[iwar] [fc:War.Game.Helps.Army's.Mock.'Red.Team'.To.Simulate.Tactics.Of.Low-Tech.Fighters]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-02 06:11:37
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Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 06:11:37 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:War.Game.Helps.Army's.Mock.'Red.Team'.To.Simulate.Tactics.Of.Low-Tech.Fighters]
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Wall Street Journal
October 2, 2001
War Game Helps Army's Mock 'Red Team' To Simulate Tactics Of Low-Tech Fighters

By Greg Jaffe and Chip Cummins, Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal

QUANTICO MARINE CORPS BASE, Va. -- In a squat brick building about an hour's
drive from the Pentagon, Gary Anderson, a retired Marine Corps colonel,
surveys the damage. Rebels, lodged in battle with the U.S., are hidden among
fleeing masses. The retreating fighters have dusted other refugees with
smallpox virus, endangering advancing U.S. troops. Guerrillas stage bloody
fights in cities, caves and canyons, and terrorists attack a U.S. aircraft
carrier.

For now, these enemy moves exist only on military computers. Col. Anderson,
along with a group of highly specialized commanders known as the "red team,"
dreamed them up as part of an elaborate war game. But if U.S. forces head
into a ground war in Afghanistan, their best preparation will likely come
from a simulated combat scenario such as this, in which a "red team" assumes
the identity of the enemy and tries to outmaneuver an American "blue team."
Increasingly, Col. Anderson and his fellow red-team specialists have been
thinking up less-traditional scenarios of battle: guerrilla warfare,
operations against non state actors, hit-and-run battles in cities and on
the frontiers. In other words, they've been thinking of the kinds of
scenarios that might play out in Afghanistan.

As awful as these scenarios are, Gen. Richard B. Myers, who took over Monday
as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, worries about what's been
overlooked. "What will keep me awake at night in this job," he told the
Senate two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, "is those things we haven't
thought about."

The war games, conducted six to 10 times a year by each of the four armed
services, are primarily computer-simulated affairs, although some
incorporate actual exercises. In the computerized games, about 100 military
officers and former diplomats break into opposing teams to plot a war
triggered by a terrorist attack, a refugee crisis or a border dispute. The
enemy red-team commanders are given fictional budgets and forces that
closely mirror those of U.S. foes. The American blue team tests potential
tactics and weaponry. A third team referees the action, and decides the
outcome. The battles usually take from one to two weeks to run, but often
take months to plan.

The games have taught Pentagon planners some hard lessons as the U.S. heads
into an unconventional war with an unpredictable enemy: Against a smart
opponent, hidden in mountains and cities, all of the U.S. military's
high-tech sensors and long-range guns provide little advantage. Casualties
are almost always high.

The games are far from perfect predictors. "If you don't have some degree of
empathy for a culture --their anger or concern -- it's very hard to think
about what they might do," says Graham Fuller, a former Central Intelligence
Agency official who has been a red-team member in Middle East scenarios.
Some red-team members also worry that the U.S. plays down the most extreme
biological and chemical-weapons attacks in order to concentrate on
more-conventional warfare.

As the U.S. readies for a possible war against a desperate foe likely to
rely on guerrilla tactics, though, the games stand as the best predictor of
the threats the U.S. will face and how it should respond. "These fights are
never sexy, easy or quick," says Brig. Gen. William Catto, whose job is to
find solutions to the problems the red-teamers create. "At the end of the
day, we're still talking about putting a knife in people."

For red-team commanders, the first goal of any campaign is to force the U.S.
to attack in places where America's superior technology, firepower and
training do little good. Red-team forces hunker down in war-torn cities, in
caves or in rugged mountain terrain where there is often no way for U.S.
forces to attack without suffering terrifying losses. In these canyons --
both urban and rural -- high-altitude bombers and precision cruise missiles
are useless. So, too, are spy satellites and unmanned surveillance planes.
"What you really want is a bloody door-to-door, cave-to-cave fight," says
retired Marine Corps Col. Darrell Combs, who role-plays the deputy enemy
commander.

That's the kind of fight that Russian soldiers stumbled into in Chechnya
when they chased a ragtag army of rebels into the capital city of Grozny in
1998 -- and that the red team has studied extensively through official
Russian battle reports and interviews with former Russian commanders. In
open terrain, the rebels' rocket-propelled grenades were worthless; rebel
fighters were being picked off before they could get close enough to fire a
shot. But in Grozny's blind alleys, rebels could lie in ambush and fire
their grenades with lethal accuracy. In the Russians' first assault on the
city, Chechens destroyed 122 of146 Russian tanks and armored personnel
carriers.

After studying that battle and simulating other fights, the U.S. now teaches
its troops to break into small units to attack buildings or rebel
strongholds, and to advance from many directions at once, using cheap
hand-held radios to coordinate assaults. "Eventually, the better-trained
U.S. soldiers will root us out," says Col. Combs, playing the role of enemy
commander. But in the process, the U.S. will lose infantrymen, he says, and
"the American people will only give you so many infantrymen, so you better
use them wisely."

