Essay by Eric Worrall
The US Navy is holding an open source table top war game, to model how climate change could affect future conflicts.
Navy Holding Climate Change Wargame
By: Mallory Shelbourne
June 21, 2022 4:30 PMThe Navy next week will host an open-source table-top wargame to experiment with how climate change could affect a future conflict, a service official said today.
The half-day exercise will feature individuals from Capitol Hill, the Defense Department, the defense industry, think tanks and academia, Navy assistant secretary for energy, installations and environment Meredith Berger told reporters during a Defense Writers Group breakfast.
The purpose of the June 29 exercise is “to come together and really think about and experience what it means to operate in a climate-impacted environment,” Berger said.
“We’re going to create the right level of stress in a very responsible way to see that it is hard to make these choices and there [are] unanticipated consequences and there’re costs and impacts and all sorts of intervening circumstances that we need to think about from each other’s perspectives,” she added.
…
“By 2030, poorer nations and poorer populations are most adversely affected and lease able to cope with the worst effects of climate change. Migrations increase in frequency and scale as the poor move toward the urban littorals,” the document reads. “Influxes of people of difference religions, ethnicities, tribes, and family and belief systems create new tensions. Moreover, increasing migration begins to overburden social welfare infrastructure in places already struggling to cope with societal issues.”
…
Each military service now has a chief sustainability officer in an effort to follow President Joe Biden’s executive order on sustainability, Berger said. That position is held by each service’s civilian head for energy, installations and environment.
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Read more: https://news.usni.org/2022/06/21/navy-holding-climate-change-wargame
If the US Navy thinks climate change is likely to lead to security threats, such as when “influxes of people of difference religions, ethnicities, tribes, and family and belief systems create new tensions”, maybe the USA should anticipate this climate threat by securing vulnerable borders with walls?
The caves will not save you from the climate idiots. We’ve got to get to the trailer coordinates that Nicolas Cage found.
This is same Navy with more than its share of expensive screwups lately.
Yes, stupidity is accelerating now. Hold tight.
Forest Service failed to account for climate change in New Mexico fire (cnbc.com)
And it depends on your definition of “The”
Ohio State University granted trademark for the word ‘THE’ on merchandise – ABC News (go.com)
Get Nick on the case immediately … he is the master of redefinition.
Maybe they can convince CCP and Putin that it is too hot to invade neighbors.
To the contrary, it will be too hot for America to fight.
A pinwheel and solar panel on every helmet to power the helmet’s AC unit!
I am sure they will attack with Solar powered tanks.
The Russians will be fleeing a Russia that has gotten too hot, by moving to places that are even warmer.
The Russians are going to go to war with Canada over Florida?!?
😉
I guess everyone in the world will be coming over to my neck of the woods then – and while all you hosers are fighting over Baffin Island I’ll be in Bali!
I don’t know why it’s still called Florida. It should be renamed “New South Canada” or something like that. 😉
All I can do is shake my head. The world has truly gone insane
It’s even feeding on itself.
Forest Service failed to account for climate change in New Mexico fire (cnbc.com)
Village People – In the Navy – it’s been down hill ever since.
It’s a strange world where so many true headlines
sound like I’m reading a Babylon Bee article.
If it gets warmer the sailors ought to wear
Navy blue T-shirts instead of the current uniforms.
Maybe I’ll get a prize for that suggestion?
Or at least a participation trophy.
Richard, my involvement consists of redesigning the summer-weight headgear for senior commanding women to cover up their male-pattern baldness. Failing that, Congress has to begin funding hair transplants for women.
Let me save the US Navy the trouble:
it won’t
Quite the contrary! As icebergs become more common and northern seaports are less accessible because they are frozen over, tactics will have to be modified accordingly.
Glaciation is very unlikely to return for at least 2-3000 years, sadly.
Good point. Greenland is already adding impressive mass to the ice sheet, preparing to feed more icebergs into the Atlantic. 🙂
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/surface/SMB_curves_LA_EN_20220621.png
Whether the weather will be like the late seventies or the 2000s the various military outfits are all use to it by now.
But don’t we need to know what will happen to all of our ships when the ocean acidifies and the ph goes from 8.3 to 8.2?? What if it makes the toilets flush backwards? What if ships sit 4 nanometers lower in the water? What if they can’t make ice?? This is important stuff!
Hold on, but how would they steal and pocket yet more $ billions in addition to missing trillions that Pentagon has already lost and can’t account for?
The disruptions described as the set up to this exercise are more likely to be due to energy poverty, as fools in the West refuse to “allow” fossil fuel projects in areas that could greatly benefit from reliable energy access.
