posted
When you can land a C-5 Galaxy with an M-1 Main Battle Tank, a B-1 Bomber, and a KC-135R Tanker on a carrier deck then you won't need the Air Force.....
The Navy and the Marine Corps like their carriers, can't blame them, they can move, airbases can't, they can sit and get hit though.
These days it is, usually, unimportant too distinguish between branches, since they all work together as a matter of nessecity. Except for the Army/Marine Corps thing.... Marines really hate to be called Naval Infantry.......
Strategic strikes with B-2's can happen against any country, easily, so that should be the first strike, unless you want to make a statement, then Tomahawks fired off of cruisers/destroyers/submarines will do that. We can fly up the Gulf and over Kuwait, since we can fly out of Kuwait to strike Iraq right now.... Same for Turkey.
Re-enforcing the brigade stationed in Kuwait would be nessecary, several Corps could be placed there, if the Navy can protect them in the Gulf. This would also be a job, in the air, for the Air Force.
All the SL-7s, fast sealift ships, would need to transport what they can. Heavy armor and their supporting trucks.
Also the MPPS, Maritime Pre-Postioning Ships, which carry most of what you need to take over a country the size of Kuwait (sustained combat opertions for 30 days) are also stationed at Diego, along with a couple of boat loads of equipment.
It would have to work like it did for Operations Shield/Storm, depending on what treaties have come about since then......
And if there are no treaties worth a crap you can also use money, Most Favored Nation status, increased military aide, lowered tariffs, etc. to gain cooperation from who we need.....
Turkey may have to decide between the lesser of two evils, Say Damns NBC weapons or letting us help the Kurds... Which they have already, letting us fly aid out of our NATO sanctioned airbases and air drop it on the Kurds....
The military aspect is usually easy to plan and accomplish, compared to the political aspect....
Dang, this frisky keyboard stuff is catchy......
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
The problem with sealift is that you need a harbor to offload any serious hardware. The Navy or the Marines don't have anything that could sail all the way to the shore and disgorge large numbers of vehicles directly (and they don't want that - they got rid of the Newports and they are not going back). AFAIK, they don't have anything like the WWII portable harbors, either.
What they have is the ability to do a semi-standoffish delivery of a couple of "reinforced batallions" to an essentially pre-secured (read: carefully bombed) beach.
So the trick is in establishing an area where the main forces can offload safely, and Saudi and Kuwaiti unco-operation would mean that area would have to be in Iraq. Meaning that a non-superior US force would have to hold a beachhead until it could be reinforced into a superior one. I think that means a bloody fight, or the risk thereof.
Surely that's doable, but it's bloodier than anything the US has done for a while. The air superiority would have to be even more absolute than in 1991 to minimize the risks on sealift, let alone airlift. And there's no chance of making it a surprise attack now.
A special forces strike against Saddam himself might do the same as a full-scale invasion. If only such strikes worked in reality as nicely as they do in the books.
posted
We should have just nuked Iraq in 1991 when we had the chance. Any countries that tried to fill in Iraq's place, we could have bombed them. Put the fear of Allah into all of those countries over there. That would've made all those countries over there stop fighting.
-------------------- Fry- How will we get out of this? George Takei's head- Maybe we can use some kind of auto-destruct code like one-A, two-B, three-C... (Bender's head blows up) Bender- Now everybody knows! -Futurama's obligatory Star Trek episode
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
From what I heard at the time, there was a possibility of our using a nuclear device on Baghdad, but only if Saddam had launched an all-out chem/bio attack on the coalition troops.
Because if you nuke Baghdad, you lose thousands of years of precious archaeological artifacts, sculptures, art, and whatever else Saddam's hoarded there. Plus you probably don't get Saddam, and you give the Left something new to complain about you having done.
No, we shold not have nuked Iraq. We should have fully committed, invaded, captured him, whacked his supporteres, set up a pro-West government, and rebuilt the country according to our terms, but we shouldn't have nuked them.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I know what you're saying. I thought I had added 'would have blown up a lot of people who weren't soldiers, and the hostages, if there were any left by that point.' Must have lost that in the 'refresh.'
Still, might have killed less people that way than the sanctions are supposed to have killed.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Yes. If you're going to declare war on a country (or go to war with them -- there is a difference), then one objective should be certainly be to get the leaders of your objective.
Of course, in the past, the American people haven't always liked the losses incurred (Somalia, anyone)?
posted
You'd be suprised how much crap from WW2 is still around....
Now they've got LCAC, Landing Craft Air Cushioned, good for over the horizon landings. Plus there is stll a few LSTs, Landing Ship Tank, around, which carry pontoon bridges as portable harbours.
We have it, it is old, but would still work in a 'limited' war or regional conflict, depending on terminology....
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Then again, every conflict since WWII has been limited in scope and nature the casualties then depend on the cause and the objective.
Somolia was perhaps a good cause, but with an ill-defined objective, bad things happened.
-------------------- Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war. ~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine. ~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently. ~C. Montgomery Burns
Registered: Mar 1999
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