The other day, I wrote about a field exercise we were participating in at Fort Lewis to prepare for a flyaway deployment with the Signal Battalion. I also talked about our OpFor training with the Special Forces Group. If you recall, I defined OpFor as the Opposing Forces. I believe I also mentioned that the Special Forces Group had a penchant for straying away from the rules of engagement for the “war games” we had planned. I also may have said that we also disregarded the rules of engagement as a result. Well, guess what? We had another little battle exercise planned with our OpFor. We were planning a convoy with radio communications. The OpFor was read in on the convoy plan and route, and they were to set up an ambush at a designated location along the convoy route. They were given all of the communications signals and the authentication key and countersigns for the day. The authentication key and countersigns were going to be crucial to communications because the OpFor was supposed to “intercept” encrypted transmissions and needed to decrypt them. There may have been a slight problem with that. Yeah. They may have accidently (on purpose) been given the wrong authentication key and countersign. I don’t have a clue how that could possibly have happened. I told the radio guy these are the codes the OpFor gets and gave him the codes. The question is, did I give the radio guy the right codes? Hmmm… Oh well, no time to worry about that anymore. Anyway, I also told the radio guy to inform them that the signal to return to the designated rally point was the message, ‘The barn is burning. Red alert. We crashed and burned.’ I also told him to inform them that the signal for mission completion was, ‘The barn is burning. Mission complete. 100 percent success. No prisoners taken.’ Now, the plan was for the OpFor to allow the point vehicle to pass through the ambush then hit the convoy main body and take no prisoners. That was the plan. Plans change. I should also mention that the convoy was to be conducted in blackout conditions, so the distance between vehicles would ostensibly be a little closer together. Plus, the vehicles would be moving a lot slower than usual. Not to mention that it was the dark of moon that night with overcast skies. You would think that the OpFor would have perfect hunting conditions. Right? Wrong. The only way they could have perfect hunting conditions is if they had the right convoy route. It turns out that somehow, they were fed bogus information on the convoy route. Oh, the route they were given was the correct route as planned. It just wasn’t the route we took. Then when they tried to intercept our radio transmissions, we may have sent them some bad encrypted information. As a result, when they thought they had strayed off route and asked for grid coordinates, we may have deliberately led them down a primrose path. When they called for help, we decided to play with them. For example, my radio guy called me and said “Lost 1 this is Lost 3 are you Lost 2 over?” I immediately replied, “That’s a negative Lost 3. I am Lost 1. I believe Lost 2 is requesting assistance, over.” To which the radio guy replied, “Lost 2 this is Lost 3. I am Lost. Cannot provide assistance. Please respond, over.” The OpFor team leader did not know what the hell was going on, so he got on the radio and sent out the message, ‘The barn is burning. Red alert. We crashed and burned. Everybody is lost.’ Then it started raining, and the OpFor team leader sent another message asking for grid coordinates to the rally point. We sent them, except the coordinates may have led them into a swampy marsh in a heavily wooded area. The further a person drove into the swampy marsh, the further their vehicle would sink into the mud and sludge. The only problem was, unless you knew the training area you couldn’t tell you were driving into trouble until it was too late. Yeah. It seems that they didn’t know the training area all that well. All but their last vehicle drove straight into trouble and got stuck. Now, they really did have an emergency. When we saw the flare go off, we knew they had taken the bait hook, line, and sinker. Their last vehicle turned around and retraced its route back to the main road in hopes of finding us to get help. We sent a radio message back in the clear, ‘The barn is burning. Mission complete. 100 percent success. All prisoners taken. No friendly casualties. No shots fired.’ Those Special Forces dudes were not happy campers. It was miller time, or as I would otherwise say, it was just another exercise in futility.
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