Rebels storming an aircraft carrier to take it over to use as a power supply because the US forced them to use solar and wind. That’s a valid scenario actually.
Will they consider the risks of aircraft running out of biofuel and tanks having to stop to recharge their batteries?
I want to wargame against a foe that powers their entire industrial base using solar panels and windmills.
My first wave of cruise missile launches that distribute bomblets over a wide area should win the war with a minimum of civilian casualties. With a sufficient number of missiles, I predict I could destroy or render inoperable about 90% of these large, fragile, fixed targets.
Just hit their storage means, batteries or pumper hydro, and they will be without power the fisrt calm night.
If they are “net” zero, hit their nuc and FF plants, same result.
If they are net zero they will have far bigger problems than having a war as well.
Just drop massive amounts of smoke munitions. Cover their entire area with a haze and solar production drops.
Not as if you are making anything explode after all, it is ONLY smoke.
Well, one way climate change will affect warfare is that when battery powered military vehicles such as tanks and IFVs are hit and the ammo blows up it will contaminate a large area with the toxic metals contained in the batteries. Oh, and the fires will release clouds of toxic fumes from burning lithium perhaps requiring the use of gas masks.
I hope they will include such things as iceberg and ice detection in former warmer waters.
“to come together and really think about and experience what it means to operate in a climate-impacted environment,”
Really now, it’s a front for talking about what operations will involve during nuclear winter, a real possibility based on Putin’s commanders recent offerings to his press. Destruction to 350 km of ground zero. Paris, London, Berlin 200 seconds after launch. It ain’t gonna be a Navy meeting about the next El Nino.
https://avia-pro.net/news/rossiyskiy-sarmat-unichtozhit-london-za-2-minuty-2-sekundy
Oh my God! How is the military ever going to be able to fight a war when it is 2º warmer than they expected?
I think they should be planning for fighting when all the women, including the ones who are really men, are menstruating at the same time.
They are more worried about giving the Trans, and “menstruating persons” their “safe places” and people addressing their fellow sailors by the preferred pronouns.
To borrow one of Rush’s terms, The PMS Amazon Battalion! (I wouldn’t want to get in their way!)
That swimmer who thinks he’s a girl could lead the charge!
(OH! Wait. Does it mens…?)
You see, it’s archaic thinking like only women can menstruate and only men can womenstruate that will lose wars.
The war game can be won by requiring each soldier to wear a non-binary uniform, declare their pronouns loudly and accurately, and develop a sanitary product plan based on respecting and celebrating themstruation.
I feel another pride month coming. I hope Amazon has the right logo for it – our navy’s future is at stake.
A couple of hundred thousand people with guns AND PMS!
Now, THAT is a scary thought !
The USN has just cranked Monty Python up to 11 twice in the same month. At least drunken
sailors eventually sober up!
Timo: “I think they should be planning for fighting when all the women, including the ones who are really men, are menstruating at the same time.”
Oh yeah! Tell the women that the enemy said their uniforms made their butts look fat, then give the order to “ATTACK!!” and stand back. 😲
It’ll be a 3-minute war. There will be a dark side with the enemies’ ‘nads hanging from their bayonets.
That’s 2° warmer on average. Which probably means 4° warmer nights, same old days.
Massive word salad statement-
“We’re going to create the
right(VIGOROUS) level of stress in a veryresponsible(NO FEELINGS HURT) way to seethat it(IF IT) is (TOO) hard to make these choices (WHAT CHOICES)….(AND THEN…AND THEN) and there [are] unanticipated consequences and there’re costs and impacts and allsorts(MANNER) of intervening(CHAOTIC) circumstances that we need to think about from each other’s (inclusive with neighbors?) perspectives,” she added (OPINED).Oh no, apparently some folks did a similar thing concerning a monkey virus and lo – just a few months later The Pox arrived on the scene.
Is that just a rumour or a hoax, like Windows 10 for example?
Why I say that is that Bill Gates was one of them.
Is he a Real Bad-Guy or a bad guy as in like pantomimes at Christmas?
He’s real alright.
My ship melted!
A simple way to reduce training & miscommunication that could lower results:
Let me make it simple for the entire @USNavy.
Your pronouns are shipmate/shipmates. There. I just saved the taxpayers
millions by avoiding ridiculously useless training. Anchors aweigh.
https://twitter.com/mchooyah/status/1539076888542564358
In Oz we just call everybody “mate” 😉
What a crock of crap! The Navy and the Merchant Marine have long experience in working in “Climate impacted environments”.
