Today, with the threat of China and the need to wage a war
thousands of miles from the US mainland or any substantial US base, the
challenge of reinforcing and resupplying Pacific forces exists. The parallel between this Pacific resupply
effort and the earlier REFORGER seems obvious.
If anything, the Pacific resupply is a much bigger challenge
than REFORGER.
Distance is one significant difference. The REFORGER distance from, say, New York to
Le Havre (France) is 3,520 miles. By
comparison, the distance from, say, San Diego to Guam is 6,183 miles. Thus, a Pacific REFORGER has to travel around
2,500 more miles than the original REFORGER.
Another difference is that convoys from the US to Europe had
the entire continent to land at and had the support of multiple countries when
they arrived. The actual destination was
well known. A Pacific REFORGER will have
very limited choices of landing locations and, currently, we don’t even know
exactly where would need to provide resupply (will Guam even be functional
after the start of a war?). This makes
pre-planning difficult, to say the least.
Despite the difficulty, we absolutely need to come to grips
with the need for a Pacific REFORGER and begin planning and practicing for
it. The recent US Transportation Command
logistics surge exercise was an eye opening disappointment and should serve to
drive home the need for annual large scale resupply exercises to the Pacific.
On a closely related note, the US is planning to conduct a
modern version of European resupply with Exercise Defender-Europe 20. As explained on the US Army Europe website,
Exercise
DEFENDER-Europe 20 is the deployment of a division-size combat-credible force
from the United States to Europe, the drawing of equipment and the movement of
personnel and equipment across the theater to various training areas.
U.S.-based
equipment will leave from ports in four states and arrive in six European
countries. This will require the support of tens of thousands of service
members and civilians in multiple nations.
DEFENDER-Europe
20 is the largest deployment of U.S.-based forces to Europe for an
exercise in the more than 25 years. (1)
From the Defender-Europe 20 Fact Sheet: (1)
- 20,000 U.S. service members from the continental U.S. deploying to Europe
- 13,000 pieces of equipment drawn from the Army Prepositioned Stock
- 9,000 U.S. service members based in Europe participating
- 7,000 Army National Guard Soldiers from 12 states
- 4,000 km traveled across 12 convoy routes
- 750 U.S. Army Reserve Soldiers participating
Interestingly, the Army also plans to conduct what appears
to be a greatly scaled down version of Defender-Europe 20 for the Pacific, Defender–Pacific
20. (2)
…
U.S. Army … is aiming to practice rapid deployment from the continental United
States to the Pacific.
The
plan is to bring over a division headquarters and several brigades over the
course of a 30- to 45-day period along with their enablers … (2)
The time period is extended and there is no mention of any
large scale movement of equipment. There
is also no suggestion that the movement would be conducted via convoys as would
occur in a real war. The wording hints
that the movement would be a ‘peacetime’ transportation exercise using leased
commercial flights although this remains to be seen.
As we noted, a resupply effort for the Pacific has the
paramount question of where to send the supplies. The Army has this to say on the subject,
The
exercise will consist of many things the Army has not practiced at such a large
scale, Brown [Gen. Robert Brown, the commander of U.S. Army Pacific] said.
Forces will be in countries like the Philippines and Thailand, and they will likely
work with other countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. (2)
The problem with this is the obvious question of whether
practicing delivering and dispersing forces throughout the region is really
reflective of a what a realistic strategy would be. A very good argument could be made that doing
so would simply be setting forces up for isolation and defeat in detail. It is also quite debatable whether any of the
proffered sites would actually be politically available to the US in a war with
China. It is quite possible (maybe even
likely) that the mentioned countries would attempt to remain neutral in a war
and would refuse to allow US use of their territory. That being the case, why would we practice
something that might not (likely would not) be possible in a real war?
While the difficulties are obvious (choosing deliver sites,
for example), we should embrace the challenge and begin planning and exercising
realistic wartime resupply movements.
These exercises should include convoy defense against subs, aircraft, missiles,
and surface ships as well as convoy defense at the delivery sites as they may
well be in range of enemy attack.
We have got to start losing our peacetime mentality and
begin embracing full scale, peer war. As
we’ve noted several times in past posts, it is discouraging that the Army is
the only service that seems to be starting to face up to the prospect of peer
war. There is much work to do to prepare
for possible war with China and the Navy is far behind the curve. The Navy needs to wake up and get ready.
The ideal location is Taiwan. We have to deliver 100 M1A2T tanks, 14 M-88A2 tank recovery vehicles, 16 M-1070A1 heavy equipment transporters and 250 Stinger missiles anyway. Let's do it with style.
ReplyDeleteI pretty sure Taiwan would not be receptive to a gesture that massively provoke China. Chiang Kai-shek left Taiwan in a difficult situation he should have declared his island refuge independent back in the 50s or 60s. (the US really should have disabused him of his fantasies of invasion) Now democratic Taiwan is stuck with a really tricky situation, I am pretty sure that if it would not trigger a war Taiwan would declare independence but it sorta can't now and the US no longer in a position to easily defend it.
