It's an anniversary season surprisingly little remarked upon in the mass media, but this summer 10 years ago the Pentagon was drawing up plans for the invasion of Iraq. I suppose the presidential campaign season is sucking most of the air of of the room, but can anyone doubt that ,had the war turned out as the Bush administration hoped and expected, the 10th anniversary of the war would be a big deal and this summer's anniversary of the fateful decision to invade would have been noteworthy?
Of course, things didn't turn out as expected, and from the point of view of a wargamer there's an interesting point of view to be had on that.
While the vast majority of wargames depict battles and campaigns that actually happened, there has always been a significant portion based on what-could-be, not just what was. Indeed. the very first wargames were military training tools and were largely geared towards helping train officers to conduct future operations. A secondary purpose was to evaluate plans and tactics. Hobby wargames based on history were a much later development, with H.G. Wells Little Wars in the early 1900s and Roverts Gettysburg in the 1960s.
Once they went there, wargame designers found that there was a much bigger market for refighting the battles of the past than speculative or training style wargames. But wargames based on possible future wars or battles have never been completely absent and were quite popular during the Cold War ear, especially.
In particular, just about every aspect of the Cold war turning hot was explored in a vast number of NATO vs. Warsaw Pact games. But various other potential wars have featured in sundry games over the years -- from rather likely ones such as renewed Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pakisatni wars to some highly unlikely one such as fighting between Flemings and Walloons in Belgium or invasions of the United States by foeign coalitions.
But remarkably, very few of the actual major wars that have been fought since the rise of modern wargaming have been anticipated. There was no wargame predicting the Iraq-Iran war, the Falklands War or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. During the Gulf War the previously published Gulf Strike was repurposed to cover the developing situation and S&T under Jim Dunnigan did a fairly credible job of throwing together Arabian Nightmare, also reflecting imminent operations, but this was a rather different case of prognostication than the typical what-if game.
So there's very little evidence available for evaluating whether what-if games about potential wars are really worth anything at all, as far as providing any insights, aside from games at a very tactical level, which often mix actual and hypothetical scenarios.
Which brings me to the unique case of Back to Iraq, Ty Bomba's examination of a potential second war between Iraq and the United Startes which went through three editions between the end of the first Gulf War and the second Iraq War. Historians in the future sufficiently detached from the passions and partisanship of today may, I think legitimately look at Back to Iraq as part of the groundwork that prepared the way for that war's occurance.
And I don't mean to pick on Bomba at all. When he wrote so matter-of-factly that "(Saddam) regained the freedom necessary to carry on his various chemical, biological and nuclear weapons research programs" he was expressing a sentiment shared by many, myself included, at the time.
Rather, the lesson to be drawn is how unimaginable the future is, especially the further into it you go and the more of it you include. Back to Iraq, third edition, which appeared early in 2002 (evidence in the magazine suggests that it was largely designed in Oct. 2001), does a credible job of predicting the general course of events and even some of the order of battle. It's a relatively straightforward job to adjust it to match the historical events, which I did in this "historical scenario,"
But subsequent events showed that the game fundamentally missed the point of the war, which that it was not about defeating Saddam's rickety rump conventional forces, but was about creating the conditions on the ground that would win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and give the United States the stable ally it wanted in the region. To be fair, Bomba was hardly alone in missing this point. President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, Gen. Franks and viceroy Bremer were among those who also misread the fundamental nature of Iraq and led the United States down the wrong path. But to the extent that Back to Iraq didn't attempt to ask the question of "what next?" let alone attempt an answer, it illustrates the biggest limitation of any what-if wargame that attempts to provide an insight into a potential war.
A contemporary example of this is the Clash of Arms game Persian Incursion. based on the excellent Harpoon 4 system, I don't think there's a better or more exhaustive open source examination of what an Israeli war with Iran would look like, and, frankly, I suspect there isn't a classified examination that's better, either.
The strength of Persian Incursion, however, lies in its technical and tactical evaluation of how the Israelis could target Iran's nuclear capabilities and what the Iranians can do about it. Militarily the answer ends up being clear. The biggest challenge for Israel is the logistics of mounting the raid and delivering the ordnance. And there's very little that Iran can do about it and nothing they do has a significant effect on the outcome. So does this make the whole thing a forgone conclusion?