Pull out the records of the North Sea Convoys. The invasions of Attu and Kiska and support operations for them. Watch Tower and the subsequent costly naval battles for Guadalcanal and Solomons in the South Pacific and the 7th Fleet’s experiences in the SW Pacific.
What they need to do is make it so they have people on their ships that can fix stuff on their ships when it breaks which is a capability they have lost in the last couple decades and is very serious.
We still have a Merchant Marine with ZERO US flagged cargo ships?
I was obviously referring to WW II experiences. But apparently yes we do still have a Merchant Marine.
• U.S.-flag fleet – number of ships 2021 | Statista
181? I’m going with my gut but I’m betting that is a SMALL fraction of what would be needed to fight a war.
But, we could just outsource that to China.
Depends on where it is fought.
South side of Chicago? It’s already a war zone there.
What do you? Taiwan and Korean peninsula. Expands to India and Pakistan.
Or does it just go nuclear in 24 hours?
Meredith Berger holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies and Spanish from Vanderbilt University; a Juris Doctor from Nova Southeastern University, where her father, notable Democratic Party donor and lawyer Mitchell W. Berger, J.D., is on the Board Of Trustees; and a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. Wikipedia
_________________________________
Pretty much all you need to know.
I’d like to know how much she donated to get that job
In saner times, appointments of political donors’ family members to government sinecures were overseen by grounded, experienced senior operatives within the incubating organization to ensure that nothing of consequence was ever entrusted to the appointee.
But what happens now when the whole organizations are asylums being run by the inmates?
From the 2:17 mark for the General’s WAC and his imbecile son-in-law.
Who knew that The Village People were prophets?
IN THE NAVY—VILLAGE PEOPLE, Official Music Video (1979) HD – YouTube
They would be cancelled now due to not using the correct pronouns.
The same way WEATHER affects today’s conflicts.
Please return our billion dollars before you waste it.
How about we have a war game that features this:
One side uses all fake green energy………solar, wind and batteries.
The other side uses all fossil fuels.
i’m in.
Moronic virtue signalling to get news coverage for the Klimate Kult.
Any way you cut it, if you want to learn such things, plus the capability of the current force do operate in it, then you get the ships and sailors out there and conduct hard, realistic, sustained training operations in the areas where the though conditions exist instead of playing a board game based on incomplete knowledge of the capability of units deployed,
Are we always doomed to repeat history? The most sustained and deadliest surface actions in the history of the US Navy were those during the Guadalcanal campaign when the Japanese time and again proved their superiority in night operations and that of their long lance torpedoes.
It cost a whole lot of ships and lives to learn the lessons that should have, at least in part, been learned if the Navy had been conducting realistic training for such actions in the prewar years.
Ships of fools. They can’t really be believing the crap they are being spoon fed with. The admirals are too afraid to publicly denounce this charade as BS for fear of losing their jobs and pension. I hope some day we can all look back on this and it will all seem funny.
I don’t know. I know a 2012 grad from squid academy who is a true believer in all the progressive woke dogma. They’ve been indoctrinated since grade school and the academies are serving to further their role as useful idiots.
Pre-war assessments of Japan’s military potential concluded that the Japanese were all near sighted and hence would be poor pilots and that their sailors would not be able to engage surface fleets at long distance.
They also concluded that because of this near sightedness, they would also not be able to fight well at night, at any distance. Therefore night operations would not be needed.
As usual they were warned by a man on the spot about the capabilities of the Japanese Navy and choose to ignore him.
But as far as training went, the Navy planners, according to War Plan Orange for much of it’s duration were set on a scenario of a daytime confrontation between the vast fleets of both nations that would decide the issue in one massive battle between surface ships. The ascendency of the Aircraft Carrier to become the ships around which task forces ere formed was not anticipated nor the use of US subs as more than scouts and snipers.
As with the French Army the US Navy was still planning on fighting the last World War all over again regardless of technological advances until the IJN showed them in actual attacks and combat the way the Naval engagements would be fought.
Further, unlike the Japanese the US Navy failed to conduct realistic training exercises. They were canned leaving no room for commanders to improvise. And they were always daylight operations in which the fear of the loss of sailors in training was a paramount factor.
And don’t forget our torpedoes.
Before the war our bean counters wouldn’t allow live fire tests.
At great cost we learned there was a problem with the firing pins.
Never underestimate a potential enemy.
In reality, the IJN kicked our @ur momisugly$$ in night engagements for the first year or so, despite our advantages with RADAR.
For perspective, Japan had been at war in China for more than 4 years prior to Perl Harbor. Their sailors and pilots had real combat experience. The US had been conducting annual fleet exercises since the 1920s to test various operational doctrines. A lot of areas to improve had been identified but the US Congress simply was not funding the navy (or indeed any military branch) to the extent required to make much progress.
