Snake is on the right track here, gentlemen.

A lot of times what happens in these large scale exercises is that political will of the enemy is adjusted.

I was on Team Red for a large exercise that involved a bunch of computers and heavy rank (with their staffs) of not just our guys, but our allies. The first go-around we were told that no political hindrance to any plan of action we desired was in play, and the only goal was to defeat Blufor.

We did.

What we won was a vast area of agricultural and industrial land made uninhabitable for 10 years without a massive investment in decontamination - and the agricultural land was probably going to be fallow for decades as we killed all of the insects along with the animals using chemical weapons.

PingPongia might have been liberated for the spread of Glorious Leader's vision of Socialism, but it wasn't of value to the strategic purpose of the engagement in the first place.

So we reset, a few lessons were learned about using The Big One Logistics Center in an environment where NBC threats are real, got a new set of constraints, and did it over a couple more times. Including scenarios where Blufor asked for and were denied assets they could really have used under the guise of "political restraints."

The story of US armed force in conflict is pretty straight forward - if the USA has the political will, there is no nation that can stand up to a sustained military commitment, even if the enemy succeeds in military goals early on.

So the OpFor **can** win, but like a computer game, the exercise can be reset until the BluFor wins? Still, if I was the OpFor and managed to get the exercise restarted a few times (win!), that's my job done! Sure, if done properly, the OpFor should lose but that doesn't mean they'll make it easy for the BluFor, right?

So back to my question, the OpFor **can** win, right? Although I understand this isn't the whole point of the exercise. Just like OG said, their worst day should be in the simulation, not in combat. Or like in A-A training dogfights, even with limits on what he's allowed to do, the instructor will "win" until such tiime as the student learns enough for the student to "win."

Like I said, it entirely depends on what the exercise is about. USUALLY, if it is a training exercise, Opfor isn't supposed to win because you want to get at least one "uninterrupted" application of your own doctrine to assess if the students in Blufor have actually understood their role, their task, the mission objectives. You need a structured approach to the after action review. When the Opfor teram wants to win (and that's an almost irrestistible urge, admittedly), it may be "more fun" and possibly even "more realistic" but the whole exercise may still fail to achieve the intended goal. A "free for all" takes a lot more time to go through (time that you may not have), and there's a strong tendency for everybody to get defensive if Red "didn't play by the rules"/"didn't adhere to doctrine" as a justification why they couldn't stick to the plan (which may or may not be true, but it's a convenient excuse in any case). You don't want hurt pride to interfere with the learning process.

That's not to say that occasionally you wouldn't need a shake-up. I'm a big fan of pushing people out of their comfort zone when it comes to military training, don't get me wrong. But there are times to do that, and there are times when, in the interest of the pursuit of your training goals, when you don't do that.


The problem with this specific case is, I at least do not know what the organizers of the Millenium Challenge wanted to achieve. Therefore I prefer to withhold judgment whether or not the exercise managers had just fragile egos and were utterly incompetent and ignorant (or whether Marines are the better soldiers, anyway). The way everything is presented to us, it makes a nice story, but like I said, first of all it's a story (if inspired by true events), second, we don't know which elements were omitted (but we can assume with certainty that there were omissions).

That was good.

If the OpFor spots a gap or weakness in the application of the doctrine of the BluFor, can he not capitalize on that for a "win"? I must admit using the term "win" may not be the correct one to use in this situation.

ie, an OpFor that just goes along for the ride and follows the script vs. an OpFor that really tests the limits of the simulation? I've been watching a few martial arts videos lately and I think it's the difference of say an Aikido demonstration (is he applying the correct technique and moving the correct way?) where the other guy is cooperative versus something like an MMA sparring match (is his technique good enough to win a fight?). The student may make a few mistakes and that means the trainer/sensei "wins" at which point the exercise resets. Hope that made sense.

You are looking for a cut and dried answer where there isn’t one. Every excercise, simulation, war game, force-on-force, testbed, etc has its own objectives and will be constructed in that manner. Some are very scripted because they are looking to find out something as a proof of concept and must gather specific data. Some are completely Wild West. And most fall in between.

Agree, had he put it into a book it may have made it more accessible. I believe the business world picked up on some of his thinking long before the military it seems and wonder if his, reportedly, abrasive nature may have accounted for this. He did seem to be in the habit of upsetting many of the top brass.

As has already been mentioned, these are usually training exercises not assessments of enemy potential. As such, training how to react when things go wrong is as important as successfully accomplishing some task.

Not really looking for a cut-and-dried answer but even on all the examples you listed, the OpFor is still supposed to poke holes in the BluFor's actions, right? I can see the BluFor being scripted but surely they don't want to script OpFor's response because if the BluFor "wins," did they really win due to good doctrine and successful application of doctrine or did they win because of the script?



