[HN Gopher] We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Ha... ___________________________________________________________________ We only ever talk about the third attack on Pearl Harbor Author : stanrivers Score : 204 points Date : 2021-05-31 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.butwhatfor.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.butwhatfor.com) | GuardianCaveman wrote: | My uncle flew Cobra helicopters in Vietnam and the us developed a | new anti air system and he was supposed to fly against it to demo | its effectiveness. I don't recall the story well but he flew nap | of the earth and in a certain manner he knew would counter the aa | system and embarrassed the hell out of the bluefor test team and | engineers who said he cheated. A friend in the army did an | excercise at Bragg where Special forces made him and the other | guys attached into opposing force to hunt them down. My friend | and his team circled back from the trucks and climbed in the bed | and when the sf got tired of looking for them and came back to | the truck my friend popped out from under a tarp and simulated | kill with miles gear and they said he cheated as well. I guess | there are a lot of egos and sore losers in the military | throughout history. | saberdancer wrote: | You have to take into account that some of these exploits are | possible exactly because you are in an exercise and can work | around the rules. | | Flying nap of the Earth with a Cobra probably works because he | knew the location where the AA system was located, there were | no other "combatants", no air cover or spotters/infantry along | the route to inform the AA that helicopter is flying low. | | SF story about circling back is fun, but in a real scenario it | would mean you kill a couple of guys but end up surrounded by | unknown number of people and infantry. | germinalphrase wrote: | At least during Vietnam (and according to "The SOG | Chronicles"), it seems like the special forces guys were | really out there in areas the US didn't exactly admit to | going (Cambodia, Laos). As such, taking them down probably | wouldn't cause much of a counter reaction. | kevmo wrote: | Check out the most expensive War Games in history -- the USA | got annihilated, and there were a lot of hurt feelings. The Lt. | Gen. quit in the middle of the games, because he kept winning | and they kept changing the rules to force a USA victory. | Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul | K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, | using 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-style | 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: one aircraft carrier, ten | cruisers and five of Blue's 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. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 | lifeisstillgood wrote: | Curiously the Japanese Navy War Gamed their attack on Midway | in a similar fashion, and the "USA" team placed their | carriers exactly where Nimitiz did a few weeks later, and | sank the Japanese fleet. | | The top brass then "re floated" and announced the US Navy | must sail from Pearl and so be ambushed, as per plan. | | So, yeah, risk management is everything | onepointsixC wrote: | This story is a lot less impressive when you start learning | the details. | | Such as the fact that the motorcycle messengers traveled at | the speed of light to instantaneously transmit orders. The | fact that the salvo of cruise missiles came from boats which | could not carry them, and the fact that simulator's fleet | defenses were turned off to prevent them from targeting | commercial air and commercial shipping. | quercusa wrote: | You'd think Blue would have prepared for small boat suicide | attacks less than two years after the USS Cole attack. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cole_bombing | B1FF_PSUVM wrote: | No one expects the "loyal opposition", oh wait, they did | ... | enriquto wrote: | This story is absolutely bonkers. If the wikipedia page is | true, this paints a very ridiculous state of US high brass. I | refuse to believe that a major military nation may engage in | such petty stupidity. Thus my conclusion is that the whole | summary of the events is carefully crafted to misled future | enemies of their true capabilities. | kevmo wrote: | Powerful countries have done dumb stuff all throughout | history. It's one reason why empires don't last. | | Burying your head in the sand only makes you part of the | problem. | enriquto wrote: | > makes you part of the problem. | | Fortunately for everybody, I have no influence on any | military nor political force anywhere. Or any relevant | responsibility for that matter. The world is safe from my | wrong opinions. | newsclues wrote: | Never underestimate the incompetence of senior leadership. | corty wrote: | Exercises are different. When you don't have to fear death | for you or your troops, you don't act the same I guess. I | think the blue team would have thought twice about letting | their ego run the show if the red team had used life ammo. | daveevad wrote: | > Thus my conclusion is that the whole summary of the | events is carefully crafted to misled future enemies of | their true capabilities. | | Thus you have discounted the strategy that disclosing | exactly what happened misleads future enemies the most. | onepointsixC wrote: | While the first sounds fine, I don't see how you could | reasonably consider the second one anything but a complete | waste of everyone's time. | jabl wrote: | Well, in retrospect it's easy to say that air power is the future | and battleships are obsolete. But with the information available | at the time, I don't think it really was that clear