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Comment by nan0 | Hacker News Reader

"In these simulated fights, an aggressor force obliterates US stealth fighters on the runway, sinks US warships, destroys US bases, and takes out critical US military systems."

Uhh is this assuming that the US is just sitting still? Scrambling of fighter jets can vary and much is just speculation on how fast they can scramble, wonder which time they went with in this think-tank . Found an interesting discussion on how fast an F-22 can scramble [0]

In general I would be interested in how these "simulated wargames" are being created.

[0] "How fast can an F-22 scramble?" https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/9703/how-fast-c...

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> In general I would be interested in how these "simulated wargames" are being created

I don't know about now, but from what I've read about the wargames of the past, they had a lot in common with recreational tabletop wargames. Hexagonal grids, figurines, rule systems. I too would be curious about how these are done now.

My understanding of wargames is that its like a recreational tabletop game to determine the results of combat.

But the movement of troops, and their positioning, is determined by the soldiers in the exercise. So its like playing Axis and Allies (the generals roll dice to see who "lives and dies" in the game), except that the soldiers move in real-time (the soldiers on the board move to Hex-location X only when the REAL soldiers in the exercise get to that location).

Practicing the issuance of commands itself is important: not only for the generals, but for all the soldiers down the line. Communication is a skill that is only built up with practice. Even if combat itself is fake, there's a lot of benefit to the exercise.

> Uhh is this assuming that the US is just sitting still? Scrambling of fighter jets can vary and much is just speculation on how fast they can scramble

Even if they can scramble, it's still an issue if they don't have bases to fly back to to refuel and rearm.

I think it's interesting that the Swedes confronted this same issue, and responded by designing their air force to disperse into small, distributed bases in the event of a major conflict:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_90

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_JAS_39_Gripen#Usability_a...

I think it also depends on what base we are talking about that the enemy has destroyed. Is this a base the farthest away from neighboring base? Are the KC-135s refiller planes destroyed as well? Where is the nearest carrier located? Like I said would really like to see how the simulation was executed.

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