- In 2002, a Marine general led a fictional version of
Iran in a war game against the United States, and won.
The US military tapped Lieutenant General Paul VanRiper
to lead the red opposing forces in the most expensive
military exercise in history.
He was put in command of an inferior Middle Eastern
inspired military, and his mission was to go against
the full might of the American Armed Forces.
In the first two days,
he sank an entire carrier battle group.
The exercise was called Millennium Challenge 2002.
It was designed by the joint forces command over the
course of two years, and it had 13,500 participants,
numerous live and simulated training sites,
and was supposed to pit an Iran-like Middle Eastern
country against the US military,
which would be fielding advanced technology it didn't
even plan to implement until five years later.
The war game would begin with a forced entry exercise
that included the 82nd Airborne
and the First Marine Division.
When the blue forces issued a surrender ultimatum,
VanRiper, commanding the red forces, turned them down.
Since the Bush doctrine of the period included
preemptive strikes against perceived enemies,
VanRiper 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 Corp being timid.
As soon as the US Navy was beyond the point of no return,
he hit 'em, and he hit 'em hard.
Missiles from land-based units, civilian boats,
and low-flying planes tore through the fleet.
As explosives-laden speed boats decimated the Navy
using suicide tactics.
His signal to initiate the attack was a coded message
sent from the Minuets of Mosques at the cult prayer.
In under 10 minutes, the whole thing was over,
and Lieutenant General Paul VanRiper was victorious.
So how did 19 ships and some 20 thousand US troops
end up at the bottom of the Persian Gulf?
It started with the Op Four leadership.
VanRiper was the epitome of the salty
Marine Corp General officer.
He was a 41 year veteran, both enlisted and commissioned.
Serving everywhere from Vietnam to Desert Storm.
VanRiper attended the Marine Corp Amphibious Warfare school,
the College of Naval Command and Staff,
Army War College,
and the Army's Airborne Ranger schools.
That is not the ribbon rack of a timid individual.
In fact, the Three-Star General had been retired
for some five years by the time he led the red forces
in Millennium Challenge.
He was an old school Marine,
capable of some old school tactics and he insisted that
technology cannot replace human intuition,
and the study of basic nature of war,
which he called a quote terrible, uncertain,
chaotic, bloody business.
When VanRiper commented on Millennium Challenge,
he said that the blue forces were stuck in their own
mode of thinking.
Their vastly superior technology included advanced
intelligence matrices and an operational net assessment
that told them where the Op Four vulnerabilities were,
and what VanRiper was most likely to do next out of
a range of possible scenarios.
They relied heavily on that.
When the blue took out red's microwave towers and
fiber optics, they expected his forces to use satellite
and cell phones that could be monitored.
Not a chance.
VanRiper instead used motorcycle couriers.
Messages hidden in prayers and even coded lighting
systems on his air fields.
Tactics employed during World War Two.
He struck first.
He calculated how many cruise missiles their ships
could handle and, in his terms, simply launched more
than that.
In fact, VanRiper hated the kind of analytical decision
making the blue forces were doing.
He believed it took far too long.
His resistance plan included ways of getting his people
to make good decisions using rapid cognition and
analog but reliable communications.
The other commanders involved called foul,
complaining that a real Op Four would never use the
tactics that VanRiper used.
Except VanRiper's fleet used boats and explosives
like those used against the USS Cole in 2000 when it
was attacked by a small explosives laden boat in
the Yemen Port.
In the end, the blue forces were all respond and
VanRiper was prevented from making moves to counter the
blue forces landing.
He had no radar and wasn't allowed to shoot down
incoming aircraft he would've otherwise accurately targeted.
The rest of the exercise was scripted to let the blue
force land and win.
VanRiper walked out when he realized his commands were
being ignored by the exercise planners.
The jig was up.
Three Star wrote a 21-page critique of the exercise
that was immediately classified.
VanRiper spoke out against the rigged game anyway.
Nothing was learned from this, he wrote.
A culture not willing to think hard and test itself
does not auger will for the future.
Couldn't agree more.
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