The Seat of Purpose is on Land (1)
Too many naval observers tend to view naval matters in
isolation, as purely ship-on-ship affairs.
The reality is that navies exist to support ground actions. Yes, they may do this, in part, by
ship-on-ship battles but the ultimate purpose of a navy is to influence and
support matters on land. Thus, the US
Navy in WWII found itself conducting a series of amphibious assaults in the Pacific
in order to support the overall strategy of seizing the LAND(S) of Japan.
Unfortunately, the land (islands) that needed to be seized was
held by Japanese forces that had had sufficient – often lengthy – periods of
time to build fortified defenses. Thus,
overwhelming force was needed to ensure victory against a dug in and fortified
defense. This brings us to that well
known axiom of attack which gives the advantage to the defenders by a margin of
3:1. This means that the attacker must
bring a numerical superiority in troops of 3:1 in order to ensure victory.
Attack is to Defense as 3 is to 1
Let’s look at the historical data for the Pacific campaign
and see how the numbers and troop attack:defense ratios compared in several of
the major defended assaults.
Date
|
US Troops
|
Japanese Troops
|
Attack:Defense
|
|
Tarawa
|
Nov 1943
|
18,000
|
4,800
|
3.75 : 1
|
Hollandia
|
Apr 1944
|
50,000
|
14,000
|
3.57 : 1
|
Saipan
|
Jun 1944
|
59,000
|
29,000
|
2.03 : 1
|
Guam
|
Jul 1944
|
36,000
|
22,000
|
1.64 : 1
|
Tinian
|
Jul 1944
|
41,000
|
8,000
|
5.12 : 1
|
Peleliu
|
Sep 1944
|
47,500
|
10,900
|
4.36 : 1
|
Philippines
|
Oct 1944
|
200,000
|
85,000
|
2.35 : 1
|
Iwo Jima
|
Feb 1945
|
110,000
|
21,000
|
5.24 : 1
|
Okinawa
|
Apr 1945
|
183,000
|
76,000
|
2.41 : 1
|
Indeed, we see that the attacking US forces did, generally,
have a 3:1 advantage although the ratios varied quite a bit. A further factor affecting the ratio is that
in an amphibious assault, there are other elements involved such as aircraft
and ships which may positively impact the attacker’s effective ratio (fire
support, bombardment, etc.) while not impacting the numerical ratio. In short, the attacker:defender ratio is a
useful concept but is affected by many factors beyond just troop counts. The takeaway from the ratios we see in the
table is that the attacking force did seem to recognize the necessity and/or
desirability of having a significant numerical advantage and this is the lesson
for us, today.
One also can’t help but be struck by the sheer numbers of
troops involved. We’ve come to believe
that war is something that is conducted by a squad or platoon on patrol and
that a major action might involve a company of a hundred or so troops. In stark contrast, amphibious assaults in
WWII involved multiple regiments, divisions, and even armies! Given that a single big deck LHA amphibious
ship can carry 1600 or so troops and other amphibious ship classes even less,
where are we going to get the transport capacity to move 50,000 – 200,000
assault troops for a single operation?
But, I digress …
The numbers of troops – and remember that this was repeated
for each assault! – suggest that we need to radically readjust our operational
thinking. When was the last time we
practiced an amphibious assault with more than a single ship, let alone the
twenty to ninety troop transports necessary for a serious assault? If we think we’re going to conduct major
amphibious assaults (a notion that ComNavOps does not agree with!), as the
Marines claim to be able to do, we need to begin practicing how to coordinate
that many ships, how to integrate them into a single operational plan, how to
simultaneously unload them without them getting in each other’s way, how to get
all those troops ashore (currently, we can only land a portion of the troops as
we are limited by AAV numbers – how will the rest get ashore?), how to get the troops
ashore quickly, how to move enough supplies (the logistics that are the heart
of any operation) to sustain an assault, and a thousand other aspects –
including fire support and, yes, I’m going to continue to bang that drum
because our doctrine calls for it, assumes we have it, and yet we have none.
