Millennium Challenge 2002

Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more powerful weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red".

Exercise action

Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, used old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World War II light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.

Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships. This included one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.^[1]

At this point, the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed; this was later justified by General Peter Pace as follows: "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?"^[2] After the reset, both sides were ordered to follow predetermined plans of action, leading to allegations that the exercise was scripted and "$250 million was wasted".^[3] Due to his concerns about the scripted nature of the new exercise, Van Riper resigned his position in the midst of the war game. Van Riper later expressed concern that the wargame's purpose had shifted to reinforce existing doctrine and notions of infallibility within the U.S. military rather than serve as a learning experience. He was quoted in the ZDF–New York Times documentary The Perfect War^[4] as saying that what he saw in MC02 echoed the same view promoted by the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara before and during the Vietnam War, namely that the U.S. military could not and would not be defeated.

References

1. ^ Arquilla, John, "The New Rules of War", Foreign Policy, March/April 2010.
2. ^ Borger, Julian (2002-09-06). "Wake-up call". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/06/usa.iraq. Retrieved 2010-05-12. 
3. ^ "The Immutable Nature of War". Nova. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wartech/nature.html. 
4. ^ "New York Times Television Co-Produces News Documentary The Perfect War with Germany's ZDF". Business Wire. 2004-03-23. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2004_March_23/ai_114531926. 

External links

• "Millennium Challenge 2002". USJFCOM. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. http://web.archive.org/web/20070928005405/http://www.jfcom.mil/about/experiments/mc02.htm. 
• "Battle Plan Under Fire". Nova. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wartech/. 
• Military transformation
• Naylor, Sean D. (2002-08-16). "War Games Rigged?". Army Times. http://www.armytimes.com/legacy/new/0-292925-1060102.php. 
• Kaplan, Fred (2003-03-28). "The Officer Who Predicted Saddam's Moves". Slate. http://www.slate.com/id/2080814/. 
• Borger, Julian (2002-08-21). "War game was fixed to ensure American victory, claims general". Guardian Online (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,778070,00.html. 
• Brecher, Gary (2002-12-11). "U Sank My Carrier!". The Exile. http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779&IBLOCK_ID=35. Retrieved 2010-02-16. 
• TV documentary: The Perfect War
• Gladwell, Malcolm (2005). Blink. Little, Brown. pp. 99–146.