Not really, because Larry Bond, as the game designer, is compelled to address the other ramifications of such a raid and the war by adding a subset of rules, styled "political" to deal with the larger context of the war. Now I think he does a pretty good job and its highly entertaining. Indeed, because of the manifest military impotence of the Iranian side it's the only thing that makes this a "game" at all. But this illustrates starkly the predictive limitation of the game as a whole. There's really no question that Israel has the physical means to destroy any target in Iran it chooses to destroy. But what that ends up meaning and whether the end result even counts as a "victory" is less clear. In the game it's possible for Iran to win a political victory regardless of the fate of its nuclear program. Where the player would be wrong is in assuming this is just an artificiality to make Persian Incursion a "game." In fact, it's the main insight of Persian Incursion as opposed to Back to Iraq and what makes PI a better tool than Back to Iraq was. Indeed, properly understood, PI is the cautionary tale that Back to Iraq never was, because PI makes it clear that the key battleground of an Israeli-Iran war is not between the two military establishments but the political context in which the war occurs. This is a truth that flew right over the head of Back to Iraq.
A commercial wargame is just one small voice in the wilderness of the mass media, but to the extent that it provides a little insight to the citizen weighing the costs of war something like PI provides a much more solid contribution than Back to Iraq by at least asking the right question -- even if it can't provide an answer.
Showing posts with label Gulf War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gulf War. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2012
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wartime Thanksgivings
While we enjoy Thanksgiving at home with friends and family it's appropriate to remember our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and others serving overseas and dining on MREs or less at cold outposts in Afghan mountains, at sea or inside missile silos and all the other places where duty requires.
THANKSGIVING DAY 1863
By the President of the United States : a Proclamation
THANKSGIVING DAY 1863
By the President of the United States : a Proclamation
...In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union...
...I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
SOURCE: Pilgrim Hall Museum website, which lists a sample of wartime proclamations from 1898, 1917, 1943, 1953, 1967 and 1991.Tuesday, March 3, 2009
My wars
One of the driving forces behind my interest in wargames was World War II. As a kid growing up in the 1960s that war was ever-present in the media. Veterans of the war were men in the prime of their lives.
Quite a few Twilight Zone episodes were set in World War II, which is no surprise considering that Rod Serling was a combat vet himself. The war was also a popular theme for other TV shows. Some were action-oriented like Combat, Rat Patrol and 12-O'Clock High. Others were even comedies like McHale's Navy and, amazingly, Hogan's Heroes set in a prison camp.
And World War II movies were omnipresent on afternoon TV movie shows.
While my dad was a Korean War vet (the forgotten war) my best friend's dad was a veteran of Guadalcanal and we were therefore really excited when we found out there was an Avalon Hill game on the topic.
My own kids seem far less interested in such things, I guess because my own wars lack the drama of World War II, but I did get to serve in at least two wars in my own military career.
The least dramatic, although perhaps more important,was the Cold War. I served, like so many others, in the struggle between the democratic West and the Reds. Although it was a shooting war in some places and times, notably Korea and Vietnam, most of it involved little shooting but a
of of training, boredom and "being there." In addition to my stateside service, I also got to spend a little over three years on the "front" in Germany with this unit (as depicted in the game TAC AIR):
The 1st Battalion, 80th Field Artillery was equipped with the Lance, a tactical ballistic missile that could be armed with a conventional warhead, but was primarily meant as a nuclear delivery system.
The counter depicts the missile on its portable launcher as deployed for airmobile use, but that was a rarely used capability that, frankly, seemed untenable on a battlefield. While the launcher had wheels, you couldn't safely tow the missile that way.
Instead the missile was almost invariably deployed on its fully tracked carrier, as example of
which is shown here on display at the Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, Okla.:
Ironically, by going to Germany I may have missed out on being deployed to the shooting war that DID occur during my active duty stint, the Invasion of Grenada. I was on active duty in the first place because I had done well at the Field Artillery Officer Basic Course at Fort Sill. At the time they offered the top-performing reserve component officer the chance to go on active duty and I had the choice of going to Germany or going to Fort Bragg to be in the 82nd Airborne.
I had long wanted to go to Germany (I even took German in high school) so it was an easy choice, but in retrospect it's easy to se how things could have been different. Whether or not I would have happened to be part of the 82d that deployed to Grenada is impossible to say, but it was a possibility.
I likewise missed the First Gulf War, being at the time in the 26th Yankee Infantry Division. At the time the National Guard insisted that only whole units should be deployed. This meant that, given that no infantry divisions were needed, that the only Mass. National Guard units that saw combat were some non-divisional MP and truck units. The Guard changed their mind about that rule.
As my military career seemed about to wind down without seeing any action whatsoever, I was quite surprised to get a summons to active duty in 2003! I was in the Individual Ready Reserve by then, the non-drilling reserve component. Apparently the Army was short on field grade
officers to man all the headquarters units it was creating to manage the second war in the Gulf and I ended up serving in Iraq with the Joint Special Operations Task Force North. This was an unusual unit. Basically it created a Corps-level headquarters around the core of the regimental-sized 10th Special Forces Group headquarters. Naturally, as a special forces group headquarters there were vast areas of expertise required for conventional operations and corps-sized responsibilities that the unit didn't have. So it was beefed up with all sorts of folks, from Navy SEALS, to National Guardsman, Air Force personnel, Marines, OGA (other govt' agency -- i.e. CIA) and, yes, IRRs like me.