We had no real appreciation of the capabilities of the Japanese Type 93 torpedoes or the tactics built around them and a BuOrd which stubbornly refused to acknowledge any suggestion that our own grossly defective torpedoes were anything other than perfect.
Japanese aircraft were for the most part superior to US counterparts.
In spite of this, acting on information from breaking Japanese codes, the US Navy manage to eek out a draw in the Battle of Coral Sea and a clear-cut victory (4 sunk IJN carriers vs. 1 lost US carrier) in Midway.
In the Guadalcanal campaign, although as you say we kept losing night engagements and a lot of cruisers (a.k.a. torpedo magnets), when it was all over the Japanese had lost
The key to Guadalcanal was keeping Henderson Field operational. Even when they won a night surface battle, the IJN could not stay around to finish off cripples or recover their own survivors as they had to get out of range before dawn.
These were losses in trained pilots and ships Japan could not make up.
Meanwhile, the US shipyards were starting to crank out Essex-class carriers — I think there were 22 in commission before the war ended and 7 by the end of 1943.
Absolutely. It was a clear Allied strategic victory. The Cactus Air Force, consisting of USMC F4F Wildcats, USAAF P-39’s and P-40’s along with orphaned F4F’s, SBD’s and TBD’s from damaged/sunk US carriers, inflicted heavy losses on IJAAS aircraft attacking from Rabaul. While Enterprise and Hornet F4F’s inflicted heavy losses on IJN’s remaining experience pilots from Shokaku and Zuikaku.
When Guadalcanal was secured, Japan’s experienced fighter and bomber pilots were nearly wiped out.
However, it was very costly for the USN, We lost two carriers in battles around the Solomons. USS Wasp was sunk by a IJN sub and USS Hornet was lost at Santa Cruz. At one point, USS Enterprise was the only functioning US carrier in the Pacific.
As you pointed out, the Essex class carriers and Independence class light carriers were making their way into the fleet, as were new fast battleships, one of which, USS Washington, sank the IJN Kirishima (technically a battle cruiser) in the only battleship to battleship gunfight in US Navy history. The Navy also deployed the F6F Hellcat on its carriers and F4U Corsairs to land bases in the Solomons. While the Japanese cadre of experienced pilots was bled out, we were building up ours.
I guess the bottom line was: yes in 1942 the Japanese kicked our @ur momisugly$$es, especially in night surface engagements. But the Japanese had much smaller boots and we had much bigger @ur momisugly$$es. It was a dumb fight to have picked.
Before Pearl Harbor, there was strong isolationist sentiment in the US. (If I’m not mistaken, there were Newsreels film of training exercises with trucks on the “battlefield” with the word “TANK” written on their sides.)
We thought the Japanese were nearsighted. They thought we were wimps and would “settle” if they gave a strong showing. Yamamoto had lived in the US. He knew otherwise.
The Japanese had a superb training program for naval pilots before the war. But they did not a good program to replace their losses.
The US did.
PS After the war Fuchida, who led the attach on Pearl Harbor, read a pamphlet written by one of Doolittle’s raid crew members. While in prison, that guy was given a Bible for 3 weeks. He became a Christian and genuinely forgave his captors. He wrote the pamphlet that Fuchida read.
Fuchida also became a Christian and a minister.
“From Pearl Harbor to Calvary” is where I got that info.
Enemies don’t have to remain enemies forever.
(As I was typing this it brought to mind the WW1 “Christmas Armistice”.)
Though the US lost more tonnage, including the USS Lexington, sunk on the 8th, the battle was/is judged a strategic victory of the allies because for the first time a Japanese advance had been thwarted and a Japanese fleet turned back from its objective which in this case was Port Moresby along the southern coast of New Guinea.
It would also affect future events. The Japanese fleet carrier Shokaku was damaged and the carrier Zuikaku’s air group was so depleted that it had to return to Japan to be reconstituted. So neither of these Fleet Carriers could take part in the attack on Midway.
This permanent marrying of air groups to specific aircraft carriers was a Japanese policy that would cost her through out the war until the Battle of the Philippine Sea (The great Marianas Turkey Shoot) which took place June 19-20, 1944 and which was the largest and last carrier against carrier battle in history.
The US would change and cycle air groups from carrier to carrier as needed. This allowed depleted or tired air groups to be exchanged for new fresh ones and provided for much more efficient use of the carriers.
The USS Lexington and USS Saratoga had been the test beds for Navy carrier aviation. The basic doctrines and procedures had been developed on these carriers during the 1930s. Even in death the “Lady Lex” provided a lesson.
