Lessons from a war game

This image released by the US Navy was shot Sunday from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, shows a small blue boat, alleged to be Iranian, purportedly racing near the wake of U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. The incident, which President George W. Bush denounced Tuesday as a "provocative act," was videotaped by a crew member on the bridge of the destroyer. (U.S. Navy/ AP Photo )

Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes ’02 War Game

Excerpt:

In the days since the encounter with five Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz, American officers have acknowledged that they have been studying anew the lessons from a startling simulation conducted in August 2002. In that war game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.

“The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack,” said Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military. “The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes.”

Comment: Underscores the seriousness of the near confrontation earlier this week! Read full article for the dangers of the "tactic of swarming"

The Great White Fleet centennial

Why TR Claimed the Seas: The importance of a strong Navy.

Excerpt:

On Dec. 16, 1907, the 16 battleships of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet sailed from Hampton Roads, Va., on a 43,000-mile journey around the world. The occasion was immediately understood as Teddy Roosevelt's way of declaring that the United States, already an economic superpower, was also a military one. Unnoticed by most Americans, this past Sunday marked its centennial.

There is an enduring, bipartisan strain in American politics (think Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) that wishes to forgo the military role. As wonderfully recounted by Jim Rasenberger in "America 1908," the voyage of the Great White Fleet, as it was popularly known, was energetically opposed by members of Congress, who sought to cut off its funding when it was halfway around the world. Sound familiar? Mark Twain considered the venture as further evidence that TR was "clearly insane . . . and insanest upon war and its supreme glories."

In fact, Roosevelt had sound strategic reasons for putting the fleet to sea. A year earlier, the British had commissioned their revolutionary Dreadnought battleship, setting off an arms race with Germany that helped set Europe on a course to World War I. Labor riots against Japanese immigrants in California had strained relations with Japan, whose dramatic naval victory over Russia at the battle of Tsushima had made the rest of the world keenly aware of this rising Asian power.

"Nearly every day fresh bulletins of sinister Japanese maneuvers appeared in the European and American press," writes Mr. Rasenberger, including rumors of thousands of Japanese troops disguised as Mexican peasants, "preparing to attack America." Roosevelt himself later explained that he had "become uncomfortably conscious of a very, very slight undertone of veiled truculence" from the Japanese. "It was time for a show down."



Comment: Wikipedia: The Great White Fleet . Official site: The Great White Fleet. DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY: The Cruise of the Great White Fleet

Bond of the Sea

USS San Jacinto

Bond of the Sea - The U.S. Navy has always faced unexpected threats

Excerpt:

The threat plainly weighs on Capt. Sharpe's mind. A ship like the San Jacinto would have only seconds to track, identify and destroy an incoming missile; in 1988, a mistake by the USS Vincennes led to the downing of an Iranian commercial jet and the killing of nearly 300 passengers. "How do you wield a gun in a knife fight?" Capt. Sharpe asks. Could he launch missiles while simultaneously defending against attacks from small boats? What about mines or submarines (Iran deploys three Russian-made, ultra-quiet, Kilo-class subs)? The Cole was struck, he admits, because "we never expected the enemy to look like that." So what will the enemy look like next?

That question was every bit as relevant in Mr. Brown's Navy days as it is in Capt. Sharpe's. As game theorist Thomas Schelling once observed, the U.S. was surprised at Pearl Harbor because intelligence services were obsessed "with a few dangers that \[were\] familiar rather than likely." Kamikazes--the suicide bombers of their day--were successful at first for similar reasons. By the time the Navy was able to devise effective countermeasures a heavy price had been paid.

It is in the face of these terrors that generations of American sailors, from Capt. Sharpe on the bridge to Seaman Brown in the engine room, have set sail, brought together by what Joseph Conrad famously called, in "Heart of Darkness," "the bond of the sea." That's a bond for which a landlubbing columnist can only feel grateful as he looks out from the bridge toward the Verrazano Narrows under clear skies.

Comment: My three brother-in-laws (Dave, Dan, and Ed) all served in the old Navy (late 50's / earlier 60's). We need to deeply appreciate the men and women who serve our country in the Navy! It's a dangerous world and these are defending us!