Video: United States War With Iran Simulated

• Video: United States War With Iran Simulated
  by https://southfront.org/
  The United States and Iran are balancing on the edge of a fully-fledged open military conflict, with many claiming that President Donald Trump had to respond militarily to the Iranian retaliatory missile strike on US military bases in Iraq. However, they have forgotten that in 2002 the Pentagon already ran a colossal wargame designed to simulate a war with Iran – and the US lost heavily.
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  Millennium Challenge 2002 was a $235 million USD military exercise that involved elements of all the U.S. armed forces, with over 13,500 personnel engaging in the most realistic wargames held up until that time. Almost immediately following the invasion of Afghanistan and ahead of the 2003 launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the exercise was clearly meant to test the Pentagon’s new vision of waging war against a Middle Eastern enemy. The enemy that the OPFOR (opposition force) was modeled after was in fact the nation of Iran.
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  The commander picked to develop the strategy of the OPFOR, or “Red Team”, and lead them in battle was retired USMC Lt. General Paul Van Riper. General Van Riper is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, who held many important commands over his 41 years of military service. At the time of Millennium Challenge, he was working with the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. He proceeded to do what everyone in the DOD command structure thought was impossible, defeat the U.S. military with a technologically inferior yet highly motivated and adaptive force.
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  Van Riper knew that perhaps the greatest advantage enjoyed by the U.S. forces, their high-tech advantage in command and control and surveillance, was also a potential weakness. The U.S. military’s overreliance on technology was exploited as its Achilles heel. The retired USMC general forbid his forces from communicating via radio communications, relying on motorcycle couriers and runners. He also conducted cyphered communication embedded in the Muslim call to prayer conducted throughout each day. The Blue Force had very little idea of what the Red Force was planning in the days leading up to the simulated amphibious assault.
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  The Bush Administration had  just recently announced the pre-emptive strike doctrine that included the use of pre-emptive war against an immediate or perceived future threat to U.S. national security. Since then, Washington has been actively using these perceived future threats to justify its own actions all around the world. (The claim that the assassination of the Iranian national hero, General Qassem Suleimani, in Baghdad on January 3 was required to prevent a war is an example of such a justification.) Therefore, with full knowledge of the preemptive war doctrine, the Red Force commander knew that an attack was imminent.
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  As soon as the Blue Force deployed in range for a strike on the simulated Iran, the Red team went on the offensive. Van Riper’s forces decimated the U.S. naval and amphibious assault within approximately fifteen minutes. Nineteen warships, including an aircraft carrier, and five amphibious ships, were sunk, and an estimated 20,000 sailors and marines were lost. The Red Force used barrages of hundreds of land-based missiles coupled with swarms of small, explosive laden suicide boats to defeat a combined aircraft carrier strike group and amphibious ready group.
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