Talk:Millennium Challenge 2002

message: Discussion regarding the neutrality of this page has been frozen for more than year and an half, but errors and misconception are still present within the article.
I've been comparing secondary sources with primary ones and found various discrepancies, especially regarding claims of the "scripted" nature of the excercise.
For example many articles cited in this page claims that the whole exercise was scripted or steered to end with a decisive Blueforce victory, but this seems to be in contrast with the "U.S. Joint Forces Command Millennium Challenge 2002: Experiment Report ", wich cleary proves that the whole exchercise ended in decisive Redforce victory (page 602, F-17): "The Government of Red (GOR) was successful in achieving its campaign objectives, while the JTF-S commander was not able to meet his objectives. The GOR was able to retain most of its DIME capabilities though there was some degredation to GOR PMESII systems, particularly involving infrastructure and economic systems. The JTF-S DIME and PMESII were degraded across all areas of capability and systems"
Another questionable claim can be found in the 'Aftermath' section, which states that the airborne assault was entirely scripted as Red forces had to deactivate their air defense system. This is indeed not completely false or unfounded, but the wording and lack of context makes it sounds like it was a simulation of a combat envrioment that was deliberatery adutered, part of a larger wargame. The point of said airborne training has always been to evaluate and train various MEDEVAC / Logistic operations, not to conduct combat training, and so the presence of such enemy elements during said training was simply demmed not necessary.
There's also many problem with the sources listed in the Wikipedia page; with the exception of the two i added on my recent edit (U.S. Joint Forces Command Millennium Challenge 2002: Experiment Report and the M.C. Press Report) there's no primary source, and many of them are either biased or conflicting with primary ones. 
Many of the articles and blogs cited in the page have little or no sources, and sometimes seems like they're citing each other or repeating the same story. Some comes from reputable publications, other are obscure and probably biased (such as http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6779&IBLOCK_ID=35&PAGE=3, wich is just an opinion piece).While the Experiment Report is very expansive and the official Press Conference do clear lots of misconceptions, it's difficult to find other serius analysis and reports (at least from my narrow POV).
Note: this does not mean that the whole excherise was not scripted or that Red forces had varing degrees or freedoom in wich they could operate, but it's improtant to realize that scripting of complex wargames and training simulation it's the norm in the army and law enforcment, as it can greatly improve training value and avoid degeneration of the excercise. Returning home on the first day of a 14 day exercise because everyone died due to glitches and faults in the simulation has no training value and it's overall a waste of money. 
Wargames like Millennium Challenge are not strictly designed to be won by Red or Blue forces by design. OPFOR (Reds) are meant to provide training value and challenges for Blue, and not to be an 1vs1 competitive envrioment (Pretty much in the same way your D&D master is not actively trying to kill you while playing, and the other way around). 
I do believe that the articles need restructuring and better context, and i'd like to read from other users regarding the issue. Titan hs 2 (talk) 14:06, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia favours secondary sources, this is to, among other things, avoid original research. I suspect a section on the official results followed by a section on its other reviews could get around this. I agree the page needs work and I think I agree with your general direction just be aware of WP:SYNTHESIS. We are just here to report what has been said, without personal analysis, even when it is wrong. Dushan Jugum (talk) 19:28, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I happened to revisit this page after checking through my past contribs, and I think I should respond to User:Titan hs 2 here on the matter of neutrality concerns.  Without making any judgments regarding errors and misconceptions (the article text itself is my sole source of familiarity with the topic) I don't think that the citations in your first section actually contradict.  If they intended and steered towards a Blueforce victory, an actual Redforce victory would be unanticipated but not contradictory.  Having the odds stacked against you doesn't make it impossible to win.  Your second point is justification for adding clarifying language, but that's not a neutrality issue.  For your third point, I think User:Dushan Jugum's warning against original research in favor of secondary sources is correct and important.  Published first-party sources like yours can be useful and valuable additions to the article, but we should generally avoid treating those as better than other reliable sources, as that would introduce justified neutrality concerns and other issues.  If information in the article is indeed wrong or misreported, then reliable secondary sources refuting it should be numerous and easy to find for us to give their due weight to.  --Tathar (talk) 02:00, 25 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Secondary sources, conflicting claims and lack of context