SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Those whacky Persians...

Perhaps its to practice what we already showed them how to do!:/\\!!
This is not the first time that the American high command has fudged the results of a war gaming exercise because the real results would be very embarrassing to all U.S. leadership, from the White House down to the Pentagon. In the early years of the Clinton Administration, America's top guns -- her elite fighter pilots -- engaged in an war gaming exercise with Israeli pilots. The American aces were humiliated, so much so that the Pentagon discreetly asked the Israeli government not to publicize the results! The story I read was very small and buried deeply in our local paper.
Now, let us return to this news story. The American officer leading the "enemy" -- the "Force Red" team -- was "the straight-talking Marine commander who had been brought out of retirement to lead Force Red. His name was Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K._Van_Riper and he had played the role of the crazed but cunning leader of the hypothetical rogue state ... In the first days of the 'war', Van Riper's Force Red sent most of the US fleet to the bottom of the Persian Gulf." (Ibid.)
The tactics adopted by this Marine Corps general were astounding and they produced "The Worst US Naval Disaster Since Pearl Harbor".
"The war game was described as 'free play', meaning that both sides were unconstrained, free to pursue any tactic in the book of war in the service of victory ... Much of the action was computer-generated. But representative military units in the field also acted out the various moves and countermoves. The comparison to a chess match is not inaccurate. The vastly superior US armada consisted of the standard carrier battle group with its full supporting cast of ships and planes. Van Riper had at his disposal a much weaker flotilla of smaller vessels, many of them civilian craft, and numerous assets typical of a Third World country." (Ibid.)
"But Van Riper made the most of weakness. Instead of trying to compete directly with Force Blue, he utilized ingenious low-tech alternatives. Crucially, he prevented the stronger US force from eavesdropping on his communications by foregoing the use of radio transmissions. Van Riper relied on couriers instead to stay in touch with his field officers ... At every turn, the wily Van Riper did the unexpected. And in the process he managed to achieve an asymmetric advantage ... Astutely and very covertly, Van Riper armed his civilian marine craft and deployed them near the US fleet, which never expected an attack from small pleasure boats ... Force Red's prop-driven aircraft suddenly were swarming around the US warships, making Kamikaze dives. Some of the pleasure boats made suicide attacks. Others fired Silkworm cruise missiles from close range, and sunk a carrier, the largest ship in the US fleet, along with two helicopter-carriers loaded with marines ... the Navy was unprepared. When it was over, most of the US fleet had been destroyed. Sixteen US warships lay on the bottom, and the rest were in disarray. Thousands of American sailors were dead, dying, or wounded.

"If the games had been real, it would have been the worst US naval defeat since Pearl Harbor." (Ibid.)
Clearly, this war games disaster was something the Pentagon could not have foreseen. Publicly, Pentagon spokesmen admitted of no disaster, since, in war gaming, destroyed equipment and dead sailors can be "resurrected" at the touch of a keyboard. At the end, the government of the rogue state was overthrown and victory achieved -- but only after General Van Riper quit in disgust. Oh, yes, and the Pentagon did not admit that they had anything to learn and insisted there was nothing they needed to change.
But, you may argue, surely they knew better internally and were working madly to change tactics so they would not have this kind of real disaster, from a real enemy, who can really kill our sailors and marines. You may be right, except for the fact that most of the reasons for this disaster are systemic and cannot be easily or quickly corrected. How can this be?
The first problem is that the Navy has heavily invested in equipment which does not work effectively in close-in places like the Persian Gulf. In other words, our Navy was created, and equipped, to fight a blue-water enemy out in the open ocean, and is very vulnerable to a determined close-in enemy using unconventional tactics. Listen as this article explains this terrible reality. Essentially in warfare, there is always a 'cheap' solution to an expensive problem: English long bows vs armored knights, or Stinger shoulder rockets against Soviet Hind helicopters... by-by Afghanistan. This carrier mock up is a practice dummy for what we've shown can be done. Yamamoto copied the British attack on Taranto at Pearl Harbor and now the whacky Iranians are following suit ...to whack US similarily! http://www.rense.com/general64/fore.htm LT GEN Van RIPER http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Riper_USMC.jpg