Millennium Challenge 2002

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Millennium Challenge 2002 ( MC02 ) was the largest ever military exercises of the United States Armed Forces with the aim of the action in accordance with the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 implemented network-centric warfare ( Network-centric warfare to test). Since the course of the maneuver revealed weaknesses in the new strategy and as a result the Department of Defense ordered a restart and changed the rules so that they still helped the strategy succeed, the maneuver was highly controversial.

course

Millennium Challenge 2002 ran from July 24th to August 15th, 2002 and had a budget of $ 250 million . The maneuver consisted of military exercises with the participation of soldiers as well as virtual parts, since data transmission by computer is an essential element of network-centric warfare.

13,000 men from all American armed forces were provided for the maneuver and retired Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper of the US Marine Corps was reactivated. The troops under Van Riper's command simulated the enemy, traditionally known as the red color. The area of ​​operation looked similar to the Persian Gulf, and it can be assumed that the invasion of Iraq or Iran should be studied here.

Van Riper thwarted the Department of Defense's optimism by avoiding the tech-centric alignment of the blue side. For example, he had orders sent to the front by motorcycle detectors in order to bypass the broad electronic surveillance and signal interference from Blau. Van Riper's real achievement, however, consisted in his use of the "fleet" available to him, which consisted of small fishing boats, patrol boats and ordinary civil aircraft. He had these converted into floating or flying bombs with explosives. At first, Van Riper let these civil-looking units wander aimlessly in the Gulf until they were asked by "Blue" to leave the waters. Van Riper then ordered a suicide attack by all units simultaneously on the blue fleet. Meanwhile, he strained the Blue Party's electronic defense measures by delivering a concentrated strike with all available cruise missiles on the Blue Navy . In this attack a total of sixteen ships, a total of two thirds of the blue fleet, including an aircraft carrier, were sunk. According to this simulation, blue would have lost up to 20,000 soldiers in an emergency.

In response to this devastation, the Department of Defense reset the score to zero and ran the maneuver according to a prescribed pattern, so that Blue's original strategy worked. General Van Riper protested against this partisan interference and therefore resigned as commander in chief of "Rot". When the results of the maneuver became known to the public, a debate developed over the action of the Department of Defense .

Lieutenant General Van Riper stated in the two-part documentary The Perfect War from 2004 that he fears that if a maneuver is staged in which the United States cannot lose, history will repeat itself. He himself had served as a first lieutenant in the Vietnam War in the 1960s , using methods introduced by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara . On the battlefield, the Americans filled out punch cards for the IBM computers that were later sent to Saigon for evaluation. The computers in Saigon evaluated this information and passed it on to the USA: 'We will win the war', while the soldiers in the field knew that the war was already lost.

Web links

Commons : Millennium Challenge 2002  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Television documentaries