On a broader level, this same 3:1 requirement applies to
land battles. I’m not as familiar with
Army matters but I know that for the last few decades we have stopped
exercising complete, large units. It’s
probably safe to say that there is no serving General who has commanded an
entire division in an exercise. The Army
has been leading the way among the services as far as refocusing on major war
but even they are still woefully behind the curve. Perhaps they’ve begun to exercise at brigade
and larger levels but, if so, I’m unaware of it. Regardless, the Navy and Marines are
absolutely not operating at these levels and they need to begin doing so,
immediately.
I touched on it, already, but these kinds of troop numbers
also point to a need to reinvigorate our logistic capability. How will we supply food, ammo, fuel, water,
and the thousand other items needed by 50,000 – 200,000 men in the field? How will we get that quantity of supplies to
the operational area? How will we
provide escort for the logistic ships?
How will we get the vast quantity of supplies ashore in a timely manner
given that we struggle to get enough supplies ashore during a minor
humanitarian assistance mission? How
will we get supplies ashore if we don’t have a secure port? And so on …
As I’ve stated in previous posts, it is not reasonable to
have all the equipment and capabilities to accomplish this on hand today. We didn’t have that capability at the start
of WWII, either. Those are the things
you build during the war. What is reasonable is to have designs
for cheap troopships ready to go, prototypes of effective landing craft (not
the nearly useless LCACs that we have) that are operational and working on
tactics, plans in hand for likely major assaults, fire support plans (you know,
for our non-existent fire support capability), etc.
Regarding exercises, no, I don’t expect us to perform an
amphibious exercise involving 50,000 – 200,000 troops (although the assault
fleets did exactly that prior to each assault!) but we should do at least a
yearly assault exercise involving, say, a complete Marine Expeditionary Brigade
(14,000 troops or so). What a cluster****
that would be but, at least, we’d know where the problems are and we could
begin addressing them now rather than waiting for our own Tarawa to find out
that we don’t know what we’re doing.
We need to wake up.
We need to remember that war involves massive numbers of
people and equipment.
We need to recognize that what we’re organized for and
training for, today, bears almost no resemblance to actual war.
We need to begin preparing for war … China is.
As a generic capacity, amphibious assault and port seizure are capabilities are useful to keep in your back pocket. Most of the human population lives within a hundred miles of the ocean. We need amphib's for every day use and the ability to expand for big war uses. Our every day amphib's are too expensive for the what we get out of them and I don't see expertise being made or maintained for war time use.
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with at least having designs and prototypes for landing craft, troopships, and all the other useful things we seem to lack, my concern is: do we have the ability to start large scale production of anything anymore?? Are there enough small/medium sized companies and facilities, available for a rapid wartime expansion? Is there even space for these companies to appear or expand to meet the demand? The famous Kaiser efforts here for example, couldnt be replicated for instance, because the waterfront space is mostly long gone. Urban sprawl and redevelopment absorbed it. The maritime capabilities here are, at best, a tiny fraction of what once was. I could be wrong, but Im assuming that is the case all over the country. I feel that, while landing craft and all the less-sexy yet useful items will further strain the mispriortized and wasteful budget,they need to be pursued NOW,as we will have to fight a war with whatever we have on day 1....
ReplyDelete"Are there enough small/medium sized companies and facilities, available for a rapid wartime expansion?"
DeleteThis is exactly the kind of not-sexy planning and preparation that needs to be conducted now, during peacetime. We need to study war production and see what facilities could be converted to war production and where are shortfalls are and figure out how to address those shortfalls.
This is the kind of work our so-called professional warriors should be doing instead of sensitivity training and building $8B+ Zumwalts with no main weapon. Sadly, this kind of work seems to be beneath our professional warriors and, to the best of my knowledge, is being ignored. I'd love to be proven wrong!
