Army Doesn't Have Enough Soldiers for Potential Wars with China and Russia, Review Committee Says

The likely threat to the US would seem to be from information warfare/perception management. "Island hopping"?? Urban combat in Asia?? WTF

 

Not a likely scenario. The problem initially would be getting enough troops onto the island in the first place to make a difference when it comes to supporting the Taiwanese army in it's attempts to forestall an invasion. If the Taiwanese fail to do that and the Chinese take over? The alternative becomes mounting a seaborne counter invasion to push them off again. In either scenario however the US is not going to risk the lives of US soldiers on the ground in Taiwan unless it has first secured sea lane approaches to the island. To do otherwise would be risking potential disaster where any US forces in Taiwan end up getting marooned there because the Chinese Navy and Air force still have the firepower to cut Allied supply lines behind them!

The thing is though the Chinese face exactly the same problem. If they invade without first securing the sea approaches around Taiwan they risk the US Navy and Air Force doing the same thing to them! All of which means any invasion of Taiwan (assuming the US actually does decide to intervene) is going to be settled by an intensive air and sea campaign in the South China Sea, East China Sea and Yellow Sea. Whoever wins that? Wins Taiwan.

US Forces would no doubt be rushed to the Philippines, Japan and the Island bases in between because they would all have to be secured as forward bases for the US and allied operations in any case. I simply cant see any scenario though where significant numbers of US Troops would land and fight in Taiwan if the Joint Chief's weren't certain they could support them (or evacuate them if needed) once they landed.

As for the Europe issue? The bulk of the manpower there now is and will remain the European members of NATO who are all rapidly building up both troop numbers and equipment levels as I type. (I can link you to an excellent video on this if you want.) They already over match Russian forces in number and certainly in equipment like aircraft and naval vessels. Where US support would be vital is the back office stuff, not manpower. So that's maintaining communications links, intelligence gathering and analysis and overall command and coordination. If US combat brigades are still deployed to NATO in the future? Their roll looks most likely to be as a highly mobile ready reserve i.e. they'd would not be committed to combat until NATO identified the most critical/important point of contact with the Russians and sent US forces in to hammer it.

All of which is all hypothetical anyway because it's going to take Russia a decade or so to rebuild it's army. And by then? NATO will be able to crush any invasion. Russia simply no longer has the numbers or the economy to win such a fight.

 

They do have the nukes though.

 

A thoughtful response, but I was only responding to what was in the original article, "The service specifically does not have the number of soldiers needed for what would likely be an intensive island-hopping campaign in the Pacific and subsequent urban battles in major metropolitan cities in Asia, according to the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, which was created by Congress."

 

Yes, I get that but I think what's being outlined in that report is literally the worst (and hence most unlikely) scenario possible. To begin with 'Island hopping' implies the Chinese have already miraculously managed to seize both Taiwan and (at the least!) the chain of islands spreading from the Philippines to Japan without any US and Allied interference before they succeed while at the same time also successfully invading Taiwan! Achieving all of that while the Allies for some reason just sat on their hands and watched is IMO extremely unlikely.

 

Well if they crashed our power grid or pulled another Covid at the onset of the invasion, they very well could buy time to get well ahead before the US and allies could respond. Not the likeliest scenario but within the realm of possibility as far as that report goes.

 

The number one problem China faces is hiding it's buildup. The best comparison I can think of would be the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944. Yes, the allies went to great lengths to misdirect German attention away from Normandy but there was nothing they could do to disguise the fact an invasion was being prepared or indeed when the time finally came that it was imminent. The build up in men, material and shipping was simply to large to hide. Everyone in the German chain of command up to and including Hitlers favorite pet Alsatian (Blondi) knew it was coming, just not exactly where or when.

China would have the same problem pre-positioning it's troops and transports without American & Taiwanese satellite surveillance, Sigint and intel assets on the ground becoming aware something was being planned. Sure Xi could 'pull a Putin' and publicly declare that the military buildup was just a 'training exercise' but even if he fooled American intelligence agencies (unlikely) the Taiwanese will still be watching that 'exercise' like a hawk and putting their own forces on high alert for the duration.

For the rest? Any direct attack on the US would risk immediate retaliation and neither of the two things you describe would effect US naval and air assets in the short to medium term so they would still be able to intervene the invasion attempt assuming the order to do so was given.

