Chapter 8

It took a little time, but I finally had my ‘stake in the ground’. Marcel liked it and thought it should get presented to some of the officer team My three cohorts, Jim, Ian and Inga, were in back listening while we presented it. In summary, it went like this...

“To win a battle now and then is fairly easy. You all have heard that saying ‘win a battle but lose the war’!

What that mean is you have a lot of elements, or parts to consider to win 51% of the time. Success means that all the parts work, every time, all the time. In our case that meant the following:

- We needed to know when and where to fight.

- Who to fight.

- What would be the conditions we would be facing. That means will we have numerical superiority or not.

- If not, then will we have force multipliers on-hand (Right, I just have to find or make them as we go maybe). For example, tanks or artillery versus men and horses.

- Is the terrain suited to our needs or not. It does little good if our troops all wear ‘desert camo’ in a mountain snowstorm, or ‘Arctic wear’ in the heat of a desert. Ask ‘Napoleon’ and the ‘Grande Armee’ about that.

- What do we need to do to win. We can not take or hold any ‘prisoners’.

- How long will the engagement last. Duh! Re-supply may be an issue.

- What fighting aspects of the battle are there and how long will each be required to be in force. Opening strikes cannot last forever. Caves in the mountains was different than the bunkers in the desert or a hidden camp in the swamp.

- Timing is everything. During the Civil war, if Confederate troops had been rested enough to occupy Little Round Top, before the Union did, that War of Northern Aggression would have turned out differently. Instead, General Ewell rested them, he felt advancing was not, ‘practicable’ as ‘The General’ (Robert E. Lee), always a ‘gentleman’, had said. For lack of a hill, a war was lost. Can you all say, ‘De Feet’, French for ‘C’mon Man!”

From the simple outline Marcel presented, we not only had to identify the who, what, when, where and how much was ‘agin’ us, we had to literally be able totally destroy the opposition within the battle window, we would not have many chances for that.

In our scenario that meant we started at or went to, The Med, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman or the Persian Gulf. The Suez was just too restrictive to stage ships at. Some places had great inland rivers, in season, like the Nile or Tigris, most did not.

Feet on the ground would be needed and to win, we had to be in a position to be victorious in urban cities, rural farmland, desert sand and rugged mountain terrain at the same time maybe.

The time to do all that was right now, the problem was today there was no enemy in the field to overcome. An IUD here, a sniper there and any all-out response got held up to the world as though some bully-boy was taking pot shots at the locals.

No, Marcel was probably right in his estimate for when we had to have everything ready. Europe and religion had given us the Crusades. The Middle East and religion would answer with Jihads. Until there was a proper foe to defeat all we could do was to prepare.

Lest we forget the strategy, let’s review it. We fight on land, by air and our conventional forces rule the seas. It is getting those creepy crawlers into position that take some work. This effort will not be against some static defense line up of tanks and guns like Iraq had been. You saw what an urban battle could mean after that ‘Victory” twice over.

When we consider use of the alternatives, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons we would face that nasty word, ‘Armageddon’. We would destroy 50 Million to eliminate the 500,000 against us, not a good trade off in the eyes of the world.

For purposes of planning, we have had to make some assumptions. If we can react quickly enough, Air power can immobilize them for a while and contain the targets, or the important elements within localized areas, say training camps or staging areas. Using an average of 1,000-2,000 Marines plus 1,100 crew per carrier older style(Like Tarawa or Wasp Class ships and LHA 7 design for America class ships) for land, sea and air incursion using hovercraft, LCUs and helicopters with a force multiplier of 4.5, an OPFOR of 250,000 would require us to utilize 35 Carriers. If those number were low estimates, the next ramp up would be 60-70 Carriers against half a million or if our effort was diluted. Based on what I was thinking, the number of ships we would require overall would be 150-160. 60 prime attack carriers with 10 more of them in reserve, 40 support ships with 10 in reserve and 30 protection platforms with 10 more in reserve. All this depended on a conventional fleet getting us quickly to the gateway point, mentioned earlier, one of the Gulfs. With these numbers we could win, however we cannot ramp up the old way and not man and equip all that, we need to devise a new solution with higher value ‘force multipliers’. The LHA-7’s cost $3 Billion apiece. We could not afford that. Neither could we equip our ships for any aircraft other than Helicopters. A few Osprey would be aboard for medical emergencies or fast extraction ashore.”