Why America’s Wargames Need A Harder Reality Check

PAUL’S DEFENSE BRIEF (PDB) – Who stress-tests U.S. war plans? Our military spends billions trying to predict what its adversaries will do — and almost nothing testing whether its own plans make sense.

In part, this reflects the decline of red teaming, the practice of systematically challenging plans to expose biases, blind spots, and weak assumptions before they become operational liabilities.

As U.S. adversaries become more sophisticated and the Pentagon integrates AI into planning, restoring systematic self-critique isn’t optional — it’s urgent.

Restoring red teaming will require updating how it was practiced in the past.

There are four possible ways to make this happen: train all planners — not just specialists — in assumption-testing, focus on building red team capabilities rather than red teams, strengthen mechanisms for including red teaming in ongoing planning cycles, and use forecasting methods and platforms to trigger assumption reviews.

Targeting Failure Pathways. Red team methodology primarily targets three failure pathways in defense and military planning.

Biases like optimism bias or mirror-imaging creep in when planners unconsciously assume the adversary will behave as they would, or that their preferred outcomes are more likely than they are.

Blind spots emerge from organizational or institutional silos. Planners may simply not see how logistics, allies, civilians, or political dynamics could shape the battlefield in ways they haven’t anticipated.

The most dangerous failure pathway is unevaluated assumptions — uncertain claims upon which entire plans depend, but which rest on weak arguments, weak evidence, or both.

Integrating AI into planning amplifies these risks, as it can encode biases in its training data, create blind spots when algorithms function as black boxes, and generate confident outputs based on unvalidated assumptions.

As these systems become embedded in planning, systematic assumption-checking becomes more, not less, critical. For a time, the U.S. military invested in mitigating these risks, but then it stopped. TIME TO RESTART.

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY – Here’s a roundup of today’s other top defense news from conservative national security expert PAUL CRESPO.

THE PDB – Not the President’s Daily Briefing, but almost as good – PAUL’S DEFENSE BRIEF:    

NATIONAL SECURITY

A third of all Americans support the U.S. military strike on Venezuela that captured narco dictator Nicolas Maduro, while 72% are concerned about prolonged intervention in the country, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Not surprising considering the opposition media coverage. 65% of Republicans support the operation, while just 11% of Democrats and 23% of independents back it.

HOMELAND SECURITY

All National Guard troops assigned to federal protection missions in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon, are returning home, putting an end to deployments that were mired in legal battles even before some cities saw service members in the streets.

DEFENSE POLITICS

Army resuming hiring of religious support workers for chaplain corps after backlash from last year’s move to cancel contracts.

President Trump issued a warning to Raytheon, saying he would cut the defense giant’s government contracts if it does not accelerate weapons production and act to rein in stock buybacks.

The Air Force has taken initial steps to implement War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plans to overhaul Pentagon procurement by creating seven new acquisition organizations aligned with specific mission areas.

Ingalls Shipbuilding hosted the Navy secretary and other top military leaders and showed them that the shipyard has the capacity and workforce to build a share of the nation’s proposed Golden Fleet.

Trump’s return-to-office mandate exempted feds with disabilities. Many are being ordered to work in person anyway.

US POWER OVERSEAS

The U.S. military delivered 188 tons of relief supplies to Sri Lanka in the week following devastating Cyclone Ditwah in late November.

VENEZUELA THREAT/OIL

The Senate advanced a resolution to limit Trump’s ability to conduct further attacks against Venezuela, sounding a note of disapproval for his expanding ambitions in the Western Hemisphere.

White House officials excluded top U.S. intelligence officer, Tulsi Gabbard, from Venezuela planning since last summer, due to her anti-interventionist views.

A mass departure by sanctioned tankers from Venezuela, some switching to Russian flags, and loaded with oil, has triggered a fresh effort by the U.S. Navy to chase several oil tankers in the Atlantic.

RUSSIA THREAT

U.S. boards ship sailing under Russian flag: What we know and don’t know about the legalities. Relations between the U.S. and Russia hit a fresh bump after the U.S. Coast Guard boarded a vessel sailing in Icelandic waters, claiming it was in breach of sanctions on Venezuela.

Two Russian Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missiles with multiple warheads fired near the Polish border at Ukraine in retaliation for a fabricated drone strike on one of Putin’s homes, the Kremlin says.

CHINA THREAT

China’s two days of live-fire drills near Taiwan last month were seen as a test run for a blockade, a message to the U.S. They came closer than ever to the self-ruled island’s coast and were the largest-scale exercises in more than three years of exercises partly aimed at deterring a U.S. role in a war over Taiwan.

UKRAINE WAR

Russia launched its first attack on the Odesa regional port complex for the first time since New Year’s.

EUROPEAN DEFENSE

Italy announced an air force base in Sicily as the first F-35 training school outside the U.S., reflecting growth in demand for pilot training after fresh orders of the jet in Europe.

MIDDLE EAST THREATS

U.S. non-NATO allies should buy U.S.-made military gear. The Chinese-Pakistani-built JF-17 Thunder has emerged as a surprise candidate for Saudi Arabia’s next fighter.

Turkey will spend $27.34 billion on defense and security in 2026, marking a 30% increase over the previous year.

SPACE THREATS

Following a 2025 that saw Vandenberg Space Force Base complete a record 77 space launches, missile tests, and aeronautical operations, Space Launch Delta 30 is exploring further expansion at the California base.

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY

Korean industrial conglomerate Hanwha has been expanding its portfolio of projects in U.S. naval and defense space and has a new agreement with a U.S. autonomous-vessel company to compete in medium-sized unmanned warship space.

US MILITARY

Special Operations Command is exploring how AI can process biometric data gathered by its operators, asking the industry for information on facial recognition, speaker identification, and DNA profiling capabilities.

Is the Army paying attention to lessons learned in conflict zones around the world? sUAS (small unmanned aerial systems, i.e., drones) have transformed modern warfare, and it is time our training reflects that reality.

In a milestone for the Army, it has promoted a senior noncommissioned officer directly to captain in the Foreign Area Officer (FAO) field for the first time.

Marine Corps taps Northrop, Kratos to build its Valkyrie autonomous drone wingmen.

Coast Guard adopts mandatory physical fitness training. Starting this year, active and selected reserve Coasties will need to work out at least four days a week, no excuses.

Fiscal Year 2025 saw the most fatalities among sailors in a decade, according to the Naval Safety Command.

END of PDB

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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