back in 1932. | Back then, no capital ship had been sunk let alone been severely | damaged(?) by aircraft. Aircraft, and in particular naval | aircraft, at the time were flimsy biplanes, with monoplanes | slowly entering the scene. Sinking a battleship with those? Pfft, | entirely reasonably people said. | | I mean, put yourself into the hypothetical supreme naval planner | of, say, the US or Japan at the time. Are you really going to | gamble your entire nations (or empires, if you will) capability | to project force overseas on the notion that air power is the | future and battleships are obsolete? If you're wrong, the enemy | battleship fleet will just shrug off your feeble aerial attacks | and proceed to crush your navy and conquer your overseas assets. | | So in that sense it's no surprise that both USN and IJN built | both battleships and carriers. And at least the US kept building | them long after Pearl Harbor (though the Iowas were all ordered | before Pearl Harbor, but they weren't cancelled in favor of | carriers or converted into such either). | aqme28 wrote: | Totally agreed, politically, but wasn't Billy Mitchell | demonstrating air power vs naval as far back as 1921? | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell#Project_B:_Anti... | | It seems mostly like the powers that be weren't ready to accept | it. | [deleted] | jabl wrote: | Indeed, Mitchell's experiments were one of the first to | suggest that air power might have a role beyond scouting in | naval combat. And no doubt, history proved him to be right. | | But again, it would still have been a very risky gamble that | air power is the future when all your potential adversaries | are building ever bigger battleships. | greggyb wrote: | > I mean, put yourself into the hypothetical supreme naval | planner of, say, the US or Japan at the time. Are you really | going to gamble your entire nations (or empires, if you will) | capability to project force overseas on the notion that air | power is the future and battleships are obsolete? | | Per the fine article, Japan _did_ devote their preparations to | air superiority and carried out exactly the attack forewarned | by the 1932 war games. So, yes, that seems to have been a good | strategy. | jabl wrote: | They didn't completely rely on that though, as they, for | instance, ordered the Yamato class battleships in 1937, at | great expense and years after the wargames mentioned. | | The IJN seems to have been quite obsessed with their Kantai | Kessen doctrine, where battleship fleets would slug it out in | one decisive battle. | protomyth wrote: | To be fair, some American Admirals believe in battleships | fleets slugging it out. I cannot remember which battle, but | it was basically caused by an American Admiral moving his | BBs for just such a battle. | snakke wrote: | Your hunch is correct. There is a quote from a british naval | officer that roughly says that -if they were right [on aircraft | carriers being the next best thing and battleships being | obsolete] they'd win the war. If they were wrong, they'd lose | the empire.- | | The exact quote escapes my google-fu sadly. I'm quite postive | I've seen it in either one of Indy Neidell and his team's WW2 | week-by-week episode[0] or one of the many excellent | Drachinifel's videos about all things naval history[1]. | | [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1AejCL4DA7jYkZAELRhHQ | [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4mftUX7apmV1vsVXZh7RTw | pmontra wrote: | In other wargames: | | You might remember that the Ronald Reagan was sunk by a Swedish | stealth submarine in 2005 [1] and that there is little hope to | save the Baltic and Taiwan if Russia and China decide to occupy | them [2]. | | [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/war-games-swedish- | ste... | | [2] https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass- | handed-t... | tpmx wrote: | [1]: | | > Key Point: Why are we still building aircraft carriers when | even Sweden can sink them? | | Oi. | | Still a fair question, though. | fatbird wrote: | Because they're the greatest _peacetime_ weapons system ever | invented. Until hot war breaks out, which seems increasingly | unlikely under the umbrella of nuclear weapons and MAD, they | are the premier force projection tool around--in essence, the | best bluff a superpower can make, and crucially, it 's worked | since WW2. | | That said, while incidents like Sweden "sinking" a carrier | have happened and embarassed the Navy, carriers have been | present in multiple wars since WW2 (Vietnam, Persian Gulf, | Iraq War) and haven't been sunk. If it's really that easy, | one would think it would have happened when enemies actually | were motivated to inflict such a loss. This suggests that the | wargame conditions aren't very reflective of actual doctrine. | protomyth wrote: | I thought the assumption was the the US attack subs would | clear the area before a carrier would get there. | CamperBob2 wrote: | One complication is that sinking a US carrier would likely | trigger nuclear retaliation. Even if the enemy is in a good | position to do so, that will make them think twice. | senko wrote: | Would it, tho? | | Answering a conventional strike in international waters | with a nuclear one (and at different target instead of the | original attacker, since you can't really nuke a sub) is | crossing the Rubicon, there's no going back from that. | vajrabum wrote: | Submariners have long had a saying that there are two kinds of | ships, submarines and targets. | finiteseries wrote: | From what I understand, the US doesn't realistically intend to | defend or recover either of them, let alone with CSGs, let | alone with their own CSGs. The umbrella