One of the things that's hit the news lately is that the United States is considering storing heavy armored vehicles and artillery in the new Eastern European NATO nations.
While this looks 'tough', it's more bravado than a credible mission. First off, I assume this is going to be very similar to the POMCUS (Prepositioning Of Material Configured to Unit Sets) equipment stored in Western Europe during the 'good old days' of the Cold War. Which is fine. Except that what those were for was for the REFORGER concept--the return of forces to Germany, basically to dramatically reinforce the 'regular' military presence we maintained for decades in West Germany. There were annual REFORGER exercises to allow Stateside units to practice mating up with their equipment and then participating in a series of training exercises over a good portion of West Germany over the following couple of weeks.
I was there, I was stationed there, in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, from 1988 to 1990. So, yeah, we got to train against the Stateside units, running around 'on the economy', off base, out there on the roads with the German civilians, running around through their towns and farmers' fields.
But this concept has no US troops there.
And the numbers are miniscule. 150 troops each--basically a single infantry company--in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Just three single, isolated, cut-off infantry companies? What good is that?
Even the other sets of equipment--enough for 750 troops in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria? That's at best a single battalion, each, in each of three rather large countries. Poland is nearly the size of New Mexico; Romania the size of Oregon (or West Germany); Bulgaria the size of Tennessee.
What possible good could such small numbers do against the classic Russian steamroller?
One mission--one whose name is loaded with gallows humor--die in place.
In other words, die in a loud, grotesque military manner so as to goad America and its allies into a much larger response to avenge the troops lost. Kinda like Pearl Harbor in a way. But it still sucks if you're aboard the USS Arizona or the USS Oklahoma.
Back in the olden days in the 11th Cav, we had a not-so-funny joke that our real mission was to be the speed bump for the Soviet 8th Guards Tank Army, to buy time for the forces behind us to at least get out of their motor pools. The correlation of forces, us vs. them, was adverse in the extreme. The rumor was that the Soviets had an entire tank regiment, 93 tanks, dedicated to finding and stopping our single tank company of 14 tanks. We joked about 'target-rich environments' and we trained hard and just about all the time.
Still, the one thing we could count on were the US and other allied NATO forces behind us, the massive numbers that 5th Corps and 7th Corps could put into the field, entire armored and infantry divisions behind our little ol' regiment. We might joke about them, but we knew they had our backs.
Of course, the Soviet Union collapsed not with a bang but with a whimper on Christmas Day 1991, and all that stuff was swept away. Now it looks like it may be coming back, but today our country simply doesn't have the tax base necessary to support massive military spending necessary to field the armed forces necessary to accomplish the defense of Europe (or even just our part) against the full might of a re-armed Russia.
I think that this may be a symptom of a completely different problem--how long has it been since we had a President with significant military experience? OK, fine, W. served in the Air National Guard. No offense to our ANG guys and gals, but for this that doesn't count. Carter served on submarines, but yet made a mess of things. JFK's service aboard PT-109 was legendary, and having spent a good part of WWII dealing with oversized personalities like Churchill, De Gaulle, Patton, Montgomery, and Stalin prepared Eisenhower for the White House, where compared to those others, Khruschev was a cream puff.
And Obama never served a day. But then again, while technically Reagan served (he attained the rank of US Army Captain), he spent the war stateside making movies. I think the difference is that Reagan had the self-knowledge to know what he didn't know and the hubris to accept that. Plus he had the innate ability to select the right people for the right jobs, paint a big picture of what he wanted done, and then he left them to do it. By and large it worked for Reagan.
In a bigger sense, however, it's the American people who've got to change their views. We cannot support the large standing military we once had. We have so eroded our tax base that we can't afford it, not any more. Unless something massive happens with our economy, the United States is going to have to return to its pre-Theodore Roosevelt days of being the dominant regional power in North and Central America, and having little real role elsewhere in the world. We can't afford a 40-fighter-wing Air Force, or a 600-ship Navy, or a 25-division Army like we once did. The Air Force has so muddled things up with reorganizations into composite wings that it's hard to compare; the Navy is struggling to get to a 200-ship fleet, and the Army has, at best, 10 divisions. In fact, if the Army had to defend our border with Mexico, it couldn't do it, not using standard Army doctrine; the Army couldn't even defend just the Texas border alone--and that would be with stripping units from everywhere else around the world.