I used to work at a family owned shipyard in Norfolk Virginia. We were visited a couple of times by Navy civilians that were going through all the shipyards in the Hampton Roads area and determining their capabilities and capacities for repair and, I imagine, construction. I can only assume that they were doing this everywhere.
DeleteThank-You for being the voice of reason.
ReplyDeleteThe politicians, military and otherwise, Will get a rude awakening just before the shooting starts and they find out how few ships and aircraft are functional and how long, or briefly, disposable supplies will last once the shooting starts. I may be wrong, but isn't the last successful ship design the Arleigh Burkes from more than 30 years ago? Possibly the Amphibs, but doctorine makes them unusable.
We don't have a modern Navy, we have some new construction on old designs but entire classes of ships have been retired without any replacements. The Ford's are never going to be fully functional, yet we continue to build them.
The lack of a strategic plan drives incongruity of ship design and doctorine, i.e. amphibious assault ships with no way to get troupes and equipment ashore. Without a long term plan, accurate assessments of inventories and capabilities and future needs of equipment will be impossible. I can't see the current Navy leadership changing course in the near future. As you have said, we need new leadership in the Navy, people who are not afraid to endorse a strategy and course of action to meet that strategy.
Until that happens we are stumbling in the dark. The Lewis and Clark expedition, not surprisingly, had daily issues to overcome. Clark wrote in his journal of one such problem, "...having become lost, we redoubled our efforts." The Navy seems to be lost and hopes it will somehow go quickly in the right direction. Relying on random chance seems like a losing strategy, to me.
Ship construction facilities, at least small ship construction like minesweepers and landing craft, should be based on both coasts. Start new ship designs and build a few prototypes to test the designs. Having all construction in one area invites attack. Spreading out manufacturing and warehousing will eliminate the single point failure that currently exists.
If you don't think the Navy is going to conduct large-scale amphibious assaults, and the Navy doesn't either, why continue to post about it?
ReplyDeleteI post about it because the Marines claim it as a core competency and I've never heard the Navy say they don't think they'll do amphibious assaults. Heck, they keep building big deck amphibious ships at several billion dollars each!
DeleteAs long as they claim the capability, I'll analyze it.
"What is reasonable is to have designs for cheap troopships ready to go, prototypes of effective landing craft.... "
ReplyDeleteI glad I read that part.
What I think would be required would sitting down with industry and seeing what they can reasonably produce quickly and accept it might not be first best choice in a perfect world with no real budget or time limits and all the bells a whistles.
I'm struck here by Ford backing out of bidding for whatever the Army is calling its new Hummer replacement. The ideal was good but the Army demanded so much specialty requirements it amounted to needing a new plant and not leveraging existing capacity.
You can however build a fairly decent F-250 based vehicle if you scale back expectations as Israel does with the Plasan sand cat. It would be nice to see if the Pentagon has paid to see if such a more simple jeep (err light fighting vehicle – whatever) could be implemented and in what time scale. I would think you would need to do the same in approaching smaller ship builders. Can you find a design that is perhaps not the most perfect but don't make that be the enemy of the good in order to work out something that they can shift to make quickly and efficiently.
I bring this up because if you are planning for a high intensity war with say China, I think it is not unreasonable to expect both sides will quickly loose a lot of their ships and gear - the expensive stuff that neither side can knock out with rapidity.. The war might be won or lost on not having the best stuff but having a lot of good enough stuff.
A corollary I would also like to see a lot more spending on maintaining and estimating what can be pulled out the bone yards and how fast and what spare parts would need manufacture out of the blue.
Also I will believe any service is really taking large scale war seriously when I see a decision to not build say a LCS so has to upgrade existing stockpiles of munitions.
One last thought I still think China's planning for a major war is overstated a bit by over consuming the State reporting on it. There are cracks there. Corruption in promotion is apparently still common and perhaps pervasive by some reports. The rabid edge of state media and some political leaders are apparently a lot more upbeat about their ability to invade Taiwan than the Military.
