even managed to get Iran on-side, who also needed the cash, for a joint complaint to OPEC over overproduction. There would be a resolution where OPEC would agree to set prices at $21 and set up a pair of quota oversight committees, one headed by Iraq and one by Iran, the UAE and Kuwait would both agree to a quota cut of 0.5MBPD each. This seemed to solve the issue so everyone went back to their lives. However it had not, Saddam would keep things on a rolling boil and continue his threats and start massing troops on the border while talks, supervised by Egypt and the KSA continued, however this was viewed as a negotiating tactic by those nations. Pan Arabism Saddam had long held that Iraq should be the leader of the Arab world. They had long been under the sway of the Ottomans, British, Various Persian and other empires. There had not really been much of a distinct set of Arab nations as we today would recognise them for centuries. Remember that Saudi Arabia did not exist until 1932, Iraq until 1921 and so on. Therefore there was not actually a clear idea of what exactly the Arab world should look like. What Europe should look like was settled by centuries of war and politics until we have arrived at the relatively stable idea of international borders we have today, they did not have this inertia. This is the sort of thing that leads to all the aborted attempts at unifying nations, even the one that did get off the ground (The United Arab Republic) comprised of Egypt and Syria and sort of North Yemen lasted only 3 years before it dissolved. So there is this long struggle for who leads the Arab world. The originator was Nasser who put a thumb in the eye of the British and took control of Egypt and so was something of a favourite. But many people since then had tried to assume the mantle. Were he to have annexed Kuwait he would gain hugely politically and monetarily which might enable him to finally elbow out Assad and stand as a hugely influential state in his own right. The counterweight to the religious regime of Saudi Arabia in the Arab world. However nobody else wanted to cooperate with that particular aim and this would prove a large problem for Saddam. He would not only be defying the west but threatening all his neighbours as well, this enmity and fear would be the grease needed to get them to allow the West in to beat Saddam up. This whole idea also lead to the strong conviction in the Arab world which would persist up until the tanks rolled that Arab nations did not attack each other, particularly Kuwait would be convinced of this but so would Saudi Arabia. It was an unwritten rule that Saddam was about to smash. Summary Eventually Iraq would invade on the 2nd of August 1990, they would gamble on a fait accompli, the belief that nobody was strong enough or willing enough to throw them out. However the very idea of Saddam Hussein regional leader was enough to alarm every neighbour of Iraq and Iraqs crimes in Kuwait and Saddams very obvious attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon that he had gotten caught for meant that pretty much everyone was against him, both Arab and non-Arab. As we will explore later, it was not necessarily a bad bet on his part with the information he had. The rest of the world would have to move both heaven and earth to defeat him. The Persian Gulf had around two thirds of the worlds oil reserves at this time, it supplied the majority of Japans oil, about a third of Europe and a tenth of the US’s, most of those nations could survive without it, but the idea of Saddam Hussein as a gatekeeper of that was certainly not a pleasant one. CENTCOM history and relationships with the Arabs  Central Command or CENTCOM had been established in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in 1983 and grew out of the farce that was US arrangements beforehand. The Middle East had long been guarded by Britain who would pull out in the 60’s, but the US would not smoothly slide in as it would in other theaters. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had brought into sharp focus the threat that now existed to the Persian gulf and its oil fields. This threat was largely imaginary, even the USSR with all its military strength didn’t have the ability to hold Europe, carry on in Afghanistan and also take one of the largest nations in the Middle East and maintain their supplies over a thousand miles through the Zagros mountains down to the shores of the Persian Gulf. However that was the very real fear at the time. But it provided the impetus for the creation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force whose role was to deploy quickly and with sufficient force from all four branches to deal with threats like that, or a Soviet invasion into Pakistan as another theoretical possibility. However the Joint Command runs head first into the interservice rivalries embedded in the pentagon. Nobody in the forces wanted this new command to exist, they would have to sacrifice part of their commands to it, but given the strong political imperative for its creation everyone wanted to command it. Eventually this would be settled with a Marine commander General Kelley. RDJTF would develop their major plan to conduct a marine landing in Southern Iran, seize Khuzestan and push up to the Zagros mountains. They would then deploy Atomic Demolition Munitions to collapse the