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Subject: scenario creation
NOFSC    2/6/2007 11:28:35 PM
Where would I find people so interested in military tactics that they enjoy coming up with invasion scenarios and figuring out how they would win in those situations? I'm talking about modern day what ifs, not historical events?
 
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NOFSC       2/8/2007 6:19:40 PM
I get what you're saying about past history and where things are heading in the present, but I'm having a hard time believing that hispanic peoplein that situation - becoming such a significant population in parts of the the southwest that they gain political control of those areas - are then going to use that political control to secede or to rejoin those territories to Mexico. I could certainly see them pushing their own agenda locally and nationally - easier immigration, more conservative values, etc.
 
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NOFSC    I give in   2/8/2007 6:41:00 PM
I didn't mean to shut down smitty, either...it is an interesting scenario, and obviously other people are assuming it's more possible than I am.

I'm a little hampered in this discussion because I'm trying not to bring in storyline issues to debate here - I have enough people pecking at me over that elsewhere. I was trying to isolate the place, people and forces and just talk particulars. I'm realizing that this particular incident actually calls not for an attack and occupation, but more of a hit and run type affair, though, so I can drop this line of questioning.

Here's another question, though. Is there a place in the continental US about which you would say: "If a foreign force controlled (fill in the blank), then we'd have a hard time displacing them." Or does our weaponry make it just about impossible to take and hold onto anything within the US? Again, I'm not including any lead-ins such as how would that force get there in the first place; I'm just talking about what part of the US would be most vulnerable to occupation and most difficult to rid of an occupying force.



 
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Jeff_F_F       2/8/2007 9:32:14 PM
The places I'd suggest are San Francisco (+Hilly urbanized terrain on a long peninsula, economically important location -Lots of nearby military bases), and the hills across the Columbia River from Astoria, OR. (+Hilly, fairly isolated from nearby population centers and military bases, economically important location, -hills are a much simpler military exercise to root enemy out of than an urban setting.). The problem is partially weapons, but more training and the simple problem that anywhere in the continental US, the enemy is in our backyard.
 
Realistically, I think the only way any attack on the contenental US is a challenge is if you project into an alternate reality or a point in the future where either the US has become decadent or a sufficiently powerful enemy had emerged which can threaten the US.
 
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NOFSC       2/8/2007 11:36:33 PM
Jeff - a couple more questions about what you said above:

1. Why is aluminum oxide ore an important resource, as opposed to Bauxite?

2. Do you really think video games are a good introduction to military tactics? Do you think your average Joe could take what he learned from game playing and get real world results with it against an trained enemy?

 
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joe6pack       2/9/2007 3:16:06 PM

Jeff - a couple more questions about what you said above:



1. Why is aluminum oxide ore an important resource, as opposed to Bauxite?



2. Do you really think video games are a good introduction to military
tactics? Do you think your average Joe could take what he learned from
game playing and get real world results with it against an trained
enemy?



I'll answer #2 as a former infantryman and say: Absolutely not.  There was a good thread on this topic on the infantry board a long while back if you want to go looking.  People have brought up "but the Army / Marines" use video games.  True, but that is used to augment training they all ready have. It is not substitute for actual training. 
 
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joe6pack       2/9/2007 3:53:18 PM

I didn't mean to shut down smitty, either...it is an interesting
scenario, and obviously other people are assuming it's more possible
than I am.



I'm a little hampered in this discussion because I'm trying not to
bring in storyline issues to debate here - I have enough people pecking
at me over that elsewhere. I was trying to isolate the place, people
and forces and just talk particulars. I'm realizing that this
particular incident actually calls not for an attack and occupation,
but more of a hit and run type affair, though, so I can drop this line
of questioning.



Here's another question, though. Is there a place in the continental US
about which you would say: "If a foreign force controlled (fill in the
blank), then we'd have a hard time displacing them." Or does our
weaponry make it just about impossible to take and hold onto anything
within the US? Again, I'm not including any lead-ins such as how would
that force get there in the first place; I'm just talking about what
part of the US would be most vulnerable to occupation and most
difficult to rid of an occupying force.