was/is? organized | around deterrence, allies, and ultimately retaliation. | | Carriers were/are? more for the vast supply lines going towards | the areas where e.g. Swedish/Japanese stealth submarines would | be bottling up Russian/Chinese assets near their coasts. | | China in particular has thousands and thousands of miles of | neck extending into and out of the Indian Ocean. | afterburner wrote: | > there is little hope to save the Baltic and Taiwan if Russia | and China | | With a proper counterattack, they can be liberated. The war | isn't over just because the attacker says so. | elihu wrote: | The article makes a good case that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to | surprise attacks and the Navy had good reasons to be aware of | that at the time. However, that being the case, what should they | have done differently to be less vulnerable? | | Clearly they needed some kind of early warning system, and they | actually installed a radar installation which was brand new | technology at the time. (Unfortunately, they didn't heed the | warning when it came.) What else should they have done? | mixmastamyk wrote: | Well, it doesn't get any simpler than taking threats seriously. | Beyond that a night shift and early morning patrol into the | blind spots couldn't have hurt. | jvanderbot wrote: | This sounds very familiar. You should look up the millennium | challenge to see this play out again in modern times. | | https://warontherocks.com/2015/11/millennium-challenge-the-r... | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 | Marazan wrote: | The Millennium Challenge was a farce but _the Millennium | Challenge was completely right_. | | The point of the millenium challenge was to see if modern | advances in C3 could allow a numerically inferior force to the | one used in Desert Storm could invade Iraq successfully. | | What they discovered was against a tenacious and unconventional | enemy willing to use elite troops in daring and near suicidal | ways then America would take unacceptable losses. | | But..... | | That's not the enemy they were going to face. They were going | to face the Iraqi army. So whislt on the face of it the "reset" | was ludicrous it was also appropriate. | | And, I was a critic of the US military's strategy for the | Invasion of Iraq, I thought the force ratios were insufficient | and I was wrong. The Millennium Challenge did indeed show that | C3 advances were sufficient to allow the lower force ratios to | succeed. | | (Of course the Millennium Challenge did have other failures in | the limits of what it was testing. The occupation of Iraq was | botched from the opening days as whilst the force numbers were | sufficient to beat the Iraq army they were not sufficient to | occupy the country in a way that stopped it descending into | chaos) | mcguire wrote: | That's a well-known failure mode of modern professional | wargames: they analyze the heck out of the first three days | and then hand-wave the rest of the campaign. | bluejekyll wrote: | Saying this up front, as an American, I believe we were lied | to and misled in lead up to the invasion of Iraq, and someone | should have gone to jail for that. | | That said, this statement isn't quite this simple, " they | were not sufficient to occupy the country in a way that | stopped it descending into chaos." The US administration made | a decision to disband the Iraqi military and it's other | paramilitary forces. That meant that all existing structure | for maintaining order in the country was lost. By doing this, | it necessitated a large occupation force, that never was | created, and only made the US more hated there. | | Look at the occupations of Germany and Japan after WWII and | it's a very different outcome and one where existing systems | were left in place to help maintain an orderly transition. | monocasa wrote: | I was under the impression that the Millennium Challenge's | red team was playing as Iran, not Iraq. | | A "tenacious and unconventional enemy willing to use elite | troops in daring and near suicidal ways" particularly known | for their use of speedboats blended with more traditional | military material is the Revolutionary Guard's MO. | kilroy123 wrote: | Same here. That's why I think a war would Iran would be | suicide and we would suffer a humiliating "defeat". Or at | least many people would die. | | Unless our strategies radically change. | jeltz wrote: | Yeah, the descriptions I have read of the red team fits | Iran much better than Iraq. Simulating an attack against | the Iraqi navy seems rather pointless. | i56asg5h wrote: | Colonel Billy Mitchell, the "father of the US Air Force," was | famously court marshalled in 1925. He had predicted that in the | future Japan would attack Pearl Harbor with aircraft. He | predicted 'aircraft traveling 1000 miles per hour would fight | each other in the stratosphere'. He predicted troopers would one | day parachute behind enemy lines. He predicted long range heavy | bombers. He aggressively argued for stronger investment in air | power, against a resistent brass, who, irritated with him, had | him court martialed. A great 1955 Gary Cooper film tells his | tale, "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell." This is the | climactic court martial scene: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecMYH3dPIUI | jgeada wrote: | It is as if people keep thinking of the military as this | altruistic organization staffed by pure self-sacrificing people | willing to put it all on the line for the defense of country. | Sure, that is somewhat true of the troops. But the generals and | leaders are political beasts that know the true purpose is to | call coddle the status quo & divert gargantuan