passes through the area and seal USSR forces off from the critical areas of the Persian gulf. The concept of the force was preparation to fight a major war in the Middle East. It had no specific area of responsibility but that was what it was geared for. However people would keep trying to kill it, particularly the Army who kept trying to absorb it into EUCOM. Previous to its existence the Middle East was on a demarcation line between Europe Command (EUCOM) and Pacific Command (PACOM). The new secretary of defence under Reagan, Caspar Weinberger pointed out, very rightly, that this was a recipe for disaster because its putting an administrative boundary right through one of the most volatile and economically vital areas on the Earth. Iran had collapsed as a US friendly entity, they had nobody else lined up to take responsibility for that, the KSA wasn’t strong or interested enough, Iraq and Syria were Soviet client states. Turkey was far more relevant to Europe and was in no way Arab. So despite vigorous USN opposition CENTCOM was created, it had responsibility from Egypt to Pakistan and down to Kenya. Command was by gentleman’s agreement to alternate between Marines and Army. So it was created in 1983. This was greeted privately very warmly by the KSA as a counterbalance to the USSR’s attempts to enter the region, but they publicly distanced themselves from it as was entirely expected. Israel however was very upset because it was this as a new command particularly for the defence of the Arabs and would push relentlessly for it to be scrapped offering various incentives if America would just leave the region to them. However, they would be denied in their efforts. The specifics of CENTCOMs activities I have covered in the tanker war but its origins as a rapid deployment force and also its mainly maritime surroundings are part of why it had quite such heavy Marine involvement, (as indeed is their job). So CENTCOM would tick along until the late 80’s, getting involved in the tanker war and almost getting into a couple of fights with Iran which has been covered elsewhere at length. However here Schwarzkopf enters the story, looking for a new job. He had previously commanded the 25th Mechanized Infantry, who were earmarked for CENTCOM in the event of war. However at that time he was Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans at the Pentagon, a prestigious post that would almost certainly lead on to a 4 star command, or pretty much the top rung. It was the Armies turn to elect a commander to take over after the Marine General Crist who was about to depart. So Schwarzkopf was offered a choice of 3 jobs. CENTCOM, Forces Command (FORSCOM) which is command of all army units in the Continental United States, or Combined Forces Command Korea (CFC). Of those three four-star commands CENTCOM was probably the least prestigious. In the event of war they had the Ninth Air Force, the First Marine Expeditionary Force and the Third Army. However in peacetime they only had responsibility for planning, the sole major combat forces they had was the USN command in the Persian Gulf (Based in Bahrain). It was much more a diplomatic role, the job being to reassure the gulf states that America was there for them, try to get them into military cooperation agreements and just draw them into the US orbit. The USN made a surprise bid to get command for themselves with Admiral Mustin but did not succeed, probably an attempt now that the tanker war was dieing down to dismantle CENTCOM entirely now the region was quiet, they resented having navy ships under Army command quite intensely. Schwarzkopf would settle in quite well and would immediately visit every nation in the region that would have him. There were two surprises, the first was that the majority of them were still concerned about Iran even after the war had knocked them back almost a decade, the second that they actually were starting to invite greater US presence, they had doubted the US would step in to protect their shipping but when they had it had left a good impression. He would push for greater freedom in arms sales to the Arab nations, which had been previously greatly restricted by the fear they would be used against Israel. He did not make fantastic progress because the state department in particular was very pro-Israel at this time, but he did manage to generate some loosening of restrictions and quite a lot of goodwill generally for his appreciation for the Arab point of view in his meetings. As his tenure developed however he noted that people were starting to fear Iraq. The emir of Kuwait pointed out that the Shatt-Al-Arab was still closed due to wrecks, UXO and not having been dredged. This meant Iraqs only way out lay bang next to Kuwait, he believed Iraq may try to seize the islands of Bubiyan. Kuwait would describe its defensive plans in some detail to Schwarzkopf and the UAE in particular would break its diplomatic isolation of the US (Having felt cheated on the sale of HAWK missiles in the 1980’s) to invite them to their national parade. Interestingly while he was there he would meet the Iraqi general who would finally sign the peace agreement in 1991. However, the biggest problem with CENTCOM was it was still operating off a variant of the RDJTF plan as its reason to be. This was the plan it presented to the pentagon to justify its budget and get funding