Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="msr, post: 1808, member: 1368"] Dear All, With the Spams whingeing about all this not being wargamed, the time is nigh to ask whether they learnt anything at all from Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper. The whole article is here: [url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,787017,00.html[/url] but here is the most interesting paragraph: Van Riper had at his disposal a computer-generated flotilla of small boats and planes, many of them civilian, which he kept buzzing around the virtual Persian Gulf in circles as the game was about to get under way. As the US fleet entered the Gulf, Van Riper gave a signal - not in a radio transmission that might have been intercepted, but in a coded message broadcast from the minarets of mosques at the call to prayer. The seemingly harmless pleasure craft and propeller planes suddenly turned deadly, ramming into Blue boats and airfields along the Gulf in scores of al-Qaida-style suicide attacks. Meanwhile, Chinese Silkworm-type cruise missiles fired from some of the small boats sank the US fleet's only aircraft carrier and two marine helicopter carriers. The tactics were reminiscent of the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in Yemen two years ago, but the Blue fleet did not seem prepared. Change 'seemingly harmless pleasure craft' into 'seeming harmless pick-up trucks' and I think that you have almost exactly the current situation.... msr [/QUOTE]