quote:

Originally posted by dewhorse:
Why Europe....like Putin is going to roll into Poland

That being said our Merchant Marine is no where near prepared and has been left to rot.

But seriously....why is Russia the priority over China? Russia is a Regional power...nothing more.

Europe (as a whole) has a ~1.1M active military contingent ....why are we worried?

I'd look at Russia's expansions in the Artic, their destabilization efforts in Europe and the US, Volstok 18 (300K Russian/Chinese troops) and the various other exercises they have done lately, plus their actions in Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia and other former Warsaw pact nations. Russian Cyber and EW ops while hard to pin down are constant. The Russian military modernization is ongoing, but depending what info you chose to believe on it, that could be good or bad. I'd also look at the leaked ORA rates of our allies. It's not a pretty picture. Plus with all the saber rattling and proxy fighting gong on lately (Syria), the risk of accident escalation does exist. Some of the Central (formerly eastern) European nations have started to issue guerrilla manuals to their population.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I thought the US had switched to focusing primarily on prepositioning equipment in Europe. Hence the large stockpiles of vehicles, supplies, and weaponry around the continent.

This helps eliminate the need to bring in as much of the equipment via ships... As long as we can fly in the troops to man it, much of the stuff they need is already waiting over there.

There is a rise in both active forces and pre-positioned equipment since the Ukrainian crisis. Previously, US ground combat forces in Europe were pretty much down to 2nd Cavalry Regiment (a Stryker brigade combat team these days) in Vilseck, Germany, 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vicenza, Italy, and you might count 12th Combat Aviation Brigade in Ansbach, also Germany. The rest was logistics and support like 21st Theater Sustainment Command in Kaiserslautern, signals, intelligence, military police and medical brigades supporting American deployments all over the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa via the strategic hub of Ramstein Airbase and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

The current plan is to provide an additional mechanized division for deployment in Europe. As noted, one brigade combat team already rotates through Hohenfels, in turn rotating battalion task forces out to Eastern Europe (this is in addition to the battalion group led by 2nd Cavalry in Poland as part of the multinational NATO presence there and in the Baltic states - British-led in Estonia, Canadian-led in Latvia, German-led in Lithuania). Equipment for two more BCTs is being pre-positioned in Germany, and a fires brigade will be stood up here next year with newly activated units. Additional combat aviation now also rotates through.

It's still far from Cold War levels, but then so is the Russian army. Then again, they could move from home territory across the Estonian and Latvian border as well as from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast, surrounded by Polish and Lithuanian territory; depending upon how Belarus acts, they could also come the other way in a pincer movement to close the "Suwalki Gap". Meanwhile the bulk of NATO forces would have to move from West Germany since NATO still observes its 1993 founding act with Russia about not permanently basing "substantial" additional forces in Eastern Europe. One problem is that even if it wanted to politically, there is a lack of adequate infrastructure in facilities and lines of communication there.

So people are currently in a hurry to re-establish logistics capabilities that have been allowed to deteriorate after the end of the Cold War. For example, in West Germany military forces used to be able to road-march heavy convoys under their own authority; these days they have to be cleared by civilian authorities, and not even on the federal, but the state level. Also, despite the theory of unrestricted travel within the EU, military equipment still needs diplomatic clearance with different times of prior notice in the various member states, who all have different regulations.

Add to that the reduction in dedicated military transport capabilities, with much movement being taken over by civilian contractors, usually the lowest bidder - and you get situations like some time ago when German police stopped a convoy returning US self-propelled howitzers from deployment to Poland, secured insufficiently under German safety regulations. Traditional providers like Deutsche Bahn don't even necessarily have sufficient heavy-load flatbed cars anymore to rail-march armored formations, and it goes down to minor technical details like the number of tank loading ramps still available in the German Army.

A lot is being done to address the problems; former USAREUR commander General Ben Hodges always demanded a "military Schengen" to make movements within the EU as easy as civilian travel and commerce, and the EU is also providing funds to upgrade strategically important roads, rail lines and bridges in Eastern Europe. NATO recently established two new headquarters, Atlantic Command in Norfolk, VA for trans-atlantic movement, and Joint Support and Enabling Command in Ulm, Germany for Europe. It will need some time for the military and organizational buildup to take effect, though.