for its need to be. It was a ridiculous plan at this stage as it essentially involved Invading Iran and fighting them up to the Zagos in order to use nuclear weapons to bring down the mountain before the soviets invading and fighting Iran from the north could reach and secure the passes. Schwarzkopf decided to scrap it and reassess what the point of CENTCOM was. His view was that the most credible threat was Iraq who was making no efforts to downsize its army and that was the primary threat in the area. He was supported in this by the new incoming Joint Chief Chairman General Powell, who shared his view. But it was likely to be a lengthy battle set against the background of incoming budget cuts that everyone was trying their best to dodge. Trying to get ahead of the game he would however hold staff exercises (As again, CENTCOM has no troops) in July of 1990 with Iraq having seized Kuwait and was now moving towards Saudi Oil facilities. The idea was for CENTCOM to slow them and delay them long enough to get reinforcements into the theatre. However while this was going on Saddam publicly threatened both the UAE and Kuwait and built up his forces on the border in full view of CENTCOM’s intelligence gathering capabilities. There was a genuine danger of confusion between real and factual events so all the exercises material had to be quickly overstamped more prominently with Exercise Only. The Arab nations in general continued to say that Iraq wouldn’t turn on them. However the UAE would be so alarmed at this that they would invite USAF support units and ask for the USN to create a radar picket in the Persian gulf to warn them of incoming Iraqi attacks. Kuwait and the KSA on the other hand assumed that Iraq could be placated with money and the state department shared their view. Schwarzkopf was recalled to Washington to brief on the threat and while he was there Saddam would invade and seize the whole of Kuwait. Conclusions Saddam had several very compelling reasons to invade Kuwait. It almost certainly seemed like a masterstroke to him. However, he ran into the problem of seizing something, sitting back smugly and waiting for his enemy to be defeated. And that enemy refused to be defeated. He had aggravated too many people, amassed too much potential power such that he had driven off what allies he had left and alienated everyone else. He would be subject first to thundering sanctions by the UN and ultimately military destruction because of it. He misjudged the likely effect of fear on his neighbours specifically. This combined with the very public arrest of several arms dealers who were giving him circuitry for the atomic bomb and also the interdiction of the supergun parts in the UK earlier that year. Combined with the atrocities his troops would commit in Kuwait very quickly turned world opinion even deeper against him. The US on the other hand was in the middle of an attempt to establish a more permanent presence in the Gulf, it was vitally important for world trade and economic stability that it is kept open and they are the only people capable of doing so. So, they are presented in many ways with a unique opportunity here to achieve their political aims alongside the general idea of trying to prevent people from warring each other aggressively.
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Oct 28, 2019 19:15
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Polyakov posted:Gulf war - Desert Shield and Desert Storm If you ever decide to do a podcast let me know, I will sign up. Once again amazing post, thank you!
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Oct 28, 2019 19:54
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Hope you don't mind me following this closely.
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Oct 28, 2019 19:54
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Phanatic posted:Sorry, I misinterpreted your post. it was unclear even within my pantheon of just post low effort nonsense, all good
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Oct 28, 2019 20:20
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If he hadn't killed so many people Saddam's leadership would have been so bad as to be comic.
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Oct 28, 2019 20:21
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Squalid posted:If he hadn't killed so many people Saddam's leadership would have been so bad as to be comic. Christopher Andrew's book on the history of intelligence cites some of the post-2003 interrogations of Saddam that found him with a "confused grasp of international relations" and a "primitive understanding of military affairs". He was so unwilling to allow UN inspectors into Iraq and provide proof that he did not possess weapons of mass destruction because he was obsessed with the Iranians not figuring out any military weaknesses, and his questioners noted how completely unhinged he became just talking about them. The questioning also indicated that he believed the propaganda that was issued during the Iraq war, due to his own incredible capacity for self-delusion and how well he'd purged everybody who wasn't willing to tell him what he preferred to be true. Of course, it also says something about the omissions of US intelligence at this time about the WMD issue and also that they had no idea about what was driving him.
