Sigma I-66 war game

Last updated February 22, 2019

The Sigma I-66 war game was one of a series of classified high level war games played in The Pentagon during the 1960s to strategize the conduct of the burgeoning Vietnam War. Sigma I-66 was based on the unrealistic scenario of a famine-stricken and militarily diminished North Vietnam agreeing to de-escalate its war efforts. It ended with a hypothetical force of 100,000 Viet Cong still in South Vietnam.

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The Pentagon, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase The Pentagon is often used as a metonym for the Department of Defense and its leadership.

Pentagon usage of war games

These war game simulations were designed to replicate then-current conditions in Indochina, with an aim toward predicting future foreign affairs events. They were staffed with high-ranking officials standing in to represent both domestic and foreign characters; stand-ins were chosen for their expertise concerning those they were called upon to represent. The games were supervised by a Control appointed to oversee both sides. The opposing Blue and Red Teams customary in war games were designated the friendly and enemy forces as was usual; however, several smaller teams were sometimes subsumed under Red and Blue Teams. Over the course of the games, the Red Team at times contained the Yellow Team for the Peoples Republic of China, the Brown Team for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Black Team for the Viet Cong, [1] and Green for the USSR. [2]

Indochina, originally Indo-China, is a geographical term originating in the early nineteenth century and referring to the continental portion of the region now known as Southeast Asia. The name refers to the lands historically within the cultural influence of India and China, and physically bound by the Indian Subcontinent in the west and China in the north. It corresponds to the present-day areas of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and (variably) peninsular Malaysia and Singapore. The term was later adopted as the name of the colony of French Indochina, and the entire area of Indochina is now usually referred to as the Indochinese Peninsula or Mainland Southeast Asia.

The Việt Cộng, also known as the National Liberation Front, was a mass political organization in South Vietnam and Cambodia with its own army – the People's Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) – that fought against the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War, eventually emerging on the winning side. It had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized peasants in the territory it controlled. Many soldiers were recruited in South Vietnam, but others were attached to the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), the regular North Vietnamese army. During the war, communists and anti-war activists insisted the Việt Cộng was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of Hanoi. Although the terminology distinguishes northerners from the southerners, communist forces were under a single command structure set up in 1958. The headquarters of the Viet Cong based at Memot came to be known as Central Office for South Vietnam or COSVN by its MACV and South Vietnamese counterparts, a near-mythical "bamboo Pentagon" from which the Việt Cộng's entire war effort was being directed. For nearly a decade the fabled COSVN headquarters, which directed the entire war effort of the Viet Cong was the target of the RVN/US war effort, and which would have collapsed the insurgency war effort. US and South Vietnamese Special Forces sent to capture them usually were killed very quickly or returned with heavy casualties to the point that teams refused to go. Daily B-52 bombings had failed to kill any of the leadership during Operation Menu despite flattening the entire area, as Soviet trawlers were able to forewarn COSVN, whom used the data on speed, altitude and direction to move perpendicular and to move underground.

Preparation for these simulations was quite extensive. A game staff of as many as 45 people researched and developed the scenarios. The actual play of the war game involved 30 to 35 participants. There are four or five simulations per year, solicited secretively from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and major military commands. [3]

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT). As one of the principal members of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States.

Playing the game

Sigma I-66 was staged in September 1966. Its focus was managing de-escalation of the war if the communists were willing to begin negotiating instead of fighting. [4] In the video-taped summary of the game, a briefer notes that it was believed that the Vietnamese communist insurrection would dwindle into nothingness as they had previously in Greece and Malaya. [5]

Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two similarly sized regions, Peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand in the north and maritime borders with Singapore in the south, Vietnam in the northeast, and Indonesia in the west. East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia and a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital and largest city while Putrajaya is the seat of federal government. With a population of over 30 million, Malaysia is the world's 44th most populous country. The southernmost point of continental Eurasia, Tanjung Piai, is in Malaysia. In the tropics, Malaysia is one of 17 megadiverse countries, with large numbers of endemic species.

