Posted on 07/10/2011 1:47:28 AM PDT by Strategy
TEHRAN, Iran -- A senior Revolutionary Guard commander threatened Saturday that U.S. aircraft carriers would be targeted if Iran came under attack amid a standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear program.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Very true. Already in Vietnam, non-nuclear World War II-style morale bombing (carpet bombing of enemy cities to try and break their morale) was deemed unacceptable, so forget about nuclear.
Too true.
Take N.A.S.A. for an example.
Spend loads of money in a paralized condition.
A senior Revolutionary Guard commander threatened Saturday that U.S. aircraft carriers would be targeted if Iran came under attack ....Uh ... mr 'senior Revolutionary Guard commander' THAT would be a baaaaaad idea.
"Go ahead. Make my millennium"You'll be getting your '72 Sturgeons' faster than you can say, "Allahu Akb..."
1. Van Riper “gamed the game” in his approach to initiating hostilities. The game “fighting” was scheduled to start as a phase in the experiment. His aggressive actions during last two days before hostilities were “scheduled” to start initiated navy responses in the simulations. His boats were sunk and aircraft shot down and then re-set so the experiments objectives were achievable.
2. Commander, 2nd Fleet, JFMCC, had protested the MC2002 scheme for employing naval forces indicating that he would never put his forces into the positions they were required to be in for the scenario. Specifically, he said that he would not put his battle group or amphib group into the Persian Gulf with the threat unless there were “smoking holes” up and down the Straits of Hormuz.
3. The self-defense features of the naval simulations used in MC2002 were pretty much turned off when Van Ripper began his attack (which was actually coordinated with face-to-face collaboration between his force commanders in the wargame spaces and not by using hand written notes carried by motorcycle... i.e. no friction). Any ship/boat that runs anti-ship missiles out on the rails and turns on its targeting radar in range of a CVBG will get an immediate response from a SURCAP or Aegis Cruiser in overwatch. That did not happen when the attack sequence began because the simulations were not adjusted back (so as not to alert Blue that the attack was forth coming).
4. All this was explained to Van Riper before during, and after the After Action Review (which he attended). The actual causalities assessed were realistic given the deployment of forces at the time of the Red attack. After the fact there was “grand-standing” and a public “I told you so display” that distorted everything that was learned during MC2002.
5. Tremendous lessons in Joint command and control and information sharing were demonstrated and learned in MC 2002 and have been successfully employed in actual operations since. Many are still classified because they did reveal weaknesses that were not identified or understood before the experiment.
6. MC 2002 was an EXPERIMENT. The intent was to “test it till it breaks” to learn where we were vulnerable. That mission was accomplished. Van Riper’s little public sideshow was an after the fact distraction that only exposed his ego and distracted from the important lessons that were learned.
I was just about to post the same sentiments. See below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
The crowing and “bring it on” mentality from the elderly keyboard commandos is laughable. In case anyone has forgotten, our military has been worn pretty thin by over a decade of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan all the while engaging in four? five? pseudo wars in Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Combine that with the above chilling realistic scenario introduced by the above exercise in 2002, these threats should be paid attention to.
“Since then they’ve wargamed that scenario TO DEATH.”
By all means, please provide links that validate such comments.
I figure the 30 mike (and even the 20 mike which I am familiar) would kill reliably anything up to about 60 feet, and really ruin the day of larger ships up to about CVN size. (I am thinking of someone strafing a ready deck with one.)
Fortunately, unlike Marine generals we can depend on the Iranians to follow the rules. You put me in mind of the lessons learned from an earlier wargame.
On February 1, 1932, the United States began its annual Grand Joint Army and Navy Exercises. This year the goal was to test the defenses of Hawaii.
The Blue attackers, with the Navy’s two new carriers, USS Saratoga and Lexington were ordered to land a combined Army-Marine assault force on Oahu, Hawaii. The Black defenders, equally well supplied with battleships and cruisers and submarines, were supposed to stop them.
As the joint exercises got under way, the Blue force sent its two carriers and four destroyers ranging ahead of its battleships and cruisers, under the command of Rear Adm. Harry E. Yarnell.
At nightfall on February 6, 1932, Yarnel’s Blue task force was plowing through heavy seas 60 miles northeast of Oahu. The ships were running with no lights, under absolute radio silence. In the predawn murk on Sunday February 7, in heavy seas, Yarnell launched 152 planes from Saratoga and Lexington.
Yarnell’s fighters “strafed” lines of planes parked on runways, while his dive-bombers dumped 20 tons of theoretical explosives on airfields, ships in the anchorage, and Army headquarters at Fort Shafter. Not a single fighter rose to oppose them.
The New York Times correspondent covering the Grand Exercises reported that the Blue planes “made the attack unopposed by the defense, which was caught virtually napping, and [they] escaped to the mother ships without the slightest damage being inflicted on them.” He also noted that the Black defenders had yet to locate the Blue fleet 24 hours after the attack.