sums of money into | private pockets with as few questions as possible. | | This is why when real wars happen and the stakes actually | suddenly matter there tends to be a large upheaval at the top to | discard the political animals. When was it the last time you | heard of a US general being fired for incompetence when a | procurement projects they led goes totally off the rails (as they | almost always do), blowing any notion of budget, time & | preparedness ? | Lammy wrote: | IMO the use of aircraft isn't even the most interesting part of | the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Having an aircraft carrier | isn't very useful if you can't load it with enough fuel to get to | a target and back: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment | shakezula wrote: | To add to this: One of the reasons they originally targeted | Pearl Harbor was to take out our oil and fuel reserves there, | but at the last minute they changed targets and went for our | ships instead. | | From what I've read, if they had taken out our reserves there, | our entire foothold in the pacific would have been lost for a | year plus while we rebuilt, and we would've had to move our | carrier forces back to the pacific coast, which would've been | devastating at the time. The entire pacific theatre effort from | the U.S. would've been crippled before it could've started. | | War is really just a game of logistics. | mjlee wrote: | First Sea Lord (Head of the Royal Navy) Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson | described submarines as "Underhanded, unfair and damned un- | English". He also suggest that enemy submariners be tried as | pirates and hanged if caught. | | Thankfully (for the RN...) reason prevailed and submarines were | in service for the First World War. The pirates association lives | on today though - RN submarines returning from deployment still | fly the Jolly Roger. | sthnblllII wrote: | FDR goaded Japan into that attack by cutting off their oil and | suppressed intelligence about the impending attack to ensure a | decisive entry into WWII over the opposition of 90% of the | American public. Having political leadership so opposed to the | will of the people is a state US 'democracy' seems perpetually | unable to end, re Iraq, Vietnam, WWI, WWII etc. Hearing US | lecture governments that fight on behalf of their people instead | of manipulating them into war would be a national embarrassment | if Americans weren't firmly ensconced in their pro-US empire | media bubble. | | PS: FDR began sending supplies to the USSR before pear harbor | despite its mass murder and atrocities across Eurasia and extreme | unpopularity of the Soviet government with the US public. The | embargo with Japan was made for geopolitical reasons and any | "humanitarian" argument is post hoc. | | EDIT: Remarkably, President Herbert Hoover remained politically | active in the post-FDR media landscape and his account of the | events and of FDRs actions leaves little room for doubt about | FDRs aims in his foreign policy with Japan. | | https://www.hoover.org/research/freedom-betrayed-herbert-hoo... | fighterpilot wrote: | Do you have a cite for the suppression of US intelligence prior | to the attack? The mainstream history sources I've read have | suggested no such thing and led me to believe the US really was | caught with their pants down. The Japanese sent an envoy to | alert the US after the attack started, but while trying to | maintain plausible deniability that they tried to make contact | beforehand. | | Also why would you pin the fundamental blame on FDR cutting off | the oil? Japan was running a pretty brutal occupation of China | at the time. Continuing to supply oil would be supporting that | occupation. It's true though that part of Japan's motive for | the attack was that oil was running out. | richliss wrote: | This is one of the best things I've ever read on Hacker News. | Thank you. | duckfang wrote: | Lets remind us our dates. | | July 4, 1898, the Newlands Resolution was a joint resolution by | the United States Congress to annex the independent Republic of | Hawaii. In 1900, Congress occupied the Territory of Hawaii, | despite the opposition of most native Hawaiians. | | Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, | Hawai'i, an occupied territory. | | August 21, 1959 is when they were forcibly turned into a state, | after 60 years of occupation. | | Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities where | civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force. | | Edit: both posts are at -4. And indeed it's sad to see close | minded nationalism take and keep hold. The world is bigger than | from Hawai'i to Maine, and the USA is often the aggressor. I | liken to consider myself a citizen of the earth, and not any one | nation. | monoideism wrote: | > Dec 7, 1941 is when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, | Hawai'i, an occupied territory. | | With the end objective of occupying themselves, like they | occupied so many countries during WWII. | | > Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities | where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force. | | Yes, because those settlements had no military value, so they | focused on targets of military importance. When able, the | Japanese had no hesitation about killing or raping local | inhabitants of the places they occupied during and before WWII | - see Nanking and Korean "Comfort Women". | | I'm OK with someone criticizing US conduct in Hawaii in the | years leading up to WWII, but let's not pretend that imperial | Japan was some kind of benign force for good in the world | during the same time period. | pdonis wrote: | _> With the