Stage I -- Official Evaluation

Okay, here's the official evaluation of team performance for Stage I.

Because Scott Gainer and James Sterrett had to drop out at various times, I was left to conduct the evaluation more or less on my own. This was not what I had planned, since I was hoping to split the responsibility three ways. However, I still made sure to have both Scott and James looking over my shoulder. While I must admit I had the strongest say in the outcome, the final score should be considered a consensus of all three umpires.

As you know, Stage I is worth 20 points out of a total of 100 points for the overall MBX event. The official score for Stage I of the MBX is as follows:

REDFOR: 17 points
BLUFOR: 15 points

So... congratulations to the REDFOR team on winning Stage I of the Global Thunder MBX!!!!!!

As I've indicated, arriving at these totals was a long and complicated task which I will endeavor to explain in detail. Before I begin, I must mention that certain aspects of the REDFOR plan may have been left out in order to preserve operational secrecy during Stage II. I suggest that any discussion of the scoring be put off until after the MBX is completed, when the full details can be revealed.

As described in the game rules, the two scores represent an "asymetrical contest" whereby each team is attempting to succeed in attaining two very different, though related, goals. BLUFOR's goal was to neutralize threats throughout the world wherever they cropped up and wherever they imposed a threat on a US asset, economy or a US ally. This could be achieved by either directly defeating the threatening country through armed conflict (e.g., Croatia), moving forces to oppose any future threat (e.g., Bulgaria) or providing intelligence to allies so that the foreign governments can conquer the threat on their own without the need for US units to do it (e.g., Honduras). Whether a threat was successfully answered was determined by whether or not the US reduced the attack/defense ratio by less than 3:1, factoring in combat multipliers (such as terrain and fatigue) as well as reaction times.

Getting a perfect score would be difficult for BLUFOR, since each potential matchup represented a loss of points. To mitigate this, I put a cap on the number of potential points that could be lost, rating each conflict as either a 1-point or 2-point failure. Only the most egregious error in strategic planning -- one that could single-handedly lose a war -- would be met with a 2-point subtraction. (Each possible threater of action -- as opposed to each country -- was considered to be a separate "threat." This made it so that the total number of 1-point and 2-point threats added up to 20.) Any threats that were looming within the next 3 months but were not quite red-hot yet could still be countered by the US as long as intel resources were tasked to observe those areas at the end of the game. This was determined by the Threat Analysis Report (TAR). (See below).

REDFOR, meanwhile, had the goal of staging an attack somewhere in the northern European theater in support of a higher level strategic plan (which I am not at liberty to discuss in detail until the close of the MBX). The criterion for a successful attack was the same basis as that of BLUFOR -- that is, an attack/defense ratio of 3:1 or better (again after accounting for all combat multipliers and reaction times). This task was made more difficult by the fact that they did not have many assets at game start and had to build up their forces over time -- all the while allowing the BLUFOR team to sniff out their intentions over time through intel requests.

To keep the overall plan as secretive as possible, various deceptions (Mastirova) were practiced by myself as GM, which is in keeping with renowned Soviet doctrine. Since grand-strategic-level secrecy was not REDFOR's responsibilty, the REDFOR team would not be penalized if BLUFOR were to find out which nation was the REDFOR country. (I figured an intel leak or two would probably happen during the game that would give this away, anyway, which, as it turned out, it did.) The team *was* responsible for operational security, however. If REDFOR drew too much attention to its area of operations or if their overall objective was sussed out by BLUFOR, the team would have been charged points. This was in fact what made their task so difficult, since *any* activity in their neck of the woods would increase the risk of detection. I felt this was still a fair challenge, given the that unlike BLUFOR, the REDFOR team had only one mission and therefore could devote all of their time to get their plan exactly right.

Thus, both sides faced what I felt were "impossible" tasks, whereby achieving a full 20 points would be a near-miracle indeed. This is a Very Good Thing, in my opinion, since it stretches the teams' creativity to their limit to succeed, thus providing a more carefully thought-out and perhaps even ingenious plan of action. (Besides, impossible missions are considered common in war! :->) I think we all benefited from the difficulty imposed, and perhaps the Lurkers did, too.