+1

I have no military background, but I'm going to take a stab at explaining this anyway, as I think I get the concept. I'm going to make up a hypothetical and maybe exaggerated scenario for the sake of explanation.

Let's say the US is conducting an exercise, and the purpose of the exercise is to evaluate/teach strategies and principals for conducting an amphibious landing, specifically the actions associated with landing on the beach and how troops and assets move toward their objectives. And then let's say OpFor nukes the entire battle group before anyone ever get's within 5 miles of shore. Do you think you'd say "Great job OpFor! Exercise over!"? Or do you someone would say "We didn't learn a damn thing about amphibious landing. Start over and, OpFor, let us get to the part we trying to learn about."?

An analogy that comes to mind is the term "Practice Hero" from football in high school. When you're practicing plays on offense you run them over and over again, often against your own team standing in for your next opponents defense (called scout team defense). After the first couple of times through, the scout team defense knows exactly where the play is going and can easily foil it every time. But their purpose is to be there and react in ways that the other team would realistically react in a game when they don't know the play is coming. So they may be asked to do certain things to see what happens under different scenarios, even it they aren't "doing their best" to stop the play they know is coming (ie - a Practice Hero).

Ice, the fun is when it's "scripted," but things still go wrong.

Some of us dinosaurs remember when the Air Land Battle concept was being developed and implemented at the same time a leap in technology was happening. The learning curve was really interesting to watch.

It's one thing to write down "TAB (Artillery radar units) will acquire threat indirect fire, determine the locations and types of the source(s), and seamlessly coordinate with the appropriate level of command for Artillery, Army Aviation, and other service's combat assets as well as any maneuver elements that may be impacted for mitigation, suppression, and destruction" and quite another to make it happen. And that is a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of the whole piece of the puzzle.

In the case above, under original doctrine the Target Acquisition Batteries were all held at the Corps or Division Artillery (DIVARTY) level, and would speak only to them. Responsiveness was, um, sub-optimal. In a series of exercises it was discovered that it was difficult to coordinate down to individual Artillery Battalions for counter-battery fire, with the USAF for ground attack, or even Army Aviation when all the players were in the same room and could speak directly to each other.

At that point it's irrelevant what REDFOR was doing. There's a problem with how organizational structure fits within the doctrine, one that can't be validated without exercises, and more than one (to strip out the personalities of command).

To note, they completely re-organized TAB assets, dispersing and making them organic to lower levels of command as warranted, and removed a bunch of the layers for which they had to send information.

I mentioned "Personalities of Command" earlier, but that needs fleshing out. What I meant was culture of Staff. A good commander with a soft or hesitant staff is in harm's way as he can't implement his plans; a good commander with an overly aggressive or overly optimistic staff can become reckless based on their advice; a good commander with a solid, proficient staff becomes a great commander. This is why being tagged as a "good staff man" is just a death sentence to a troop that wants to be in the field...commanders will usually recognize them and keep them there.

Thanks for that example and I see where you're getting at, but that's too far exaggerated (nuking). My example would be if the exercise was to do an amphibious landing, the OpFor could poke holes in the attempt itself (getting to the beach) or provide challenges so that even if BluFor can get to shore, they might not end up with enough guys for the mission --- again, not necessarily for a "win" for the OpFor but more to show the BluFor the weaknesses of their current methods so as to find the gaps in their procedures and fix those gaps. If the OpFor's job is to simply be practice targets and play dead after BluFor shouts "pew-pew!!" then might as well not have OpFor at all.



I agree and I fully understand that depending on skill levels and desired learning objectives, an OpFor following a script may be desirable. I'm obviously talking about those instances when guidelines are there but the OpFor is supposed to provide a challenge to the BluFor.

Kind of like the difference in A-A training exercises. You may start out behind your instructor and he can't go past MIL power or pull past 6Gs and your job is to take him out before he can turn the tables. Next level will be behind the instructor but he can go to AB and to max performance of his jet. Next level will be head-on passes and take him out before he does that to you. Then after that would be having to look for him in a specified airspace and perform your attack. The idea in all exercises is for you, the student, to employ A-A maneuvers so as to be in a position to launch a missile or get a guns kill. An ideal result would be for the student to "win," but the instructor will make the student work for it and if the opportunity presents itself (which may happen numerous times! ), hand the student his butt and show him where he (student) went wrong.

https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/m...rupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/

''Van Riper’s red team prepared itself for an amphibious assault by the Marines. He knew that the first wave would include the V-22 Osprey, a multi-mission, tilt-rotor aircraft that the Marines had in the pipeline but would not actually field for another five years. The V-22’s twin 38-foot propellers gave the transport aircraft a notoriously large identifiable radar signature that could easily be identified and tracked with crude radars and surface-to-air missiles. The red team was ready to begin shooting down the V-22s when Van Riper’s chief of staff received a message from the white cell. Hostile fire against the V-22s or blue’s C-130 troop transport planes was forbidden. 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.''