end objective of occupying themselves_ | | The Japanese had no intention of occupying Hawaii. They | simply wanted to incapacitate the US Pacific Fleet. Had the | US Pacific Fleet's carriers been in port at Pearl Harbor at | the time, they would have succeeded. | coredog64 wrote: | Japan could have also crippled the US fleet had they | targeted the oil stored at Pearl. | duckfang wrote: | I suggest you look up some reading on the subject, and try to | shy away from the US propaganda. | | No Choice but War: The United States Embargo Against Japan | and the Eruption of War in the Pacific | | https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqmp3br Beyond Pearl Harbor: | A Pacific History | | And you'll find out that there was continual and worsening | relations with Japan due to US imperialism. Hawai'i was only | one such territory colonized and conquered. | | And there were economic sanctions from 1931 to 1941 for | various products. | | But this is also out of the US playbook to surround an enemy | or proposed enemy, pull out economic sanctions, and then pull | out the single bad thing. For example, here's the AFB's | around Iran https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main- | qimg-4d67205db3b8a9d820ca77... , but we're supposed to only | look at Natanz nuclear refining. | | Now, I'm not saying that Japan was honorable in combat. They | death-marched Chinese. The "comfort women" were rape and | murder victims. But really, all nations have similar horrific | stories. Japan, alike the US, was no different in that | regard. | GuardianCaveman wrote: | The Japanese started planning their revenge on the US since | commander perry forced them to open trade. The US has a | history of creating cassus belli like mexican war and | Vietnam etc but what you link to is propaganda. And WW2 we | had a clear cassus belli for Japan. Japan not only did | things more evil than any other force on the planet I've | ever read about in history as listed in the rape of Nanking | but never faced any real consequences from paying | reparations or apologizing and even today it's full of the | equivalent of Holocaust deniers who continue to spew | falsehoods in defense of the poor Japanese who were only | trying to liberate Asia from imperialists | whoooooo123 wrote: | > commander perry forced them to open trade | | Tangential: if anyone is interested in learning more | about this, I recommend the YouTube channel _History | Buffs_ ' review of the film _The Last Samurai_ | jabl wrote: | Certainly all of the major combatants of WWII have blood on | their hands and committed what would certainly today be | called atrocities and war crimes. That being said, there's | certainly massive differences in motivation and scale. | | For that reason, Imperial Japan certainly ranks right up | there together with Nazi Germany as the most evil regimes | in recent history, and the US of that era does not (saying | this as a non-US'ian who is generally pretty critical of | the post-WWII foreign policy adventures the US has gotten | itself involved in). | umvi wrote: | Japan didn't bomb native settlements because doing so would | have been a waste of resources that offered no strategic | advantage. It would be like during the revolutionary war if | Britain had focused on destroying the (largely neutral) Native | Americans settlements instead of the "occupiers". | whoooooo123 wrote: | Also, Japan brutalised and terrorised every nation it | occupied during the war (and before). If Japan brought no | harm upon the "occupied" Hawaiians it certainly wasn't out of | any ethnic good will towards them. Does anyone seriously | thank that, had Japan won the war and occupied Hawaii, it | would have treated the natives any better than it treated the | Chinese or Vietnamese? | travisjungroth wrote: | The history of US colonization of Hawaii is legitimate and | relevant. The hint that WWII Japan was gracious towards island | natives is absolutely _wild_. | samatman wrote: | Credit where credit is due: painting Imperial Japan as an | anticolonial liberating force is novel. | | It's risible and insane, but novel nonetheless. | whoooooo123 wrote: | As long as we're bringing up historical facts that are only | tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, let's also remind | ourselves of the rape of Nanking, the Burma death railway, Unit | 731, the tens of thousands of PoWs that Imperial Japan murdered | in its camps and the twenty million people who were killed | (many of them by chemical and biological warfare) in Japan's | genocidal campaign against China. | JustFinishedBSG wrote: | > Note that Japan did not bomb native settlements and cities | where civilians and natives lived - only the occupying force. | | Ah yes, Imperial Japan, known for it's incredible humanity | toward civilians. | mc32 wrote: | Yeah especially considering their attitude toward civilians | in Nanking/Nanjing, Manchuria and The Philippines. | goodcanadian wrote: | I would point out that 94% of residents voted for statehood. | jacksonkmarley wrote: | This is a good article, and the story is certainly emotionally | appealing, with the maverick who goes against the prevailing | wisdom being proven correct in the end. | | I wonder how this sort of story would look when put into the | context of a large scale investigation into military strategy and | dissenting voices. When these contrarians pop up are they usually | right? Maybe there are heaps of them and 9 out of 10 times | conventional military strategy is the better option? | | Modern military history seems to have so many examples of leaders | being wrong, including 'successful' ones, it's hard to extract a | clear narrative in many cases. | nostrademons wrote: | Taken