This took place in 2002, but how much do you wanna bet the philosophy behind the Navy’s failure still exists. And what they did to cover it up. Quite a story.
It all comes out of the “Millenium Challenge ’02” war games we staged in the Persian Gulf this summer. The big scandal was that the Opposing Force Commander, Gen. Paul van Ripen, quit mid-game because the games were rigged for the US forces to win. The scenario was a US invasion of an unnamed Persian Gulf country (either Iraq or Iran). The US was testing a new hi-tech joint force doctrine, so naturally van Riper used every lo-tech trick he could think of to mess things up. When the Americans jammed his CCC network , he sent messages by motorbike.
The truth is that van Ripen did something so important that I still can’t believe the mainstream press hasn’t made anything of it. With nothing more than a few “small boats and aircraft,” van Ripen managed to sink most of the US fleet in the Persian Gulf.
What this means is as simple and plain as a skull: every US Navy battle group, every one of those big fancy aircraft carriers we love, won’t last one single day in combat against a serious enemy.
Yeah, BooBoo. The fact that it actually took place is meaningless.
I’m just curious … WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE? What sources does “War Nerd” use? Or does fact checking even matter to “dvorak.org/blog” anymore?
Cause without it, this just seems to me to be branching out into the “hate the military” vibe? What, hating Christians not enough for you?
The way that the war in Iraq since the declaration of victory was made may be a great illustration of the whole premise of the article.
US forces having their asses kicked by low tech, disorganized insurgents.
Put the BS meter up on this one. The article says he sank most of the fleet, but gave no information on how. Just becuase he sent all his bathtub toys at the fleet at the same time says nothing, as does the idea of a bomb leaded cessna sinking a carrier. The Japanese tried that in WW2, it didn’t work, ultimately, and we have better close in defense systems, such as the Phalanx, now. I’m not saying that we wouldn’t take losses, only that it’s not that simple.
Put the BS meter up on this one. The article says he sank most of the fleet, but gave no information on how.
Comment by Angus
Errrr… maybe using 30 or so Sunburns?
It’s quite difficult to sink an aircraft carrier since they are designed to take a lot of damage and still keep on going. The article seems to indicate that a carrier was operating alone, but in a war time situation this would not happen. There would be groups of carriers operating together. Aircraft carriers are for force projection, other ships in the fleet have the task of defending the carrier from attacks. This article has a very high bullshit rating.
#3, #5;
Millenium Challenge article at Wikipedia (with citations).
#7;
See #8.
Somehow the articles leaves out that van Riper had cruise missiles, not just “cessnas and fishing boats”
Yes, the articles with Van Riper seem very vague about the methods used in the wargame.
Your poor ignorant gits never did learn how to use Google. The Guardian covered it right after it happened. Their article in September, 2002:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,786992,00.html
#7
sinking a aircraft carrier is actually quite simple. All the general did in these war games was follow Soviet Cold War doctrine. The Soviets always knew the only way to defeat the U.S. if there ever was a war between the 2 superpowers was sheer overwhelming forces. the Soviets would send wave after wave of cruise missiles, fighter jets, and subs in the hope that a U.S. and NATO forces would be overwhelmed and their fleets could be sunk. the U.S. and NATO relied joint protection, the idea that if one fleet was attacked, the other two in the area would help in defense of the first.
this was talked about back in 05 on discovery channel. the whole idea about the war games was that the U.S. military, but especially the bush administration wanted to prove their theory’s on “Transformation”
the problem is the “Transformation” doesn’t work and Iraq is the proof
wikipedia article on Transformation
http://www.tiny.cc/Transformation
(Take another look at the casualty figures, Asleep. Especially amusing is the overlap between the ones saying the 2ndA serves no purpose, and the ones saying exactly what you are saying.)
One of the handicaps the fleet operated under was not being able to sink all those little boats or shoot down the small planes at the first indication some were hostiles.
That would be “war crimes”, according to today’s interpretation.
It would have been SOP during WWII.
The next war may well last only a few days, and the military will not be able to get free of the restrictions imposed by wishfull thinking before being defeated.
This is an incredibly old story. The War Nerd wrote in back in 2002. Here’s a link to what I think is his first posting of it.
http://tinyurl.com/2jsub7
The ships are not MEANT to last more than a day in a war. The whole point of them is to be sunk, so Der Fuhrer Bush can award contracts to wealthy contributers to build more!
This scenario has been repeated so many times in movies such as Private Benjamin. The underdogs always outsmart the know-it-all higher officer by using subterfuge to trap the other’s army.
In real life, this scenario has been successfully done in Viet Nam, Rhodesia, and Afghanistan already. The well armed superior force loses to the ill equipped, but smarter, locals.
