In the videogame Arma II during its campaign Harvest Red. You are a force reconnaissance team trapped behind enemy lines as the Russians invade the fictional country of Chernarus. Throughout the course of the game you wage a guerrilla war against the Russians alongside factions such as NAPA. By the end of the game it is said that the involvement and direct conflict between US and Russian forces were denied by both sides as they both saw it to be best for international relations and to maintain the international "peace".
In the videogame Operation Flashpoint: Red River, a similar situation occurs within the country of Tajikistan between US forces and Chinese forces as they wage battle after battle against one another. That too is heavily implied that what actually happened was downplayed by both sides to avoid international fallout.
My question for PrepHole is, how likely/common is this scenario? Where military units of apposing nations fight one another despite being in situations where the official account is that they are to never engage one another? Is there some sort of unwritten rule that is followed by countries where military operations, most likely involving special forces, happen between two entities such as the US and the Soviet Union for example, you just kind of sweep it under the rug? Are there secret wars that are fought or have been fought that are similar to the fictional stories of Harvest red in Arma II and the story in OFP: RR?
>battle after battle
So we'te talking what? Four to six Navy SEAL autobiographies published before the conflict is even over,
It was an entire USMC MEU going up against regular PLA ground forces in the country of Tajikistan, a country north of Afghanistan.
It's impossible to simply cover up something of that scale so I wonder what exactly is meant by "downplayed" here
Especially since you seem to be saying these are the actual militaries of each country fighting each other and not mercs with a suHispanicious number of guys who just left the marines, you get the point
Things on that scale are, at least as far as I know, extremely rare
There was a hilarious case in the Korean War where China invented a new army that wasn't the PLA and transferred almost the entire PLA over to that so that technically it was NOT the PLA that was fighting Americans but this super special new force meaning that China didn't declare war on the US et al.
There's some sort of acceptance now that nobody formally declares war on anybody any more but in Asia this tradition is a little older than everywhere else, for example China did not formally declare war on Japan despite millions of people fucking dying until Pearl Harbour because it would affect what the US was allowed to send them
Is this where the future of warfare is heading? more of a regression more than anything.
>China invented a new army that wasn't the PLA and transferred almost the entire PLA over to that so that technically it was NOT the PLA that was fighting Americans but this super special new force meaning that China didn't declare war on the US et al
Essentially revert back to the concept of having a nations "regulars" and then supplement it with paramilitary/corporate (East India Trading Company) or mercenary entities so that you can fight wars without "fighting in the war".
>an entire MEU fights PLA with hundreds of deaths and the world doesn't know
>in reality 13 troops die at Kabul and it is known to the entire nation within half an hour
Further to add on this to a spec ops "clandestine" capacity look how quickly the world found out about the Tongo Tongo ambush with only 3 fatalities in a country really few Americans even knew we were deployed into.
Meanwhile you think that 2000 troops can deploy and face considerable losses and remain hidden?
We're not knocking out cell towers for one. If we did, information would be much more difficult to spread.
> if you want reasonable scale peer conflict that doesn't involve nukes
There is the idea that as long as either side of the conflict is not facing an existential risk i.e. US and PLA forces face off in some central African shithole for cobalt rights, then you could have a potential peer fight without nukes becoming a factor.
If one of the democracies is involved, they can't stomach the deaths and move on as if nothing happened. No way no how.
It's bullshit, yes, but you have to write bullshit if you want reasonable scale peer conflict that doesn't involve nukes. No way around it.
Well the vietnamese pilots certainly weren’t all vietnamese…
Even then everyone knew they were there. The fiction was that they were volunteers rather than active duty
>trapped behind enemy lines as the Russians invade the fictional country of Chernarus. Throughout the course of the game you wage a guerrilla war against the Russians alongside factions such as NAPA
I've not played this in years so correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the main enemies of Harvest Red insurgents backed by the Russians rather than the Russian military itself? (aside from a squad or two of spetsnaz I vaguely recall encountering towards the end that had been advising them or whatever)
If I remember correctly their ultimate goal was to stir up as much trouble as possible so they could justify sending their own military in for "peacekeeping" and stage a soft annexation of Chernarus
The ChDKZ are the insurgents you're talking about, but early on in the campaign, the USMC is forced to leave the area and Razor team are left behind, at which time the Russians send in a "peacekeeping" force. So the rest of the game you're fighting both ChDKZ and Russians.
That explains it then; my bad
Towards the end the actual russian military shows up and the US military pulls out, the protagonist and his team stay behind as deniable assets assistings the local guerillas against the russians
I suppose it'd be something like the Sino-Soviet border wars, or the Sino-Indian ones before they confiscated guns from everyone on the border so they wouldn't keep escalating.
>My question for PrepHole is, how likely/common is this scenario?
Western spooks and special forces in Afghanistan during the 80s anon, also Chicom and Soviet "advisors" in Vietnam
Probably a whole bunch of other examples as well
Its unlikely because even a moron in africa have some kind of camera strapped on his phone and can document the "non"-ongoing conflict.
>how likely/common is this scenario?
unclear. likelihood seems to roughly track the relative power of security services' paramilitary elements vs. conventional armed forces. that is: when spy agencies and their death squads are the first thought for solving problems, these weird dodgy malaka conflicts seem to be correspondingly likelier to arise.
>Where military units of apposing nations fight one another despite being in situations where the official account is that they are to never engage one another?
to what end? ever since NOOOKs, the implications of total war have been too sobering for open shooting conflict between top-tier militaries to be commonplace. sometime during the cold war, it finally sublimated into the military consciousness that yes, a manoeuvre-kill via espionage or other non-shooty means is still a kill. culturally, top militaries coming to grips with the concept of a force-continuum changed the tenor of great power competition. but the rise of ideological terrorism displaced resources away from great power competition too.
modern SOF in the sense of SMUs arose mostly from the latter. days of rage, german autumn, etc. the rise of islamist terrorism following the end of nato/ussr conflict made the gwot a natural, if idiotic, postscript to the cold war.
but: why do we know which Dude Wipes every seal endorses, while we still know nothing about what delta does? arguably, levels of operational secrecy correlate with Eliteness, but this seems far less likely to me than the possibility that there are still some ops so dirty that nations want them never to get out. would these be shooting-war battles with geopolitical rivals? idk. probably not.
>Is there some sort of unwritten rule […]?
cold war era spooks have suggested as much. but often the norms were unilateral. for instance, google "moscow rules" for american tradecraft limitations in russia.