US repeatedly defeated in high end wargames

According to a recent report, in high end exercises against Russia and China, US forces are routinely defeated. Aircraft are hit before they can get airborne, and ships are hit with heavy missile attacks that mission kill carriers and take them out of the fight.

The exercises start with all five warfighting domains contested, meaning US forces would have to fight for superiority. In most cases they fail. Interestingly one of the comments made was, "When the F-35 is in the air it dominates the fight", but it frequently is destroyed on the ground or can only get small numbers airborne. In the cyber battlefield US C3 systems would be crippled by cyberattack.

In a fight in the Baltic or Pacific, the US forces would be facing quick defeat. One of the biggest causes is the complete lack of defenses at US bases. There's a single Patriot battery in Germany that would go to Ramstein in the event of a European war. There are 58 Brigade Combat Teams, plus various airbases that have minimal defenses against aircraft and missiles.

Before you start with the "this is just an excuse for more money" this lines up exactly with what I've heard for the last couple of years from my own sources. The Pentagon is largely clueless about cyberwarfare and defending against it, and in many other areas, complacency set in pretty hard. It's going to take a radical change at the Pentagon to fix things.

taskandpurpose.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

It's going to take a major defeat before minds get changed.

This is bad news indeed.

I bet we don’t have the same outcome in our simulated wargames .

I haven’t read the article yet but I doubt they will mention it. You said the US has no defenses and had to fight for superiority. In the games are the Russians and Chinese already on war footing?

a reply to: Fallingdown

These ARE our wargames.

They didn't say much about individual exercises so we don't know what the scenarios were.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Suffice to say that I am not surprised by this at all.

a reply to: projectvxn

I'm surprised it made it into the wild, not by the results.

Outdated doctrine, over reliance on airpower, inability to recognise evolving warfare methods (particularly cyber warfare which the Chinese excel in) and lack of units with real conventional fighting ability would all be to blame imo.

A large amount of US army brigades are light infantry ones designed to be rapidly deployable around the globe, which sounds great but such formations prove little more than a speed bump against a fully mechanised parity enemy.

I doubt there will be much change since most folks at the Pentagon and the higher command of NATO in general owe their position more to politics and favours than to ability.

I remember reading red storm rising by tom Clancy.
There was a part in the book when the Russians decided to attack and debated if they should prepare their forces or just attack immediately.

They chose to prepare and thats what tipped off nato forces so they could prepare.

This took place before cyber was a thing so it would surely factor into the fight.

Anyone that wants to get rid of Americas nuclear deterrent needs to pay attention to this whole situation.

No one is going to go toe to toe with the US.

If someone wants to defeat the US, they will attack us at home using terrorist attacks that create chaos and bring down our infrastructure. They will do something like an EMP that causes systematic issues domestically making it hard for us to focus on fighting overseas and also causes a breakdown of society.

Our biggest weakness is that the country is so large, so diverse, and so many points of entry that it would be fairly easy to attack. Especially if you have a bunch of martyr types.

a reply to: Edumakated

But the bigger the country the harder it is to attack though.

Transporting men and material over vast distances is a pain in the ass for anyone.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I'm not surprised by that either.

Even SEALs are more interested in book contracts than being quiet professionals.

originally posted by: Ohanka
a reply to: Edumakated

But the bigger the country the harder it is to attack though.

Transporting men and material over vast distances is a pain in the ass for anyone.

That's the point. They don't need to transport a bunch of troops. One shipping tanker loaded with a nuke is all it would take. It isn't about troop to troop warfare anymore. Think several 9/11 attacks at once... remember how things were on 9/11. The chaos?

Bringing the grid down.

They attack from a distance and let the country implode on it's own. EMP brings down grid. Society collapses and THEN they invade after everyone has starved.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Is the Blue Force NATO or just US assets?

Maybe that is why we are interested in things like Iron Dome air defense system from Israeli.

Maybe that is why we are interested in things like Iron Dome air defense system from Israeli.

a reply to: Edumakated

That's largely what got us to this point. The mentality had been "we're ahead of everyone and bigger than everyone, so no one will bother us". The result has been us sitting on our thumbs while others go out and catch up to us.

a reply to: beetee

At a guess I'd say a combination of the US and US/NATO, but without information on individual scenarios, I can't say for certain.

a reply to: Zaphod58

US will not win because they don't have a Chinese General. That is a fact. "If I had Chinese Generals, Canadian Commanders, American technology I would destroy the world." Keep planning against China will do you no good.

I think it was the OPM hack a few years back, they had a music major as head of cyber security and the only reason it got found out was they got a new head appointed who insisted on an updated (still out of date but more recent than what was there) security software.

If the wrong degree being put in charge happens there, I imagine it happens in the military as well.


Plus had a friend in cyber security (civil service) demand a demotion because as he put it, they don't want to spend the money to actually secure networks., so they can make their evaluations look better something I can definitely see happening in the military.

Double post I ended up quoting it. First post on page 2 .🤦‍♂️