ChrisOk 🔻

A quarter of a century ago, USMC GEN Paul Van Ripper did this exact strategy. In 2002, he was tapped by the Pentagon to play a adversarial force (red team) modeled after Iran during the $250 million Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame. General Van Ripper refused to hold back. Cleverly using low-tech, asymmetric tactics, he launched a surprise strike that sank 16 to 19 U.S. warships including an aircraft carrie) within minutes. Van Rippers tactics were simple: motorcycle couriers, light signals, and coded signals from mosque minarets. Unhappy with the results, organizers halted the exercise, refloated the ships, and altered the rules to script a Blue Team victory. General Van Ripper resigned from his advisory role, but spoke out in protest: "Nothing was learned from this. A culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future." The U.S. military produced an exercise where "the result was preordained", and not a real test of America's ability to invade a hostile nation. He was prophetic a 24 years later.