from the universe of _all_ ideas, a random contrarian | idea is usually wrong. Taken from the universe of contrarian | ideas pushed by domain experts and backed up by successful | experiments, they 're usually right. Paul Graham recently wrote | an essay on this: | | http://paulgraham.com/newideas.html | | Ernest King (the red team commander in the second wargame) | wasn't a random newbie: he eventually served as Chief of Naval | Operations in WW2. And a successful wargame is about as strong | evidence as you can get. Amazingly, real-world experience is | _still_ often discounted by people in charge, which shows the | power that existing paradigms and status-quo bias have on | people. | marvin wrote: | If leaders and strategists around the world could take one | single lesson from the Covid pandemic, it should be that you | must never, never underestimate the power of mental inertia | and the status quo. | | It leaves all but an elite few in the dust when reality | suddenly changes in what's perceived to be an instant. Most | normally competent people will behave as complete morons for | the 6-12 months it takes them to understand the new reality. | Of course, reality has been changing for a long time, but in | principle there's still time to react when it becomes obvious | to well-placed observers. | | I'm sure that an organization that's able to internalize that | lesson will have an immense strategic advantage in a conflict | against a peer force. Whether that be a virus, a military | adversary or a competing industrial entity. | rm445 wrote: | These large-scale war games aren't just an opinion or a white | paper though. Maybe better to ask something like how often an | unconventional win in a war game could actually be replicated | by an adversary in real life. | | I seem to recall a similar response to massed small boats | (simulating) taking out a U.S. carrier in war games a few years | ago. Implying that the Persian Gulf is far more dangerous than | previously understood. AIUI the Navy did nothing but cry foul. | Maybe the strategy has been changed in response since. | fmajid wrote: | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/21/usa.julianborg. | .. | | General Van Riper used low-tech but effective techniques like | using motorcycle messengers to transmit orders in a way that | could not be intercepted by US ELINT/COMINT or blocked by | jamming. | | We are lucky Saddam did not have inventive Marine generals, | because any general smart enough to be effective would have | been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime. | onepointsixC wrote: | You're missing the part where those motorcycle messengers | move at the speed of light, that the speed boats used were | tiny commercial ones which could have never loaded let | alone fired the heavy cruise missiles used and that blue | force's defenses were off because the simulator otherwise | would unintentionally target civilian shipping and | aviation. | | If the Iranians could have they would have done so already. | There's a reason why they had resorted to militias and | sectarian violence in Iraq instead. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | _> because any general smart enough to be effective would | have been eliminated as a potential threat to his regime._ | | Saved our asses in the European theater, in WWII. Hitler | was an insecure micromanager. | | His generals represented generations of military expertise. | They were really good. | | There's a number of places where Germany could have won the | war, but were short-circuited by _der dumkopf fuhrer_ | fighterpilot wrote: | I'm not sure about that. His generals really screwed up | the Eastern theatre in the late 1940s. Hitler knew they | needed to secure the oil in the Caucasus but the generals | were myopically focused on an Eastern advance and on | securing useless symbolic military wins that contributed | nothing towards the oil effort. It's because they weren't | capable of understanding the dire economic need for oil | and were too zoned in on their domain of expertise | (military engagement). Hitler for all his faults was one | of the few who knew that the only important stratetic | objective at that point was oil. He failed to get a | number of his generals on that same understanding, and in | some cases these generals sabotaged the oil effort. | NoNameProvided wrote: | > and in some cases these generals sabotaged the oil | effort. | | This sounds interesting, do you have any sources about | this? | | > His generals really screwed up the Eastern theatre in | the late 1940s. | | My limited understanding of the eastern front is that: a, | Hitler ordered the initial attack despite the warning of | his generals b, forbid any (even tactical) retreat when | the tides turned which eventually led to the destruction | of multiple army groups. | jimnotgym wrote: | > despite the warning of his generals | | The problem here being that his generals warned against | all of his other attacks earlier in the war which were | amazingy succesful. I suppose he felt that he knew better | by the time of the Eastern front. | fighterpilot wrote: | Anything about Operation Barbarossa is good. There's a | few YouTube videos on the channel TIK discussing the oil | objective on the Eastern front that are basic and densely | packed. | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | That makes sense. I remember reading about that, but I | guess it didn't sink in. | | Oil was _very_ important to a mechanized army. | fighterpilot wrote: | Exactly. Most people think the Eastern front was an act | of lunacy. In reality it was an act of utter necessity. | Hitler's only chance of potentially winning WW2 (if there | ever was a real chance) was