Battle Plan IV
March 26th, 2003 - 10:35 am
One reader asks, “Could you post a comparison between your wargaming scenarios and the actual progress of the war? (I’m just asking out of curiosity, not out of some desire to say ‘Ha Ha, you were WRONG!’”
Fair question, and a good one. I’ve been fiddling with this OpArt scenario, trying to get it to accurately model the Iraqi irregular forces who have been causing us grief in Basra, Nasiriya, and along our supply lines to 3ID south of Baghdad.
I’m not yet happy with the results, so I won’t yet post my updated version. But here’s how it breaks down in the game as opposed to reality.
Why does everyone assume that we will be resupplying out of the south. I am under the impression that we basically control the western half of the country, including at least one airstip. And just from a rough eyeballing of the map, it seems like it is a shorter route. So, safer and shorter than coming from the gulf, and we now have some slack in airlift capabilities while the gulf is going to be full for a while as the troops we wanted to send through Turkey will be going through the south. I don’t think that our re-supply issues are as great as the nay-sayers are predicting.
Because we ARE resupplying from the south.
Are there any more sand storms coming?
Right now, they are. I don’t think that has to be so in the future. It isn’t like CENTCOM is suddenly suprised at the long supply lines and the pockets of resistance. What are we using H3 for right now? It was important enough to be seized and secured in the opening stages of the war. Are there any large troop deployments that are unaccounted for? To airlift a significant fighting force in theater would take a long time. I have no doubt it is a SOF base right now, but they don’t take up much room. The west serves as an ideal supply depot for the forces headed north. Isolated and barren, they is almost no risk of attack out there, with clear lines to the troops. As the supply convoys come out of the south and drop of their cargoes, they need to go somewhere to pick up more. They can either return south for more, or head west. I can think of three uses for that base: Bringing in the aircraft from Turkey that can’t be based there to fly sorties, airlifting the troops stuck off Turkey in, or using it for re-supply. The last seems to me to be both the most logistically possible and the most important.