Amphibious Assault Size

Our peacetime paradigm has led us to believe that war is a small affair:  a few ships, a company of soldiers, a platoon with a few missiles (according to the Marines!), a carrier and a couple of escorts, etc.  We’ve forgotten the immense scale of effort that a true war requires.  Let’s take a look at historical amphibious assaults from WWII and remind ourselves of the size of the effort required for success.
 
 
Guadalcanal - 11,000 troops initial assault, 1^st Marine Div, plus 6,000 additional men from various battalions over the next few weeks;  initial force proved too small and required additional Marine and Army reinforcements
 
Tarawa/Makin - 35,000 troops, 36 transports, 2^nd Marine Div.; 8th, 2nd, 6th, 10th, 18th Regiments plus other battalions; 27^th Army Div., 165^th Regiment, 3^rd Battalion/105^th Infantry Regiment
 
Kwajalein – 85,000 troops,4^th Marine Div, 7^th Army Div, 300 ships
 
Eniwetok – 3500 troops, 22^nd Marine Reg., 106^th Infantry Regiment
 
Saipan - 60,000 – 70,000 troops, 2^nd Marine Div, 4^th Marine Div, 27^th Infantry Div
 
Guam - 36,000 troops, 3^rd Marine Div, 77^th Infantry Div
 
Tinian – 15,000 troops, 2^nd Marine Div, 4^th Marine Div
 
Peleliu – 28,000 troops, 1^st Marine Div, 81^st Infantry Div
 
Luzon - 175,000 troops;  6^th Army, 800 ships
 
Iwo Jima – 110,000 troops, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th Marine Div;  500+ ships
 
Okinawa - 200,000 troops, 1^st, 2^nd, 6^th Marine Div, 7^th, 27^th, 77^th, 96^th Infantry Div
 
Normandy – 173,000 troops, 4^th, 82^nd, 90^st, 101^st, 1^st, 29^th Infantry Divisions plus several British and Canadian divisions
 
Desert Storm – While not an amphibious assault and not even remotely approximating a high end, global, peer war, it still involved some 600,000+ troops of all types.

 
We’ve come to believe that an amphibious assault can be conducted by a platoon, company, or, at the high end, a 2000 man Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU).  This is simply not true.  The best any of those can do is a minor raid and, in the context of a peer war, those would be very minor annoyance raids, at best.
 
In addition to noting the size of the ground forces, check the size of some of the naval components:  up to several hundred ships!  Our entire current Navy would be insufficient to conduct a single assault.
 
We’ve completely forgotten the magnitude of the forces necessary to wage a high end war.  The only point to this post is that we have got to start remembering what real war entails and start training for and factoring in the sheer magnitude of: 

• Ground force size (tens to hundreds of thousands of troops)
• Logistics required to support massive ground forces
• Horrifying attrition
• Naval force size assets (hundreds of ships)
• Industrial manufacturing capacity (see attrition)
• Munitions consumption on a staggering scale

  
Our pathetic exercises involving platoons and companies or a few ships is so insufficient and inadequate as to border on criminal (in the figurative sense).  We have to scale our exercises up to semi-realistic sizes.  We need to exercise actual divisions, not virtual simulations.  We need to assemble and exercise several dozen ships at a time and learn how to command and control them as well as keep them supplied with munitions and fuel (guaranteed we can’t).
 
Almost none of this involves the pursuit of new technology which seems to be the military’s main focus and default solution to any problem or question.  We are so far off the correct path we can’t even see it from where we are!  The Navy is, by their own public statements, facing an imminent Chinese war …  …  and they’re downsizing the fleet!  In what alternate reality does that make sense?
 
As I keep saying, we’ve forgotten what real war is.  Perhaps this post will help us remember.