That being said it is clear the endless global war on Terror has warped the US services in how they train and for what and has indeed have put planning for a large war on the back burner (and thinking about what fighting a peer means *). But I'm not sure I would make upgrading the landing marines my first priority. I would say allowing size and flexibility of air wings to shrink (CV ones), the atrophy across all services (but I'm looking at you US army and USMC) air defense and planing for a day with no air superiority. Erratic cyber defense and no plan to massively draft the best civilians (pre-vetted) on day one. And lets not get into lack of focus on ASW and mine warfare defense or offense... The mine warfare and ASW can't be ignored they have to be first it you are ever going to land troops anyway.
Oh and on this one
“How will we provide escort for the logistic ships?”
Didn’t the USN just recently admit they had no plan for that?
* the classic example I have seen tossed about is how we were so sure our heavy bombers would not need a fighter escort for daylight attacks before WW2.
Kath, this is a huge problem. A lot of the dysfunction comes from the military ignoring their obligations. MIC etc etc running the show instead.
DeleteThat said, I don't know if you've looked at where the US ranks in the world for machine tool manufacturing, and where we are in traning skilled trades to run the design and manufacture in todays CAD/CAM Solids Modelling world. From my research the news does not appear to be good. We better hope Japan and Germany stay as functional allies as I think we are going to need them to rebuild the manufacturing base. And that is not going to be an instant process.
I think the point you made about gaining a truly deep understanding about resurrection requirements to get "stuff" out of the boneyards and back in the fight is highly pertinent. And we desperately need to figure out how to turn that into a reality.
"MIC etc running the show instead."
DeleteTo some degree, yes, but we should be wary of falling into the trap of blaming the easy target. The MIC is not setting our training programs. They're not determining our strategy, operations planning, and tactics. They're not spec'ing useless assets (LCS wasn't spec'ed by MIC, it was spec'ed by professional Navy personnel - the MIC went ahead and happily built a flawed ship but they didn't initiate it or spec it.). And so on. The blame starts and ends with the Navy leadership. Yes, MIC is a pervasive problem but it's a peripheral one. The core problem is blatantly incompetent Navy leadership.
" I think it is not unreasonable to expect both sides will quickly loose a lot of their ships and gear - the expensive stuff that neither side can knock out with rapidity.. The war might be won or lost on not having the best stuff but having a lot of good enough stuff."
DeleteI agree. The problem is that the US tends to trash their retired assets whereas China keeps theirs. Case in point, we have no ready reserve fleet. Our reserve fleet is at the bottom of the ocean (Spruances) or in other countries (Perrys) or in razor blades or just sitting, rotting, waiting to be scrapped.
@George
DeleteSkilled trades is an area the US has persistently failed to sustain. To be like like Germany requires a willingness to a lot more integration of government industry and organized labor and sustained funding than the US has been willing to do recently (say past couple decades).
I think you have a good point - it is needed. I disagree with CNO that a hot war with China is immediate and close, its certainly more possible now. What I see is a sustained cold war one that also sees Russia largely preferring to side with China (unless there is some dramatic break in the Putin system). I don't see China favoring war as much has being an equal to the the US and carving out a China sphere of economic and political ideals/institutions/alliances comparable to the one the US and Europe established after WW2. An Ill-Liberal sphere if you will.
That is sans a blow up over Taiwan a long term battle. And I think we seriously need to not always see things as a military fight and prioritize the Pentagon. Higher education, research, Infrastructure, Cyber warfare/IT security/programming all need to put back to the real spending levels we had back in the 60s. We need to seriously look at areas where China has monopolies and try and avoid being on the wrong end of those.
Not say gut the Pentagon, but don't loose sight of the long game by just spending on it.
"don't loose sight of the long game"
DeleteI don't see war with China as being "immediate and close". Why would China want to go to war now? They're getting everything they want without war! We're appeasing them. What I've said is that war is inevitable, not immediate and close. Feel free to cite me but do so accurately!