Meanwhile, peace in Europe is mainly guaranteed by nuclear deterrence just like in the past. Though that game is moving again, too - see the Russian development of SSC-8 cruise missiles in possible violation of the 1987 INF Treaty, which was highlighted by the somewhat unfortunate recent remark of US NATO representative Kay Bailey Hutchison to "take them out" if necessary.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
I thought the US had switched to focusing primarily on prepositioning equipment in Europe. Hence the large stockpiles of vehicles, supplies, and weaponry around the continent.

This helps eliminate the need to bring in as much of the equipment via ships... As long as we can fly in the troops to man it, much of the stuff they need is already waiting over there.

As of 2013 we had actually pulled all the pre positioned stuff out of Europe to include the Tanks. We shut down Manheim, a major base and closed down a number of the old (and important) Depots at K-town. We have reestablished prepositioned stocks in Europe under the banner of the Army Prepostion Stocks (APS). You can find a number of open source internet articles on the web about it.

Unfortunately, the APS doesn't include personnel. Once 1st Armored and 1st Infantry left theatre we had no active duty tank crews in Europe except for the OPFOR at the Joint Multinational Training Center (JMRC). So we now rotate Regionally Aligned Forces (RAF) into Europe. Originally, the RAF used a set of equipment stored in Europe called the European Equipment Set or something like that (supposedly folded into the APS). A couple years ago it transitioned to a "Heel to Toe" rotation, meaning that the income RAF brings everything and we practice using the ships mentioned in the original post of this thread. You don't want to know how much that costs and I can't say for certain, but I question the validity of the belief that it was cheaper to withdraw forces from Europe and only send them when needed.

Also, don't forget ammo and fuel.

This whole situation is a result of reaping the peace dividend a little early and mismanagement of resources on the DOD/GOVs part.

I’ve got an idea. Let the rest of NATO take care of it.

Unionized militaries running tanks and fighters on unicorn farts and bio-fuels, shooting lead-free safety tipped nerf darts...

What could go wrong? Caliphate will work things out.

Bring back REFORGER!

I'll post more later. I worked the stateside logistics end of Gulf War I with MTMC and MSC.

quote:

Originally posted by SgtGold:
Bring back REFORGER!

I'll post more later. I worked the stateside logistics end of Gulf War I with MTMC and MSC.

We are.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by YooperSigs:
So lets recall WWII and how close the German U-boat fleet (Operation Drumbeat) came to crippling us during the early stages of the war. Given the advanced capability of modern submarines now have, as well as modern aircraft, how practical (or survivable) would a sealift be?[/QUOTE

Imagine a torpedo that is fired offshore, runs into a harbor, lays at wait for a few days, or weeks and as a ship comes nearby, detonates it's line of mines.

Submarines Don't even need to be near a ship anymore.

quote:

Originally posted by CD228:

quote:

Originally posted by dewhorse:
Why Europe....like Putin is going to roll into Poland

That being said our Merchant Marine is no where near prepared and has been left to rot.

But seriously....why is Russia the priority over China? Russia is a Regional power...nothing more.

Europe (as a whole) has a ~1.1M active military contingent ....why are we worried?

I'd look at Russia's expansions in the Artic, their destabilization efforts in Europe and the US, Volstok 18 (300K Russian/Chinese troops) and the various other exercises they have done lately, plus their actions in Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia and other former Warsaw pact nations. Russian Cyber and EW ops while hard to pin down are constant. The Russian military modernization is ongoing, but depending what info you chose to believe on it, that could be good or bad. I'd also look at the leaked ORA rates of our allies. It's not a pretty picture. Plus with all the saber rattling and proxy fighting gong on lately (Syria), the risk of accident escalation does exist. Some of the Central (formerly eastern) European nations have started to issue guerrilla manuals to their population.

Well put, I would agree the European's military are in a sad state of affairs also it is possible that we see an incedent start a shooting war but I believe it would be very short lived.

The Russians want to regain their power but they also do not want to engage in a major engagement. They would lose and Putin may lose his power.

This is one of the reasons we are putting ever stronger sanctions on the Russians and key individuals.
Besides that, this isn't 1940. A few things have changed since then and there are many newer technologies that will shape the early days.

Having worked for TRANSCOM for a couple of years, I can definitively report that the Army can get there. When they would get there, effectively, is a different conversation altogether. Not needing to point out that the other guys have all of their assets there already. And the geographic topography of Europe has not significantly changed in, oh, the last 30,000 years. So original OPLANS apply....

