The Washington Post recently obtained Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper‘s report about the Millennium 2002 war game in response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request:
I first learned of this classified document by reading a 2002 Army Times article in which Van Riper criticized Millennium Challenge 2002 as “rigged” and mentioned “a 20-page report” that he had submitted to his superiors.
With this information, I filed the declassification request to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2013. At the time, I was working for the National Security Archive, a nonprofit based at George Washington University that fights to make government records of historical significance public.
Eleven years later, I got my answer — an email explaining that the record I had requested had been declassified in part. The released report demonstrates why it is important to push back against government secrecy: Unearthed records may reveal to the public critical information omitted from official government narratives.
Van Riper’s write-up contradicts portions of an official 752-page final report on Millennium Challenge 2002 released by the military more than a decade ago that called the war game a “major milestone” and described the loss of an entire carrier group as only “moderately unsuccessful.”
The story of what happened definitely got out:
In the exercise, Van Riper played the “Major General” of a country resembling Iraq or Iran that “possessed natural resources critical to the world community.”
His report notes that he used a strategy of ambiguity, asymmetry and denial of territory to have his forces, known as “Red,” defeat the superior U.S. military. He wrote that because the U.S. forces, designated “Blue,” appeared determined to go to war, he “saw no option except to strike Blue first.”
To plan his attack, Van Riper wrote that he “employed a command and control methodology specifically designed to thwart” American technological advantages, including the ability to intercept electronic and phone communications. He relied on couriers to relay sensitive messages and communicated to aircraft with lanterns to avoid radio chatter.
After his surprise attack simulated the destruction of the carrier group, the atmosphere at Norfolk command, where Van Riper led his team, was “shock,” he told The Post in an interview. “It was just quiet. It never happened in an exercise before. … I don’t think [Joint Forces Command] knew what to do.”
Van Riper wanted to continue to attack U.S. forces, pressing forward with his asymmetric advantage, his report notes.
Instead, a war game adjudicator determined Van Riper’s successful attack “wouldn’t have happened” in real warfare and ruled that all but four of the virtual U.S. ships would be “refloated” and the war game would continue, according to his report.[…]
After the U.S. carrier group was “refloated,” other restrictions were imposed on Van Riper, he noted in his report. His forces could not initiate combat, but U.S. forces could. Van Riper’s forces were also forbidden from using chemical weapons against the United States, which he considered his country’s “most significant” asymmetric military strength.
“It never happened in an exercise before”
Perhaps never with AMERICAN forces:
“One of the events historians have pointed to as evidence of the Imperial General Staff’s superiority complex is the war game held aboard the battleship Yamato from May 1-4. Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku hosted this tabletop exercise and invited all of the senior commanders involved in Operation MI to participate. His chief of staff, Rear Admiral Ugaki Matome, ran the game and served as the chief umpire. In theory, the purpose of the exercise was to fight out the battle on paper first and expose any flaws in the Japanese plan so they could be corrected before launching the actual operation. This game, however, seems to have been treated as a formality rather than a serious tool for improving operational plans. In their book “Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway”, authors Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully described the game as “four days of scripted silliness” and “a mockery of professional staff work.”"
“One incident during the game that proved especially notorious occurred soon after the Japanese carrier force, known as the Kido Butai, was spotted. The player controlling the U.S. forces (whose name is lost to history) sent a flight of land-based bombers from Midway to attack the carriers. The game umpire rolled a pair of dice to determine how many hits were scored. The result of nine was enough to sink two carriers, Akagi and Kaga. To Admiral Ugaki’s mind, however, that was ludicrous. He did not believe the Americans would be so aggressive. Even if they were, he was confident the Japanese carriers would be up to the task of defending themselves. He overruled the umpire and reduced the result to just three hits, meaning that Akagi was still afloat. The destruction of Kaga stood for now, but even it reappeared in a later game covering the subsequent operation planned for New Caledonia and the Fiji Islands.”
https://navalwarcollegemuseum.blogspot.com/2021/06/you-sank-my-aircraft-carrier-did.html
Excellent point, M. Mack.
“The player controlling the U.S. forces (whose name is lost to history) sent a flight of land-based bombers from Midway to attack the carriers.”
The Umpire was correct. It would take much more than a flight of land bombers to sink the first Japanese carrier.
Also, the double Jukov vs. Pavlov exercise in Soviet Union. This one involved much more smoke-and-mirrors damage control later.
The scandalous details of “MC 02” began to leak almost immediately:
https://web.archive.org/web/20151117122930/warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-real-story-of-a-corrupted-military-exercise-and-its-legacy/
If you read Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, the Japanese CAP did a great job; it was just not enough for the number of land-attacking aircraft, and torpedo and dive bombers from carriers.
It should be noted that the Japanese carrier composition (and also US) were very attack focused, so only 1/3 of the aircraft were fighters. Later in the war it would change, and 1/1 was not uncommon. USN even experimented with carriers dedicated only to CAP.