The counter above, from the game Operation Iraqi Freedom, depicts some of the Special Forces troops that were part of JSOTF-N.
As it turned out, the refusal of the Turkish government to allow the 4th Mech Division to invade Iraq from the north meant I didn't personally have a very active war, as I was assigned to the "ground fires" section that was responsible for coordinating artillery fire. In the actual event there was just one 6-gun battery of 105m howitzers in our area that the 173rd Airborne Brigade brought along and all the fire support that the special forces teams received was in the form of air strikes coordinated by the Air Force folks instead of us.
I did get to serve, and although it wasn't a time of high drama personally, I've been around long enough to recognize that every small bit part does play its role in the larger story. War and politics being unpredictable, it's hard to say that things might not have played out differently. Or even that the way events did unfold was not in part because of our presence. Certainly the JSOTF-N did occupy the attention of a dozen Iraqi divisions using little more than three battalions-worth of green berets, some Kurds and about four battalions worth of Marines, paratroopers and mountain light infantry. There's little glory in an Economy of Force mission, but it's a Principle of War for good reason.
Here's me in Iraq:
Quite a few Twilight Zone episodes were set in World War II, which is no surprise considering that Rod Serling was a combat vet himself. The war was also a popular theme for other TV shows. Some were action-oriented like Combat, Rat Patrol and 12-O'Clock High. Others were even comedies like McHale's Navy and, amazingly, Hogan's Heroes set in a prison camp.
And World War II movies were omnipresent on afternoon TV movie shows.
While my dad was a Korean War vet (the forgotten war) my best friend's dad was a veteran of Guadalcanal and we were therefore really excited when we found out there was an Avalon Hill game on the topic.
My own kids seem far less interested in such things, I guess because my own wars lack the drama of World War II, but I did get to serve in at least two wars in my own military career.
The least dramatic, although perhaps more important,was the Cold War. I served, like so many others, in the struggle between the democratic West and the Reds. Although it was a shooting war in some places and times, notably Korea and Vietnam, most of it involved little shooting but a
of of training, boredom and "being there." In addition to my stateside service, I also got to spend a little over three years on the "front" in Germany with this unit (as depicted in the game TAC AIR):The 1st Battalion, 80th Field Artillery was equipped with the Lance, a tactical ballistic missile that could be armed with a conventional warhead, but was primarily meant as a nuclear delivery system.
The counter depicts the missile on its portable launcher as deployed for airmobile use, but that was a rarely used capability that, frankly, seemed untenable on a battlefield. While the launcher had wheels, you couldn't safely tow the missile that way.
Instead the missile was almost invariably deployed on its fully tracked carrier, as example of
which is shown here on display at the Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, Okla.:Ironically, by going to Germany I may have missed out on being deployed to the shooting war that DID occur during my active duty stint, the Invasion of Grenada. I was on active duty in the first place because I had done well at the Field Artillery Officer Basic Course at Fort Sill. At the time they offered the top-performing reserve component officer the chance to go on active duty and I had the choice of going to Germany or going to Fort Bragg to be in the 82nd Airborne.
I had long wanted to go to Germany (I even took German in high school) so it was an easy choice, but in retrospect it's easy to se how things could have been different. Whether or not I would have happened to be part of the 82d that deployed to Grenada is impossible to say, but it was a possibility.
I likewise missed the First Gulf War, being at the time in the 26th Yankee Infantry Division. At the time the National Guard insisted that only whole units should be deployed. This meant that, given that no infantry divisions were needed, that the only Mass. National Guard units that saw combat were some non-divisional MP and truck units. The Guard changed their mind about that rule.
As my military career seemed about to wind down without seeing any action whatsoever, I was quite surprised to get a summons to active duty in 2003! I was in the Individual Ready Reserve by then, the non-drilling reserve component. Apparently the Army was short on field grade
officers to man all the headquarters units it was creating to manage the second war in the Gulf and I ended up serving in Iraq with the Joint Special Operations Task Force North. This was an unusual unit. Basically it created a Corps-level headquarters around the core of the regimental-sized 10th Special Forces Group headquarters. Naturally, as a special forces group headquarters there were vast areas of expertise required for conventional operations and corps-sized responsibilities that the unit didn't have. So it was beefed up with all sorts of folks, from Navy SEALS, to National Guardsman, Air Force personnel, Marines, OGA (other govt' agency -- i.e. CIA) and, yes, IRRs like me.The counter above, from the game Operation Iraqi Freedom, depicts some of the Special Forces troops that were part of JSOTF-N.
