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Comment by GuardianCaveman | Hacker News Reader

My uncle flew Cobra helicopters in Vietnam and the us developed a new anti air system and he was supposed to fly against it to demo its effectiveness. I don’t recall the story well but he flew nap of the earth and in a certain manner he knew would counter the aa system and embarrassed the hell out of the bluefor test team and engineers who said he cheated. A friend in the army did an excercise at Bragg where Special forces made him and the other guys attached into opposing force to hunt them down. My friend and his team circled back from the trucks and climbed in the bed and when the sf got tired of looking for them and came back to the truck my friend popped out from under a tarp and simulated kill with miles gear and they said he cheated as well. I guess there are a lot of egos and sore losers in the military throughout history.

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You have to take into account that some of these exploits are possible exactly because you are in an exercise and can work around the rules.

Flying nap of the Earth with a Cobra probably works because he knew the location where the AA system was located, there were no other "combatants", no air cover or spotters/infantry along the route to inform the AA that helicopter is flying low.

SF story about circling back is fun, but in a real scenario it would mean you kill a couple of guys but end up surrounded by unknown number of people and infantry.

At least during Vietnam (and according to “The SOG Chronicles”), it seems like the special forces guys were really out there in areas the US didn’t exactly admit to going (Cambodia, Laos). As such, taking them down probably wouldn’t cause much of a counter reaction.

Flying noe was used in several missions in WW2, it was a known tactic so you cannot say "it only works because ...". A fast plane or helicopter flying noe is detectable, but until the people detecting it can inform the people that can intercept, the mission can be over and the aircrafts returning to base.

i think part of the point is - in some circumstances you can not fly low because you open yourself to certain types of engagement, and that for a particular test you could be certain that incoming helicopters wouldn't be that low.

Check out the most expensive War Games in history -- the USA got annihilated, and there were a lot of hurt feelings. The Lt. Gen. quit in the middle of the games, because he kept winning and they kept changing the rules to force a USA victory.

     Red, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, adopted an asymmetric strategy, in particular, using old methods to evade Blue's sophisticated electronic surveillance network. Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to front-line troops and World-War-II-style light signals to launch airplanes without radio communications.
     
     Red received an ultimatum from Blue, essentially a surrender document, demanding a response within 24 hours. Thus warned of Blue's approach, Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet by the second day of the exercise. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles that overwhelmed the Blue forces' electronic sensors and destroyed sixteen warships: one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five of Blue's six amphibious ships. An equivalent success in a real conflict would have resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 service personnel. Soon after the cruise missile offensive, another significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats, which carried out both conventional and suicide attacks that capitalized on Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

You'd think Blue would have prepared for small boat suicide attacks less than two years after the USS Cole attack.

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

No one expects the "loyal opposition", oh wait, they did ...

It's really concerning that the Navy had serious accidental collisions years after that attack. It suggests that it's still alarmingly easy to get close to a destroyer without anyone noticing.

This story is absolutely bonkers. If the wikipedia page is true, this paints a very ridiculous state of US high brass. I refuse to believe that a major military nation may engage in such petty stupidity. Thus my conclusion is that the whole summary of the events is carefully crafted to misled future enemies of their true capabilities.

Powerful countries have done dumb stuff all throughout history. It's one reason why empires don't last.

Burying your head in the sand only makes you part of the problem.

> makes you part of the problem.

Fortunately for everybody, I have no influence on any military nor political force anywhere. Or any relevant responsibility for that matter. The world is safe from my wrong opinions.

Never underestimate the incompetence of senior leadership.

Exercises are different. When you don't have to fear death for you or your troops, you don't act the same I guess. I think the blue team would have thought twice about letting their ego run the show if the red team had used life ammo.

> Thus my conclusion is that the whole summary of the events is carefully crafted to misled future enemies of their true capabilities.

Thus you have discounted the strategy that disclosing exactly what happened misleads future enemies the most.

The US "Mark 14 torpedo" was far far worse

"never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

This story is a lot less impressive when you start learning the details.

Such as the fact that the motorcycle messengers traveled at the speed of light to instantaneously transmit orders. The fact that the salvo of cruise missiles came from boats which could not carry them, and the fact that simulator's fleet defenses were turned off to prevent them from targeting commercial air and commercial shipping.

Do you have more details on the "speed of light" motorcycles? That sounds like an interesting read

To quote someone on Reddit [0]:

"Van Riper famously used "motorcycle couriers" to get around the destruction of his C2 network. The problem was that this was handled as simple handwaving, with him saying that he would use motorcycle messengers to handle all the message traffic. Despite supposedly doing so, he continued to relay messages as if he doing so with a normal communications network. Essentially, his motorcycle messengers were treated as being just as efficient as an electronic communications network. Clearly, that wouldn't be possible, hence the folks joking about "light speed motorcycles"."

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/WarCollege/comments/la7elp/so_what_...

Curiously the Japanese Navy War Gamed their attack on Midway in a similar fashion, and the "USA" team placed their carriers exactly where Nimitiz did a few weeks later, and sank the Japanese fleet.

The top brass then "re floated" and announced the US Navy must sail from Pearl and so be ambushed, as per plan.

So, yeah, risk management is everything

While the first sounds fine, I don't see how you could reasonably consider the second one anything but a complete waste of everyone's time.

There's plenty of cases like this. One that comes to mind is AIM-4 Falcon: afaik they delivered 30 thousands of those missiles, despite the fact that it essentially didn't work.

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