So nationalists and jingoists everywhere, suck it up. If we can't put up, then we need to shut up.
While this looks 'tough', it's more bravado than a credible mission. First off, I assume this is going to be very similar to the POMCUS (Prepositioning Of Material Configured to Unit Sets) equipment stored in Western Europe during the 'good old days' of the Cold War. Which is fine. Except that what those were for was for the REFORGER concept--the return of forces to Germany, basically to dramatically reinforce the 'regular' military presence we maintained for decades in West Germany. There were annual REFORGER exercises to allow Stateside units to practice mating up with their equipment and then participating in a series of training exercises over a good portion of West Germany over the following couple of weeks.
I was there, I was stationed there, in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, from 1988 to 1990. So, yeah, we got to train against the Stateside units, running around 'on the economy', off base, out there on the roads with the German civilians, running around through their towns and farmers' fields.
But this concept has no US troops there.
And the numbers are miniscule. 150 troops each--basically a single infantry company--in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Just three single, isolated, cut-off infantry companies? What good is that?
Even the other sets of equipment--enough for 750 troops in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria? That's at best a single battalion, each, in each of three rather large countries. Poland is nearly the size of New Mexico; Romania the size of Oregon (or West Germany); Bulgaria the size of Tennessee.
What possible good could such small numbers do against the classic Russian steamroller?
One mission--one whose name is loaded with gallows humor--die in place.
In other words, die in a loud, grotesque military manner so as to goad America and its allies into a much larger response to avenge the troops lost. Kinda like Pearl Harbor in a way. But it still sucks if you're aboard the USS Arizona or the USS Oklahoma.
Back in the olden days in the 11th Cav, we had a not-so-funny joke that our real mission was to be the speed bump for the Soviet 8th Guards Tank Army, to buy time for the forces behind us to at least get out of their motor pools. The correlation of forces, us vs. them, was adverse in the extreme. The rumor was that the Soviets had an entire tank regiment, 93 tanks, dedicated to finding and stopping our single tank company of 14 tanks. We joked about 'target-rich environments' and we trained hard and just about all the time.
Still, the one thing we could count on were the US and other allied NATO forces behind us, the massive numbers that 5th Corps and 7th Corps could put into the field, entire armored and infantry divisions behind our little ol' regiment. We might joke about them, but we knew they had our backs.
Of course, the Soviet Union collapsed not with a bang but with a whimper on Christmas Day 1991, and all that stuff was swept away. Now it looks like it may be coming back, but today our country simply doesn't have the tax base necessary to support massive military spending necessary to field the armed forces necessary to accomplish the defense of Europe (or even just our part) against the full might of a re-armed Russia.
I think that this may be a symptom of a completely different problem--how long has it been since we had a President with significant military experience? OK, fine, W. served in the Air National Guard. No offense to our ANG guys and gals, but for this that doesn't count. Carter served on submarines, but yet made a mess of things. JFK's service aboard PT-109 was legendary, and having spent a good part of WWII dealing with oversized personalities like Churchill, De Gaulle, Patton, Montgomery, and Stalin prepared Eisenhower for the White House, where compared to those others, Khruschev was a cream puff.
And Obama never served a day. But then again, while technically Reagan served (he attained the rank of US Army Captain), he spent the war stateside making movies. I think the difference is that Reagan had the self-knowledge to know what he didn't know and the hubris to accept that. Plus he had the innate ability to select the right people for the right jobs, paint a big picture of what he wanted done, and then he left them to do it. By and large it worked for Reagan.
In a bigger sense, however, it's the American people who've got to change their views. We cannot support the large standing military we once had. We have so eroded our tax base that we can't afford it, not any more. Unless something massive happens with our economy, the United States is going to have to return to its pre-Theodore Roosevelt days of being the dominant regional power in North and Central America, and having little real role elsewhere in the world. We can't afford a 40-fighter-wing Air Force, or a 600-ship Navy, or a 25-division Army like we once did. The Air Force has so muddled things up with reorganizations into composite wings that it's hard to compare; the Navy is struggling to get to a 200-ship fleet, and the Army has, at best, 10 divisions. In fact, if the Army had to defend our border with Mexico, it couldn't do it, not using standard Army doctrine; the Army couldn't even defend just the Texas border alone--and that would be with stripping units from everywhere else around the world.
So nationalists and jingoists everywhere, suck it up. If we can't put up, then we need to shut up.