That's what I meant when I mentioned in an earlier post that what Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper achieved,he achieved with one hand tied behind his back.
And that's why I wondered whether the scenario was realistic/''fair''.

It wasn't. But at the same time there were 14,000 personnel in the exercise, waiting for their turn to conduct a live training event. The planning of the conditions of the exercise may have been shoddy, one-sided, and exuding hubris on a number of levels. But that wasn't the fault of the soldiers scheduled for the live part of the exercise.

Well,I never said nor implied that it was the fault of the soldiers.But we are talking about a major 250 million dollar exercise here.That is not pocket change.Therefore,the conclusions of such an effort must be as clear and useful as possible.

I'm not sure this is the case here.

But those costs are precisely the reason why they decided to run with the script, see?
I don't think the point of the exercise was to figure out "the" way to invade Iran. It's more like "Wachovia" which just happens to have the shape and geographical location of Iran, and they made the mistake to come up with a badly conjectured story backdrop that then dictated the assets given to Opfor. When Opfor turned out to be way more creative than the writers of the scenario, the exercise was already in full swing, and every delay would have increased the costs of the exercise by millions, and more likely than not diminished the training value of the exercise for the majority of the participants (the soldiers of the airborne brigade etc. in the live exercise part).
So exercise control decided to put the opening of the scenario on rails, even if that appeared as a dick move to team Opfor, even if that made them look like sore losers. Because if you really wanted to wargame an operation, you wouldn't combine that with a live exercise that was directly dependent on it. You would conduct a number of exercises with minimal staff, analyze the ourcome of at least five runs, then identify the most promising course of action, and in preparation of that action prepare a string of exercises that replicates a number of key elements in your future operation (like an amphibious landing, an air drop, SEAL teams communicating with stealth bombers, or whatever you're planning to use in the opening stage of the operation. Once that all troops are in theater, all bets are off what's happening next, anyway. If not, the US would have won in Korea, in Vietnam and in Iraq (post 2005). But the enemy gets a vote as well, so all that you can do as the attacker is to plan your first move, and to rehearse that before execution.

Right, that’s what simulators and CPXs (Command Post eXercises) are for. And what’s not being shown here is that a lot of times the Blue Force has just as many seemingly ridiculous or unrealistic restrictions placed on it as well. For example, during a field exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, the Blue Force was restricted so that my MLRS battery could fire no more than 54 (IIRC) rockets in a 24 hour period. Totally and completely unrealistic, but the US Army loves artillery and would gladly rain it down on the enemy’s head 24/7 if given the opportunity. That doesn’t let the maneuver forces do THEIR thing, though, and actually maintaining formations and timetables while moving cross-country ISN’T something that can be learned in simulations. So maybe MLRS gets used for SEAD, counterbattery, or to take out the enemy’s reserve - typical general support artillery roles - and the direct support cannons get used to halt enemy attacks or soften up the enemy troops Blue is attacking.

My main question is this:

Shouldn't the rules of any exercise (let alone one as big and important as this one) be clear right from the start?

Paul Van Riper got frustrated and quit supposedly for this exact reason.

I mean you want to test scenarios where the enemy (for any reason) can't use his AA defenses?Be my guest.You want to test a scenario where a USN CVBG can't use (again for any reason) its air wing?Go ahead.You want to test ANY scenario?Feel free to do so.But the rules MUST be crystal clear to everybody involved from the get go.Not change them all the time.

And to be clear, these set rules (of what can and can't be done/what is and what isn't allowed) have to do with both ''Blue'' and ''Red'' forces.

Simple as that.

Maybe they were, maybe there was miscommunication. All I've been saying is that the story that has been told in the reports that we heard is told from Van Riper's perspective. By definition, at least 50% of the story is missing. I don't know if the other 50% would confirm or contradict the story that we know. I've just been trying to hint that the story is a good one that pushes all the emotional buttons that confirm our bias against bureaucracies and high level functionaries, that it's a re-telling of David vs. Goliath which is one of the most successful stories ever told. But, it's a story.

I don't think I have anything left to contribute. I'm beginning to repeat myself.

Hello.

We had a pretend war to attempt to learn some bloodless lessons.

Instead, we re-learned that there are some serious ego trippin occifers out there.

Nothing to learn here that hasn't been learned a thousand times over throughout history.

"But I WON!"