Pacific Reforger

As you know from your history, when the Soviet Union was a threat, one of the major challenges facing the US was the rapid reinforcement and resupply of forces in Europe.  The solution arrived at was a massive air and sea lift operation referred to as REFORGER.  Large annual exercises were conducted during the Cold War to ensure that we had and maintained that capability.  Of course, once the threat of the Soviet Union was gone, the need for REFORGER disappeared and the exercises were suspended.

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.

_________________________________

(1)https://www.eur.army.mil/DefenderEurope/

(2)https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/global-force-symposium/2019/03/27/defender-pacific-to-focus-on-south-china-sea-scenario/