As it turned out, the refusal of the Turkish government to allow the 4th Mech Division to invade Iraq from the north meant I didn't personally have a very active war, as I was assigned to the "ground fires" section that was responsible for coordinating artillery fire. In the actual event there was just one 6-gun battery of 105m howitzers in our area that the 173rd Airborne Brigade brought along and all the fire support that the special forces teams received was in the form of air strikes coordinated by the Air Force folks instead of us.
I did get to serve, and although it wasn't a time of high drama personally, I've been around long enough to recognize that every small bit part does play its role in the larger story. War and politics being unpredictable, it's hard to say that things might not have played out differently. Or even that the way events did unfold was not in part because of our presence. Certainly the JSOTF-N did occupy the attention of a dozen Iraqi divisions using little more than three battalions-worth of green berets, some Kurds and about four battalions worth of Marines, paratroopers and mountain light infantry. There's little glory in an Economy of Force mission, but it's a Principle of War for good reason.
Here's me in Iraq:
That's one of the special ops helicopters used to support the green berets and other special operators.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Phase Line Smash armored cav
One of the pleasures of a real in-depth military simulation such as Phase Line Smash is the insight it can provide into actual historical events.
PLS is, perhaps, the most ambitious solitaire manual wargame ever attempted. The basic game has 55 pages of rules, in small type! A good chunk of the other 55-page book in the game also has rules.
But a large portion of the second book is a detailed battle history of the portion of the Gulf War fought by the VII Corps. The roughly 44 pages of history-related material would probably be a 100+ page book if published in the usual format for hardcover history books, so this is no simple set of designer's notes.
One of the facts depicted in PLS is the differing employments of the two armored cavalry regiments deployed for Desert Storm. Both were storied formations with long and distinguished histories.
The 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment assigned to VII Corps is the longest continuously serving regimental-sized unit on active service, dating back to the original 2nd Dragoons from 1836, which was renamed the 2nd U.S. Cavalry during the Civil War.
The 3rd ACR assigned to XVIII Airborne Corps started its organizational existence as Regiment of Mounted Rifles in 1846, (hence it's nickname of "Brave Rifles") and was later renamed as the 3rd. U.S. Cavalry during the general reorganization of the mounted branch on Aug. 3rd, 1861.
Almost 130 years later the two venerable regiments were in the Arabian desert preparing to take part in the largest armored battle in history.
The game designer notes, however, that the two regiments were employed quite differently even though organized the same.
The 2nd ACR operated independently, under VII Corps control, as an advance element of the corps. It was reinforced with an entire brigade of field artillery (the 210th FA Bde), which was a very unusual subordination of a colonel-level command to another colonel-level command. It's a testimony to the professionalism of the late 2oth Century (and early 21st Century) U.S. Army that it could make this kind of command relationship work smoothly without the kind of drama about ranks and date of rank one is used to seeing in military history. Certainly the 1861 U.S. Army could never have tried something like that! The unconventional reinforcement aside, the 2nd ACR was fulfilling a very conventional role as the advance element for a heavy armored corps.
The 3rd ACR, on the other hand, was assigned directly to the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, in effect becoming a fourth maneuver brigade for that heavy division. The 3rd ACR wasn't even much weaker than the 2nd ACR. It didn't have an FA Bde in support, it did have an attached FA battalion, to in total it was merely 24-guns smaller. Why the different treatment?
The game doesn't say, and I don't know if any of the commanders ever explicitly explained their decisions. It could have simply been due to the personal preferences of the respective corp commanders, and if Lt. Gen. Gary E. Luck had commanded VII Corps instead of XVIII Airborne, and Lt. Gen. Frederick M. Franks Jr. headed XVIII Corps instead of VII Corps maybe things would have been done differently.
But analyzing the situation by the Army method known as METT suggests that the decision might well have been the same even if the corps commanders had been switched because there were significant differences in the conditions facing the two corps.
The M in METT stands for Mission, the the mission of the XVIII Airborne Corps was to act as the flank guard for the entire Coalition army assembled for the offensive to liberate Kuwait. The corps was supposed to prevent any Iraqi forces from interfering with Coalition plans.
The E stands foe the Enemy. In the XVIII Corps zone Iraqi forces were sparse and deployed in widely separated strong points. They were not strong, but they were located in many distinct positions that would have to be neutralized.
The first T stands for terrain. For the airborne corps there were miles and miles of trackless desert to cross. The corps area of operations was very spread out.