to capture more oil in | Eastern Europe. They were running on the fumes of | synthetic oil created from coal at that point. | | Stalin knew Hitler's objectives well because of how hard | Hitler was pushing for oil in negotiations before they | became foes, and strategically positioned Russia's army | in a way to block Hitler's advance specifically to key | oil locations, while leaving other locations relatively | weaker. | hef19898 wrote: | Hitler's problem, IMHO and only militarily, was that he | was right more often than not in 39 and 40. He failed to | figure out why, so. As a result, he thought working | against military expertise was the silver bullet. That, | and that there never was a real chance to win a | conventional war against the allies. | | Another general that comes to mind os Field Marshal Haig. | He wanted a break through on the Western Front in WW1. He | got a war of attrition, which worked for him and not for | the Germans. So he thought going for a break through was | the way to go. It worked in the end, but for the wrong | reasons. | | That being said, a lot of German WW2 generals are over | hyped, first on their memoirs and then by anti-communist | "propaganda". | travisjungroth wrote: | This story is amazing. The story of US war games seems to | commonly be "Yeah the Read Team won but..." and no changes are | made. Maybe those are just the stories I hear. | | It's also interesting to consider if the Japanese attack on Pearl | Harbor would have happened if it weren't for our own dress | rehearsals we carried out in front of the Japanese. Maybe war | games are a bad idea when they're too big to keep secret and | you're too politicized to integrate the lessons. Admiral Yamamoto | didn't have to worry about upsetting US Navy top brass. He was | able to benefit from our lessons, even if we weren't. | rjsw wrote: | Japan also learned plenty of things from Taranto [1]. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto | rightbyte wrote: | > The story of US war games seems to commonly be "Yeah the Read | Team won but..." and no changes are made. Maybe those are just | the stories I hear. | | War games are not fair really. For either side. No-one know | what the actual outcome of a manouver would be. | | Also, if Red's commander is way better, Blue's paper strategy | might still be preferable. | | My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in | logistics foremost. | KineticLensman wrote: | > My feeling is that big military exercises is a exercise in | logistics foremost. | | Varies. Getting people familiar with command and control | procedures is a key theme. | | In the UK, 'Army HQ' manages the process of ensuring that | forces are ready for operations - which is where the training | happens. When the country deploys troops on an operation, | various units and sub-units are assembled into a mission- | specific force which is ultimately under the control of a | Joint Task Force HQ, not the Army's peacetime HQ. Exercises | are a key part of the peacetime 'readiness cycle' through | which the various force elements are prepared for ops. An | exercise might test the staff of a battlegroup HQ to receive | orders from a Brigade HQ ('Higher Control' in exercise-speak) | and in turn generate orders that are given to its constituent | sub-unit HQs. Such an exercise might last for a week and have | separate phases for Planning and Execution activities. The | different HQ elements need this type of training because the | precise mission-specific C2 arrangements simply don't exist | when the forces are in their peace-time barracks. | | Logistics are entirely simulated in such an exercise so that | you don't need half the army around to train 50-100 staff. In | fact there is such a thing as a Tactical Exercise Without | Troops that totally focusses on HQ processes so as to avoid | wasting the troops' time while the staff in the exercising HQ | get their act together. | | Field exercises using laser-simulated weapons might involve | 'last mile' logistics activities but there is no way they | will involve the complex logistics supply chains of a real | deployed force. | jabl wrote: | In the recent(ish) movie Midway there is a scene where the IJN | is wargaming the upcoming attack, and they get their asses | kicked since some cheeky junior officer playing the Americans | doesn't keep the carriers waiting in Pearl Harbor but rather NE | of Midway (which is what later happened in reality). So they | reprimand that officer and restart the game with the clause | that the US carriers must stay at Pearl until the attack on | Midway island starts. | | Don't know whether such a wargaming episode happened in | reality. | mcguire wrote: | Yes, it did. See _Shattered Sword_ by Jonathan Parshall and | Anthony Tully. (One additional feature often seen in the | story is the part where the umpire "resurrects" the two | Japanese carriers which were "sunk" in the attack---that part | is usually overplayed, since it would be a waste of time to | continue the game without the two carriers and there were | still questions to be answered.) | jabl wrote: | I keep hearing good things about that book. Alas, my | interest in Midway only seems to go so far and I'm finding | myself unwilling to commit to actually reading that book. | Oh well, maybe one day.. | credit_guy wrote: | I don't have much time lately to actually read books, so | I listen to them on my bike ride to and from work. I have | had "Shattered Sword" as a paperback book for more than | 10 years, and never read more than 2 pages in it. Once I | started listening to the audiobook, I pretty much had to | finish it. It's about 24 hours of audio. Longer than it | would take to read it, but if you don't find