[tablespoon]

> Wargames are designed to be lost. It's not as useful to say "welp we stomped all over them" as it is to push the forces being tested further and further until they break, then fixing or compensating where it broke and pushing even further.

Wasn't there a pretty famous case, in a wargame meant to simulate conflict with Iran, where the red team general actually played to win but the game leaders reset things with new constraints that played to US advantages?

There are also pretty significant intrinsic problems with a Taiwan strait conflict: it's literally in China's backyard and the PLA is modernizing so the US can no longer rely on having an overwhelming technological advantage. IIRC, Taiwan's military strategy also assumes that they'll have a technological over the PRC, so they haven't embraced asymmetric tactics as much as they should.

From my armchair, it seems to me that Taiwan needs to adopt something like the Israeli model, where pretty much their whole population is in the reserves and can be mobilized quickly for a conflict. The US needs to figure out a way to reinforce and resupply it, and disentangle its supply chains from China to make that workable.

However, I'm not hopeful with the kind of leadership we have now. It's thinking is too short term and it's unwilling to make any really costly commitments.

[ranger207]

You're probably thinking of the 2002 Millennium Challenge. That was a wargame plus a training exercise, which complicates things. For example, there were real US Navy ships out in the Persian Gulf, but to avoid disrupting commercial traffic they were confined to a specific area. The OPFOR (opposing forces) commander knew the confines, so he didn't have to scout for BLUFOR (US forces), and BLUFOR couldn't maneuver to avoid him. For another example, BLUFOR was jamming and destroying all of OPFOR's communications, so OPFOR switched to motorcycle runners. Unfortunately the simulation software didn't exactly support motorcycle runners, so they moved just as fast as radio communications but were invulnerable to BLUFOR strikes.

BLUFOR kept getting revived because it was also a training exercise in addition to a wargame. You've got dozens of ships gathered in the area to practice formation maneuvering, underway replenishment, etc, under wartime conditions. If you're on a ship that's blown up on day 2 of 20, what are you supposed to do for the rest of the time? It's better for training to revive casualties.

Stuff like this is why it's not easy to trust the outcome of a wargame.

[bryanrasmussen]

>Wasn't there a pretty famous case, in a wargame meant to simulate conflict with Iran, where the red team general actually played to win but the game leaders reset things with new constraints that played to US advantages?

yes, wargames are designed to be difficult to win, unless political expediency interferes with the design.