posted 07-19-2002 02:06 AM               

Mock Battle in Calif., Nevada

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO- Preparations are underway in Southern California and Nevada for one of the largest military experiment in U.S. history designed to help troops prepare for future wars.

Beginning next week, about 13,500 troops from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines will use the latest in military hardware in a simulation of what planners believe the battlefield could look like in five years.

The troops will play out scenario involving simulated weapons of mass destruction, urban warfare, the United Nations and humanitarian relief over three weeks during the so-called Millennium Challenge 2002.

The Joint Forces Command, operating in Suffolk, Va., is coordinating the experiments off the coast of San Diego and at bases in Southern California and Nevada.

The experiments are the fruits of a drive to transform the military from a heavy, mechanized force designed to fight the Soviet Union into mobile, high-tech troops that can deliver swift hammer blows to a different kind of enemy.

"In the Persian Gulf, it took us months and months to stage forces and stockpile logistics," said Tony Billings, a spokesman for Joint Forces Command. "New concepts are designed to cut down on that preparation time dramatically and position U.S. forces so that they're capable of rapidly and decisively striking at the enemy's center of gravity."

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On the Net: http://www.jfcom.mil/about/experiments/mc02.htm

posted 07-27-2002 11:19 AM               

From the National Desk

Published 7/26/2002 6:16 PM

LOS ANGELES, July 26 (UPI) -- The first pre-production version of a new armored vehicle was delivered to the Army Friday and is to make its debut next week during an ambitious military exercise aimed at seeing how the military of the future will conduct its deadly business.

General Dynamics delivered the first of eight pre-production Stryker Mobile Gun System vehicles to the Army in a ceremony in Muskegon, Mich., the city where the heavily armed, high-speed armored car is being developed.

The vehicle is designed to provide armored firepower for the Brigade Combat Teams that are envisioned as the United States' first responders to trouble spots around the world in the coming decades.

The Stryker delivered Friday is the first to be armed with a heavy gun that will give Brigade Combat Teams a tank-like weapon that can be quickly brought in to support light infantry troops. The Mobile Gun System is armed with a 105 mm tank gun mounted in a "shoot on the move" turret.

The eight-wheel vehicle will be the centerpiece of a portion of the Millenium Challenge 2002 exercises, which includes a July 31 assault by paratroopers on a mock airfield at Fort Irwin, deep in the Southern California desert.

Once the airborne troops have the airfield secured, the Stryker, along with a dozen other versions of the vehicle, will landed aboard Air Force cargo planes to defend against a possible counterattack by enemy troops and tanks. The Stryker can be loaded aboard C-130 and C-17 cargo planes.

The Army already has several Strykers in its inventory designed to carry troops and supplies, serve as ambulances and operate in environments contaminated by chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

posted 08-20-2002 12:13 AM               

Fri Aug 16, 5:44 PM ET

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A retired general who commanded "enemy" forces in a recently concluded $250 million U.S. war game says the exercise was rigged so that it appeared to validate new war-fighting concepts it was supposed to test.

Paul Van Riper, who headed the Marine Corps Combat Development Command when he retired in 1997 as a three-star general, said he became so frustrated with undue constraints on his command of "enemy" forces that he quit the role midway through Millennium Challenge 2002, which ended Aug. 15. His complaints were reported Friday by the Army Times, a private newspaper that covers Army issues.

The Times obtained a copy of an e-mail Van Riper sent to colleagues explaining why he had quit. "It was in actuality an exercise that was almost entirely scripted to ensure a Blue (friendly forces) `win,'" he wrote.

Van Riper was in command of the Red force, meant to simulate the enemy. Navy Capt. John Carman, chief spokesman at Joint Forces Command at Norfolk, Va., which sponsored the war game, said Friday that there is no record of Van Riper having quit his role as "enemy" commander.

He said the retired general is "held in high regard" and entitled to his opinions.

"We don't agree with his conclusions," Carman said. Van Riper, who participated as a TRW contract employee, said he was concerned that the military would implement new war-fighting concepts on the basis of what he considers to be false conclusions from the three-week exercise.

Carman said the results of the war game were being evaluated and that some concepts will require further experimentation.

Millennium Challenge 2002 was two years in the making and involved a wide range of U.S. military commands across the country linked by computer networks to simulated troops, air and sea units with 13,500 actual military personnel fighting a classified war scenario.

Van Riper said exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against the Blue, or friendly, forces, and on several occasions the Red forces were directed not to use certain weapons against Blue.

Robert Oakley, a retired ambassador who played the role of civilian leader of the Red force, told the Times that Van Riper was outthinking the Blue force. He said, for example, that in the computer simulations, Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, negating the Blue forces' high-tech eavesdropping capabilities.

When the Blue naval forces sailed into the Persian Gulf early in the experiment, Van Riper's forces surrounded the ships with small boats and planes. Much of the Blue force's ships ended up at the bottom of the ocean.

Oakley said Joint Forces Command officials had to stop the exercise and "refloat" the fleet in order to continue.

Vice Adm. Marty Mayer, the deputy commander of Joint Forces Command, defended the exercise.

"I want to disabuse anybody of any notion that somehow the books were cooked," Mayer told the Times. He said, however, that "certain things are scripted" in any large war game. "You have to execute in a certain way or you'll never be able to bring it all together," he said.

Mayer said that in some parts of the exercise Van Riper was constrained "in order to facilitate the conduct of the experiment."

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On the Net: Millennium Challenge 2002 at http://www.jfcom.mil/about/experiments/mc02/faq.htm