In the summertime of 2002, the U.S. army spent $250 million, after two years of planning, to reply a query it had already determined. The query was: what occurs if America goes to struggle with an Iran-like energy within the Persian Gulf? The reply it had selected was: America wins. What it obtained as an alternative was a retired Marine basic sinking the fleet in ten minutes after which submitting a 21-page classified critique that acquired no response, forcing him to stroll out in disgust.
Lt. Gen. (ret.) Paul Van Riper served 41 years within the Corps and was twice adorned with the Silver Star in Vietnam. The Pentagon selected him to command the Crimson Power, the Iran-like adversary reverse the U.S. Blue Power. In his commanding officer’s words, he was “a devious form of man” and “a no-nonsense, stable skilled warfighter” – in different phrases, good to play the adversary within the Pentagon’s Millennium Problem struggle sport.
When Blue Power delivered its eight-point ultimatum (the ultimate level of which was unconditional give up), Van Riper understood instantly what the train was actually testing. He preempted the preemptors, launching cruise missiles from ground-based launchers, industrial ships, and low-flying plane operating with out radio communications to scale back their radar signature. Concurrently, swarms of speedboats loaded with explosives ran kamikaze assaults straight on the hulls of America’s ships. The service battle group’s Aegis radar system, designed to trace missiles and plane, had no reply for a ship operating on the waterline. It was overwhelmed inside minutes. Sixteen warships sank: an plane service, ten cruisers, 5 amphibious ships. Had it been actual, 20,000 American sailors and Marines would have died.
The Pentagon reset the train. The ships Van Riper had sunk had been merely declared raised. The variety of vessels adjudicated destroyed was, in Van Riper’s personal phrases, “a re-engineered product,” primarily based on “the minimal ships wanted to allow Blue JTF to proceed the train.” This was not primarily based on an evaluation of what the modelling confirmed. It was a backward calculation from what Blue wanted to nonetheless be within the sport. The fleet was re-floated as a result of the outcomes had been inconvenient.
Van Riper was then instructed to activate his anti-aircraft radar so it may very well be focused. His troops had been forbidden to shoot down incoming plane. The situation of his items was to be shared with the opposing pressure on demand. He stepped down, filed his critique, and acquired no response. Three years later, the 700-page final report had nonetheless not been printed; it sat in draft. The brand new commander stated he wished to “disavow the time period” effects-based operations and maintain the method. Within the government abstract, Van Riper’s techniques had been attributed to “a renegade aspect inside the purple management.” A basic with 41 years of service, particularly chosen to check the system, had been transformed into a personality flaw.
His conclusion was filed twelve days after the train: “The Blue JTF didn’t arrive at that end-state by partaking a pondering and adaptive enemy. The end result was preordained. Any suggestion in any other case isn’t credible.”
As Van Riper told The Guardian: “Nothing was realized from this. A tradition not prepared to suppose arduous and check itself doesn’t augur effectively for the long run.”
All through the train, each try by Van Riper’s forces to open negotiations was refused. He supplied to debate the elimination of his forces from the disputed islands. Blue declined to reply. Van Riper requested in his personal report: why, if Blue had each instrument of energy out there, did it not open a single channel for dialogue earlier than committing to army motion?
The reply was within the official 700-page report, buried in a sub-bullet: “If an enemy is diplomatically backed right into a nook the place his finest and solely viable different is a pre-emptive assault, the pleasant forces within the space ought to be conscious and ready for that chance earlier than the enemy assaults.” The report’s authors knew. The preemptive assault that sank the fleet was famous as “a controversial occasion” that “offers perception.” The experiment was declared a hit.
Twenty-four years later, the sequence repeated. On Feb. 27, 2026, Oman’s International Minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, announced {that a} breakthrough had been reached: Iran had agreed to by no means stockpile enriched uranium and to full IAEA verification. Peace was inside attain. Talks had been anticipated to renew on March 2.
The struggle started on February 28.
The USA and Israel struck first. They issued an ultimatum, with a army choice already in movement. Dialogue between the 2 sides rapidly closed earlier than it might constrain the end result. In 2002, the simulation ran this sequence. In 2026, it ran once more, with actual plane and actual targets.
Operation Epic Fury opened with over a thousand strike sorties within the first 24 hours. Iran’s typical naval fleet was largely destroyed earlier than it might sortie. By any typical measure of firepower utilized, the opening was a hit. Nevertheless, Iran doesn’t struggle conventionally.
Van Riper’s command philosophy was easy: he wished his forces working by long-term private associations and implicit understanding relatively than digital communications that may very well be intercepted. Mission-type orders had been conveyed in ways in which evaded America’s superior digital capabilities. Couriers had been used for probably the most delicate messages. Taxiing plane used flashing lights from towers as an alternative of radio. Van Riper’s purple crew was decentralized, with every unit able to performing with out instruction from above.
