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)
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.
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