The US participated in an island defense exercise as part of
‘Balikatan 2026’. The following
statement from a USNI News article on the exercise demonstrates why this kind
of exercise is worse than useless.
“Overwhelming torrent of fires” ????
“ripped apart any notional enemies” ????
Who wrote this article … Steven Spielberg?
Where was the intelligent, free acting, well equipped enemy
force with their own “overwhelming torrent of fires” ripping apart any notional
defenders after having pounded the defenses with an overwhelming torrent of
missiles, rockets, and drones? Where was
the attacker’s Gen. Van Riper?
One might be tempted to say, yeah, this wasn’t a perfect exercise
but it was a start and better than nothing, right? Wrong.
At this point in the Littoral Deep Battle plan, an overwhelming torrent of fires ripped apart any notional enemies that made it to the beach.[1]
“Overwhelming torrent of fires” ????
“ripped apart any notional enemies” ????
First, it’s not a “start” on anything.
We should have been practicing assault defense for decades. We should be well past the “starting”
point.
Second, and worse, we now have a
group of officers and men who think this is how reality will be and they’ll
have no idea what to do when the perfect, scripted actions they're used to are demolished by
the enemy’s vote. An NBA basketball team
wouldn’t practice against a high school team and believe that would somehow
prepare them for a championship game.
Why would we practice against a ludicrously simplistic “assault force”
and believe for a second that it was in any way realistic or helpful? All this did was establish and reinforce bad
habits in our doctrine and our people.
I guess we learned our lesson from Millennium Challenge
2002. You avoid controversy by making
the exercise ridiculously easy.
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https://news.usni.org/2026/05/05/littoral-deep-battle
As soon as I read that article this morning, I knew CNO was going to comment on it!!!
ReplyDeleteFew things that stood out to me:
"Two notional amphibious landing vehicles and a maritime drone boat represented as the targets during the live-fire Littoral Deep Battle...." We all know it was China but let's not say it?!? Plus, seriously, I hope our military is planning to defeat a bigger landing force than 2 LVTs and a drone boat!!!!
"....After receiving their fire orders, two launchers a few hundred meters to the rear of the defensive line slewed their launching pods toward the coast and rippled off a total of six rockets in their first salvo....." we know they fired another 6 rockets afterwards....and that's it?!?!? Not even pretend to shoot and scoot a few more times to get used to that?!? Nope! Guess it was getting dark....any mention of how we would resupply the launchers? What happens when we don't have airlift? Ships? trucks? how does the whole supply chain works?
"....The defensive line shifted some of its fire towards the drones, downing several in quick succession. However, American Stinger man portable air defense system teams missed two shots against a drone target. The final missile tore the target drone apart, with the exercise concluding shortly after." Why after 4 years of Ukraine war are we firing expensive missiles at drones?!? Again, that's not a good success rate, need 3 missiles to down 1 drone? that raises a bunch of questions....
"At the conclusion of the three-hour anti-invasion exercise,....." again seriously?!?! Even 3 days wouldn't have been enough but would be far more interesting and lessons learned....this is what we used to call in the Army a dog and pony show. Nothing learned but everyone leaves happy.
The list of silliness and pointlessness in that exercise was long. I could have ripped on it for many paragraphs but what's the point? After a while, it's just boring to keep highlighting the same nonsense over and over. I settled for just making the point that this kind of exercise is not just useless but actually degrades our competency by fostering bad habits.
DeleteI particularly enjoyed the description of the HIMARS sited a few hundred meters to the rear of the defensive line (Maginot, anyone?). I know if I had a weapon with a range of 20-300 miles, depending on the munition, I'd be sure to site it right up close to the enemy!