time to read | it, it's quite a good substitute. | enkid wrote: | I mean, if you know the adversaries plan, it's pretty easy to | come up with something that wrecks it, which is what it | sounds like that officer did. What the Japanese didn't know | was that the Americans also knew the plan. | TwoNineA wrote: | Americans also got lucky that George Best and Wade McClusky | were able to hit the carriers knowning that most attempts | in the battle so far have utterly failed. | jabl wrote: | It seems that the Americans were very lucky at Midway | indeed, with the dive bombers avoiding running into | fighters, and the hangar decks filled with loaded and | fuelled bombers waiting to be spotted once the attacks | were over. Which made them extremely vulnerable to | anything hitting the hangar decks, and even a few hits | were enough to doom the ships. | | Not entirely unsurprising that upon entering the jet age | the USN demanded their own expensive but less flammable | brew JP-5 instead of "standard" jet fuel (which itself is | much less dangerous than the aviation gasoline that was | the cause of many WWII carriers burning). | SkyMarshal wrote: | The amount of luck involved in the US victory at Midway | is astonishing. About the only part of it _not_ due to | luck was the codebreaking that tipped off the US about | the coming Midway attack, the heroic efforts of the dock | workers in getting the damaged Yorktown fixed and back to | sea in 72hrs, and persistence of the aviators who finally | broke through the Japanese defenses and hit the carriers. | | This video series from the Japanese perspective is pretty | good and shows all the luck involved: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&list=PLLeOB_b | Zlk... | ghaff wrote: | You can probably argue that the Americans' singular lack | of essentially any success early on was a bit _unlucky_. | But the ultimate decisiveness of Midway was very much a | case of everything going right at a couple points for the | US. Probably wouldn 't have altered the course of the war | given US manufacturing power (and the upcoming atomic | bomb). But keeping Midway saved an airfield much closer | to Japan than Hawaii was. | graycat wrote: | As I studied Midway, the conclusion I came to was that | the Japanese made a big mistake: They had two attacks for | two quite different goals going at once, and the two | conflicted and were one too many. | | The two attacks were (1) attacking the ground | installations on Midway island and (2) defending against | the US aircraft carriers. | | For (1), the main goal of the whole operation was to take | Midway island, but early in that operation the goal was | to destroy the ability of US planes on Midway to attack | the Japanese ships. The Japanese kept worrying about | attacks on their ships from US planes on Midway. | | For (2) the Japanese had tried to determine where the US | carriers were but the effort failed, and, net, the | Japanese didn't know where the US carriers were. The | Japanese considered the possibility that the US carriers | really were about ready to find and attack the Japanese | ships. | | Then, net, handling both (1) and (2) was too much and led | to (A) having the Japanese airplanes busy with (1) and | unable to respond to (2) and (B) giving too little | attention to (2) until too late. In particular, the | Japanese had to wait, wait too long, wait on their | airplanes returning from their attack on Midway and have | their decks full of those returning airplanes. Also they | had to wait, wait too long, wait to rearm their planes | with torpedoes for attacking US ships instead of bombs | for attacking Midway ground targets. | | Basically, either (1) for the island or (2) for the US | ships was a long term effort, from getting ready, | launching the planes, managing their fighter cover for | their ships, recovering the planes, getting the planes | below decks, refueled, rearmed, and ready for launching | again. The Japanese were able to do well at all that for | either (1) or (2) but not for both in the time available. | The Japanese underestimated the challenge and threat of | trying to do both at essentially the same time. | onepointsixC wrote: | Midway had it's fortunate moments, but IJN didn't have | much of a chance from the get go due to the absurd USN | ship production: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ag2x3CS9M | rjsw wrote: | I read a suggestion recently that there was a higher | probability of sinking IJN carriers during the Indian | Ocean raid [1] than at Midway. Any attacks on them would | have been done by radar equipped aircraft at night with | no Zeros flying. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_raid | Gravityloss wrote: | This was a very good read. So many communication | problems. Ships or aircraft were spotted or encrypted | messages were deciphered - but information was not | relayed for various reasons. | sillysaurusx wrote: | It wasn't as lucky as it seems. The dive bombers were | able to dive straight down, almost vertically, with no | risk of being shot down by the enemy Zero fighters (since | they were drawn away by a previous attack). | | It's more lucky that they didn't attack the same targets, | than that they hit their targets. | | Also, not directly relevant, but I'll plug this video: ht | tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s&ab_channel | =... it's great. | jabl wrote: | I agree, that video series is very good. (And, among its | sources it lists the _Shattered Sword_ book recommended | elsewhere in this thread) | Giorgi wrote: | This was really interesting, it's tragic that so many people died | because of the ignorance. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-31 23:00 UTC)