Military Sealift Command has 19 ships that are either roll on/roll off (RORO), or have RORO capability. AFAIK all of them have been commissioned post Gulf War I, and none of them use steam as a method of propulsion. During the Desert Shield phase of GWI, it took the average MSC ship 29 days to make the journey from Houston TX to Saudi Arabia. They tried to cut down on the transit time, but it resulted in even the most modern ships blowing boiler tubes and one was actually stranded in the atlantic and had to be towed and repaired in route. The newer ships are all turbine or straight diesel and would probably fare better if pushed.

The reason I brought up steam is 100% of all the ships brought out reserve were steam powered. One dated from 1949. The need to deploy several corps of mechanized forces in a window as small as we had in 1990 resulted in the use of both US Merchant Marine shipping, and foreign shipping. Based on my experience I would estimate that only 30% of all the heavy tracked equipment went over on MSC shipping.

One of the things that made deploying that much equipment possible is almost half of it was already in Europe, including massive quantities of ammunition. After GWI we left something like 2 mech divisions worth of vehicles in Kuwait. We used to have something similar in Europe, and it's probably time to go down that road in terms of preperation.

MilitarynEealift Command shipping.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Cattivo:
The Communist Chinese have shown much better judgement - even impulse control - than Putin. They also have a viable economic and influence-building strategy, which means they're less apt to resort to force to get what they want.

The Chinese are behaved, at least for now. What happens when Chairman Mao Jr comes to power in 10 years time, and has aspirations for world domination? That day WILL come. And it will be a bad day for the world.

When's the last time we ran a REFORGER?

The Army has a number of large cargo ships we called PREPO, we did an ammo inspection cycle in 1990 when I was in Japan, another a couple years later at Mare Island.

I dealt with the ammo, there are ships with other supplies and gear, not sure about heavy armor. Here's a link with presumably accurate info:

https://www.globalsecurity.org...gency/army/aps-3.htm

quote:

Originally posted by slabsides45:
When's the last time we ran a REFORGER?

1993 AFAIK.

There's a number of issues:

- The ships are old
- Ships like what's being used, aren't built anymore. Internal clearance for Ro/Ro ships are different today. The current MSC ships were built during a different time.
- The US Maritime industry as a whole is in decline, not a lot of folks wanting to get into the Merchant Marine, let alone be a stevedore or, longshoreman.
- US shipping companies aren't as plentiful anymore...what remains exists mainly to serve Jones Act routes
- US shipbuilding industry is largely limited to building oil platforms and off-shore fishing vessels; big ships like tankers, container ships, bulk carriers and cruise ships are a mainly built in China, S.Korea and Italy.
- Commercial yards like USN yards are worn-down and just got budget approval for long overdue upgrades...how long that will take remains. Then there's the backlog of maintenance on USN ships. Just read there's only ONE company that makes propeller shafts for USN ships
- Infrastructure support in Europe is in dire need of an upgrade. There's a whole lot of new roads, bridges and overpasses that cannot support movement of armor, let alone all the admin bureaucracy that's now in-place.

The generalities of that article can apply to our Air Force too. Old/lack of equipment and lack of qualified people (maintenance/pilots).

quote:

Originally posted by feersum dreadnaught:
I’ve got an idea. Let the rest of NATO take care of it.
Unionized militaries running tanks and fighters on unicorn farts and bio-fuels, shooting lead-free safety tipped nerf darts...
What could go wrong? Caliphate will work things out.

We do have to ask ourselves if NATO is still a viable alliance. Without outright withdrawal, I think Trump is doing that.
Ever since WWII we have been the world cop, and we have been taken advantage of, particularly by a Europe that embraces socialism and welcomes it's Muslim invaders with open arms.

I'm one of those graybeards in their 50's they refer to; I'll be 60 this month. And I have a job as most of my counterparts do. We wouldn't just be available anyway should there be a need in emergency. Do they think all licensed mariners are just waiting to go to sea? Also as stated, higher steam licenses aren't as common anymore. I've sailed on diesel ships almost all of my career.

It's a shame how our fleet has dwindled and as mentioned, ship building capacity in this country is a fraction of what it was during WW2. This a big problem long in the making.