When red-team commanders mount an attack, it's never a head-on confrontation
with their more powerful foe. "You have to attack them where they are lazy,
slow and indolent," Col. Anderson says.

So in his role as enemy commander, he hides small groups of soldiers in the
mountains along a resupply route -- a tactic perfected by the Afghan
mujahedeen during their 1980s war with the Russians. Using shoulder-fired
Stinger missiles, they shoot down most of the helicopters supplying troops
further inland. Eventually, the U.S. commander sends out small patrols to
root out Col. Anderson's troops, but the Americans, fighting in unfamiliar
mountainous terrain, are badly bloodied. When their commanders send in more
helicopters to rescue his dead and wounded troops, Col. Anderson orders the
red troops to shoot those down, too.

Other game playing involves logistics, security and public relations.
Retired Rear Adm. Eric A. McVadon, who plays the red-team commander in Navy
games, tries to sabotage U.S. ships in port by sending terrorists to
infiltrate port security or crews. He also warns that local airfields could
be attacked by terrorists posing as fuel-truck drivers. If the U.S. bases
large numbers of planes or supplies in places like Pakistan, Uzbekistan or
Tajikistan -- where there aren't any established U.S. bases, and many locals
are hostile to the U.S. -- lots of soldiers might be needed to guard
American assets.

Other red-teamers take the fight to U.S. allies by attacking their embassies
and military installations, or targeting U.S. ships on their visits to
foreign ports. One red-teamer recently attacked a fictional $4billion U.S.
aircraft carrier by ramming it with an equally fictional barge loaded with
propane and explosives. By the time the U.S. forces realized the barge was a
threat, it was too late to stop its momentum. "You want to raise the issue
of cost," which could sap resolve back home, says Mr. Fuller, the former CIA
official.

Low-Tech Arsenal

In the red teams' low-tech arsenal of weapons, one of the most potent is
refugees -- a deep concern to U.S. planners as the number of Afghan refugees
keeps rising. Wary that enemy soldiers will hide in refugee camps and
columns, blue-team commanders must set up elaborate checkpoints that require
lots of manpower and time, assets often in short supply. Other red-team
leaders position hordes of sick and hungry people in front of advancing U.S.
troops, forcing the Americans either to stop and give help, which slows
their advance, or to rush past the dying hordes and provoke their anger.
When desperate, Col. Anderson has dusted crowds of refugees with the
smallpox virus, knowing they will soon come into contact with, and even
embrace, their American defenders commanded by the blue team.

As the war drags on, red-team commanders often find that their best allies
are local and international newspapers and broadcasters. In the Middle East,
red-teamers often start their games by portraying incoming U.S. troops as
heathens who import alcohol, promote Christianity and strike up friendships
with Muslim women. "If I can't find actual events, I make them up," says
retired Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes, former head of the Defense Intelligence
Agency, who game plays a red-team commander.

After each U.S. strike on his fictional soil, Col. Anderson seeds the
landscape with the bodies of dissidents, their wives and their children.
Then, when the first reporters and CNN cameramen arrive, he announces that
the infidels -- the Americans and their coalition partners -- have bombed a
mosque or church, killing civilians. "Maybe I can cause blue to pause and
re-evaluate how they are doing targeting," he says. Even better, he may
cause the blue team's coalition partners to have second thoughts. Whenever
possible, Col. Combs has his forces dig in around villages where women and
children live, or near important cultural and religious shrines.

Other red-team tactics are designed not to win the war, but to drag it out
indefinitely. "I want to make it hard to reach any firm conclusion to the
hostilities," says Gen. Hughes. "We may not have the firepower," he adds,
"but we own the clock."

Sometimes the red team's best tactic is to disappear, to refuse to fight for
months or years, or to order its troops to retreat into foreign cities. "How
many people live in Kuala Lumpur? How many people live in Islamabad?" asks
one red-team commander -- and how would anyone ever find the enemy in cities
so large?

Tactical Mistake?

For all the mayhem that the red-team commanders have wreaked in recent
years, they have never dreamed up anything like the Sept. 11 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In his small windowless office, filled
with military tomes and souvenirs collected over a 29-year career, Col.
Anderson suggests the attacks were a "big tactical mistake."

As a red-team commander, the last thing he wants to do is perpetrate an evil
that galvanizes the American people and its allies for a long fight, Col.
Anderson says. Before his enemy troops launch any attack, he adds, he also
wants to be sure the assault won't be so horrible that it will enable the
U.S. to assemble a coalition of Islamic nations against him.

"As a red-team commander, I'd be afraid right now that I wouldn't be able to
achieve my political objectives," Col. Anderson says. From a man who has
contemplated the worst scenarios, it is an optimistic note.

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