Regular news reporting on military exercises is pretty much useless. The news, and most lay people, think these are sports matches where you have a fair contest to see who wins. That’s not the point. The point is to learn. And you don’t learn shit by winning.
So pretty much all western military exercises start from a huge disadvantage, usually putting an unprepared force against a numerically and materially superior red team.
The blue team will always lose, because there the point. It simulates the worst case scenarios, to learn from them. “What if Russia comes at us with months of preptime and we only have our backpacks?” will teach you what to put in your backpacks to do better. “What if there are 20 of them and 5 of us” will teach you how to prepare for a tough fight, because you already know how to win an easy fight.
If the blue team wins consistently at an exercise, it’s a useless waste of time and money.
Regular news reporting on military exercises is pretty much useless. The news, and most lay people, think these are sports matches where you have a fair contest to see who wins. That’s not the point. The point is to learn. And you don’t learn shit by winning.
So pretty much all western military exercises start from a huge disadvantage, usually putting an unprepared force against a numerically and materially superior red team.
The blue team will always lose, because there the point. It simulates the worst case scenarios, to learn from them. “What if Russia comes at us with months of preptime and we only have our backpacks?” will teach you what to put in your backpacks to do better. “What if there are 20 of them and 5 of us” will teach you how to prepare for a tough fight, because you already know how to win an easy fight.
If the blue team wins consistently at an exercise, it’s a useless waste of time and money.