NOTE: Since neither side was very clear on what their opponent's team's task was, there tended to be an assumption that "only their team" had the hard mission and that the MBX might have been unfairly skewed against them. (This was especially the case on the REDFOR team!) I do not mean to fault the players by any means for thinking this; in fact I think this conclusion was only natural given what they knew and what they did not know about the other side's mission. But it is interesting nonetheless that it is always "my side" that has the harder challenge! <g>

Okay, so let's look at how the points were distributed. First let's look at BLUFOR:

For BLUFOR, a perfect score would be to successfully neutralize all potential threats. "Neutralize" means to match the aggressor force with at least 1/3 of that force (1:3 ratio). The 3:1 ratio is adjusted to account for various combat multipliers (surprise, mobility, training) and "soft factors" such as fatigue, morale, etc.

To be a "potential threat," a country must have launched, or must have been planning to launch, some sort of hostile action against a US asset or US ally by ENDEX of Stage I. There are 11 countries that fit this definition, which are as follows:

(Already executed)

Angola
Argentina
Yugoslavia (Serbia)
Honduras

(Planning to execute in the future)

Russian Union
China
North Korea
Indonesia
Bulgaria
Iran
Libya

The time limit for "future attacks" was 3 months. Any country not ready to attack before that time was considered a non-threat for the purposes of Stage I scoring.

Those countries that were not planning an attack for 2 or 3 months however were of course less likely to be noticed by US recon assets by ENDEX. However, imo there should have been at least an inkling of such intentions among the larger threats. This is why I required BLUFOR to submit a Threat Assessment Report (TAR), as a means of indicating where their intelligence services will be focused over the next three months or so and therefore decide whether they will eventually "bust" the threat countries. The last official TAR listed the following countries as threats, in this order:

1. China
2. Russia
3. Bulgaria
4. Iran/Iraq
5. Honduras

This list is essentially correct in terms of priority but imo I think it should have listed North Korea and Indonesia over Honduras and Iran/Iraq (which btw is cheating slightly, since it attempts to name two threats while only taking up one "slot," but no matter, as this becomes moot anyway given the following judgement). The reason that Honduras need not have been included is that the Contras in Honduras are on the brink of being neutralized thanks to US intel being fed to the Honduran government regarding the location of their supply base. This will be considered a major back-breaker that will lead to the end of the Contra threat. The rebels cannot receive any more supplies due to the near-blockade situation that the US has established around Cuba. (Any ships leaving Cuba would no doubt be trailed and eventually boarded.) While even a small conflict in Honduras is troubling due to the country's proximity to US soil it is still puny compared to the magnitude of the miltary buildup and intentions of N. Korea. The same holds true for Indonesia who is also planning on attacking US allies and restricting US shipping in order to gain permanent control of the Spratlys. This country's military position has been strengthened through its alliance with China and especially now that they have acquired a large number of Silkworm missiles.

This error does not directly affect the BLUFOR score per se, but it does affect it indirectly as we'll see in a moment. Okay, let's set the TAR evaluation aside for the moment, we'll refer back to it as we go through the evaluation. Let's look at the main list of threats again, and see how the US did:

Angola:

An interesting cat-and-mouse story. Both sides actually won, since Yuhu managed to cut off UNITA forces in a surprise attack into Namibia that no one forsaw, grabbed fistfuls of diamonds for his personal coffers and then retracted his forces before the US could wallop him. The US wins too, because by deploying forces to Namibia they are credited with at least neutralizing any further Angolan threats in the region. They did not preserve the UNITA presence, but all that means is that the US military will be taxed by having to provide a more direct presence.) Evaluation: threat neutralized.

Argentina:

Total intel failure on the BLUFOR side; they never saw it coming. They were also very stingy with their satellite recon support for the UK during the crisis, which one might say contributed to their loss. (Shortly before the CPX the BLUFOR team was presented with the option to help out its ally, but pressures to keep tabs on US threats apparently caused them to decline giving help. As a result, the British were left with only 72-hours old reports fed to them by Washington, which the Brits declined in favor of SAS insertions). While one could argue that the Falklands affair is really just a "UK issue," there remains the fact that a communist country has expanded its territory and has no doubt gained immense political influence among the "borderline" Latin-American countries as the first successful challenger to the US-European gringos. This can only help sway the political pendulum in favor of Communist expansionism closer to the continental US. There is also the argument that any war involving a US ally is threatening to US interests, should the ally lose. Evaluation: minus 1 point.

