He was great in Dr. Strangelove.
Posted on 06/26/2019 8:19:05 AM PDT by gasport
That time a Marine general led a fictional Iran against the US military – and won In 2002, the U.S. military tapped Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper to lead the red opposing forces of the most expensive, expansive military exercise in history. He was put in command of an inferior Middle Eastern-inspired military force. 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at wearethemighty.com ...
Agree. If they’d treated the Ukranians decently the outcome is different.
Unless of course there are depth charges, torpedoes, or other things coming at you...:)
Military history is full of measures and countermeasures...the Cold War was largely a “Happy Time” for American submariners (except of course, for the poor souls on the Thresher and the Scorpion...and the San Francisco.
We have lapsed on our anti-sub tools to a degree, simply because it isn’t “sexy”, it is hard, often unfulfilling work. But if there were another war, and subs were sinking everything in sight, there would be ways developed to retaliate...simply as a matter of national survival.
I have a huge amount of respect for submariners of any country. I think it takes a special type of person.
Hahahahahaha
Sounds like “Up Periscope” with Kelsey Grammner.
We would do better to provoke and support an internal revolution than a military invasion where Iran is concerned. The US currently has no stomach for total war and we get some wins against the likes of the Iraqi army but piss it away with Marquis of Queens bury ruled, lawyer ran combat operations and stalemates at best against other enemies.
The section where the umpires essentially reset the war game after one side was decimated reminded me of the Heartbreak Ridge ambush scene in training where the jerk off major was screaming “you are in the wrong ambush sight!” as his unit was cut down to a man in the training exercise.
Can you imagine these same people trying to disarm the US citizens, especially those with combat experience? GI’s who are most certainly going to think out of the box with no umpires to reset the game.
You give them more credit than they are worth, IMO. It doesn’t mean we have to discount, discredit, and underestimate them.
But they don’t have that capability for either a large operation or extended operations.
300 cruise missles shot at a carrier group killing thousands of US sailors is going to make us give far less of a damn on how that plays at the UN, of that I am pretty sure.
I trained in the Navy with Iranians, and went to college with Iranians, and in general, I found them overall to be smart, normal, and had good senses of humor.
That all changed in 1979, and I saw some who I could tell didn’t like us at all, and some who didn’t want to go back to Iran, but didn’t have a say in the matter.
What happened to that country and those people in 1979 was a shame. Unfortunately, we now have to deal with the leadership of the country and not the people.
A real non-Islamic revolution would be a great thing, no doubt.
And we have 7 Trillion in hard debt and another 30 trillion or so in unfunded debt, so we have to tend to that or we are doomed as a nation. If we go to war, it shouldn’t be over a drone shot down. There are plenty of valid reasons to pick up a gun and fight, we need to be sure we pick one of those.
By the way, when I say you give them too much credit, it is less along the lines of thinking they can do more damage than they can...but is more along the lines of when you think things are tough, your opponent often has the same or worse issues than you and you just aren’t taking them into account.
The enemy has to feed, build, buy, maintain, deploy and train too.
And righ now, that is the score.
Big holes with water gushing in tend to increase their helplessness no matter how many guns and missiles and planes they have.
Whatever hurts us economically is catastrophic for them. We can last for a while without oil (in fact, we export); Iran probably can’t last for a month without exporting.
In any conflict with Iran, Israel gets lots of rockets and we get terrorist incidents all over. We and Israel survive, Iran doesn’t. Also, I’d rather not ever have to do this, but THEY are the ones calling us the Great Satan for the last 40 years. They WANT a worldwide conflict to usher in the return of the 12th Imam. Better when their economy is already weakened and everyone (including their paid-for allies) knows it, than at a time of THEIR choosing.
I didn’t say that occupying Iran would be easy - I said that we don’t need to do it. What would be easy, in a relative sense, would be shutting down a large portion of their economy, wiping out their air force and navy, poking out their eyes (i.e. targeting their intelligence services, radars, etc.) and destroying large parts of their refinery capacity (and they import about half of the refined products that they use.
