acted with utter confidence, because their Operational Net
Assessment matrixes told them where Red Team’s
vulnerabilities were, what Red Team’s next move was likely to
be, and what Red Team’s range of options was. But Paul Van
Riper did not behave as the computers predicted.
Blue Team knocked out his microwave towers and cut his
fiber-optics lines on the assumption that Red Team would now
have to use satellite communications and cell phones and they
could monitor his communications.
“They said that Red Team would be surprised by that,” Van
Riper remembers. “Surprised? Any moderately informed person
would know enough not to count on those technologies. That’s a
Blue Team mind-set. Who would use cell phones and satellites
after what happened to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan? We
communicated with couriers on motorcycles, and messages
hidden inside prayers. They said, ‘How did you get your
airplanes off the airfield without the normal chatter between
pilots and the tower?’ I said, ‘Does anyone remember World
War Two? We’ll use lighting systems.’ ”
Suddenly the enemy that Blue Team thought could be read
like an open book was a bit more mysterious. What was Red
Team doing? Van Riper was supposed to be cowed and