It’s July 2002. George W Bush is the President of the USA. In the Persian Gulf, a US Navy carrier group comes under surprise attack from a wave of missiles launched from commercial ships and radio-silent aircraft. The carrier group’s defences are overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the incoming missiles. 19 US ships, including the main aircraft carrier, are destroyed and sunk within 10 minutes. 20,000 US troops killed and lying dead at the bottom of a foreign sea. The Pentagon is stunned. Staff officers at Norfolk Command turn to stare at each other, open mouthed and wide-eyed in horror. A middle eastern adversary has just decimated one of the most powerful military expeditionary forces in the world.
In 10 minutes.
This was not foreseen, planned for, or even considered as a remote possibility when, hours before, the US had demanded the unconditional surrender of the adversary and a commitment from them to cease any offensive or even defensive actions. And now the most powerful military in the world has suffered its biggest defeat in history with 20,000 of its finest service personnel dead at the bottom of the ocean.
Fortunately, this was just an exercise.
But a very realistic one. A war game. An officially run stress test to simulate how a planned scenario would play out if it was conducted for real. This exercise was called Millennium Challenge 2002 and was the largest ever joint military exercise conducted by the United States. Designed over 2 years and costing around $250 million with 14,000 participants, every facet of a military deployment to potential hostilities was included.
The background to this exercise was a theocratic, Middle Eastern country with an Army, Navy, and Air Force and where relations with the US had descended into open hostility. Oh, and the country also had significant natural resources critical for global trade and commerce.
Sound a wee bit familiar?
In these war games, everything is done for real. Manpower, logistics, capabilities, are all utilised from current resources. The good guys are referred to as Blue Forces, the bad guys are Red Forces. In this exercise, the Blue Forces were of course, the US Military. For the Red Forces, the Pentagon wanted someone suitably qualified to assume the role of military commander of a hostile middle eastern nation. A military or former military senior officer with relevant experience.
Enter Marine Lt General (Retired) Paul Van Riper.
It should be noted that Van Riper was not a corridor-slinking staff officer. A multi-decorated combat veteran, he was assessed as one of the finest field commanders to grace the United States Marine Corps. Based upon his long career and experience of command, The Pentagon probably assumed that Van Riper would apply conventional US doctrine and tactics in his responses to the Blue Team actions.
They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Assuming his role as Major General in command of his nation’s armed forces, Van Riper immediately looked for his opponent’s key weaknesses and devoted his main effort to exploiting these. His first assessment was that the Blue Forces would rely heavily on technology to identify Red Forces military capabilities and infrastructure. They would also depend upon that same technology to intercept commands and directives, giving them advance notice of Red Force intentions and the ability to strike these. Van Riper knew that satellites, SIGINT platforms and ELINT intercepts would be constantly attacking his military communication platforms.
So he went old school.
Encrypted notes, on paper, delivered by motorcycle couriers. Coded messages broadcast from minarets and mosques to coordinate actions. Lighting signals on airfields to enable take offs and landings without the need for communications between aircraft and ground crews. His Air Force went dark; no radio communications for his enemy to exploit and Find, Fix, and Finish.
When Blue Forces took out his nation’s microwave towers and fibre optics, it didn’t impede Van Riper’s ability to direct his forces. His old school methodology ensured command and control still functioned. But Van Riper was also well aware that, should the might of the Blue Forces arrive near or on his shores, things would change significantly. And this is where his experience as a field commander during combat tours came into its own. He recognised that there would be a geographical point where the carrier group would commit to a point of no return. A threshold which meant they had committed to engaging in war. Van Riper identified this point and prepared, without any digital or radio communications to betray his plan.
Then he struck.
He used missiles launched from commercial boats. Wave after wave of land-based missiles to overwhelm defences and leave openings for his Air Force to strafe with their missiles. Boats laden with explosives driven directly into the hulls of the Blue Force ships. In a 10-minute attack he’d wiped out 19 ships and killed around 20,000 US service personnel.
This was not in the script.
The Pentagon and Norfolk Command went into meltdown mode. Recriminations for who was culpable for such a defeat soon morphed into a blame game but not for the commanders responsible for the defeat. Nope, a far more convenient scapegoat was soon identified and nominated as responsible for the failure of the Blue Forces to win the war game.
Lt Gen Paul Van Riper.
The narrative the Pentagon began to spin was that, in the real world, tactics such as Van Riper’s would never be used. He hadn’t played fair. No Middle Eastern adversary could possibly put together such a strategic defence against a technologically advanced opponent using mere analogue tactics.
Van Riper raised an eyebrow and pointed out that an exact tactic he used was taken from the suicide attack against The USS Cole in Yemen in the year 2000.
As a veteran of multiple combat tours of Vietnam, he reminded The Pentagon that an army of small men and women on bicycles had constructed one of the world’s most incredible feats of military supply logistics: the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A supply line that navigated the jungles of 3 countries and stubbornly resisted the heaviest bombings the world had seen to that point. That the might of the Soviet Union, with all its armour, helicopters, and manpower was defeated by the ‘analogue’ tactics of the mujahideen.
But his examples were falling on deaf ears.
The exercise was put on hold then ‘refreshed’. A start over. The Staff Officers, in probably one of the most brazen examples of in-group bias ever seen, assured each other that the failure of the exercise lay in Van Riper, not them. Therefore, better to replace Van Riper with someone more suitable. Thank Van Riper for his assistance and send him on his way.
Van Riper wasn’t happy.
As an experienced field commander, he knew all too well the inherent dangers in Command ignoring vital lessons from the battlefield. He argued that The Pentagon was essentially prioritising saving face over learning from mistakes. When he saw that the exercise was now scripted to enable the Blue Forces to win, Van Riper walked away. Putting his thoughts to paper, he wrote a detailed, 21-page After Action Report (AAR) where he highlighted how vulnerable the US Military was to low tech warfare.
An important document, one might think, particularly when America went on to invade Iraq only a year later. An opportunity perhaps, for the military command to read a very pertinent AAR that could provide important lessons to bear in mind when attacking a hostile, Middle Eastern nation with natural resources critical to global trade and commerce. Alas, this was not the case.
The AAR was classified and buried for over 20 years.
A detailed report from a decorated Marine General pointing out US Military vulnerabilities against Iran, was, to all intents and purposes, buried.
It’s this act which I believe completely validates Van Riper’s assertion of The Pentagon prioritising saving face over operational lessons. If, as The Pentagon claimed, Van Riper had conducted an unrealistic campaign which added no value to the exercise, why hide the AAR? For 20 years? I think it’s pretty clear that while the public-facing message was such, privately The Pentagon couldn’t allow such a damning indictment of US military vulnerabilities to come to light.
In the past few days, Donald Trump has come under increasing pressure to explain how his administration could possibly not have considered Iran’s responses to the US/Israel attacks. His defence is to claim surprise. That he hadn’t been made aware Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz. That his administration was both shocked and taken aback when Iran attacked US allies’ energy infrastructure in the region. That he was surprised Iran was still fighting.
He shouldn’t be.
A report from a decorated Marine Officer, written 24 years ago after a war gaming scenario playing out a US/Iran conflict, would have told him everything he needed to know.
If it hadn’t been hidden.