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Oct 28, 2019 20:40
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Fangz posted:I mean on the instant-speed-motorcycle couriers thing, again Riper didn't come up with that, it was part of the scenario's rules. This thing you linked said that you were supposed to approximate time it takes for couriers among other things to arrive, not to say "you can do it instantly from any distance". I.e. it would be a justification for "the motorcycle couriers are buzzing around at 80 mph across the field of battle" not "the motorcycle couriers are actually instantaneous".
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Oct 28, 2019 21:19
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fishmech posted:This thing you linked said that you were supposed to approximate time it takes for couriers among other things to arrive, not to say "you can do it instantly from any distance". The thing I linked said they did approximate the time. Approximating communication time is the responsibility of the people managing and designing the simulation, not the responsibility of the players. The players just tell JECG (Joint Experimental Control Group) "I wanna do this". If JECG lets them do it that's JECG's choice, and their fuckup if they did it wrong. If Blue wanted to move aircraft carriers over land, the JECG will tell them their ships were beached, same principle. EDIT: The second snippet is from the section evaluating the success of the simulation and its limitations after the fact. The report did not generally consider the motorcycle thing a big deal and certainly does not blame Riper for it. The point of the simulation is to evaluate Blue's response, not Riper's abilities to manage an insurgency communications network. Fangz fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 21:52
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Fangz posted:The report gives the impression that they did get a lot of workable data out of it (though, of course it would say that). The problem is basically that Van Riper conflated the proper Red Force attitude he was meant to have (win by all means possible) with the idea that what mattered in the game was who won, and continued to try and lawyer it afterwards. I think he doesn't want to be in the same position as the Red Force leader in the Midway planning. I don't think he was honestly quibbling over how fast motocycles can go, but it sounds like the referees just refloated the fleets told him not to communicate. Which is also fine so far as running the rest of the games goes, but it does leave an open question as to how Blue would actually handle non intercepted messages. Likewise, the specfics of what ships could carry what missiles might not add up, but the core problem of disguised missile carriers remains in some form or another. Refs probably did the right thing in refloating the carriers and startong over, Blue was right to bitch about relatavistic motorbikes, Red was probably right to bitch about issues left unresolved.
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Oct 28, 2019 22:38
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WW2 Data The first German Rocket is up, although its really a glider bomb. What was the difference between Solid Fuel and Liquid Fuel rockets, and why is it important, especially for early missiles? Which radio-controlled bomb is under the knife today? How did it operate, and why did the mother aircraft have to slow down and pull up at launch? All that and more at the blog!
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Oct 29, 2019 00:24
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the JJ posted:I think he doesn't want to be in the same position as the Red Force leader in the Midway planning. I don't think he was honestly quibbling over how fast motocycles can go, but it sounds like the referees just refloated the fleets told him not to communicate. Which is also fine so far as running the rest of the games goes, but it does leave an open question as to how Blue would actually handle non intercepted messages. Likewise, the specfics of what ships could carry what missiles might not add up, but the core problem of disguised missile carriers remains in some form or another. Refs probably did the right thing in refloating the carriers and startong over, Blue was right to bitch about relatavistic motorbikes, Red was probably right to bitch about issues left unresolved.  Just another RPG session gone bad...
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Oct 29, 2019 02:05
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the JJ posted:I think he doesn't want to be in the same position as the Red Force leader in the Midway planning. I don't think he was honestly quibbling over how fast motocycles can go, but it sounds like the referees just refloated the fleets told him not to communicate. Which is also fine so far as running the rest of the games goes, but it does leave an open question as to how Blue would actually handle non intercepted messages. Likewise, the specfics of what ships could carry what missiles might not add up, but the core problem of disguised missile carriers remains in some form or another. Refs probably did the right thing in refloating the carriers and startong over, Blue was right to bitch about relatavistic motorbikes, Red was probably right to bitch about issues left unresolved. With the boats, I'd say it was a valid point of concern to complain about it because it falls into the "Yeah, duh" rule. If you see small fiberglass boats at point blank range, you won't assume they'll suddenly launch a missile the same size as the boat out of nowhere. It would be like having a civilian in a market suddenly pull an RPG-7 out of their T-shirt to shoot at you: there's no way you can be expected to prepare for the impossible.
