I posted this in response to a post on Big Lee's site (about modern wargaming).
I heard recently that the US Armed Forces held a $250m wargame to test their most up-to-date electronic gadget armed force (Blue) against a less technologically advanced foe (Red)
Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States armed forces in mid-2002, likely the largest such exercise in history. The exercise, which ran from July 24 to August 15 and cost $250 million, involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more powerful weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, denoted "Blue", and an unknown adversary in the Middle East, "Red".
Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper (born July 5, 1938) is a retired officer of the United States Marine Corps. Since retirement Van Riper has served on several advisory boards and panels. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
Red, commanded by Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, used 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 lighting signals to get airplanes off the runways without using radio communication.
Red received an ultimatum from Blue, that was essentially a surrender document, that Red must respond to within 24 hours. Given that Red knew that Blue was coming, by the second day of the exercise Red used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's fleet. In a preemptive strike, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise missiles, overwhelming the Blue forces' electronic sensors, destroying sixteen warships. This includes one aircraft carrier, ten cruisers and five out of the six amphibious ships. The equivalent of this success in a real conflict would have resulted in the death 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 carrying out both conventional and suicide attacks, able to engage Blue forces due to Blue's inability to detect them as well as expected.
Using old school tactics, he totally undermined and beat the biggest and most expensive military surveillance and tactical operation in history. The US authorities had to restart the entire exercise and changed the rules to ensure the "blue" team won, in order to justify the monstrous expense put into the project.