 

Well the "training exercise" option seems like the most likely since China conducts one near Taiwan a couple of times a year. At some point each time they conduct an exercise it will be real enough to be ready to go once the political leadership makes up it's mind to go all in.

 

There are exercises and then there are 'exercises'. It's true that China conduct's exercises all the time around Taiwan but the thing is a real invasion would basically require a full scale mobilization by the Chinese armed forces. To ensure success? Most of the ground forces needed for that invasion together with all their equipment would need to be propositioned near the port cities they are supposed to embark from before it even began. Training up key naval, marine & air elements for their role in an invasion is relatively easy in comparison since these troops and assets that would be the leading edge of the invasion are already based on or near the coast. Its the long tail i.e. the engineering, logistics, infantry and armored units etc that have to follow up the initial landings that are the problem. You can't have a division of troops prepped & ready to go up near the Mongolian border and expect them to be stepping on to the beach head a few hours later after the invasion has started. They need to be if not already on board their transports waiting to go then at least lined up on the docks ready to board the moment the shooting starts.

And again. If the Chinese ever do decide to conduct the type of large scale 'invasion' exercise you describe? Taiwan and the US and it's allies in the region will have been watching the preparations (troops arriving, ships being loaded etc) and they will be on alert.

 

So does NATO. The thing is though that while nuclear weapons are generally regarded as an excellent deterrence against being invaded? They're not 'optimal' as a weapon system if you are the invader, even in situations where the other side doesn't have nuclear weapons. This is because nuclear weapon strikes (at least multiple ones) vastly complicate active combat operations for both sides. It doesn't make them impossible mind you but after a few weeks of conducting combat operations in NBC gear? Combat effectiveness and troop moral falls off a cliff. And as the invader, even if you win? After the shooting stops? Your the one whose going to end up having to clean up the mess afterwards.

 

Those (and it isn’t just Islamists) with a suicide bomber mindset don’t care about the earthly aftermath of their destructive acts.
There are plenty of people, I suspect including Americans particularly Trump, who would be chilled about destroying everything in order to ‘save face’.

 

Even men like Putin and Trump have a sense of survival, in fact given their egos? They probably an even stronger sense than most people. But they also know while they'd survive the war inside secure bunkers and might even be comfortable doing so for w while those facilities do have only finite resources. At some point, one year, two years 5 years after the war ends? Food stores will run out, the generators and air filtration will start to fail will fail and they'll have to leave their shelters. At whihc point? They'll be in exactly the same retched boat as all the other survivors. Same for all the billionaires in the 5 star luxury shelters. Soon enough the tech will start to break down, the food stores will get used up and they to will end up back on the surface scratching the ground and trying to grow whatever crops they can like everyone else. Just another bunch of dirt poor farmers trying to survive till the next harvest comes in.

 

Yes, quite right.
However even with the knowledge of near certain capture and miserable imprisonment, people still commit crimes.
Consequences seem inconsequential to people like Trump, after all his lustful hunger and desire for sex with Stormy Daniels ‘trumped’ any thought of consequential impact on his family.

 

Well I'm surprised their exercises don't include all of those aspects. At some point, it's likely they will.

 

Oh the army trains all the time just not in and around the major coastal cities. It would be like the US army occupying San Francisco for 10 days in training for for a seaborne assault on some mythical island of the West coast. Sure you could do it bit imagine all the problems it woudl cause.

The day comes we see 300,000 Chinese troops mustering in or near coastal ports from Shenzhen & Fujian to Zhejang with all their equipment being trundled in and loaded onto transports? That's the day the 'exercise' gets serious.

 

For the last two decades, the biggest war games are those in Atropia.



And they are not just "US Army", they are literally nation wide all services exercises. With tens or hundreds of thousands from all branches of the military taking part, in over a hundred different locations. One phase in Arizona will involve Army and Marine Air Defense units working for or against one side or the other, and Air Force, Marine and Navy aircraft doing the same thing. And not far from the cost in Central California will involve Infantry and multiple medical units. And out in the California desert will be two more similar games going on, involving mostly Army and Marine land forces.

The US military rarely does really massive "War Games" like they did until the early 1990s. Thanks to computers and modern communications, units and umpires in Hawaii, California, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, and almost every other State and Territory can conduct their own localized war games, and at higher echelons they are all stitched together to make a single battle space.