The Black commanders put up a vigorous defense-after the fact. They persuaded the umpires to rule that 45 of Yarnell’s planes had been hit by antiaircraft fire. They also pointed out that their battleships were at sea when Yarnell attacked and insisted that in a real war they would have soon caught up with his carriers and massacred them with their long-range guns.
A few air-minded admirals, including the outspoken Yarnell, argued that his Blue attackers had won a stunning victory that demanded a re-evaluation of American naval tactics. But the battleship admirals quickly voted them down.
In the end, the final report of the Grand Exercises’ umpires made no reference whatsoever to Yarnell’s Sunday-morning raid. On the contrary, the umpires concluded: “it is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great losses in the attack air force.”
Yet another similar exercise was conducted in 1938. The end results and conclusions drawn were much the same.
>>> Second, do you honestly think they learned nothing if the carrier was in full combat configuration for these games?
We won’t really know that unless and until there is war with Iran in the Gulf. But if history is a guide, the most important military lessons are learned by the decision makers only after a lot of people die.
Reading the thread overall, I find myself much more understanding of Riper’s “Robert McNamara” comment.
“marxist mooselimb magic negro will have to nuke their sorry asses.
“
Nope. He wouldn’t dare. His Muslim brothers wouldn’t tolerate it and he knows it.
You know, we don't even need to have any of these in the Persian Gulf to use them.
Cheers!
I guess you are right...
We should have just surrendered to Van Riper’s superior operational skill... cancelled the rest of the experiment and reported that the waging of any campaign in the Persian Gulf would be impossible because the Iranians could cleverly leverage our technology against us by aggressively forcing us to reduce even our normal self defense posture.
If, in the future, the Navy chooses to enter the Persian Gulf unprepared for combat then the lessons of MC 2002, like the lessons you cite regarding lack of awareness to the potential Japanese threat demonstrated in the 1930’s exercises, will be the same...
The apt quote is Forrest Gump... “Stupid is as stupid does.”
The problem with deploying A-10s is that they are land based. That means that they have no naval support, limited overwater combat radius, even with inflight refueling, and limited loiter over the fleet.
The Air Force also hates them, since it doesn't fit into Air Superiority Doctrine, (Read that as "You and me, Red Baron..."), the Revealed Truth of the steely eyed fighter jocks, who are now advising the JCS, and staffing all contingencies. To the best of my knowledge, the AF has STILL, despite the success A-10s have had, never reactivated regular Thunderbolt units, leaving them for the Reserves. And have not budgeted any new construction.
The Zoomies are not in the fleet defense business, figuring that since the Navy has airplanes, let them defend their own.
The Air Force and the Navy have always held Earth Moving in contempt, leaving it for the Marines, even as they assign any Marine squadrons to fleet defense. Close Air Support has never been popular with the other services. Some bearded snuffie with an AK and a Golden Beebee can screw up their whole day.
The Navy Aviator is still trying to recreate the Marianas Turkey Shoot. US Navy ships are no longer in the surface ship warfare business. The Gun Club died after WW2. The Navy have only air defense, or are ASW dedicated, and are not in the ship to ship defense business, let alone defending against small craft like the Boghammer, with a one-way-ticket-to-Crazy-Town crew. And remember, even if only one Boston Whaler with a bomb gets through, a CV is out of the plane launching and recovery business while Damage Control fixes things.
Consider how much trouble 2 dozen Skinnys in a dhow can cause, when we have to import SEALS to shoot back.
Yawn....
Ern - you said it in eleven words - total truth - it's how they do it over there. Well with the exception of Israel... not much bluster there - just strength. Can we assume Arabs carry a small stick?
You are misguided. Obama will never loose a nuke against a Muslim state, period.....
It’s ok,
soon his sorry ass will be out of the office.
To be honest I am afraid for the marxist turds safety.
If it looks like he will lead the party to a horrible de feet I look for a dem to off his marxist ass. Make him a martyr so they do not go down too bad.
LOL
” I look for a dem to off”
So far it seems the only people to assassinate a President or try to have been liberals:
1. Republican Lincoln was shot and killed by Booth, a Democrat.
2. Republican Garfield was shot and killed by Guiteau.
3. Republican William McKinley was shot and killed Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist.
4. Conservative Democrat JFK was shot and killed by Oswald, a Communist.
5. Democratic-Republican Party Andrew Jackson was shot at by Richard Lawrence, a Democrat and felt to have conspired with John C. Calhoun, a Democrat.
6. Republican Theodore Roosevelt was shot by John F. Schrank, a Democrat.
7. Republican Harry S. Truman was attacked in the alternative Whitehouse by Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, Socialists from the Puerto Rican revolutionary Nationalist Party.
9. Republican Gerald Ford was shot at by Lynette Fromme, a member of the Charles Manson family.
10. Republican Gerald Ford was shot at by Sara Jane Moore, a “revolutionary”.
11. Republican Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, while raised in a conservative home under a business leader, Hinckley turned to music and a more liberal lifestyle.
“I am reading a book that seemed to say a warthog was a Cobra helicopter.”
Cobra gunship = “Whiskey” the current iterition of the helo.
Truman was a Democrat.
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