Regarding the long game, China plays the long game. They're using every aspect of their civilization to fight us: economic, financial, intellectual property, trade, military, foreign investment, foreign relations, etc. We need to engage in the same long game and direct our resources to defeating them. Properly done, that holds some small hope of avoiding the inevitable war but I don't see us doing that so we're back to inevitable. Of course, China could totally collapse, as the Soviet Union did, but I don't see that happening, either. So, again, war is inevitable.
Sorry if you think I mischaracterized you that was not my intent. I guess I not so sure on the inevitability of a hot direct war vs some kind of proxy situation(s). I would bet against waiting China out it still has a lot systemic issues some of which like its now rapidly aging population and lack of cheap young labor its not seeming planning for well.
DeleteI do think we have to consider how we deal with China. Right now its a muddle. We were after the cold war, the world is flat, end of history, China in the WTO fast, were making one bet and it seems reasonable to say it failed.
"Yes, MIC is a pervasive problem but it's a peripheral one. The core problem is blatantly incompetent Navy leadership."
DeleteNavy leadership knows exactly what side of the bread it's butter is on. Someone has a chat during a golf game. "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you had some LCSs for all these low intensity wars? We've gamed this out some and came up with a rough design you might like. Want to have a look?"
And thus the LCS was born. And because the Navy brass want to become industry brass that doesn't even require coming to work, they listen very, very carefully. That unholy alliance between the Navy, industry and the political apparatus that needs increasing amounts of money to get elected is very unhealthy for the country.
As usual, its follow the money. Navy leadership isn't necessarily stupid. I suspect reality is much worse...
"What I see is a sustained cold war one that also sees Russia largely preferring to side with China (unless there is some dramatic break in the Putin system). I don't see China favoring war as much has being an equal to the the US and carving out a China sphere of economic and political ideals/institutions/alliances comparable to the one the US and Europe established after WW2. An Ill-Liberal sphere if you will. "
I agree with you here. I suspect one of the reasons China is pushing AI and similar development so hard is they are well aware of the demographic problems bearing down on them.
One of the big problems in the West is what to do with the hordes of people that AI is going to make redundant in a services-based economy.
Arguably, China might actually be better placed to deal with that issue. Time will tell.
"We've gamed this out some and came up with a rough design you might like. Want to have a look?"
DeleteAnd thus the LCS was born."
I know it's appealing to believe that but it's just not true. The LCS was born out of Navy wargames and a desire to find a compelling budget justification during a period when the Navy was in danger of budget cuts due to lack of a perceived threat. Thus, "littoral" was born as a vague threat that required a specialized ship. Take a look at this post:
"LCS - Conceptual Origin"
and,
"Littoral Warfare"
The LCS was the Navy's child, 100%. Compounding that fraudulent concept and poor design requirements, was the selection of two builders who had never built warships before and so, yes, they made mistakes and produced poor ship designs but the requirements were all Navy.
"Skilled trades is an area the US has persistently failed to sustain. To be like like Germany requires a willingness to a lot more integration of government industry and organized labor and sustained funding than the US has been willing to do recently (say past couple decades)."
DeleteEven if we had the shipyards, the lack of skilled tradesmen would cripple the industry. In Hampton Roads RIGHT NOW a welder can walk into a job at any shipyard on the water front making $25 an hour starting wage. And that is the bottom of the pay scale. The issue is, the number of people that want to do those jobs is not there. "Its Hot, Its Dirty" is the battle cry of young people when faced with learning the trade or working for $8.50 an hour at McD's or Starbucks.
An addendum to the long game and related to you earlier point about expelling Chinese students (presumably mostly grad students... You might find this interesting (from the Atlantic):
Deletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/07/chinas-influence-efforts-germany-students/593689/
It does push back on my brain drain argument. If the new china is sufficiently able to deliver a wealthy life style, and it citizens by and large are OK the political repression than my argument does indeed not look so good.
