War Game exposes potential Army weak spots: information overload, airlift shortfall cited as possible vulnerabilities of future force.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The U.S. Army can expect, in the future, to fight enemies who will know exactly how to exploit the vulnerabilities of a technologically superior force. These adversaries will be unable to march the advanced capabilities that the United States has in areas such as intelligence gathering, worldwide reach and global communications. But they will at times succeed in fooling their U.S. foes by flooding them with information or simply by not doing a thing.

Such premises became food for thought and extensive debate during the so-called Army Transformation War Game held in April at the War College, in Carlisle, Penn. It presented a hypothetical 2019 scenario of multiple global crises where the Army--along with other U.S. services and allies--was expected to quickly deploy forces and execute directives set by the nation's political leaders.

"We want to address what kind of Army we need in the future," says Brig. Gen. (P) Michael A. Vane, deputy chief of staff for doctrine at the Training and Doctrine Command. This was the third war game that TRADOC organized for the Army chief of staff, to help him figure out how the service should "transform" from a large, monolithic entity to a more flexible, agile force that can respond to a wide array of contingencies.

"We are looking at the implications [of this war game] for the whole Army," Vane says during a roundtable with reporters. "How we fight, how we structure ourselves."

The imaginary global scenario set in 2019 is nothing but chaos. A U.S. peacekeeping mission in Southeast Asia (in a fictitious nation called Sumisia) is quickly escalating into a counterinsurgency operation against well-organized separatists. A major regional war is erupting in the Caspian Sea area between a U.S. ally (Azerbaijan) and Anfar, an aggressor nation (Anfar is a fictitious name), who are all fighting for access to oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, there is concern about potential flare-ups in Colombia, Korea (according to the scenario, North and South Korea reunite in 2015) and the Balkans. Complicating the situation further is a spate of attacks against the United States, in the form of terrorist bombings and cyber-crimes that wreck the transportation and financial systems in American cities.

In interviews during the third day of the week-long war game, several participants shared insights on how the U.S. Army was performing in the various hotspots and discussed what they perceived as the vulnerabilities of a force that was technologically superior to any of its opponents. The term "Blue force" is used to describe U.S. and allies. "Red forces" are their adversaries.

The contingency in Sumisia starts out as a peace enforcement mission, but eventually evolves into full-fledged combat. In 2019, rebel guerillas (called the...