- In 2002, a Marine general
led a fictional version of
Iran in a war game against
the United States, and won.
The US military tapped
Lieutenant General Paul VanRiper
to lead the red opposing
forces in the most expensive
military exercise in history.
He was put in command of
an inferior Middle Eastern
inspired military, and his
mission was to go against
the full might of the
American Armed Forces.
In the first two days,
he sank an entire carrier battle group.
The exercise was called
Millennium Challenge 2002.
It was designed by the joint
forces command over the
course of two years, and
it had 13,500 participants,
numerous live and
simulated training sites,
and was supposed to pit an
Iran-like Middle Eastern
country against the US military,
which would be fielding
advanced technology it didn't
even plan to implement
until five years later.
The war game would begin
with a forced entry exercise
that included the 82nd Airborne
and the First Marine Division.
When the blue forces issued
a surrender ultimatum,
VanRiper, commanding the red
forces, turned them down.
Since the Bush doctrine
of the period included
preemptive strikes
against perceived enemies,
VanRiper knew the blue forces
would be coming for him.
And they did.
But the Three-Star General
didn't spend 41 years in the
Marine Corp being timid.
As soon as the US Navy was
beyond the point of no return,
he hit 'em, and he hit 'em hard.
Missiles from land-based
units, civilian boats,
and low-flying planes
tore through the fleet.
As explosives-laden speed
boats decimated the Navy
using suicide tactics.
His signal to initiate the
attack was a coded message
sent from the Minuets of
Mosques at the cult prayer.
In under 10 minutes, the
whole thing was over,
and Lieutenant General Paul
VanRiper was victorious.
So how did 19 ships and
some 20 thousand US troops
end up at the bottom of the Persian Gulf?
It started with the Op Four leadership.
VanRiper was the epitome of the salty
Marine Corp General officer.
He was a 41 year veteran, both
enlisted and commissioned.
Serving everywhere from
Vietnam to Desert Storm.
VanRiper attended the Marine
Corp Amphibious Warfare school,
the College of Naval Command and Staff,
Army War College,
and the Army's Airborne Ranger schools.
That is not the ribbon
rack of a timid individual.
In fact, the Three-Star
General had been retired
for some five years by the
time he led the red forces
in Millennium Challenge.
He was an old school Marine,
capable of some old school
tactics and he insisted that
technology cannot replace human intuition,
and the study of basic nature of war,
which he called a quote
terrible, uncertain,
chaotic, bloody business.
When VanRiper commented
on Millennium Challenge,
he said that the blue forces
were stuck in their own
mode of thinking.
Their vastly superior
technology included advanced
intelligence matrices and an
operational net assessment
that told them where the Op
Four vulnerabilities were,
and what VanRiper was most
likely to do next out of
a range of possible scenarios.
They relied heavily on that.
When the blue took out
red's microwave towers and
fiber optics, they expected
his forces to use satellite
and cell phones that could be monitored.
Not a chance.
VanRiper instead used motorcycle couriers.
Messages hidden in prayers
and even coded lighting
systems on his air fields.
Tactics employed during World War Two.
He struck first.
He calculated how many
cruise missiles their ships
could handle and, in his
terms, simply launched more
than that.
In fact, VanRiper hated the
kind of analytical decision
making the blue forces were doing.
He believed it took far too long.
His resistance plan included
ways of getting his people
to make good decisions
using rapid cognition and
analog but reliable communications.
The other commanders involved called foul,
complaining that a real Op
Four would never use the
tactics that VanRiper used.
Except VanRiper's fleet
used boats and explosives
like those used against the
USS Cole in 2000 when it
was attacked by a small
explosives laden boat in
the Yemen Port.
In the end, the blue
forces were all respond and
VanRiper was prevented from
making moves to counter the
blue forces landing.
He had no radar and wasn't
allowed to shoot down
incoming aircraft he would've
otherwise accurately targeted.
The rest of the exercise
was scripted to let the blue
force land and win.
VanRiper walked out when he
realized his commands were
being ignored by the exercise planners.
The jig was up.
Three Star wrote a 21-page
critique of the exercise
that was immediately classified.
VanRiper spoke out against
the rigged game anyway.
Nothing was learned from this, he wrote.
A culture not willing to
think hard and test itself
does not auger will for the future.
Couldn't agree more.
Like this video?
Give it a share and let
us know in the comments
what you think.