The final T is Troops Available. For the XVIII Airborne Corps there was the problem of coordinating different nationalities and troops with very different capabilities. There was a very light, ground mobile force based around the small French division reinforced by a brigade of truck-borne U.S. paratroopers. There was an airmobile force comprised mostly of the 101st Airmobile Division and there was a heavy mechanized force built around the 24th Mechanized Division.
Given the dispersed enemy, huge distances and disparate capabilities of his units Luck evidently decided that the best approach would be to decentralize control as much as possible. Thus it made sense to subordinate the 3rd ACR directly to the 24th Mech instead of trying to coordinate their actions remotely at corps level.
On the VII Corps front things couldn't be more different.
The Mission of VII Corps was to engage the most powerful enemy armored force and destroy it in direct combat.
That Enemy force was the six-division Republican Guard (reinforced by several divisions worth of regular Iraqi troops). While the course of the war revealed the limitations of the Iraqi forces, pre-war planning had to give them the benefit of the doubt. It was a substantial enemy force.
The terrain was still trackless, but it was constrained by unit boundaries on both left and right which meant that the VII Corps would be operating in a fairly constricted space given its size.
And that size was considerable, as the Troops Available comprised five heavy armored divisions. While there were some variations in equipment and size, all five divisions were large, very heavily armored extremely mobile ground forces. Orchestrating their movement, let alone their fighting, would require close supervision by the corps headquarters, tremendous synchronization and adherence to strict timetables.
And helping those armored divisions keep their timetables was the responsibility of the 2nd ACR, which raced ahead of the corps to clear the way and make sure that no Iraqi forces of any size was able to act as a speed bump to slow down any part of the VII Corps. Franks planned to wheel the entire corps and smash into the flank of the Republican Guards with annihilating force. It wouldn't have taken much to throw the whole schedule off kilter.
So given the realities of METT the different employment strategies for the 2nd ACR and 3rd ACR make perfect sense, and are even reflected in the game. Consider how much more difficult coordinating the boundary issues between the XVIII Corps and VII Corps would be if extra levels of command were included. Instead the player (who represents VII Corps commander Franks) can deal with the 24th Mech alone on his flank, instead of multiple units.
Phase Line Smash is an amazing study of this singular campaign and even unplayed it's is worth having.
PLS is, perhaps, the most ambitious solitaire manual wargame ever attempted. The basic game has 55 pages of rules, in small type! A good chunk of the other 55-page book in the game also has rules.
But a large portion of the second book is a detailed battle history of the portion of the Gulf War fought by the VII Corps. The roughly 44 pages of history-related material would probably be a 100+ page book if published in the usual format for hardcover history books, so this is no simple set of designer's notes.
One of the facts depicted in PLS is the differing employments of the two armored cavalry regiments deployed for Desert Storm. Both were storied formations with long and distinguished histories.
The 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment assigned to VII Corps is the longest continuously serving regimental-sized unit on active service, dating back to the original 2nd Dragoons from 1836, which was renamed the 2nd U.S. Cavalry during the Civil War.
The 3rd ACR assigned to XVIII Airborne Corps started its organizational existence as Regiment of Mounted Rifles in 1846, (hence it's nickname of "Brave Rifles") and was later renamed as the 3rd. U.S. Cavalry during the general reorganization of the mounted branch on Aug. 3rd, 1861.
Almost 130 years later the two venerable regiments were in the Arabian desert preparing to take part in the largest armored battle in history.
The game designer notes, however, that the two regiments were employed quite differently even though organized the same.
The 2nd ACR operated independently, under VII Corps control, as an advance element of the corps. It was reinforced with an entire brigade of field artillery (the 210th FA Bde), which was a very unusual subordination of a colonel-level command to another colonel-level command. It's a testimony to the professionalism of the late 2oth Century (and early 21st Century) U.S. Army that it could make this kind of command relationship work smoothly without the kind of drama about ranks and date of rank one is used to seeing in military history. Certainly the 1861 U.S. Army could never have tried something like that! The unconventional reinforcement aside, the 2nd ACR was fulfilling a very conventional role as the advance element for a heavy armored corps.
The 3rd ACR, on the other hand, was assigned directly to the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, in effect becoming a fourth maneuver brigade for that heavy division. The 3rd ACR wasn't even much weaker than the 2nd ACR. It didn't have an FA Bde in support, it did have an attached FA battalion, to in total it was merely 24-guns smaller. Why the different treatment?
The game doesn't say, and I don't know if any of the commanders ever explicitly explained their decisions. It could have simply been due to the personal preferences of the respective corp commanders, and if Lt. Gen. Gary E. Luck had commanded VII Corps instead of XVIII Airborne, and Lt. Gen. Frederick M. Franks Jr. headed XVIII Corps instead of VII Corps maybe things would have been done differently.