Interesting article. Thanks for the link!
Delete"On a broader level, this same 3:1 requirement applies to land battles. I’m not as familiar with Army matters but I know that for the last few decades we have stopped exercising complete, large units. It’s probably safe to say that there is no serving General who has commanded an entire division in an exercise."
ReplyDeleteAbout 15 years ago, the Army started its transition from a division-based army to a brigade-based army, with each Brigade Combat Team (BCT) being a self-contained, deployable unit. The Army retained the division headquarters and, like the BCT, it too is a self-contained, deployable unit capable of commanding multiple BCTs.
Given our recent combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of troops served, I would submit that we have plenty of experienced officers and NCOs (the backbone of any military), at all levels of command, available today should another war break out. Hopefully, these leaders will pass down their experiences and lessons learned to future generations.
As for large-scale exercises, NATO's Trident Junction 2018 was its largest exercise since 2015 with involving some 40,000 troops, 150 aircraft, and 70 ships. The Marines made up the largest segment for the participating US forces.
The Army does conduct large-scale, division level training exercises with CONUS based units. Exercise Warfighter 19-2, conducted last November, included the 1st Armored Division, 3rd Infantry Division, the 82nd Airborne, plus some Army Reserve and Special Forces units.
And, while not a division-level exercise per se, but to its credit, the Army conducted an unannounced simulated cyber attack this past April by shutting off power to Ft. Bragg, the home for some 50,000 troops, for 12 hours to "determine the readiness and resiliency of the installation in a real-world scenario."
"Given our recent combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of troops served, I would submit that we have plenty of experienced officers"
DeleteExperienced in small scale patrols, peacekeeping, and minor engagements … yes. Experienced at commanding in combat an entire brigade/division … no.
What serving officer has commanded an entire armored division in combat, real or realistic exercise? No one, to the best of my knowledge.
Simply being an officer in a region where lots of troops are congregated is not even remotely the same as commanding a combat-coherent large unit.
"NATO's Trident Junction 2018 was its largest exercise since 2015 with involving some 40,000 troops, 150 aircraft, and 70 ships. The Marines made up the largest segment for the participating US forces."
And the Marine's contribution was minor. TJ2018 was primarily a northern NATO exercise. For example, the Marine's 24th MEU conducted an 'amphibious assault' by landing 11 AAVs and 6 LAVs - hardly an amphibious assault. The main Marine participation seems to have been cold weather gear familiarization and acclimation - useful, for sure, but hardly the kind of offensive exercise we need.
"The Army does conduct large-scale, division level training exercises with CONUS based units. Exercise Warfighter 19-2,"
This is not a naval exercise and the Army is more advanced than the other services in large scale training but, even so, this exercise did not involve the total division operating in one location, as I understand it. The various sub-units were scattered across multiple training sites. Further, it sounds like most of the training was component level training, meaning that a small unit would practice some particular aspect (setting up comms, a live fire, etc.) as opposed to the entire brigade/division maneuvering to achieve an objective.
Here's a quote from an article about it:
"The most daunting task during Warfighter was the movement of the division's main command post, …"
Moving a command post is a good exercise, in itself, but it is not a division level combat exercise - it's just a minor component.
So, good for the Army but they're still a long way from actual brigade/division combat exercises. I've love to be proven wrong about this!
"Given our recent combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of troops served, I would submit that we have plenty of experienced officers and NCOs (the backbone of any military), at all levels of command, available today should another war break out. "
DeleteSadly most of what they learnt is likely irrelevant if not downright counter productive.
Do you think in a real war 5* generals are going to sign off on every 81mm shell fired?
Realistically, the first thing a Russian Lt will do when he sees an American is call in artillery.
Things will go very bad if the first things Americans do is close ranks and set up a perimeter.
"Given our recent combat experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thousands of troops served, I would submit that we have plenty of experienced officers and NCOs (the backbone of any military), at all levels of command, available today should another war break out."