In 2026, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) relied on this mosaic protection doctrine: Its 31 provincial instructions every have pre-delegated launch authority. When Iranian International Minister Abbas Araghchi acknowledged that army items had develop into “unbiased and considerably remoted, performing on pre-delegated orders,” he was not describing a command failure. He was describing Van Riper’s structure, adopted wholesale and run for actual.
Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme chief, was killed through the opening days of the struggle. His son, Mojtaba, a hardliner with shut IRGC ties who has misplaced household to Israeli strikes, was confirmed as his alternative. Mojtaba inherited an establishment whose decentralized command construction had already proved it might operate with out him or, in actual fact, anybody. That isn’t a failure of the mosaic doctrine. That’s the mosaic doctrine working precisely as designed.
Tehran has been making ready for this struggle for almost 4 a long time. The Iran-Iraq Conflict taught a technology of commanders that uneven techniques had been the one viable doctrine in opposition to a conventionally superior adversary. The IRGC’s decentralized logistics networks and doctrinal flexibility, in addition to its capability to soak up strikes and reconstitute, had been all refined throughout irregular conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. That is what has stored the IRGC functioning regardless of the systematic assassination of its senior commanders.
Iran is combating this struggle with drones, geography, and persistence. It’s using quick assault craft and unmanned floor vessels. Its Shahed drones are hitting radar installations, air bases, resort lobbies, oil refineries. When its forces have closed the Strait of Hormuz, they’ve allowed solely 4 to 5 vessels to cross per day, as in comparison with the lots of that transited the strait previous to the struggle. On Day 29 of the struggle, the Houthis entered the battle, threatening to shut a second chokepoint concurrently.
The Blue Power’s intelligence failures have repeated. Within the 2002 struggle sport, Blue satisfied itself that when sure command nodes had been destroyed, Van Riper’s Crimson Power items would don’t have any selection however to make use of communications that may very well be intercepted. In 2026, america made the identical assumption: degrade the command construction and the enemy turns into legible. The technical time period for that is mirror imaging. The enemy didn’t develop into legible. The USA didn’t know its enemy.
U.S. forces have expended more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles, probably the most in any single American marketing campaign in historical past, as in comparison with an annual manufacturing capability of some hundred. The struggle is costing an estimated one to 2 billion {dollars} per day. Van Riper demonstrated in 2002 {that a} conventionally inferior adversary might maintain combating lengthy sufficient to forestall the superior pressure from finishing all its targets. The mechanism was not matching firepower. It was outlasting it.
Iran’s strategic doctrine has a phrase at its heart: “survive and exhaust.” The aim is to not defeat america in any typical sense. It’s to reveal that the price of confrontation is militarily, economically, and politically unsustainable. The IRGC doesn’t must win the struggle. It must deny Washington a reputable declaration of victory earlier than the home political clock runs out. Tehran is willing to negotiate an finish to the struggle, however on phrases that make the subsequent American army motion politically untenable.
This too was within the simulation. Van Riper’s Crimson Power, even constrained and scripted, retained its regime on the finish of hostilities and lived to reconstitute. The unacknowledged discovering of Millennium Problem, buried within the official report beneath a declaration of success, was that even with a stacked deck, Blue nonetheless couldn’t full all its targets. Crimson maintained its authorities and lived to strengthen, rearm, and construct once more.
Two months after the struggle started, the regime is undamaged. The Strait of Hormuz is under Iranian management. The regime has not been compelled to make any extra concessions concerning its nuclear program. Iranian proxies are broken however operational, having adopted the identical decentralized command-and-control equipment as their IRGC masters. And the Houthis are engaged within the struggle. The IRGC has lowered its recruitment age to 12-years-old, whereas america Military has raised its higher restrict to 42. Probably the most intensive American air marketing campaign because the 2003 Iraq Conflict has degraded the Iranian army functionality however no credible political finish state has emerged.
Van Riper filed his report on Aug. 12, 2002. The discovering was recorded. The doctrine was renamed. The simulation was declared a hit. On Feb. 28, 2026, an adversary diplomatically backed right into a nook watched the bombers kind up and calculated its choices. Greater than 20 years earlier, Van Riper’s report precisely predicted what an adversary in Iran’s place would do subsequent.
FEATURED IMAGE: A girl walks previous an enormous billboard studying “The Strait of Hormuz stays closed” on the Revolution Sq. in Tehran on April 28, 2026. The White Home stated on April 27 it was analyzing Iran’s newest proposal to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, two months after a US and Israeli offensive despatched shockwaves by the worldwide economic system. (Picture by ATTA KENARE / AFP through Getty Photographs)