I took a look at the source of this story – looks like a rubbish website. Why don’t you check the source??!?!
This blog’s quality is going down the drain… very disappointing.
I see so much garbage being posted here… I do not enjoy reading it anymore.
John C Dvorak – your blog sucks!
I imagine this is one of the reasons that the Pentagon is currently performing preliminary development of the Cormorant. The Cormorant is a sub launched and sub recoverable stealth fighter/bomber UAV. The idea is to convert old ICBM subs into underwater aircraft carriers. Such a boat would be nearly impossible to detect without well equipped attack subs. A modern sub equipped with Cormorants could perform many of the same tasks as a Nimitz class carrier but the threat of being destroyed would be vastly reduced.
Of course, it would be much smaller, less capable, and probably cost much more.
For a low to mid level tech enemy like Iran or China, it would be very difficult if not impossible to stop.
Every measure has a counter-measure. And sometimes the counter-measure is so simplistic that it is discounted until it is used for a real attack. Nothing is invulnerable. To think so is a prologue to disaster. To stay alive, you have to stay one step ahead of the competition.
http://tinyurl.com/2jrmm5
…which is why the nuclear option is on the table with Iran, and why we’re waiting for Iran to give us the cause to do it.
Honestly, hack… catch up.
google: army times van riper
Although the author does make some good points I wonder if he ever served in the military. I wonder if he has ever worked behind the scenes in a major war-game, I have.
These war games primary objective is to give commanders practice. Sometimes another major objective might be to test a weapons system.
These games are entirely pre-scripted down to a very fine detail.
My job was to observe, and inject situations that would cause the commanders to make decisions to keep the game on scenario. It was a lot of fun, but hard work. There were a lot of us ‘game controllers’ working together to make it happen as planned. Sometimes a commander would do something so unexpected that the scenario was hard to salvage and we would have to inject something unrealistic to salvage it. This is what it sounds like happened in the article.
You just know the guy who sank the fleet is in some dead end job somewhere playing with himself.Do you think maybe he has already retired?
Odyssey67,
I just read WarNerd’s article “Kamikaze Math”. The write-up on Japan’s Kamikazes has interesting parallels to this the topic of our Navy fleet in the Persian Gulf. It all boils down to math. How much is one nut job’s life worth when compared to a U.S. carrier? This is why suicide bombers are so scary. One life is a small price to pay to take out a carrier, especially when you put so little value on said life. Also, the crazier the society, the scarier the kamikaze.
http://tinyurl.com/2n94wr
An interesting read.
“the guy who sank the fleet”, General Paul Van Riper, was brought out of retirement to participate in the games and run the opposition. He was former head of the Marine War College, and also one of the generals that spoke out against Rumsfeld a couple years ago. So he’s not “in some dead end job somewhere playing with himself.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K._Van_Riper
This event has already been covered in a book! Chapter 4 of Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink”.
It’s a cool story, but rather old. Your linking to this crackpot rehashing of events betrays the sensationalistic and shallow bent this blog has taken on.
A war with Iran in any scenario would be a huge disaster for the US, and most reasonable people in the US know it.
1. Bomb one or two oil tankers passing through the Straight of Hormuz, set resulting oil spills on fire (or some other method to cut Saudi and Iraqi oil from reaching customers).
2. Convince partners in the SCO (Russia, China, India, Pakistan, etc) to dump dollars on the open market. Watch the US economy come to a screetching halt.
US trying to use SHOCK troop tactics with a Fleet of ships??
Give me a couple of electronics geeks and I will show you a bunch of CRAP floating on water.
The ships have to many computerized components.
WE, are almost as bad as the RED coats in the revolutionary war..
Hit and run tactics work GREAT to hide real attacks that can do anything.
File this article under Fiction (Extreme).
With no supporting documentation, and a blog name of War Nerd, I’ll take a pass on anything this guy has to say.
If you guys don’t belive Ripen, just check how easy it was for the iraqui insurgents to knock down those hi tech Apache helicopters: They blinded them with burning tires and knocked them out with grenades on a stick.
Reading through the comments, all I can say is that those of you who find where I got the story more important than the story itself are pathetic.
As the ever insightful moss pointed out in #12, all you have to do is Google the story to find out everything in the article is accurate. But those of you who need to see your blatherings in print complain about my source and can’t be bothered to do your own checking.
I suggest you stick to watching the humorous videos. On the other hand, I bet you end up complaining about the camera work. Cripes!
Until the warm smelly stuff hits the fan, with live munitions being passed back and forth like tennis serves with a hundred players on each side of the net, there is no way to know for sure what “institutionalized” weapons systems will suddenly develop multiple Achilles heels and/or glass jaws.
Think early WW2, and Battleships.