Subject: Re: Overmatched: the U.S. military
You might be thinking of Marine Corps General Van Riper. The exercise was "Millennium Challenge 2002". He played the enemy, with a considerably inferior force. Sank an entire US carrier group in the first two days of the exercise. He avoided US signals intercepts by using motorcycle messengers and light signals, instead of radios. His massive volley of cruise missiles "sank" 16 USN ships by saturating their defensive systems.

I am remembering Captain Billy Mitchell’s long road to convincing the Generals that air power would be effective. He overflew ships and dropped flour sacks on them to show that bombing from the sky could be accurate. Nothing. Later he used actual bombs to sink German warships captured in WWI, and while the public reaction was incredible, the PTB ignored it because “it wasn’t in war.”

Or, as an AI summary says: “ His 1921 and 1923 demonstrations, which successfully sank captured German warships including the battleship Ostfriesland, were a huge success in the public eye and generated significant press. However, within the military hierarchy, the results were highly controversial and largely dismissed by Navy and Army brass”

Eventually he broke through, but it took almost forever.

Then there are the Admirals who didn’t like the idea of replacing battleships (on which they had grown up and been promoted) with those newfangled aircraft carriers, because, “big guns.” Oops.

And then there was Admiral Yarnell’s “attack on Pearl Harbor” war game in 1932, which predicted the Japanese attack almost a decade prior - and was so stunningly accurate right down to the time of the attack (Sunday morning, when attention would be at its lowest.) Dismissed out of hand by the big guys, who were still wed to their battleships and outdated thinking - and we cruised along for another decade until the real thing came along.

Yeah, and we’re still producing $35B jet fighters that can’t fly, when a bunch of $2000 drones could cripple an entire fleet in an hour. And we’re not “overmatched”. Sure.