Saturday, May 29, 2010

7 Deadly Scenarios

One of the more sobering and intellectually invigorating books out there:

7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century by Andrew F. Krepinevich. An excerpt:

Dawn was now breaking. As sunlight streamed over the horizon, the airborne strike force pressed home its attack over Pearl Harbor, achieving complete surprise. Dive-bombers and torpedo planes went to work on the ships lying at anchor along Battleship Row, where the U.S. Navy's capital ships were berthed. Fighter aircraft peeled off and strafed the airfield, hitting parked planes, fuel storage tanks, and hangars. Army Air Corps pilots rushed to take off after the attacking force, but by the time they were aloft, the attackers had completed their strikes and vanished. Failing to locate the attackers, the Army aircraft returned to base, whereupon a second wave of carrier strike aircraft hit them. A New York Times reporter on the scene reported that the attacks were "unopposed by the defense, which was caught virtually napping."

Surveying the results, the American defenders were filled with anger - and relief. The attack, executed on the morning of Sunday, February 7, 1932, occurred at the outset of a U.S. Army-Navy war game called Grand Joint Exercise 4. Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell, commander of the newly commissioned American aircraft carriers Saratoga and Lexington, had launched the attacking planes. The "bombs" dropped were flour bags, which could be found splattered on the Navy's ships still sitting at anchor.

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