Guest Post by Nick Giambruno
At a cost of $250 million, Millennium Challenge 2002 was the largest and most expensive war game in Pentagon history.
With over 13,500 participants, the US government took over two years to design it.
The exercise pitted Iran against the US military. Washington intended to show how the US military could defeat Iran with ease.
Paul Van Riper, a three-star general and 41-year veteran of the Marine Corps, led Iranian forces in the war game. His mission was to take on the full force of the US military, led by an aircraft carrier battle group and a large amphibious landing force in the Persian Gulf.
The results shocked everyone…
Van Riper waited for the US Navy to pass through the shallow and narrow Strait of Hormuz, which made them sitting ducks for Iran’s unconventional and asymmetric warfare techniques.
The idea is to level the playing field against a superior enemy with swarms of explosive-laden suicide speedboats, low-flying planes carrying anti-ship missiles, naval mines, and land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles, among other low-cost but highly effective measures.
In minutes, Van Riper emerged victorious over his superior opponent and sank all 19 ships. Had it been real life, 20,000 US sailors and marines would have died.
Millennium Challenge 2002 was a complete disaster for the Pentagon, which had spent a quarter of a billion dollars to set up the extensive war game. It produced the exact opposite outcome they wanted.
So what did the Pentagon do with these humbling results?
Like a child playing a video game, they hit the reset button. They then rigged and scripted the game so that the US was guaranteed to win.
After realizing the integrity of the war game had been compromised, a disgusted Van Riper walked out mid-game. He then said:
“Nothing was learned from this. And a culture not willing to think hard and test itself does not augur well for the future.”
The main lesson of Millennium Challenge 2002 is that aircraft carriers—the biggest and most expensive ships ever built—wouldn’t last a single day in combat against even a regional power like Iran. Russia and China would have an even easier time dispatching them. They are overpriced toys.
That means the US has wasted untold trillions on military hardware that could prove to be worthless in a serious conflict.
Nonetheless, the US government still parades aircraft carriers around the world from time to time to try to intimidate its enemies.
However, it’s a flawed strategy prone to catastrophic results if someone calls their bluff.
While Millennium Challenge 2002 occurred more than 20 years ago, it is of paramount importance today.
Iran has substantially improved its asymmetric and unconventional warfare capabilities. It’s doubtful the US military would fare much better today than 20 years ago.
In short, war with Iran today could be even more disastrous than the Millennium Challenge 2002 simulation.
Unfortunately, war with Iran is an increasingly probable outcome as tensions in the Middle East are at their highest point in generations and are trending higher.
Previously, I lived in Beirut, Lebanon, for several years while working for an investment bank. The experience was effectively an advanced training course in Middle East geopolitics. Today, it helps me see the big picture in the region… and unfortunately, it isn’t pretty.
I think the next big war in the Middle East is coming soon and could be the biggest one ever. It will focus on Iran.
The market doesn’t appreciate how close we are to a big war and the implications of it.
But this distortion in the market is a blessing. It’s handing us a golden opportunity.
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I’m certainly not cheering for war. I despise war, which is the health of the State.
Regardless, a big war is highly likely, with significant investment implications that would be foolish to ignore.
Unfortunately, most people have no idea how close we are to a catastrophe of historical proportions, let alone how to prepare…
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I haven’t a clue, so can someone who was in the Navy tell us what it costs you and me to maintain two carrier battle groups in the East Mediterranian?
Per day?
As Unknown Hinson would say, “Hundreds, I tell you Hundreds od Dollars!!!”
And the womerns would be in the kitchen
A former Petty Officer provided this breakdown in 2017. Inflation has upped the numbers a bit, but this gets you close to openly available information.
____
“Including personnel, supplies, all ships, aircraft carried, and ammo, how much would a USN carrier strike group cost in total for one year?
