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.

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.