[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 19:53:57
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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
Pg. 1

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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