But analyzing the situation by the Army method known as METT suggests that the decision might well have been the same even if the corps commanders had been switched because there were significant differences in the conditions facing the two corps.
The M in METT stands for Mission, the the mission of the XVIII Airborne Corps was to act as the flank guard for the entire Coalition army assembled for the offensive to liberate Kuwait. The corps was supposed to prevent any Iraqi forces from interfering with Coalition plans.
The E stands foe the Enemy. In the XVIII Corps zone Iraqi forces were sparse and deployed in widely separated strong points. They were not strong, but they were located in many distinct positions that would have to be neutralized.
The first T stands for terrain. For the airborne corps there were miles and miles of trackless desert to cross. The corps area of operations was very spread out.
The final T is Troops Available. For the XVIII Airborne Corps there was the problem of coordinating different nationalities and troops with very different capabilities. There was a very light, ground mobile force based around the small French division reinforced by a brigade of truck-borne U.S. paratroopers. There was an airmobile force comprised mostly of the 101st Airmobile Division and there was a heavy mechanized force built around the 24th Mechanized Division.
Given the dispersed enemy, huge distances and disparate capabilities of his units Luck evidently decided that the best approach would be to decentralize control as much as possible. Thus it made sense to subordinate the 3rd ACR directly to the 24th Mech instead of trying to coordinate their actions remotely at corps level.
On the VII Corps front things couldn't be more different.
The Mission of VII Corps was to engage the most powerful enemy armored force and destroy it in direct combat.
That Enemy force was the six-division Republican Guard (reinforced by several divisions worth of regular Iraqi troops). While the course of the war revealed the limitations of the Iraqi forces, pre-war planning had to give them the benefit of the doubt. It was a substantial enemy force.
The terrain was still trackless, but it was constrained by unit boundaries on both left and right which meant that the VII Corps would be operating in a fairly constricted space given its size.
And that size was considerable, as the Troops Available comprised five heavy armored divisions. While there were some variations in equipment and size, all five divisions were large, very heavily armored extremely mobile ground forces. Orchestrating their movement, let alone their fighting, would require close supervision by the corps headquarters, tremendous synchronization and adherence to strict timetables.
And helping those armored divisions keep their timetables was the responsibility of the 2nd ACR, which raced ahead of the corps to clear the way and make sure that no Iraqi forces of any size was able to act as a speed bump to slow down any part of the VII Corps. Franks planned to wheel the entire corps and smash into the flank of the Republican Guards with annihilating force. It wouldn't have taken much to throw the whole schedule off kilter.
So given the realities of METT the different employment strategies for the 2nd ACR and 3rd ACR make perfect sense, and are even reflected in the game. Consider how much more difficult coordinating the boundary issues between the XVIII Corps and VII Corps would be if extra levels of command were included. Instead the player (who represents VII Corps commander Franks) can deal with the 24th Mech alone on his flank, instead of multiple units.
Phase Line Smash is an amazing study of this singular campaign and even unplayed it's is worth having.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
A Line in the Sand on the mark
There are a lot of reasons to play wargames, but one of them is to get some insight into real-world events.
When I think of a game that's a real "study" of history I usually think of some deeply researched and detailed simulation such as Harpoon 4, The Longest Day or perhaps the Tactical Combat Series games I've been reviewing recently.
But sometimes you don't need a lot of hardware-oriented detail to make a pertinent point with a wargame. A good of example of that is a Line in the Sand, TSR's game about the then-looming Gulf War in 1991. It's clearly no detailed military simulation. Yet despite all the fighting the region's seen over the last 60+ years the conflicts there have very little to do with military tactics or strategy. The Middle East is all about the politics.
Militarily there's no real contest at all between the "West" (U.S., Israeli and European) forces and the forces of the Islamic states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Unlike the combat between great powers in the first half of the 20th century which generally pitted roughly comparable military organizations, fighting in the Middle East has been characterized by an enormous gulf in effectiveness -- the kind more usually seen in colonial warfare. So long as a wargame reflects that vast gulf in effectiveness, the details are unimportant.
A Line in the Sand does have a military game, based on the same system used in Red Storm Rising, but it really comes into its own in the Diplomatic Game where players secretly select goals and conduct diplomatic gestures to affect world opinion and the mood of the "Arab Street." Its an amazingly sophisticated design , especially considering it was designed and published on a tight deadline dictated by fast-moving current events.
While there are some mistakes and typos betraying the haste of the production, the design itself works rather well.
