https://redlib.catsarch.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1satp8j/casualty_coverup_the_pentagon_is_hiding_us_losses/
Back in 2002, there was a war games exercise run by the US military called Millennium Challenge 2002. The simulated combatants were the Blue team (America) vs the Red team (an unnamed Persian Gulf state, likely Iran). The Red team was led by a retired Marine lieutenant. He ended up resorting to asymmetrical tactics and beat America so badly that they suspended the war game. They called for a do-over, with the rules rewritten to ensure Blue would win. Also we spent $450M on this.
Millennium Challenge was so bad I wrote a paper for my leadership class (in community college lol) on it as an example of leadership failure.
Point of order: The Red team commander was a Lieutenant General (three star general) so it's not as egregious as you think. Trust me they need all the credibility they can get because nobody looked good in MC2002.
On day one, Red team launched a cruise missile blitz and immediately sunk 16 Blue team ships and effectively ended the exercise. All told, they killed a carrier, 5 landing ships and 10 cruisers.
They called a parlay to discuss how to proceed.
Red team commander insisted it was a legitimate strategy and that the exercise should continue. Blue team leaders argued that they had to place the ships unrealistically close to shore and disable automated defenses (the US Navy equips its ships with CIWS, an automated gatling gun to throw out tons of bullets to shoot down missiles) due to the fact the operation area was actively being used by shipping in the real world. Everyone agreed to "respawn" the navy ships so they could actually conduct the rest of the exercise.
This is what I point out as the breakdown in leadership: the Blue team commanders start to lean on the referees more and more to pencilwhip Red team after this. Instead of realistically gaming out an unconstrained opponent doing his best to fight Blue by any means necessary, the referees coerced Red.
Blue team decides to land paratroopers inland before the beach landing, like D-Day. The referees lean on Red, first to move the advanced SAM systems out of the landing area when organic defenses would have them, then to not engage the transport aircraft using their machine guns and unguided AA guns they were "allowed" to have to fight the paratroopers.
The Red team commander tries to use chemical weapons to make the landing areas impassable, assuming that it was available to him. He then is told flatly that "you have no chemical weapons, they either were destroyed by special forces or decomposed in storage."
The referees over the course of the two weeks then arbitrarily reveal Red forces to Blue, citing the intelligence and reconnaissance advantage Blue would have as an excuse. "Whoops they deleted your infantry because the CIA is just that gud bro."
It is an incredible study in pencilwhipping as nobody was being totally honest in the conduct of this exercise.