Aircraft carriers were and still are essentially floating bombs. They must carry massive amounts of fuel and munitions to operate their aircraft and do so in a hull with virtually no armor protection. The flight decks of US carriers during WW II were made of wood and the aviation fuel the aircraft used was 100 octane gasoline!
Taking multiple bomb and torpedo hits the Lexington’s piping system that carried the aircraft fuel was broken in several places. The fuel ran down into the bilges and the fumes from it inundated the ship including it’s operating machinery. Inevitably it exploded dooming the ship.
The engineers understood that problem must be addressed and came up with a way to quickly purge the aircraft fueling piping of fuel and replace it with CO2 under pressure. It was a trick the Japanese never caught onto.
Another way this battle effected future events to the advantage of the Allies was preventing the Japanese from taking Port Moresby. Port Moresby would later be the jumping off point for MacArthur’s SW Pacific campaign.
The Japanese would later have to try and take it by attacking across land crossing over Kokoda Trail and the formidable thick jungle of the Owen Stanley mountain range. A task they failed to do suffering severe losses to the Australians supported by US troops defending and suffering even worse losses to malaria and a whole host of other tropical diseases.
Port Moresby would eventually have an allied air complex totaling 8 airfields from which operated US, Royal Australian Airforce. And Kiwi aircraft in formidable numbers. It was from this complex that aces like Dick Bong and Tommy McGuire the two top American aces of WW II operated along with many different bombers.
This air support and the growing number of allied troops that made New Guinea a bottomless pit for the Japanese forces trying to hold on to a presence on the island.
Radar was new and not trusted by many commanders. And it wasn’t installed widespread in those early days.
The Japanese had superior night optics and training than any allied ship.
PS When we think of radar, we think of that circle with the rotating arm sweeping a circle showing blips. Early radar didn’t work that way.
The IJN was MUCH better than the US at hitting their target with their big navel artillery at the beginning of the war BUT:
One thing many don’t know is the USN torpedoes at the beginning of the war rarely worked.
If they didn’t run too deep and under the enemy ship, they would not detonate when they struck the ship due to faulty triggers.
More IJN losses in those battles would be expected without faulty torpedoes. Many times early in the war the subs would hear the loud “thunk” as the torpedo bounced off of the ships. The IJN also reported being hit by torpedoes that didn’t explode.
After the new functional torpedoes were sent to the Pacific, even without all the aircraft carriers, Japan’s days were numbered due to the massive losses inflicted by subs to their shipping. Of the 9.7 million tons of IJN and merchant shipping sunk during WWII including by mines, planes, both land and sea based, surface ships and “miscellaneous”, subs sank over 5 million tons.
MANY procurement officers involved with that fiasco should have been shot.
From what I hear, most of those officers would have preferred getting shot over facing the wrath Admiral King eventually visited upon BuOrd.
My uncle was a submariner stationed at Pearl Harbor on 6 Dec 1941. He stayed in that service all during the war. Whatever it was that Adm King said to BuOrd had to have been but a pale echo of what my uncle, and all the other submariners at that time, were saying. Even after the war and talking to a 6 yo about that time the rage and frustration came through.
As it should have because the Brass denied there was a problem with the torpedoes, blaming the failures on the skippers of the boats, and the two major deficiencies, depth control, and a firing pin too weak to take the impact were exposed in tests by Admiral Lockwood. A real Submariner hero.
That still left the problem with the magnetic exploder which was responsible for the premature detonations but they finally allowed the skippers to deactivate it.
So the MK XIV problems were worked out, but that was not the end of the torpedo troubles.
New torpedo types came along and they had their problems. This time not design flaws but quality control problems.
Before the and during the early part of the war the Naval Ordinance hand built the torpedoes but as the war progressed the needed quantity was too great for the old ways and so the parts were mass produced and that led to problems again with depth control and lateral control.
Dick O’Kane, the greatest US submarine ace of WW II, had his sub, Tang, sunk out from under him by a circular run.
How are those poor soldiers going to be able to handle a battlefield that has gotten 0.01C warmer?
Modeled reactions to imaginary changes.
Be still my bleeding heart.
Wondering comrades, is this part of the new 5 year plan or the 10 year plan?
With advanced computers we are now planning 100 years ahead. Our climate modelers are fantastic about predicting technological, sociological and economic changes on top of their skill in predicting current and past temperatures.
But they still can’t get tomorrow’s forecast right.
This is part of the groveling the Navy must do now to get funding in the aftermath of all its major screwups. When is the next Pride launch of a Navy ship anyway?
This is part of the “whole-of-Government” response to Climate Change (TM).