It's not "fair" but it is interesting and it's authentic. Every side doesn't have an equal chance of winning, but any body could win, depending on how cleverly they play.
And despite the passage of more than 17 years, the game still feels very current. Iraq may be occupied, but the Iraqi "player" is clearly not out of the "game," just as A Line in the Sand reflects. Nearly every other Gulf War and Iraq War wargame really missed the point of the conflict, which would NOT be decided on some desert battlefield, but in the political arena.
When I think of a game that's a real "study" of history I usually think of some deeply researched and detailed simulation such as Harpoon 4, The Longest Day or perhaps the Tactical Combat Series games I've been reviewing recently.
But sometimes you don't need a lot of hardware-oriented detail to make a pertinent point with a wargame. A good of example of that is a Line in the Sand, TSR's game about the then-looming Gulf War in 1991. It's clearly no detailed military simulation. Yet despite all the fighting the region's seen over the last 60+ years the conflicts there have very little to do with military tactics or strategy. The Middle East is all about the politics.
Militarily there's no real contest at all between the "West" (U.S., Israeli and European) forces and the forces of the Islamic states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.). Unlike the combat between great powers in the first half of the 20th century which generally pitted roughly comparable military organizations, fighting in the Middle East has been characterized by an enormous gulf in effectiveness -- the kind more usually seen in colonial warfare. So long as a wargame reflects that vast gulf in effectiveness, the details are unimportant.
A Line in the Sand does have a military game, based on the same system used in Red Storm Rising, but it really comes into its own in the Diplomatic Game where players secretly select goals and conduct diplomatic gestures to affect world opinion and the mood of the "Arab Street." Its an amazingly sophisticated design , especially considering it was designed and published on a tight deadline dictated by fast-moving current events.
While there are some mistakes and typos betraying the haste of the production, the design itself works rather well.
It's not "fair" but it is interesting and it's authentic. Every side doesn't have an equal chance of winning, but any body could win, depending on how cleverly they play.
And despite the passage of more than 17 years, the game still feels very current. Iraq may be occupied, but the Iraqi "player" is clearly not out of the "game," just as A Line in the Sand reflects. Nearly every other Gulf War and Iraq War wargame really missed the point of the conflict, which would NOT be decided on some desert battlefield, but in the political arena.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Arabian Nightmare remembered
It's really a sign of how old I'm getting that it occurred to me today that our newest eligible voters this fall were born after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that was the first act in the first Gulf War.
It seems like just yesterday that the Berlin Wall fell, communism collapsed and Saddam Hussein displayed his trademark appalling sense of timing by invading oil-rich Kuwait just as the U.S. was looking for someplace to use its Reagan-buildup-honed Cold War army before paying it off as part of the "Peace Dividend." But it wasn't yesterday, of course, it was 18 years ago this summer.
There are a lot of remarkable aspects to that episode of history, but among them it was the "golden era" of paper wargaming's public influence. Frank Chadwick's Desert Shield Fact Book was on the New York Times' best seller list. Wargame designer and military analyst Jim Dunnigan was a regular on CNN. Other game designers/analysts also appeared on TV and on op ed pages of major newspapers. Wargame publishers rushed a number of games into print to take advantage of the moment, among them Avalon Hill/Victory Games with their updates to Gulf Strike, Omega Games' Desert Victory and TSR's A Line in the Sand.
Perhaps the most notable, however, was Strategy & Tactics and its Arabian Nightmare in issue No. 139. It was literally thrown together on the fly, under the direction of Dunnigan (in his second go-around as S&T editor) and designed by Austin Bay with assists from a nationwide circle of playtesters and experts. The whole thing was coordinated by emails, which might seem rather unremarkable now, but this was quite ground-breaking in 1990.
The end result was not a polished commercial product and competitive wargame, but more like a wargame kit that allowed the general public to get a first-hand look at the military possibilities. This was no small achievement, given the garbage that passed for commentary in newspapers, news magazines and, especially, television. There were plenty of alarmist voices grinding their various political axes with scant regard for the military realities. Pundits predicted tens of thousands of American casualties in a bloodbath against the "battle-hardened" and well-fortified Iraqi army. Indeed, Saddam himself seemed to believe the hype. Had he understood the actual balance of forces he might have saved himself from starting the long sequence of events that led to today's situation in Iraq by arranging for a face-saving exit.
Arabian Nightmare did a very credible job of presenting the likely course of events. A friend and I played out the first few days of the war and according to the game an air campaign would reduce the Iraqi army to impotence in short order and even if it didn't, the Coalition ground forces would run right over them.
It's mostly of interest now as a historical artifact, although it could be used to explore what-ifs about the campaign easily enough. It probably could even be used to look at the 2003 war, although I haven't tried that.