Capital Costs, these are one time costs, but, you have to buy this stuff, or you don’t have a Carrier Battle Group
one Carrier – $12.8 billion
one cruiser $1 billion
2 DDG $3.6 billion
1 SSN $1.7 billion
Logistics Ships to support group
one AOE $641 million
one T-AKE $443 million
$20.5 billion dollars, and we don’t have any aircraft or personnel yet
Now we need an air wing
1 FA-18F squadron (12 planes) $846 million
3 FA-18E squadrons (36 planes) $2.5 billion
1 EA-18 squadron (5 planes) $341 million
1 E-2 squadron (4 planes) $704 million
1 MH-60S squadron (8 helos) $224.8 million
1 MH-60R squadron (11 helos) $471.9 million
1 C-2A squadron (2 planes) $80 million
About $5.1 – $5.2 billion in planes and helicopters
It costs about $1 million to get a US Navy pilot through basic flight school. $9 million to get them fully qualified, depending on the plane. We have a minimum of 120 pilots in the air wing to get all the planes in the air. So $120–900 million has been spent on training them so far.
The carrier’s reactor department has trained people too. It costs about $500,000 to train a nuclear power operator. Reactor department probably has about 300 of them, so $150 million training the reactor department.
So about $27 billion, and now we have a Carrier Task Force with planes, trained pilots, and nuclear power operators for the Carrier and submarine.
According to this article Is It Time for the Navy to Reassess the Importance of the Aircraft Carrier?, it costs $2.5 million per day for operational costs. That is about $900 million per year.
So, your first year cost is $28 billion, each additional year is about $1 billion
The training costs are ongoing because you have turn over in every job. The pilots and nuclear operators are not the only training costs, just the most expensive.
This is why other countries don’t operate Carrier task forces like the US does. Force projection is expensive.”
https://www.quora.com/profile/Don-Miller-13
No more than it does no matter where they are parked.
If the American Navy was driving star ships instead of aircraft carriers,it wouldn’t protect the homeland from sabotage and terrorists attacks. We have welcomed the enemy to settle among us.
If you were one of the countries the US is consistently threatening, what would you be doing to take advantage of Joe Biden’s open border policy? Out of the 8 million people who have flowed across the border unchecked in the past 3 years, how many do you think are foreign agents, who are tasked with getting jobs in useful positions?
If I were in their position, I would be sending highly trained people capable of putting together very complex and effective missions that would cripple logistics and manufacturing capabilities.
When I think about the number of vulnerable targets it makes me feel it is only a matter of time before we reap some terrible consequences from Joe Biden’s treason against the US homeland.
No more “Unknown Hinson” here rat now. Order “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” by John MIchael Greer. It deecribes what awaits us. Understand that Red China has supplied Hesbollah with sophisticrated weaponry, period.
We are Sitting Ducks. And Xiden knows it.
Aircraft carriers in the context of technology since circa the 1980s (or so, a guess) are weapons of militarized policing not of any war with the outcome plausibly in doubt. However, it is naive to assume the U.S. Government ‘wasted’ our money. I could further point to the tediously formal and one-dimensional (read indeterminate without context) Cloward–Piven strategy. That we take it is conditioning. But yes, it is obviously damn stupid to invest in very expensive aircraft carriers for traditional war. The NWO does not wage traditional war. It is death and imprisonment by thousands of cuts and sutures. If you looked at yourself in generational time, you might not recognize yourself. Conservatives have conserved nothing and accept the increasingly perverse status quo. What the parents mind, the childrens don’t. Tradition is a running joke with white American conservatives.
The OP (original post, the article) ends with war mongering. Yah, I’m preachy for an agnostic. I think there is so much control of all the substantial ‘sides’ that war as recognized by the MSM is simply a growth exercise for the military industrial complexes of the world, which are slated to be unified into, you know, a thousand points of light. Must be an elite club.
They’re fighting the last war. Shocking, no? Col. Douglas MacGregor did the same thing at Ft. Irwin in ’93 during red on blue exercises. The belief in expensive weaponry will conquer all in battle will be the downfall of the US military might. That and ESG-DIE.
I predict it will not be too long before we see one of those floating bathtubs on the bottom of the sea. The US is guilty of fighting the last war and those aircraft carriers are the equivalent to the battleships of WW2.
And for the price of two of those floating bathtubs, you could have dug a channel 500 feet wide and 100 foot deep across your southern border to increase trade using a shorter route and keeping illegals from crossing at low tide. For fuck sakes, you could have used convict labour instead of having convicts work for private corporations.
It’s all fun and games until a capital ship or two gets sunk.
(The Moskva: a stunning modern example. That the Russians haven’t executed an ice-cold revenge prestige attack on Country 404 in recompense surely confuses Auntie. )
Why on Country 404? They would need to sink a British and/or American vessel, obviously.
