The Global Thunder War Memorial

From this page you can explore the series of team headquarters used in the MBX. These headquarters, along with their periodic SITREPs were designed to provide the teams with all the information they needed to assess their combat situation and issue orders during the game. The game was divided into two Stages (originally three), each with its own HQ. Stage I was the strategic segment of the exercise which lasted nearly 10 months (real time). For BLUFOR, "strategic" meant sorting through its vast global intelligence network and deciding where the key threats would be in the months ahead and deploying forces accordingly. Their team headquarters represented a special planning cell at the Pentagon in charge of making final recommendations to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For REDFOR, who unbeknownst to BLUFOR played the Russian Northern Fleet, it meant collecting strategic and tactical resources and planning the sneak attack that would take place in Stage II -- hopefully without being detected by BLUFOR and drawing its forces to meet them too early.

To help camouflage the identity of REDFOR in the game, many other countries were also represented in Stage I, each played by a member of another group of players called World Leaders. The World Leaders were in fact playing a game of their own with their own set of rules and managed by a separate umpire. (A special thanks to Perry Craig for his efforts.) The results of their game can be found on the Global Thunder MBX main page.

Stage II was the operational segment of the game and the real guts of Global Thunder. At STARTEX the BLUFOR team was immediately transported to their new theater command headquarters in Norway after finally learning that Russia had launched a sneak attack in the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) region. Their new position was Joint Command North, the subordinate command of NATO responsible for the far north. REDFOR did not have to scale down their command perspective nearly as much since they were already focused on that region, but all decisions having to do with strategic assets were over and it was now time to execute their plans in detail. Their new HQ was called the Northern Theater Command, which included just those assets from the Northern Fleet and Russia's national arsenals that were designated for the sneak attack into Norway and the Norwegian Sea.

In the final weeks of Stage II, as the Russian sub fleet passed through the GIUK gap into the Atlantic, the BLUFOR team was moved once again to yet another command, the western Atlantic Command (WESTNAVFORLANT), a part of SACLANT. This headquarters was created to focus solely on convoy operations and sub-hunting, leaving their former command to the north on auto-pilot. REDFOR was not given another corresponding command since their subs and air support, which were now the only key elements needed for deciding the game, were the same units they had been commanding since the beginning.

When you arrive at each of the various team headquarters you'll notice that the pages reflect the last days of the game (either January 3, 2010 for Stage I, or January 14-15, 2010 , for Stage II.) For detailed reports on the battles and game events taking place before those dates you can download the complete set of SITREPs for each side which are also available at each headquarters under . However, unless you can set aside an entire weekend to read through these reports you may prefer to breeze through the far more entertaining pages of ENN for a brief summary of the highlights. (Steve Gill's ENN was the fictitious 2010 parody of CNN which actually rivaled the game in color and excitement.)

Of final note, another set of headquarters sites were created for Stage III, a separate scenario focused on the ground war in Europe, but the game ended before we ever got that far. Since there is a chance they might yet be used for another MBX some day I have decided not to include all of the subsidiary links, but the few Headquarters pages that are available will give people a taste of the game that might have been, as well as the one that may come in the future.

Rikki Tikki, GM, Global Thunder MBX