DeleteTaiwan is it. From China's pov, it's a weakest link of chain. From US pov, it can be a redoubt that breaks the Chinese tide (like Hougoumont or La Haye Saints at Waterloo.) The most recent Taiwan presidential election soundly rejected the pro-China candidate so the sentiment is there to keep Taiwan free and democratic.
DeleteNow, instead of Pacific Reforger (large quantity in short period), perhaps Pacific Osmosis (small quantity in long period) would work better in the case of Taiwan.
For the Pacific exercise, it's reasonable to hold a first exercise on a small scale to find out what works in action: which ports turn out to need improving in non-obvious ways, which countries get nervous when they have US troops there, and so on. Such exercises will need scaling up if war becomes an imminent threat, of course.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the question of which countries feel threatened by China. In Western Europe, that question was very simple and so was the subsequent alliance-building. But politicians in East Asia may well feel very nervous that if they ally with the US and annoy China, they may be left twisting in the wind when US policy changes. Like it or not, Chinese policy has been consistent for decades, and American has not.
Exactly. My guy feeling is some of these countrues are more concerned with USA politics and direction than China....if they dont want to fight China and it's there backward, why are we fighting China with no local allies?!?
Delete"Such exercises will need scaling up if war becomes an imminent threat, of course."
DeleteIf war becomes imminent, there won't be time to scale up exercises and get anything of value from them. It takes 5-10 years, minimum, to alter our force structure and equipment so any lessons derived from a scaled up exercise with war imminent would be useless.
We have to conduct major exercise ALL THE TIME, whether war seems imminent or not.
Well,at least one service is trying, sort of. Agree that we should try to come up with a better location or at least a more appropriate location to where we think these forces will be needed. Thailand is all nice but do we really need to put an army division there? It could be a crawl,walk,run exercise so Thailand could be a good start but we should be seriously looking at REAL war locations for next exercises. Guam seems pointless if we think we lose it in the 24 hours. If Japan, SK, Indonesia,etc all stay out of US-China conflict, not only do you wonder where we are transporting aterial and troops and hitting the beach BUT a more fundamental question should be asked: what the heck are we there in first place?!? If they dont want to help US against China, why are we fighting for? If they have no problem with China, what WE are doing there?
ReplyDelete"If they have no problem with China, what WE are doing there?"
DeleteI don't know if, by 'there', you mean those specific countries or the region, in general. For the region, the answer is we're there because what happens there affects our national security. We're there because of our own interests. If our interests coincide with other country's interests, all the better.
Nico. Whenerver i bring this issue up I get cut off as being political. Defence alliances however by there very nature political. Every country in the region is concerned about China and their behaviour. They however suspect that USA is no longer a reliable allied. The events of the last 3 years including the dumping of the kurds and the romance with Kim Jong Un have served to reinforce that view. Form an alliance with the USA then have the USA move away at crucial time leaving the Chinese to devour them. Thats what they fear more than anything.
Delete"Whenerver i bring this issue up I get cut off as being political."
DeleteThis is not a political blog and we're not going to debate political issues. However, observing and commenting on the political aspects that directly impact military matters is fine. You've made a political observation. Now, tie it to the military a bit more directly than just saying that no one trusts us.
What do you suggest we do? Where/how can we find bases? How can we develop allies.
Bring it home to the military aspects and you're fine.
“The events of the last 3 years including the dumping of the kurds…”
DeleteThere is nothing in any Article of the U.S. Constitution about responsibility for Kurdistan (or any other nation for that matter).
The Kurds were co-belligerents, not allies of the USA, their security interests in post 2003 Iraq broadly aligned with ours against Saddam Hussein – it is at best questionable if broader Kurdish interests (AKA an independent Kurdish State) are compatible with U.S. interests. The creation of a Kurdish state would immediately draw armed response from Turkey (another dubious U.S. ‘ally, but also a NATO member), Iran, Syria, and Iraq. The Turks and Iranians both actually shelled Kurdistan and conducted military operations into the KRG *during* the U.S. occupation 2003-2010 – imagine what would happen if the KRG became independent, let alone the succession of part of Syria or Turkey.
The Kurds have nothing like a democracy, nor do they aspire for one in the western sense. Their regional government in Kurdistan is massively corrupt, and autocratic. We have minimal trade with the Kurds, share almost no cultural ties, and Kurds are subject to radicalization. We should be friendly to the Kurds, trade with the Kurds, share intelligence, where appropriate, and so forth but the Kurds should not play any significant role in driving U.S. policy.
GAB
This goes doubly for the YPG; they commit ethnic cleansing, bomb our actual treaty allies, have misdirected us to bomb Arab civilians, throw thousands of Arab civilians in camps on trumped up charges of supporting IS, and have even green on blue'd us for treating Arabs they've attacked. Not to mention they were set up as a proxy of Assad by Iranian intelligence. Why anyone thinks we should be more than co belligerents with them is beyond me.