Precisely why they are goading the Russ to do just that. The folks in charge WANT war: it is the health of the state. Think about it, if you were a neo-feudalist, and you knew you were superior to the polloi, wouldn’t you do everything in your power create a situation where the war you start kills as many of those same polloi as possible? They want a capital ship or battle fleet sunk: it would enflame the populace, legitimize any war expenditure abroad (with the inevitable 10 percent to the big guy), and allow all forms of repression at home. What a nice way to kill the dollar: get some thousands of their despised countrymen killed and start the last war the US will ever be in to their imagined glorious victory. Fools. Damned fools !
It proves you dont jeopardize your fleet in a narrow strait. This isnt 1943. Aircraft have a lot of range now. The entire iranian country and force could have been vaporized from well offshore in the atlantic
Ditto the USA from the Atlantic to the Pacific by the BRICS14+.
Naw man, American nukes are real.
The political thieves inhabiting the upper levels of the pentagram KNOW that the political thieves inhabiting the Peoples House will keep shoveling piles of cash at them, gleefully too. The money actually spent on hardware is wasted beyond measure, we’ve seen the receipts.
These politicals and generals strut about like peacocks, crowing high praises to themselves. Untouchables in money and might. These asswipes have never experienced the horrors they’ve meted out on other nations. Turning cities into gravel pits and wholesale destruction of the people at the whim of their mafia overlords.
All the stupidly complicated, superior weaponry can be overcome, even by simple goat herders. IMO, the usausa has been smug thinking that no nation on this rock will/could/can attack them, never happen. The same thinking applied to their flotillas, invincible.
Imo, the mafia overlords are going to do to the usausa that the usausa has done to other nations. They have ((their)) army within the fence already and adding more every day. Those stalwart symbols steaming about will disappear in a brief instant when a couple hypers slam into them.
We know its coming. Get ready to repel the invaders and keep family safe. Deal with targets of opportunity and ‘retire’ those politicals that brought this upon us, that would be all of them. Don’t forget the bureaucrats too. When we can we then go after the heads and work our way up the chain. They have money, but we have numbers and they can’t hide forever. They like their niceties, and that will be their downfall. War is upon us.
Of course there are never winners and losers in the Woketard universe…everyone gets a trophy.
What’s worse, is how many that realize the Republic is no longer controlled by “We The People” will even fight for it? Why fight a war to enrich a bunch of c0cksker elites, especially if you are no longer free and all you thought you owned is not yours?
Just remember how the GOP betrayed us. They recently voted for major gun control and are about to vote to restrict our access to ammunition unless we are registered, own a firearm legally, and go through multiple background check.
How many of you would fight a war knowing our votes are meaningless and we are literally slaves to the elites? Since most are pathetic sloths unwilling to protest in the streets in the 10’s of millions like they recently did in Brazil, and likely will not make the ultimate sacrifice to defend our US Constitution or make similar sacrifices our Founding Fathers did, we deserve our fate. It will be Russia that ultimately frees us via nuclear weapons. All because most are pathetic, do nothing apathetic, complacent, tolerant weasels.
I served under Reagan for the 8 years of his administration, and I guarantee you General Milly would have been courts martialed and serving life in a military prison as private Milley just for starters. Many politicians would have been arrested or impeached for treason. WTF is wrong with everyone?
WTF is wrong? Most Career Officers became a selected breed of liberal pussies especially under Clinton and Hussein that care mostly about their perks, their next assignment, their next promotion, etc, and nothing about winning the next war, about opposing Cultural Marxism, about defending the Constitution and Traditional American Values. Milley would be just one of thousands needing to be Purged.
Not became. most left or were purged especially under Obunga. Now to get promoted you are graded on how you perform on you knees. They only encourage leftists freaks. I served 12 years, 8 under Reagan. I guarantee you General Milley would have been courts martialed and spend the remainder of his traitorous life as private Milley in a military prison for contacting the CCP behind Trump’s back. (Just like Ted Kennedy contacted the leadership of the USSR to undermine Reagan back in the 1980s, another traitor. We only found out later and BJ Clinton never addressed it.)
Correct! Clinton went through DC in Jan. 93 and FIRED EVRYONE-down to the mail room ladies! Look it up-here we are!
Oh, I never believe these war games. They make it this way so the military can keep getting funded. Don’t YA KNOW???
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