Yeah, I agree with all of this. I said basically what you just said (with a lot less detail / citation) in my comment that starts “I mean I get it” (which I just recently edited to expand it a little).

I understand why they did it. I’m not saying it wasn’t productive to do. I actually think the way it played out probably made it extremely productive to do, and it’s to the US military’s credit that that type of outcome can even happen, as opposed to most authoritarian structures where the red team would just understand that they’re “supposed to lose” and wouldn’t even try to do something like Riper did. You don’t have to have the final “official” outcome be a blue team loss in order for everyone to learn valuable lessons from it.

What I was disagreeing with was your assertion that they just changed the conditions. They changed around the parameters and rules underlying the situation, specifically to railroad the simulation into a particular outcome. Even if I understand why that happened I can still point it out and think it’s notable, no?