DeleteIf those countries remain neutral in a war, then they must eject Chinese troops from the disputed islands. If we do it for them then maybe we recognize China's claim and keep them after the war.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with that is that none of the ASEAN nations, not even Singapore, have the military power to eject China from the Spratlys. The RSN might well be able to attack Chinese bases in the Spratlys, maybe they might even take out a few bases, but any gains would evaporate once Chinese reinforcements arrive.
DeleteReForJa
ReplyDeleteCant believe im first with that.
@John
I always struggle to follow that line of thinking, on the one hand, we move heaven and earth in the name of deescalation whenever a flare up occurs, but then, we plan major exercises to occur in the event of a flair up, only to cancel them, because escalation.
@CNO
From a training PoV its no brainer
Not only can the US train convoy escort, it can train convoy attack too
The Convoy can train fighting its way to Guam, and Guam can train destroying incoming invasion fleets
Reforger was to land the US Army to stop to Russkie horde short of Paris, then on to relieve the Poles holding Warsaw.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the US plan in China ? Land the Marines and the Every Victorious Army at Tienstin and march on Peking ?
I think that is a really valid point that CNO has brought up a few times - what is the goal here? Until that is made very clear, how can a valid long term strategy be made? This strategy would then dictate equipment needed, possible scenarios, initial moves to be made, follow up moves to be made, and finally, the training and rehearsal of them all.
Delete(Devils advocate) if there was a master plan here, would the government be letting people know?
" if there was a master plan here, would the government be letting people know?"
DeleteYes! For two reasons:
1. You can't hide a massive exercise like a REFORGER type movement.
2. The hope is that allowing the existence of a plan to be known would provide a degree of deterrence. For example, we absolutely let the Soviet Union know about REFORGER to demonstrate to them that they had no hope of achieving a victory - we would resupply in sufficient quantity and time to prevent a possible victory. Did it work as deterrence? Who knows? We don't know if the Soviet Union ever actually intended to invade Europe so we don't know if they were deterred.
A similar situation happened with the giant Fleet Problem exercise conducted before WWII. We freely acknowledged and described the exercises. Of course, they did not provide any deterrence as Japan attacked anyway. However, they did allow us to rehearse many of our actual war operations.
Finally, we publicly acknowledge and describe (at least in general terms) all of our large scale exercises such as Red Flag so there's no reason to believe we'd keep a Pacific REFORGER secret.
As a veteran of several REFORGERs, I hate to say it, but any idea that it was a realistic training exercise is unfortunately not exactly right. I always thought it was way more an PR/media event than an actual realistic training exercise.
ReplyDeleteExpand on that! What was unrealistic about it? What was realistic enough to help (some aspect must have been)? How could it have been better? How can the lessons you observed be applied to produce a better Pacific Reforger?
DeleteReforger was more of a logistics exercise used to validate data and planning in the Worldwide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS) .
DeleteThe really critical aspects of Reforger was probably the movement of USA forces from barracks to rail heads, to ports of embarkation and all that that entailed. There was also the movement of munitions from bunker to port.
Most of this stuff involved DoD agencies removed from the services and also the coordination with industry and local/state civil government needed to move bodies and stuff.
Sexy milblog worthy stuff? Hardly, but WWMCCS has been replaced twice and there will still major issues when moving corps sized elements to war in Iraq.
GAB
"Forces will be in countries like the Philippines and Thailand, and they will likely work with other countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei."
DeleteMy top five would be:
1) Taiwan
2) Philippines
3) Japan
4) Thailand
5) South Korea (could/should drop off this list completely)
GAB
ComNavOps,
DeleteSorry not to respond earlier. I was in a MSC reserve unit that participated in REFORGER at Beaumont (and later in a NCSO reserve unit) so my comments are from that perspective. It appears to have been a useful exercise for the Army, but from the Navy side we were putting all that effort into sailing one ship full of military cargo. If it took that much effort to sail one ship, we were totally unready for a major buildup. One particular problem seemed to be that it took a week to figure out all of the basic coordination issues--who does what, where the offices are, what phone numbers, basic stuff like that. Another problem was that facilities to transmit encrypted communications from the area were basically non-existent. From the Navy side, at least, the exercise always seemed to be more of a PR function than a realistic exercise. We spent hours doing dog and pony shows for the local mayors, other officials, and the media.
Basically, my criticisms pretty much echoed your criticisms of the MSC "get underway" operations. If it takes that much work to move that few ships, then we have a major problem if the balloon goes up. At the end of the exercise, we would congratulate ourselves for having done something that should have been about half as hard.
Fortunately, we took those lessons home and began doing things in our unit training program to cover the obvious gaps. We started spending time in the ports on drill weekends, getting to know the local Coast Guard, port authority, stevedores, pilots, and the like, so that we were ready to hit the ground running on day one. Then Desert Storm happened and about half of the MSC unit was recalled. Some went to the Mideast, but most ran the operation at the Port of Houston. Because we had laid so much groundwork, that went smoother, particularly the startup phase, than at other locations, and the percentage of cargo shipped through Houston exceeded the original plan, as it was just better prepared from the start. Most of that shipping was in commercial hulls rather than MSC ships, and that certainly enabled higher volume than a REFORGER.