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Oct 29, 2019 02:57
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I don't think the simulation terribly cared about the specifics of the boats. Again, it wasn't really a challenge of how well Riper knew boats - the report just describes them as swarm boats. The report describes the adjudicators ruling the surprise attack valid because of an organisational and communication breakdown on the side of the Blue team. Blue didn't detect the boats because JECG said they were hard to detect... But mainly because Blue were too busy yelling at each other. Like I said, looking at how things worked in this simulation, van Riper basically can't "cheat". There's a bunch of guys GMing this wargame, they say what works, they control all the simulated units, they do all the outcome resolution, Riper can't do anything about it. Fangz fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 03:17
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I think we can all agree the real rear end in a top hat here is Malcolm Gladwell who turned the whole thing into a start up movefastbreakthings genius bamboozling the hidebound hierarchy morality play.
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Oct 29, 2019 04:56
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the JJ posted:I think we can all agree the real rear end in a top hat here is Malcolm Gladwell who turned the whole thing into a start up movefastbreakthings genius bamboozling the hidebound hierarchy morality play. if he's the one that popularized that story then lol because 90% of the people I hear repeating it hate his guts
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Oct 29, 2019 05:00
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Squalid posted:if he's the one that popularized that story then lol because 90% of the people I hear repeating it hate his guts Yeah, Gladwell popularized the whole Riper as lone man against the system thinking outside the box game changer thing. https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/ Not sure if it's more reliable than Gladwell's story, but this article makes it less about the innovative boat swarms and cunningly dodging SIGINT with dirtbikes as presented by Gladwell and more about the $250 million dollar LARP being poorly planned with inconsistent objectives and no real purpose. "The white cell also directed the chief of staff that the red team had to position its air defense assets out in the open so the blue forces could easily destroy them. Even after some were not destroyed, the red team was forbidden to fire upon blue forces as they conducted a live airborne drop. Van Riper asked the white cell if his forces could at least deploy the chemical weapons that he possessed, but he was again denied. Van Riper was furious. 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.”" The
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Oct 29, 2019 06:10
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At the time, the DoD was really wrestling with the question of if they wanted OPFOR to try and realistically replicate a real-world opponent, or if they wanted more free wheeling, unconstrained OPFOR. Things were a lot easier during the Cold War. Note: this debate is ongoing.
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Oct 29, 2019 14:41
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Assuming that you have a realistic ruleset, how much do you gain by having OPFOR restrict themselves to some artificial personality construct, vs. playing to win by whatever means possible? The former seems like it leaves the door open for us to be unwarrantedly aggressive / optimistic during real operations, with resulting extra potential for losses. While the latter would encourage us to be more cautious and slow as we see potential threats behind every corner. With the way warfare's worked for the US these last few decades (highly publicized, with lots of handwringing over every major loss) I feel like caution would better serve us...but I'm far from an expert on these matters
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Oct 29, 2019 15:11
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Cessna posted:There's a tabletop wargame on the subject: link. I'm reading it, and the US war plan did make sense, insofar as Canadian rail and road lines are a lot more liner. The part I'd flag up is the assumption that taking Canada and holding it was a sufficient condition to cause the UK to sue for peace. Especially since the UK in a similar exercise decided not to defend Canada Canada, the US, and Mexico are rather odd nations in that they are so far away from other nations and on the whole have good relations, so even cooking up scenarios of a land war with hostile invaders takes some work. Jobbo_Fett posted:WW2 Data Excellent. Did you ever do a writeup of the Katyusha rocket artillery?
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Oct 29, 2019 16:21
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Nebakenezzer posted:Excellent. Did you ever do a writeup of the Katyusha rocket artillery? Can't say I have, but the manuals/documents I'm going off of (RE: Taking from directly), there hasn't been much information on different rockets and/or rocket types for the Soviet inventory. I've got a few other books/documents I'm working towards, but I can't say it'll have anything on the Katyusha specifically.