Yugoslavia (Serbia)

I felt the US made a fine showing here, in every respect. Bill worked hard on this campaign and every detail helped, I think. Henk also did well in the CPX, preventing a morale and political defeat by evacuating the British 4th Airmobile.) The defense of Zagreb was highly successful and met only marginal casualites, while at the same time sucking the final oomph out of the Serbian attack. The counterattack went even more smoothly, with every step organized and well-thought out. Following the treaty that was signed Nov. 29, there were still some troubling sniper attacks and car bombs in the aftermath but imo even these would most likely have been curtailed by Bill's calling up the MPs, Team COBALT (including 160th SOAR/Rangers) and 2nd ACR. It's too bad there are no "bonus points" given in this game; if there were BLUFOR would most certainly have earned one or two here. Evaluation: threat neutralized.

China

China got onto the world stage early with a sudden, surprise invasion of Bhutan on their southern border. This did not affect US interests in any way so BLUFOR was not obligated to do anything other than to keep a watchful eye in case it was a preliminary move into India. A few weeks later the leader left the country by mysterious means (resigned suddenly) and was replaced by Kenneth Chan (who really lives in China!). Kenneth went for the biggest prize in the game -- Taiwan, and had been building toward a mass invasion after trying a peaceful course of "carrot and stick" tactics first. The invasion was set for March, 2010. However, now that China has lost its recently purchased navy (due to Russian double-cross in the "sale" ) there really is not going to be an attack in three months. In fact it will probably be another year before it can procure amphibs from another country, by which time the US will have recovered from the war in Europe. Had China opted for Indonesian amphibs instead of Russian-built amphibs and warships it might well have won the war against Taiwan and the US, since China is also in the midst of mass-producing stealth bombers which the BLUFOR was slow to foil. (All the clues for figuring out where to sabotage the production were issued through the various reports and artifacts detected in the intel briefs but no one bothered putting 2 + 2 together.) Imo, a squadron or two of stealth bombers, even if the pilot training was only fair,at best, could very possibly penetrate an unsuspecting US CVBG's air defense and sink it. But all this is moot; BLUFOR wins this by default because China will be a no-show. It served the US well that they took the threat seriously, however, otherwise there might have been serious political repercussions and perhaps Taiwan would have been intimidated into joining China after all. Evaluation: threat neutralized.

North Korea

The US was slow to pick up on NK's very slow and gradual military buildup, and the fact that it is missing from the TAR altogether is a definite indicator that S.Korea will be caught underdefended when NK finally does attack. It's true that the US has a large force in-country already and that they will have the Pacific Alliance -- in particular Japan -- to help out, but the presumption is that NK has a pretty good idea of the number of current SK and US forces currently in the region (including those in Japan and Okinawa) and are working to exceed the notional 3:1 ratio while the US has not deployed anything nor does it show any sign of deploying anything soon. However, the force ratio is only projected to be slightly higher than 3:1 so it cannot be considered a major error. Evaluation: minus 1 point.

Indonesia

Given that the US has expended no military forces and very little intel in this region in the last four months (other than some pinpointed HUMINT to track the newly bought Silkworms), I would rate the US as being under-defended against an Indonesian attack. As with North Korea, there will be no "China distraction" so the penalty is again small. Evaluation: minus 1 point.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria is rubbing its hands just itching for the chance to seize Greek Macedonia. However, this country has been watched like a hawk by U-2 spy plaines and plenty of forces have been left in Croatia which can counter the Bulgarian threat easily -- especially given that the terrain in Macedonia heavily favors the defender more than usual. Evaluation: threat neutralized.

Iran

This country is very directly affecting US interests, as shown by the increase in oil prices caused by "ABC" attacks, so it fits the defintion of a threat in spades. This prompted a lot naval assets to be sent to the region in increasing amounts. The tragedy here is that the BLUFOR team could have eliminated it entirely by exploiting the intel they received that the ABC terrorist group is actually a bogus organization created by Iran. With a simple use of information warfare (e.g., leaking this to ENN) they could have caused a huge amount of embarrassment for Iran and its leader, thus bring world opinion -- and even Arab opinion -- against him. Thus the threat could have been eliminated quickly and neatly, leaving US forces free to cover other areas. Still, BLUFOR did answer the buildup. Evaluation: threat neutralized.

