Readers with a taste for history may remember the story of Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02). For those who don’t, it was a high-end military simulation from a couple of decades ago, run by the now defunct U.S. Joint Forces Command. Described as “the key to military transformation,” it cost about $250 million – a huge expense for such a thing at the time. The game’s premise was an armed conflict with a rogue Persian Gulf state.
The Blue team was a combined American force testing the concept of RDO – “Rapid Decisive Operations.” It was based on the doctrine of “network-centric warfare” and supported by a wide range of information technologies, analytical tools, and electronic sensors.
The Red team – the bad guys – was largely a one-man show run by a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general, Paul Van Riper. He was given complete freedom in conducting his side of the conflict.
The war game commenced, and Red team promptly sank an aircraft carrier, several cruisers, and much of the Blue fleet with low-tech swarm attacks. It killed thousands of simulated U.S. servicemen in the game’s first two days. It also consistently evaded Blue team surveillance by using unconventional, unpredictable
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