Unfortunately the run-up for the 2003 war didn't enjoy as much attention from wargame designers as it probably should have, although there were some efforts such as Back to Iraq in Command and S&T and Millennium Wars: Iraq. Maybe this was because the war seemed like another forgone conclusion. Certainly the public debate over the war didn't seem well-informed. In particular, there was very little attention given to the question of "what next?" Both Back to Iraq and MW: Iraq only concerned themselves with the first few weeks of fighting, although they did correctly predict the historical outcome.
Ironically, the earlier Gulf War games like Arabian Nightmare, A Line in the Sand and Gulf Strike paid more attention to the political ramifications of that war than any of the more recent games did.
Indeed, despite more than a year of speculation about a possible war with Iran, no wargame designer has tackled that topic in the detail it deserves. An updated Gulf Strike-like treatment of the issue would be quite illuminating. I know that my own wariness about launching a war against Iran is based in part on my memories of how challenging invading that country was for the much more numerous Soviets in the original Gulf Strike. I simply can't see it as doable with the force levels the U.S. could apply.
It would be a public service if one of our knowledgable modern specialists like Joe Miranda or Joe Balkoski would take a swing at the topic.
It seems like just yesterday that the Berlin Wall fell, communism collapsed and Saddam Hussein displayed his trademark appalling sense of timing by invading oil-rich Kuwait just as the U.S. was looking for someplace to use its Reagan-buildup-honed Cold War army before paying it off as part of the "Peace Dividend." But it wasn't yesterday, of course, it was 18 years ago this summer.
There are a lot of remarkable aspects to that episode of history, but among them it was the "golden era" of paper wargaming's public influence. Frank Chadwick's Desert Shield Fact Book was on the New York Times' best seller list. Wargame designer and military analyst Jim Dunnigan was a regular on CNN. Other game designers/analysts also appeared on TV and on op ed pages of major newspapers. Wargame publishers rushed a number of games into print to take advantage of the moment, among them Avalon Hill/Victory Games with their updates to Gulf Strike, Omega Games' Desert Victory and TSR's A Line in the Sand.
Perhaps the most notable, however, was Strategy & Tactics and its Arabian Nightmare in issue No. 139. It was literally thrown together on the fly, under the direction of Dunnigan (in his second go-around as S&T editor) and designed by Austin Bay with assists from a nationwide circle of playtesters and experts. The whole thing was coordinated by emails, which might seem rather unremarkable now, but this was quite ground-breaking in 1990.
The end result was not a polished commercial product and competitive wargame, but more like a wargame kit that allowed the general public to get a first-hand look at the military possibilities. This was no small achievement, given the garbage that passed for commentary in newspapers, news magazines and, especially, television. There were plenty of alarmist voices grinding their various political axes with scant regard for the military realities. Pundits predicted tens of thousands of American casualties in a bloodbath against the "battle-hardened" and well-fortified Iraqi army. Indeed, Saddam himself seemed to believe the hype. Had he understood the actual balance of forces he might have saved himself from starting the long sequence of events that led to today's situation in Iraq by arranging for a face-saving exit.
Arabian Nightmare did a very credible job of presenting the likely course of events. A friend and I played out the first few days of the war and according to the game an air campaign would reduce the Iraqi army to impotence in short order and even if it didn't, the Coalition ground forces would run right over them.
It's mostly of interest now as a historical artifact, although it could be used to explore what-ifs about the campaign easily enough. It probably could even be used to look at the 2003 war, although I haven't tried that.
Unfortunately the run-up for the 2003 war didn't enjoy as much attention from wargame designers as it probably should have, although there were some efforts such as Back to Iraq in Command and S&T and Millennium Wars: Iraq. Maybe this was because the war seemed like another forgone conclusion. Certainly the public debate over the war didn't seem well-informed. In particular, there was very little attention given to the question of "what next?" Both Back to Iraq and MW: Iraq only concerned themselves with the first few weeks of fighting, although they did correctly predict the historical outcome.
Ironically, the earlier Gulf War games like Arabian Nightmare, A Line in the Sand and Gulf Strike paid more attention to the political ramifications of that war than any of the more recent games did.
Indeed, despite more than a year of speculation about a possible war with Iran, no wargame designer has tackled that topic in the detail it deserves. An updated Gulf Strike-like treatment of the issue would be quite illuminating. I know that my own wariness about launching a war against Iran is based in part on my memories of how challenging invading that country was for the much more numerous Soviets in the original Gulf Strike. I simply can't see it as doable with the force levels the U.S. could apply.
It would be a public service if one of our knowledgable modern specialists like Joe Miranda or Joe Balkoski would take a swing at the topic.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)