The basis for Sigma I-66 was an imagined North Vietnam suffering from food shortages caused by a typhoon destroying the rice crop. The People's Army of Vietnam were being defeated in South Vietnam. American air strikes had beggared the north. Ho Chi Minh secretly passess a private message to the Americans. He proposes withdrawal of northern troops from the south, and a ceasefire from the Viet Cong. In return, he wants a ceasefire from the Americans, a halt to the bombing campaign, a graduated withdrawal of American forces, and free elections in South Vietnam. [5]

A typhoon is a mature tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere. This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, and is the most active tropical cyclone basin on Earth, accounting for almost one-third of the world's annual tropical cyclones. For organizational purposes, the northern Pacific Ocean is divided into three regions: the eastern, central, and western. The Regional Specialized Meteorological Center (RSMC) for tropical cyclone forecasts is in Japan, with other tropical cyclone warning centers for the northwest Pacific in Hawaii, the Philippines and Hong Kong. While the RSMC names each system, the main name list itself is coordinated among 18 countries that have territories threatened by typhoons each year.

The People's Army of Vietnam, also known as the Vietnamese People's Army (VPA), is the military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PAVN is a part of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces and includes: Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, Border Defence Force, and Coast Guard. However, Vietnam does not have a separate Ground Force or Army branch. All ground troops, army corps, military districts and specialised arms belong to the Ministry of Defence, directly under the command of the Central Military Commission, the Minister of Defence, and the General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army. The military flag of the PAVN is the flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with the words Quyết thắng added in yellow at the top left.

South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a country that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War. It received international recognition in 1949 as the "State of Vietnam", which was a constitutional monarchy (1949–1955). This became the "Republic of Vietnam" in 1955. Its capital was Saigon. South Vietnam was bordered by North Vietnam to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest, and the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia across the South China Sea to the east and southeast.

This scenario was played out in an aura of disbelief. Game Control forced Blue Team to cease the air attacks on the north. Control also has to rule out a Red Chinese invasion of the north. As the simulation ended, the Viet Cong representative in the game noted: "That's like the cops giving up shooting in shooting in agreement with the robbers. You're turning the countryside back over to the Viet Cong. You have not explained...how you are going to get rid of a hundred thousand...armed Viet Cong...." [5]

General Earle Wheeler ended the exercise with the comment: "I'm afraid some cynics might be tempted to rediscover that there are worse things than war." [6]

Notes

↑ Allen, pp. 193-208.
↑ Gibbons, pp. 17-19.
↑ Allen, pp. 31-32.
↑ Gibbons, p. 387.
1 2 3 Allen, p.207.
↑ Allen, p. 208.

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The Sigma II-65 war game was one of a series of classified high level war games played in the Pentagon during the 1960s to strategize the conduct of the burgeoning Vietnam War. It was held between 26 July and 5 August 1965. The games were designed to replicate then-current conditions in Indochina, with an aim toward predicting future foreign affairs events. They were staffed with high ranking officials standing in to represent both domestic and foreign characters; stand-ins were chosen for their expertise concerning those they were called upon to represent. The games were supervised by a Control appointed to oversee both sides. The opposing Blue and Red Teams customary in war games were designated the friendly and enemy forces as was usual; however, several smaller teams were sometimes subsumed under Red and Blue Teams. Over the course of the games, the Red Team at times contained the Yellow Team for the People's Republic of China, the Brown Team for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Black Team for the Viet Cong, and Green for the USSR.

The Sigma I-67 and II-67 War Games were two of a series of classified high level war games played in the Pentagon during the 1960s to strategize the conduct of the burgeoning Vietnam War. The games were designed to replicate then-current conditions in Indochina, with an aim toward predicting future foreign affairs events. They were staffed with high-ranking officials standing in to represent both domestic and foreign characters; stand-ins were chosen for their expertise concerning those they were called upon to represent. The games were supervised by a Control appointed to oversee both sides. The opposing Blue and Red Teams customary in war games were designated the friendly and enemy forces as was usual; however, several smaller teams were sometimes subsumed under Red and Blue Teams. Over the course of the games, the Red Team at times contained the Yellow Team for the People's Republic of China, the Brown Team for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Black Team for the Viet Cong, and Green for the USSR.

References

Allen, Thomas B. (1987) War Games: The Secret World of the Creators, Players, and Policy Makers Rehearsing World War III Today. McGraw-Hill. ISBNs 0070011958, 9780070011953.
Gibbons, William Conrad (1995) The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Princeton University Press. ISBNs 0691006350, 978-0691006352.

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[allen193-1] Allen, pp. 193-208.

[gibbons17-2] Gibbons, pp. 17-19.

[3] Allen, pp. 31-32.

[4] Gibbons, p. 387.

[allen207-5] 1 2 3 Allen, p.207.

[6] Allen, p. 208.