RIMPAC
January 2nd, 2009 From
>From: Brooks Rowlett
>Subject: Re: RIMPAC
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 18:03:32 -0500 (EST)
>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>I can tell you that as a participant in the Global War Game series at the
>Naval War College, I saw US carriers sunk. This included essentially
>manually scored, computer-tracked games; fully computer-scored games; and
>seminar games.
>
>There is a bit of a misconception in this story, but also a consideable
>basis in fact. In an exercise at sea, time , energy, fuel, and the
>inherent danger of operatin on the high seas all are in play. It is
>vitally important that all these resources or danger exposures not be
>wasted; to do otherwise would be shorting the taxpayers their money. thus
>even if an umpire in a naval exercize assess a kill, the loss is not
>’extracted’; rather the ships go through a damage control exercize and
>then continue to play on as if nothing had happened. More recently it
>appears that short – term removal in long-term exercizes has been
>implemented as we saw in the RIMPAC show on Discovery Channel, where ‘
>sunk’ vessels would be out of the tactical picture for six hours, then
>perhaps re-enter the scene as “reinforcements”.
>
>IN the SEACON 89 game at the Naval War College (SEACON was a game series
>designed to take engineers and scientists out of the lab and expose them
>to fleet operations, a larger version of what I did on a small scale when
>I was running training wargames at work) I participated as a player in the
>RED Air Defence Cell. We watched as our comrades in the Strike Cell
>planned and executed a massive attack that destroyed one of three BLUE
>carrier battlegroups to the last ship (we also allocated them a cet of
>fighters out of our assets for strike escort, but these were operated uner
>the strike command so we didn’t really get to play that out).
>
>BLUE knew absolutley that they had suffered a disaster. But this was on
>the second day of a five day game. It would have been a waste to send
>these thirty or so BLUE players home early. So when they arrived for the
>third day, they were told that (a) Effective jamming and a cover and
>deception plan had prevented about half the RED missiles from being
>launched, (b) those missile were restored for game purposes to RED’s
>inventory; (c) Nonetheless half the escorts of this Battle Group were
>sunk, more were damaged, and the carrier was crippled but afloat – and
>their new task was to rescue it and the surviving BG escorts. This new
>task was also a real situation that might be faced, and more to the point
>it klept the people in play and still learning about potential real
>operational problems.
>
>So, yes, the BLUE umpires ‘refloated’ a carrier that had been sunk, but it
>was definitely out of commission, conributed only minimally to future
>operations, and the players didn;t go out thinking tha carriers were
>unsinkable.
>
>Now on the other hand there does till seem to be a persistent belief that
>submarines are an easily handled problem, and a spirit of denial seems to
>exist. Watchers of the RIMPAC show might note the diesel boat which
>notionally put three torps in INDEPENDENCE about 1/2 through the RIMPAC
>exercize….
>
>BUt yet on the other hand, sub drivers have been known to deny that BLUE
>exercize ASW measures had come anywhere close. A GUPPY captain surfaced
>came up to the connig position on the sail and radioed that the
>dummy-warhead torpedo had missed him, but was told by the observing
>airplane to look behind him….where the tail of the torp was
>sticking out of the GUPPY’s plastic sail structure where it had hit,
>pierced, and stuck….
>
>Brooks A Rowlett