> Normally this would have been the end of it, lessons would be learned, and strategic directions adjusted. Instead the game was reset and the Iranian side was handicapped to prevent them from doing various things, effectively imposing a scripted result. This led to the US winning by an overwhelming margin and somehow the results of this rigged game were used to align strategic initiatives moving forward.
Wargames aren't like laser tag matches where one side wins and then it's over, the point of them is to be a training exercise. It's supposed to be closer to D&D than anything, where the person playing the opposing forces plays a similar role to the DM. If you look at interviews from other MC2002 participants, essentially what happened was that the Navy wanted to practice for an amphibious landing. Due to how they moved their ships, the computer running the simulation thought that the entire naval fleet had been instantly teleported right next to a massive armada of small boats that Van Riper had set up, without simulating what would have happened if the naval fleet had seen the enemy ships in the distance. Additionally, in real life Van Riper's fleet could not have held the missiles that he had told the computer they were carrying and now firing at point blank range at the Navy. The simulator that ran the US naval ships' defenses was also not functioning due to the engagement happening in an unexpected area, so it was turned off. Van Riper was able to sink the ships and defeat the navy within the bounds of the simulation, but not in a way that could have happened in real life.
This is basically like if I found an obscure sequence of chess moves that caused the Lichess server to crash and declare me the winner, then used it to beat a bunch of grandmasters, then went on a media tour saying that this proves that there's some massive flaw with how chess strategy is being taught.
Gen. Van Riper's tactics were apparently discredited in 2002 because they were unfair, but Iran seems not to have received the memo since their moves bear more than a passing resemblance to his.
But the US seems to be committed on repeating the Russian experience.
“So, it’s it’s uh little unfair. You know, you win a war, but they have no right to be doing what they’re doing.”
This is not what Wikipedia's summary describes. Now, maybe Wikipedia has the wrong summary, but according to it the challenge wasn't "discredited". By that point the exercise was over, but 13 more days were budgeted for, so the analysts requested their forces to be resurrected so they could play out the rest of the days, with artificial restrictions so that the rest of the challenge was effectively scripted and left no room for the OPFOR to try novel tactics.
One of the generals (of the blue team) is quoted as saying: "You kill me in the first day and I sit there for the next 13 days doing nothing, or you put me back to life and you get 13 more days' worth of experiment out of me. Which is a better way to do it?"
Also:
> The postmortem JFCOM report on MC02 would say "As the exercise progressed, the OPFOR free-play was eventually constrained to the point where the end state was scripted. This scripting ensured a blue team operational victory and established conditions in the exercise for transition operations."
It definitely seems like there were issues with RedFors achievments. But the response is still ridiculous. I would have also resigned in ReFor's shoes.
Of course this means learning the lesson of how the first defeat happened. You reset so that you can learn more lessons. If they ignored the lesson of the first defeat, that's stupid. But the reset itself makes sense.
who rigs the results of a war game and believes the results - only an idiot drunk on power.
Are you saying that Iran is capably fighting and killing US personnel, aircraft, and invading infantry?
I am a little confused about the universe you live in. The IRGC and Basij effectively do not have a chain of command and are effectively moving and acting by momentum, essentially no different than a dead man walking.
Do you know the names of any alive people in the IRGC chain of command? Have you seen videos or evidence of IRGC doing anything to harm US forces other than lob some stuff and hope it hits? Where are the Islamic Iranian armies and navies you imply to exist?
This was by design via the mosaic defense tactic.
They know the US prides itself on decapitation strikes, "taking out the leader of x" was a monthly headline during our time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and during the events of ISIS/syrian civil war. It's how the special forces operated, taking out a "leader", collecting all the names they could find in their possession, and taking those guys out. In the later days of Afghanistan, they stopped even trying to find out who the names were. If you were some mid-level Taliban member's dentist, you'd be fair game.
So Iran built a defense for that, a military that does not need a central command to continue fighting. They have their orders and they'll continue to carry them out. Completely bypass the benefits of highly accurate munitions, cyber intelligence, etc.
That's the same reason the first round of the Millennium challenge won outright. The red-team leadership knew to not expect last year's war today, and used their brains to exploit the weaknesses of a highly mechanized and sophisticated military.
There is no reason to believe that
They have been training for decades for exactly this sort of war, and have experienced veterans at all levels