Use the military to break their things and kill their people, while putting our forces at as little risk as possible - IF, IF, IF we have to have a conflict with them.
Underlying ALL of this is that they are working like demons to develop nukes and delivery systems for them (the latter in conjunction with the Norks). If you’re so much into avoiding conflict with them now, then you make it inevitable that they will develop both...and then threaten the entire world with them. Now, of course they aren’t going to threaten to nuke Moscow or Peking, but they don’t have to do that - they just have to threaten their extremely oil-rich neighbors and take them over (literally or with coercion). If we tried to intervene as we did in Kuwait in ‘90 and ‘91, they’d threaten to nuke the Saudis, etc. Since no one knows exactly how nuts these folks are, we’d have to take that very seriously. Try that latter scenario out on the Dow or the world economy - it’d make a short, sharp war with the mad mullahs in the near term look like a couple kids fighting over a ball.
Again, I don’t want a war with these guys (or anyone, for that matter). But if there is to be one, it must be on our terms to reduce our risk as much as possible, and to commensurately increase theirs.
He was great in Dr. Strangelove.
Goes both ways...
"There is more to this than the article states.
"The article is championing a maverick general that is trashing a wargame that he lost. Fine. . .but. . .the rest of the story is just as important.
"Wargames of the national/joint level are not at all like tactical exercises in the local back-40 at Fort Irvin, Red Flag, or anywhere like that. They are highly complex and use many different levels of command and control and technology and procedure. Exercises of this nature are primarily designed to test the ability to coordinate and integrate, on a national/theater/joint level, all the forces of the United States. This is a far cry from what Van Riper is used to playing in.
"Another complicating factor are having to deal with expected capabilities vs. what we have today. Many technology and weapon systems are under development and emerging technologies are vetted during these exercises. Perhaps the general didn’t like having to fight weapons that are beyond “smart.”
"It does not good to lie to ourselves during these exercises, and exercises of this level are so complex, in-depth and expansive, many assumptions have to be made, and apparently these assumptions bothered Van Riper. Fine, but if he is to play in these types of exercises he should think about two levels higher than he is used to operating.
"Another thing, exercises are notoriously more difficult than the real mission, as we challenge our capabilities. This means that when the war starts we find we win faster and save more lives—on both sides. For example, in May of ’90 I participated in a joint exercise at Ft Bragg. It was a computer exercise where Iraq invades Kuwait and goes into Saudi. Sound familiar? Anyway, we won that exercise but we took a heck of a lot more casualties than in the real war.
"As far as doctrine and sloganeering, not so. We explore all doctrine (the way we think things be done) and challege this doctrine all the time--if it wasn't doctrine it would be dogma. In fact, the Air Force has a doctrine web site for anyone in the services, at any level, to take a hack (https://www.doctrine.af.mil/).
"Bottom line: This exercises was not a bunch of guys running around in miles gear or aircraft outfitted with ACMI pods. . .no, it was an exercise to test command and control at a national/theater level. Van Riper better calm down. He may be a great tactician, but he is a lousy national/joint/theater planner/fighter.
"Some “free play” is more than other free play, and when Van Riper was limited as to WMD, he threw a snit fit. Face it, if someone throws WMD our way it is a whole new ball game, with the US going for quick and dirty win—nuke. Van Riper wanted WMD options that would have ended the game. Not good, and if he had that option, then why exercise at all?"
This wasn't just a war game. It was also a lab for command and control and war-fighting concepts that needed testing. Testing requires controlled environments, and Ripper didn't like the controls. If the game is over on day one, then several years of work gets wasted. That is not realistic either.
“This wasn’t just a war game. It was also a lab for command and control and war-fighting concepts that needed testing. Testing requires controlled environments, and Ripper didn’t like the controls. If the game is over on day one, then several years of work gets wasted. That is not realistic either. “
Good summary.
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