DeleteAs this is a Navy blog, let's redirect this back to the Marines. To the pretty sure, best of my knowledge, the largest amphibious exercise ever attempted that any serving officer would have been involved in, is a partial MEU. That's right, not even an entire MEU. In fact, I'm not even aware of a MEU exercise that ever involved more than one amphibious ship - if true, that means that the maximum amphibious exercise has been 1/3 of a MEU or a few hundred or so troops.
Looking at the types of troop numbers cited in the post, where are we going to find a Marine officer who knows how to organize, plan for, and command 40,000+ troops? Do we really want some clueless officer trying to learn large scale assaults on the fly during a live war? That's how lots of people get killed. We need to conduct very large exercises.
There's no location for the Army to train at a division level. Even NTC doesn't have the operational maneuver room, nor the infrastructure to bring in or support a division. Relatively easy with a sufficient budget, but I doubt the political will is present at either the local or federal level.
ReplyDeleteI have a few problems with this.
DeleteWhere do our brigade commanders come from and how do they get brigade operational command experience?
Is a brigade really a large enough unit for self-sustained, all-out war combat capability? Our WWII experience would suggest a resounding, NO! We found that combat required larger units such as divisions/corps/armies even to fight a small country like Germany or Japan. What will happen when we fight China?!
Do we really want our brigade/division/corps/army commanders to be learning on the fly during a real war? If not, we'd better figure out how to get them the operational experience they need to maneuver and fight large units in a productive, effective manner.
The same holds true for the Navy. There is not a serving admiral who has commanded a 4-carrier group in combat exercises. They'll be learning on the fly and that's a good way to lose carrier groups.
It would be nice to have the casualties listed in your chart. Of course the terrain and time to prepare defenses matters greatly. Urban warfare is hell, and odd places like Iwo Jima. Many people assume that a tactical victory equals a strategic one. For example, some think the Japanese won a strategic victory at Iwo Jima, as this short documentary explains.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b9wUAtDrvQ
"It would be nice to have the casualties listed in your chart."
DeleteWhat would that tell us?
And while the US has about 2,5 times the population of Japan, China has about 4,4 times the population of the US.
ReplyDeleteAchieving a 3:1 advantage on any one place the chinese really will want to defend could be a bit difficult.
You raise a very interesting point that has many aspects to it.
DeleteFor example, some of the areas of interest are just too small to fit many defenders (or attackers!) on. Many (most?) of the numerous islands (real and artificial) in the South China Sea are just too small to fit much in the way of a defense force.
Defending EVERY area of interest with a vast overkill of numbers of troops means that troop numbers will be diminished everywhere. Of course, if strategy dictates certain obvious areas of interest (and it usually does) then those can be concentrated and built up.
Dense concentrations of defending troops also means dense concentrations of targets! An attacker would love to see soldiers standing, packed, shoulder to shoulder - what a wonderful target! So, there is a tactically useful concentration of troops beyond which they become unproductive or counterproductive. Of course, a reasonable concentration of defenders backed up by a 'limitless' source of reinforcement and attrition replacement would be helpful for the defenders but, again, the reinforcement effort (troop transports of some sort) also makes for desirable targets.
Dense concentrations of defending troops also present the opportunity to surround and isolate them. Large numbers of troops in such a situation will quickly burn through food, water, ammo, etc. and render themselves combat ineffective. Of course, that assumes that an isolation can be achieved!
And so on. The point is that counting the population and assuming massive numerical superiority is simplistic and not necessarily operationally relevant or useful. It can be but it depends on a lot of factors.
Finally, the attacker has the advantage of being able to choose where and when to commit.
In the short run the Navy or the USMC should be considering bidding on all the US Army Reserve landing ships(the entire army reserve fleet- 3 heavy landing craft,18 LCU's) they are auctioning off right now.
ReplyDeletehttps://maritime-executive.com/article/u-s-army-begins-auctioning-off-maritime-assets