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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (70432)	1/31/2003 1:40:52 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi D. Long; Re: "Unless, of course, the military has already prepositioned enough equipment and supplies in the region to meet demand ahead of time." While this could be true in theory, if you'll actually go to the trouble of reading the authorities, you will discover that no, in the event of a real war, you still have to fully activate Sealift because the peak demands on the system do not change. What Sealift does is reduce the "time to market", not the "production requirements". I've repeated myself several times on this, and we've reduced ourselves to saying "is so" and "is not". So rather than suggest that you do the research yourself, I am providing you with links from the government that describe the benefits of prepositioning. You can look through them yourself and discover that your position is not supported by them: Chapter Four -- Prepositioned Forces ... Besides *new airlift and sealift forces, the Joint Chiefs recommended that the Army preposition sets of heavy equipment and combat-support units on board ships placed closer to DoD's key planning scenarios. That prepositioned equipment would allow the United States to deploy forces more quickly* than it did during Operation Desert Shield.(4) ... The Benefits and Risks of Prepositioning ... Quicker Delivery Time for Heavy Forces ... Relatively Low Cost ... Risk of Planning for the Wrong Contingency ... Risk That Two Conflicts Will Occur Nearly Simultaneously One benefit of prepositioning heavy Army equipment on ships is that it can be used for either of DoD's major planning scenarios. Those forces would be an important means of stopping an enemy assault quickly. But what would DoD do if the two major conflicts broke out in quick succession? If the equipment was sent to a first contingency, it would not be available for the second. To solve that problem, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that unless DoD withholds the equipment to use only in the second major conflict, the Army should plan to regenerate its afloat prepositioning package. In other words, after unloading cargo at a conflict, the prepositioning ships would steam to the United States and take on a second set of equipment, tailored for the next most likely conflict. The Army has been investigating whether it has enough stocks to regenerate the equipment or whether it needs to purchase more. Preliminary comments by Army officials suggest that because of the drawdown of U.S. forces in Europe, reserves of combat equipment are probably adequate. Equipment for combat-service-support units is in shorter supply, but the Army has no plans to purchase additional stocks. If a second major contingency erupted shortly after the equipment had been deployed to an earlier conflict, the Army might have to use equipment from reserve forces in the United States to regenerate its theater support units. ... cbo.gov Part of the explanation for why things work out that the military allows for peak Sealift capability despite the prepositioning of assets is explained in this chapter: ... War Fighters' Incentive to Minimize Risk. In a conflict, military troops are the people who face the consequences of risk most directly. Since the price of failure is so high, military commanders try to minimize the amount of risk that their personnel may face on the battlefield. One way to do that is to require enough strategic mobility assets so the United States could deliver overwhelming force very quickly.(6) ... cbo.gov Also see other chapters from the same document: cbo.gov My basic theory is that the US military never plans to "barely" have enough stuff to do their job. The US has a long history of waging war through the massive application of logistics. [That history doesn't date back to Valley Forge, obviously, but it arguably goes back to the Civil War.] With logistics, as with personal wealth, there is never "enough". -- Carl P.S. If the US continues to prepare for war with Iraq, this discussion will become moot, in a way. In that event, the activations will rise to the level that I predicted, just like the reserve activations are even now rising to the levels that I said were necessary for a war with Iraq (against constant thread pressure claiming that the US could fight Iraq without calling up the reserves).