A Millennium Challenge for Homeland Security
Among defense insiders, Millennium Challenge 2002 stands out as one of the most controversial red team exercises in American military history. MC2002 suspiciously resembled the looming invasion of Iraq, as it involved a conventional BLUE force facing RED military forces of a small Middle Eastern nation. In theory, either side could win the free play exercise–but it was no secret that the stakes were extremely high. Facing a massive BLUE air/ground force, RED force commander Marine Corps Lt. Gen Paul Van Riper gave a coded signal for civilian boats swarming around US coastal bases, ships, and air units to attack. His deft usage of suicide attacks and anti-ship missiles caught BLUE by surprise, inflicting steep losses on their invasion fleet.
When electronic warfare planes fried Van Riper’s communications, he used mosques and motorcycle messengers to command his subordinates. At this point, Van Riper claims that the military fixed the outcome in order to avoid an embarrassing loss. The threat from swarming attacks was later vindicated by multiple incidents in the Straits of Hormuz in 2007 and 2008 featuring the use of Iranian fast craft to harry slower-moving ships. For homeland security, Millennium Challenge 2002 is more than just a disputed wargame. MC2002 is a painful reminder of war’s dangerously nonlinear nature and the need to embrace similarly unorthodox measures to counter emerging threats.
An adaptive human mind that frustrates elaborately laid plans is the most dangerous weapon an opponent can employ. If necessity is the mother of invention, danger similarly unlocks flexibility and creativity in some individuals. Unfortunately, many of them are on the other side. Weaker opponents will rarely ever fight us in a manner that allows us to bring all of our advantages into play. Like Van Riper, asymmetric opponents will counter by targeting weaknesses and employing innovative strategies. We also do ourselves no favors by handicapping ourselves with the erroneous projection of BLUE force strategic culture, doctrine, and decision-making onto an opponent.
Fortunately, there have been many advances in the construction of tactical and operational adaptability. The Terrorism Research Center (TRC) takes police, military, and other security professionals to specialized training grounds where they consume jihadi literature, learn the adversary’s assassination and ambush techniques, and develop operational plans. The real importance of such learning is to situate the participant outside his or her organizational and cultural context, which can often stifle innovative thinking. Homeland security professionals can also use tactical decision games (TDGs) and free play games developed as part of Major (ret) Donald E. Vandergriff’s Adaptive Leadership Methodology (ALM). These games focus on improving implicit decision-making and creating a common orientation among security professionals. In the purely intellectual realm, analytical red-teaming—the challenge of old concepts or formulation of alternative analysis–also can cover a wide range of outcomes from terrorism to criminal insurgency. The last topic is one of increasing importance, as the bloody cartel conflict against the Mexican government shows signs of crossing the border.
Perhaps the best means of preventing strategic surprise, however, is to look to the future. Futures working groups on seemingly esoteric technological, political, and social subjects can help to anticipate emerging threats and opposing force capabilities. While it’s impossible to create a completely accurate and holistic long-term portrait of the future, the process is more important than the outcome. Debating, planning, and examining multiple futures and strategic narratives creates a nimble mindset that can deal with divergent change.
We can never prepare for every eventuality. But sustained training and investment in analysis can create the conditions for us to both respond to wild card events and perhaps even anticipate them. For that reason, we need many more Millennium Challenges to expose the gaps in our knowledge and point the way to a means of vitality and growth.
Comments
By deichmans on March 23rd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
A.E., Nice piece, but I don’t think you go far enough. Simply implementing a process for analysis is inadequate, as egos/agendas/stigmas will always get in the way. That was the issue in MC-2002 at USJFCOM (where I led the red team for USJFCOM J9 and had LtGen(ret) Van Riper on contract as a “Senior Mentor”): as an institution we were too wedded to our ideas to allow them to fail in the crucible of examination.
You mention that the military “…fixed the outcome to avoid an embarrassing loss.” This was pre-ordained long before the first swarm of small boats approached the virtual USS TARAWA. In fact, the press kits distributed to the media at MC-2002 featured a “Schedule of Events” including an Interim Brigade Concept Team (IBCT – the precursor to today’s Stryker Brigade Combat Teams) assault of a suspected WMD site on one of the final days of the event.
The hubris by which the concepts of Rapid Decisive Operations, Effects Based Operations, and Shock-and-Awe were critiqued led to egregious errors when their application in the “real world” failed to produce the expected results.
So, any process to support futures-focused analysis needs to actively encourage off-the-chart thinking, freedom of intellectual maneuver, and an abhorrence of “sacred cows” if it is to be useful.
By Ed Beakley (Project White Horse) on March 24th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Shane Deichmans and I both commented on a discussion of MC02 last year on the Fabius Maximus site and continuation on Chet Richards’ DNI.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/millennium-challenge/
Partial comment repeated as relating directly to doing version for HLS:
There is much to Millennium Challenge 02 and mostly behind the scenes.
At the time of its planning, all services were actively involved with warfare/warfighting/battle experimentation. These efforts had legitimate history in the Army’s Louisiana Maneuvers and the Navy fleet experiments in the 20’s and 30’s on how to execute aircraft carrier based strike operations. (Can’t see much to fault with results of the future war in the Pacific.)
To cut to the chase, MC02 intended to demonstrate broad joint capability in utilizing TTPs that information technology made possible. Not the least of the objectives was to demonstrate the ability to put on an event of this magnitude. Multiple ranges and facilities were to be linked in the same scenario, timeline, geography, and OPFOR context. Use of internet capabilities and simulation was critical. From a financial and availability standpoint, aspects of test events, training exercises and warfare experimentation were all embedded.
I was heavily involved on the Navy side in event design for one of the T&E range organizations. We had actually conducted similar Navy events linking test assets with training for Commander Third Fleet. This had included the use of both live and simulated battle groups with live C2 for the virtual battlegroup. (Real fast boats were involved) This scenario was evolved to reflect the MC02 “Access Assurance” portion but was never examined by the Navy lead exercise designers at the War College in Newport R.I. Instead, the focus (as far as I know) included little to no live and endeavored to push forward a simulation scheme high in priority.
Two real lessons that this event demonstrates:
1)The ability to examine the level of complexity required an equally sophisticated “environment.” That environment needed to be develped and evaluated/fixed first, then run the event;
2) Despite probably thirty years of working the issues that came to be known as network centric warfare and transformation, imo, these systems of systems were never stressed in the manner to which they were intended to be employed – in a highly coupled state in a dynamic chaotic environment. They were certainly never evaluated on what would have been the edge of their operational envelop – Fourth Generation Warfare.
Train as you intend to fight; Test as you intend to employ.
Over at the Forum on Project White Horse there is an ongoing special group discussion via e-mail(includes John Sullivan, Gi Wilson, et al) slowly being inserted that focuses on one aspect of this – “reality-based training” for “shooters, hosers” AND decision makers alike.