How To Host An Invasion
April 26th, 2002 - 9:19 am
Gen. Tommy Franks claims we’ll need 200,000 troops and four or five divisions to conquer Iraq.
Either that’s misinformation to make Saddam think we’ll need a longer build-up time, or Franks isn’t planning very imaginitively.
This site argued back in February that the equivalent of two divisions, combined with a few Turks and/or indigenous units, ought to be more than sufficient.
It takes 200,000 people to kill just one man and his son?
Also, indigenous units will probably be about as loyal and useful as Afghan “rebels” and cross-border Pakistan Al’Q-collaborators.
So long as we can buy them off for a week, they don’t need to STAY bought, File13.
Seems likely to be misinformation, as you suggest. There’s a lot of it going around now, too, I’ll wager.
My hunch is that the mighty and brave U.S. military will be moving against Iraq before end of summer. I’d say before end of spring, but that makes me sound like an optimist.
What your seeing is a pessismistic estimate. You don’t want to give a job a estimate 2500 and turn out it’s going to cost 2200 in material alone cause the wood is rotted away. What Franks was probably estimating was without indigineous support, and over estimating the Iraqi military machine, and then maybe some bad turn of events.
Its not unimaginative. It’s simply responsible.
Franks is a four-sytar general who has trained and practiced his whole life to make a judicious estimate of such things. I am not, and my estimate was six divisions. Franks is much more likely to be correct than I am or Vodkapundit is.
The worst thing would be to start then be held up because we put too few troops on the ground. Some of the problems we are now having in Afghanistan are due to not having enough of our troops there, and depending on undependable local allies to do the work for us. Also, the stronger we are when we attack, the faster will be our victory and the fewer the casualties to our troops, both highly desirable things.
Good call.
Take these figure into account:
US tank losses to direct fire in Gulf War: 0
US tank [M1A1+] hit/kill percetage: 90% [+]
Rounds per M1 tank: 40
“Stowed Kills” per tank; .9 * 40 = 36
Tanks per Division: ~300.
We will not run out of ONE basic load of ammo before Saddam runs out of “Elite Democratic Guards”.
The large forces that have been mentioned are occupation troops, not the core combat power required to disintegrate the Iraqi army.
From deep in the bowels of PAFB,
Emery