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Oct 29, 2019 16:40
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Assuming that you have a realistic ruleset, how much do you gain by having OPFOR restrict themselves to some artificial personality construct, vs. playing to win by whatever means possible? Because war-gaming is never open-ended. War games are built around specific constraints to test something, usually something very specific, and aren't about "winning" or "losing." War gaming is typically "What difficulties are likely to occur in this operation, and how can we take that into account for our plan?" Dishonest war gaming, like that guy with the magical teleporting bicycles and launching cruise missiles off bass boats or the Imperial Japanese Navy's farce of the Midway war gaming, teaches nothing, reveals nothing, and is an active detriment to the planning process.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:19
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Cythereal posted:Because war-gaming is never open-ended. War games are built around specific constraints to test something, usually something very specific, and aren't about "winning" or "losing." War gaming is typically "What difficulties are likely to occur in this operation, and how can we take that into account for our plan?" Sure, but the guys who says "nah, dont use your bikes like that" is also the guy who says "hey, that isn't how the ameicans would act." So there is a real question about where to draw those lines.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:35
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the JJ posted:Sure, but the guys who says "nah, dont use your bikes like that" is also the guy who says "hey, that isn't how the ameicans would act." So there is a real question about where to draw those lines. "Don't make your bike messengers capable of instant teleportation who flawlessly transmit all information instantaneously and cannot be detected, intercepted, or listened in on" is a guy who's worth listening to. "The Americans are demoralized and beaten and would never preemptively attack our invasion force" is not.
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Oct 29, 2019 17:38
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the JJ posted:Sure, but the guys who says "nah, dont use your bikes like that" is also the guy who says "hey, that isn't how the ameicans would act." So there is a real question about where to draw those lines. Sure, but a lot of that is handled when a referee lays out the purpose of the game beforehand. A lot of wargames and training exercises aren't about fighting/winning. It's not all "red v. blue play war." They'll often cover things that have been planned out beforehand but which will still require some sort of practical practice, either through a wargame or a training exercise where troops go through the motions of an actual event or maneuver. For example, a wargame scenario might be something as seemingly mundane as "how can we pack up our gear on Okinawa and move it to Korea as quickly as possible?" Logistics and operations types will come up with a plan, but actually doing it - say, really moving a battalion from Okinawa to Busan - may reveal some problems that didn't come up in the plans. In that sort of wargame/training exercise they'll want to focus on specific parts of the operation but there's no real point in covering others. They'll want to look at things like "can we get enough Mike-boats on Blue Beach loaded fast enough to make the tide?" or "will there be big enough cranes at the port to off-load our stuff" in great detail. But they won't get into hypotheticals outside of the scope of the scenario, like "what if the enemy attacks our loading operation with suicide jet-skis?" Sure, that may sound worthwhile, and maybe one day they WILL wargame that out, but right now that's not what we're looking at, we're focusing on things like "is the parking lot big enough for our trucks" and the referees will set things up accordingly. If you don't do this - focus and restrict what you're looking at - wargames tend to spiral out into "oh, yeah, what if" territory fast and nothing really gets accomplished.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:00
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^^^ this is a good example. The whole mantra of this business is "if you try to learn everything, you end up learning nothing"TooMuchAbstraction posted:Assuming that you have a realistic ruleset, how much do you gain by having OPFOR restrict themselves to some artificial personality construct, vs. playing to win by whatever means possible? It all depends on what the experiment objectives are. This process is really pretty scientific...before each year's experiment schedule is developed (this is called the "campaign of learning") the highest-ups in the DoD send down their guidance on what they want to learn about that year (this is called "experimental guidance" or something similar). From this, the experiment/education/learning experts distill things called "learning objectives." These are very clear, yes/no hypothesis type statements that are approved before any experiment is even designed designed. LOs are what scope the experiment. Some objectives require a more rigid, doctrinal OPFOR. Some require something more agile. None of this is to say this process is perfect...it isn't, not by a long shot. Sometimes the guidance is idiotic. Sometimes the LOs are poorly written, or too vague, or just plain stupid. Experiments results get compromised both by red commanders coloring too far outside the lines, and by red commanders not being agile/creative enough...it swings both ways. bewbies fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 18:07
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Prior to the US intervention in Panama against Noriega the US held "wargames" in Panama that were basically a straight rehearsal of the actual invasion. Helped that we already had the rights to bases and stuff
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Oct 29, 2019 18:11