Libya

Libya threatents Egypt and Egypt's moderate posture makes it an important peacemaker country in the stabilization of the Middle East. However, thanks to a sharing of US intel that was committed early in the game Egypt will be able to defend itself against any Libyan attack and in fact has a devastating ambush waiting for them if they do. Evaluation: threat neutralized.

Russia

Here's where the BLUFOR team took a major hit. Sure, they suspected Russia almost from the beginning (especially after one or two whopping intel leaks) but they could never quite commit to the location(s) and the timing of the upcoming offensive until the last 10 days before the end of Stage I. Most of the available US air and ground forces being readied for war by that point were recovering from the Croatia conflict and were specifically ordered to be prepared for active duty again no later than Jan. 10, or in some cases, Jan. 20. Strategically, I felt the US was beginning to fall behind in the main arms race as Russia was well on the way to preparing half a dozen armies to the European war, while the US had only just initiated a full draft situation (DEFCON 4) on Dec. 10, IIRC. So just in terms of sheer force levels in Europe, Russia looked to exceed the 3:1 ratio. (I calculated it to be about 4:1. Combat multipliers and "soft factors" about equal for both sides.) The question now was whether this was a 1- or 2-point subtraction.

One questionable strategy was the gamble to pull back the German 5th Pzr. Div. from Poland in hopes of "sandbagging" any plans of Russian aggression, with the "warning" that NATO's full weight of military might will be committed to Poland should Russia take advantage of the situation and invade. Perhaps this warning/threat would have worked against a World Leader but not a committed OPFOR country which was of course bound to attack no matter what. With NATO forces entering Poland at the same time as Russian forces, we have now a meeting engagement scenario as opposed to a classic attack/defense scenario, so the 3:1 ratio would not apply (since they are not giving themselves enough time to dig in and gain a full degree of defensive advantage). I would say a 2:1 ratio might be more the guideline in this case, since we are probably talking about a widespread hasty defense. Since the overall Russia/NATO force levels were 4:1, I felt this called for a full -2 points, for BLUFOR.

The "northern flank," (Norwegian Sea and GIUK region), the main AO for Stage II, is yet another under-defended theater in Europe. Though the forces that were stationed there were all on maximum alert, there were simply not enough forces or assets to weather the storm in most of the points of attack as planned by the REDFOR team. This was a smaller area of conflict than mainland Europe, of course, so the penalty would be smaller, proportionally -- just -1 point.

Evaluation: minus 3 points.

Adding the subtracted points together gives us -6, or a total of 14 points.

Okay, now let's look at REDFOR.

This evaluation is trickier because it forces us to project the outcome of battles at the tactical and operational level -- not strategic -- without the benefit of playing them out or the nice, clean mathematical point system that we had on the BLUFOR side. Given how subjective this can be it is likely that not everyone will agree with my evaluation. Oh well, that's why they call us "umpires," I guess, to take the heat when no one agrees with you. :-\

Another big wrinkle is that there is only so much detail I can describe about Stage I without giving things away in Stage II. So again, I will keep my remarks very general for now and will elaborate later, after the MBX is over, if more information is requested.

Without going into a mission-by-mission analysis, it is clear the REDFOR team achieved its stated goals for this stage:

