All stuff Sun Tzu wrote 2500 years ago, but very hard for a bureaucracy to internalize, because by definition bureaucracies are formed to solve known problems and are blind to their blind spots.
Ripper's argument that his tactics "won" the Millennium Challenge strike me as rather similar to the thoughts behind the Jeune École school of naval warfare, which argued for the use of massed small ships (torpedo boats) to counter battleships... except that had an easy counter in the form of the (torpedo boat) destroyer, and most naval theorists generally agree that the French Navy's embrace of Jeune École ended up doing more harm than good to their navy.
[1] The closest thing to a counterexample here is nuclear bombs, for which there isn't really a meaningful defense. Except that the use of nuclear bombs is predicated on the theory of strategic air bombing, which has been promising an easy-win button for wars for a century now, has been tried in every major conflict since then, and whose could-even-be-argued-as-maybe-a-successes in that timeframe can be counted on one hand, with some fingers missing. I'm galled that you still have military personnel and advisors today who advocate for its success, given its track record of the complete opposite.
Not that I want to give anyone any ideas.
Nope. It turns out you need astronomical amounts of spent waste to noticeably impact a large population.
The trial of Jose Padilla (aka "the dirty bomber") has the best data on this. He went to Al Qaeda, offering to build and detonate a dirty bomb. Al Qaeda wasn't at all interested. They had run the actual numbers from an engineering standpoint (unlike everyone else who had just said "ooh scary bad!"), and demonstrated clearly that dirty bombs aren't actually a viable mass casualty weapon.
Before the Jose Padilla trial, we used to hear lots about dirty bombs. Since then, not at all. It's not that people forgot about them. They just aren't actually a credible engineering threat. It's too hard to get enough material distributed over a large enough area to measurably impact health outcomes for the impacted population. That was a surprise that came out of the trial.
There are lots of attack types to worry about. Dirty bombs are very far down that list.
Ripper's tactics probably did have a perfect destroyer-equivalent counter. The entire question is: why didn't the Blue Team bring it? You can't declare yourself victorious because a counter to their counter theoretically exists - you have to actually preemptively include it in your forces!
Aren’t ICBMs and submarine-launched warheads the other two parts of the US’s triad?
Defending against strategic bombers is a different game from submarine-launched cruise missiles / hypersonics too. If you don’t spot the submarine 50 miles off your coast you can’t defend against the hypersonic. Whereas you apply a completely different set of detection and response systems for long-range bombers.
Sure the net intention of these capabilities may the same, but we are talking about whether there are counters to these weapon systems.
Dark stuff.
Either battles are uniquely unforgiving for bad strategy (entirely possible, they are usually long, which has a law of large numbers effect to it) or military historians back-form rationalizations for the victors or some other third thing I can't think of right away.
I was hoping there'd be some crystal clear example of the equivalent of not folding on an off-suit 2/7 and having it play off. But I found none. Interesting.
Midway also could be an example. Instead of a coordinated attack, the dive bombers got lost and couldn't find the Japanese carriers. This led to the torpedo bombers getting slaughtered by Japanese fighters. However, in the process of getting slaughtered, they brought the fighters down to low altitude - which meant the dive bombers could attack unmolested when they finally showed up late. Three carriers went up in flames within minutes.
The one builds an ability, the other tests its success.
> When Van Riper went to Kernan to complain, he was told: “You are playing out of character. The OPFOR would never have done what you did.”
That's a strict DM.
Also, this reminded me of the WWI documentary from Peter Jackson, "They Shall Not Grow Old", and the british comic "Charley's War" by Pat Mills.
I enlisted during what turned out to be the absolute nadir of the Iraq war (2005-2010) so the risk today is also a lot less ominous IMO (for now lol...)
There are lots of healthy people out there claiming this (though obviously there are lots of people who do actually have the conditions as well).
Yes, it can do enough damage to make other countries adopt DMCA anti-circumvention law out of fear, but it always manages to snatch ultimate defeat.
Grenada (1983)
Panama to arrest General Noriega (1989)
Iraq in Gulf War 1 (1991)
Haiti (1994)
That was a weird win with another invasion required for some reason and a toxic legacy of Gulf War Syndrome and no fly zones.
Military the US crushed it but it didn’t seem to solve anything.
That’s a question best handled by Bush Junior and the American people.
What was the second war for?