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Yeah I feel like there is a pretty clear line between teleporting invisible bikes and the idea that the american navy can, somehow, move its ships. If those are equally plausible then someone hit up the french high command circa 1939 with the god-tier bike couriers and we can stop the drat nazis in their tracks.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:22
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These sort of exercises become more comprehensible when you realize that there are two goals: one is the strategic chess-playing wargame aspect, and the other is the training and experience of doing things on a big scale. The logic of the game may cause a carrier group to be "sunk" by opfor submarines, but it would be a tremendous waste of resources and opportunity to have that carrier group leave the area and the exercise, because a huge part of the point of the whole thing was for several thousans sailors and airmen to gain experience conducting high-tempo carrier operations. So the refs always come up with some excuse for knocked-out ships or airbases or battalions to get back into the fight, and this sometimes gets reported as stubborn admirals refusing to accept that bad things could possibly happen to their ships. Famously, one of the IJN sandtable planning exercises for Midway resulted in the Americans wrecking several Japanese carriers early in the exercise, and the Japanese admirals just "refloated" the carriers and continued the exercise. This wasn't because the IJN admirals were dumb or blinkered or arrogant or in denial, but because they had gathered everyone together to game out this operation and make sure everyone understood their part in it, and calling it off early and sending everybody home just because someone rolled some dice badly would have been a tremendous waste of time for everyone involved.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:26
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FMguru posted:This wasn't because the IJN admirals were dumb or blinkered or arrogant or in denial, Not according to Symonds
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Oct 29, 2019 18:29
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Like I keep saying, *teleporting invisible bikes was part of the scenario design*. It wasn't actually Riper's idea. The point of the teleporting invisible bikes is that the simulation was not about the minutiae of intelligence efforts and simulating Red's communications infrastructure, but instead Blue's planning process. What 'teleporting invisible bikes' actually meant is that that entire part of the simulation was handwaved because it's not relevant. The report is heavily critical of Blue's fixation on micromanaging minutiae, that's why the Controllers in the JECG sided with Red. If Blue is counterleaking to argue things went wrong for them because of improperly modelled bike velocities, then Blue utterly misunderstood what they did badly.  The report is also critical of Blue's information operations - including specifically that Blue's intel plan *did not include human intelligence*. It didn't actually matter what speed the motorcycles were because Blue never made a plan to intercept them. Reading the report basically paints a picture of not Riper being super smart, but Blue making a bunch of avoidable fuckups, and JECG deciding to punish them for that. The full report also describes several experimental limitations that made Red *less effective* than realistically. For example, it details a 16 hour time jump in the simulation where concievably Red could have done something to disrupt Blue's plans.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:53
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Cythereal posted:"Don't make your bike messengers capable of instant teleportation who flawlessly transmit all information instantaneously and cannot be detected, intercepted, or listened in on" is a guy who's worth listening to. "The Americans are demoralized and beaten and would never preemptively attack our invasion force" is not. I mean, even before the motorcycle thing Opfor did launch a preemptive attack on the invasion force. That was one of the things that caught Blue by surprise and required a reset. Everyone focuses on the bikes, because Gladwell made a big deal about how outside the box that was, but... "The white cell also directed the chief of staff that the red team had to position its air defense assets out in the open so the blue forces could easily destroy them. Even after some were not destroyed, the red team was forbidden to fire upon blue forces as they conducted a live airborne drop. Van Riper asked the white cell if his forces could at least deploy the chemical weapons that he possessed, but he was again denied. Van Riper was furious. 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.”" Anyway, the question of where you draw the line between "This is silly!" and "Stick to the rules!" isn't super easily policed, and one without clear cut answers. Like I said, it seems the problem with the MC2 is that it was a poorly planned $250 million LARP that didn't keep a tight handle on what it wanted to do or what it was for and so it ended up a big old mess.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:54
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When Blue shot Red with bullets, they refused to recognize that Red had activated an invincible force shield
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Oct 29, 2019 18:58
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 If neutral observers are calling Blue's intelligence gathering efforts as redefining the word 'broke', then your problem isn't the bikes.
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Oct 29, 2019 19:01
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Wargames sound boring. Now, what would happen if someone fired a hundred anti-ship missiles at an aircraft carrier? I bet that wouldn't be boring.
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Oct 29, 2019 19:14
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