1) They achieved overall strategic and operational surprise. This is supported by the fact that as suspicious as BLUFOR was about Russia they ultimately did not commit any forces to the northern region to meet the impending attack. (At least not by December 31, game time). Actually, BLUFOR was just on the brink of plugging up the shortfall in this region but were caught one to two weeks too early. Even if the reinforcements had arrived, BLUFOR had not oriented its northern forces toward any specific strategy, locality or sequence of events which might have prepared the local commanders -- again a testament to how quietly the REDFOR team conducted its buildup of forces. The various intel leaks (such as the Rykov "promotion letter") had certainly drawn more attention to Russia as a whole, but had not given away anything very specific. (Either that, or the BLUFOR team was simply being gentlemanly and ignoring the gaffe in the name of good sportsmanship. If so, bravo, I applaud your sense of fair play and I'm sure REDFOR appreciates it, too). Given my collossal faux pas, however, I was extremely lenient in my scoring of this aspect of the game from that point on. All REDFOR had to do was not give away any further information on exact targets or precise intentions of their operations. This was still not easy to do, given the many US recon assets at their disposal and the dozens of possible "tripwires" that they could have set off. But the REDFOR team had several means of deceiving BLUFOR. Their most effective plan was the Chinese arms sale, which was legit (the Chinese leader really wanted to buy the warships, and even put in a great deal of effort to finance the purchase.) The REDFOR team almost succeeded in masking its attack completely, except for a bit of poor execution of their "disabled sub" ruse (one of their carriers left port about 5 days too early, allowing BLUFOR more time to ponder and react to what was going on in this region.) Some other minor executional flaws around this juncture also contributed to creating noise in this reagion as well, but in my leniency I decided not to penalize the team any more than 1 point.

Incidentally, the increase in alertness levels throughout NATO was the result of Russia's inability to hide its massively scaled mobilization any longer -- not the result of any leaks or suspicious actions by the REDFOR team. I determined that the NATO reaction was only to be expected during the last several weeks before war was initiated and did not count against REDFOR.

2) Having generally achieved the element of surprise, they also achieved overpowering, if not overwhelming, odds in most areas where they chose to attack. Some of the overpowering capability will come through sheer operational surprise, as described above (e.g. a sub that fires at another sub first will usually win, even though the matchup is technically 1:1. The element of surprise is thus a huge combat mulitplier that brings the ratio to 3:1 or better). There is only one area where they only just barely came in under the wire, but they still beat the 3:1 ratio so no loss of points in this regard.

However to achieve these favorable odds at the tactical and operational levels, the team "borrowed" some firepower from their main strategic assets, thus limiting the potential threat of the main strategy somewhat. I felt this should incur at least a 1-point penalty, since their approach slightly compromised the main strategic objective. (More details will be furnished in the final MBX AAR).

And finally, had the REDFOR team been able to build in some flexibility to their planning and attack a week or two earlier they would have achieved tactical as well as operational surprise -- nearly a perfect situation. I had even hinted at this at one point in my role as the Russian General Staff (whom I felt would have addressed them about this in RL) but was met with such loud protests about how everything could not nor should not be changed that I finally dropped the subject. Still, flexibility in planning was something that I had specifically encouraged in the REDFOR briefing documents and in subsequent mails, so the fact that they did not look more carefully at the BLUFOR situation and move to exploit it a bit sooner was something I felt was less than perfection. Minus 1 point.

Total subtractions: 3 points. Final score for REDFOR -- 17 points.

The score I submitted was therefore REDFOR 17, BLUFOR 14. James agreed with this conclusion, but Scott felt the game was more or less a draw. Factoring in Scott's judgement allowed BLUFOR to close the gap by 1 point, increasing their total to 15.

Summary

The REDFOR team wins the strategic planning phase of the MBX, having quietly built up a powerful striking force without giving away their intentions beforehand. Some of the force matchups in the upcoming war are going to be "just barely" in their favor, but on the Stage I scoresheet this doesn't count. If the Russians lose those battles it will be the fault of the commanders in the field, not the planners.

The BLUFOR team did almost exactly as well as REDFOR -- all the way up until the very last couple of turns when they suddenly found themselves with most of their spare forces tied up in a foreign country or returning home from a war. So nothing was available to plug the hole that they saw developing in the Norwegian Sea region. This bit of bad timing teamed up with bad luck at a most unfortuitous moment -- the moment the REDFOR team had planned their attack! Otherwise, the BLUFOR team had played each threat almost flawlessly, imo.

I would like to state loudly for the record that both teams played with skill, resourcefulness and hard work the likes of which I have never seen in any MBX I have been involved in, either as a player or an umpire -- Herculean efforts, really. If the game were measured by sheer earnestness, professionalism and enthusiasm then this game would be an absolute draw. Both teams gave their all, and it wasn't until I sat down with the facts and figures (for several hours!) that it was clear which side was the winner.

Congratulations should go out to both teams on a game well-played, whatever the score.

And now, let's get to the *real* event.... :->