Ukraine's Security Service utilized underwater drones to strike a Russian submarine in Novorossiysk, causing critical damage and impacting its operational status.
The main goals of a live wargame like this are to 1) learn lessons, and to 2) get everyone simulated combat experience. This means you need to run as many scenarios as possible and to make sure every unit gets to participate.
If Red team sinks all the landing ships on round one, does that mean your infantry doesn’t get to war game and learn lessons (after all, the infantry are all ‘in lifeboats’)? Fuck no. You take extensive notes on what red team did, restart the war game, but this time mandate the infantry land. It would be a colossal waste to not learn lessons in your infantry unit or to not allow them to accumulate simulated combat experience simply because their boats sank in the first round.
You’re right, but that’s not what they did it seems. They didn’t just restart it. They did things like requiring the red team to leave their AA radar on, so they could be targeted. They required them to not use AA against certain targets. They made them not use certain weapons systems. They also didn’t allow them to use tactics freely.
The point is, like you said, to learn. It isn’t to re-enforce doctrine. It’s to find out where it fails so it can be fixed. They wanted a show to say the US military can’t be defeated, not to learn how to fight an asymmetric war against a gorilla force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 keeps amusing me.
The main goals of a live wargame like this are to 1) learn lessons, and to 2) get everyone simulated combat experience. This means you need to run as many scenarios as possible and to make sure every unit gets to participate.
If Red team sinks all the landing ships on round one, does that mean your infantry doesn’t get to war game and learn lessons (after all, the infantry are all ‘in lifeboats’)? Fuck no. You take extensive notes on what red team did, restart the war game, but this time mandate the infantry land. It would be a colossal waste to not learn lessons in your infantry unit or to not allow them to accumulate simulated combat experience simply because their boats sank in the first round.
You’re right, but that’s not what they did it seems. They didn’t just restart it. They did things like requiring the red team to leave their AA radar on, so they could be targeted. They required them to not use AA against certain targets. They made them not use certain weapons systems. They also didn’t allow them to use tactics freely.
The point is, like you said, to learn. It isn’t to re-enforce doctrine. It’s to find out where it fails so it can be fixed. They wanted a show to say the US military can’t be defeated, not to learn how to fight an asymmetric war against a gorilla force.
Nice to meet you, General Peter Pace 🫡
That will always be funny. "Stop! We shouldn’t learn and adapt. We just want to show off with a live fire parade!