Well, the first question would be "how badly" do we want them shoved out?  The US, really hasn't done much fightingon our own turf since the Civil War.  How sensitive would the nation be to "collateral damage" given that it would be US citizens and property?
 
Militarily, short of someone managing to sneak a few hundred thousand troops + equipment into the US we have plenty of capability to displace them.  Where it might get tricky is, when the politics and public reaction start placing limitations on the response.  This is where I see your scenerio having possibilities with a much smaller force (at least for a limited amount of time).
 
Invasion check list -
 
I'd say for location it would have to be coastal accessible. 
 
You would want, at the very least, light armored vehichles to support your "occupation".  Otherwise, your troops really don't have a great deal of advantage over "the locals". 
 
You can pretty much rule out any sort of  "friendly" air cover for your occupation. So, you are going to want a lot of the best man portable SAM's you can get your hands on.  This helps cuts down / counter  on the close air support threat you would eventually face and it would hinder US mobility over the battlefield.  (e.g. it would potentially limit air assault troops moving all around your forces)
 
You would also want to check the road ways and railways near the area.  The smaller and more congested the better.  Stay away from railways.   The idea being, try to slow down how fast US heavy armor could get to the location and limit its mobility once it get there.  Make sure your troops have a large supply of the best AT / ATGM weapons you can get your hands on.  It's unlikely you will be able to bring in large amounts of light armor and heavy armor (if you could get it in) would just be a target.
 
Have LOTS of combat engineers and plenty of explosives.  Blow bridges, bring down building to block key avenues of approach.  Use mines, lots and lots of mines, anti armor and anti personell.
 
Is that a start for you?
 
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NOFSC       2/9/2007 6:55:02 PM
That's a great start. It actually seems to take us back around to my original scenario, in that a place like Santa Cruz has coastal access, would be relatively easy to cut off from the outside, has a pretty passive population that could act as "hostages" to make counter-measures by the US military difficult.

So the question is then, how much collateral damage would we be willing to see in displacing such a force. Would we immediately go to negotiations and concessions, or would the govt want to use force to prevent others in the future from trying such a thing?

And, on a completely different tack. At what point would the US step in if a foreign force was attacking Canada?

 
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Jeff_F_F       2/9/2007 7:35:17 PM
Re Aluminum Oxide : The hard part about refining aluminum is converting bauxite to aluminum oxide. Once you have Aluminum Oxide it is a lot simpler and uses less power.
 
I hadn't thought about the human shields angle. Good idea, would make things a lot tricker. Another political angle (and you may be thinking this too, since you are talking about video games) is that if the forces are actually US citizens not acting as agents of an outside threat it makes things a lot tricker. It would have been even more tricky before 9/11, and way more tricky in say 1993-1994 when over half of the US population considered the government a threat to their rights.
 
Recent changes to the Posse Comitatus Act and Insurrection Act have made it a lot easier to use armed forces to put down civil insurections. However, these changes are controversial and stirring up opposition would be a skillful tactic. Note that Oregon is one of the most libertarian states in the country. Any such move would be accompanied by rhetoric and press releases over the internet. Also, sympathetic but not necessarily involved persons might be in contact with the forces.
 
Also, note that the most powerful conventional weapons such as ICM and thermobaric munitions are going to be the most controversial to use in urban areas because of the heavy collateral damage.
 
As to video games, it depends. I was disturbed a few years back (shortly after Doom II came out... a few years...) after playing the game straight through almost my entire christmas break for college, when walking down the street I had a fleeting thought that a recessed doorway looked like a good place to hide. Doom isn't that realistic, so the conditioning that it can provide is not terribly useful, however as video games get more and more realistic, it seems that the conditioning they provide is likely to get more useful as well.
 
Though such training is undoubtedly better than nothing, it is sorely lacking as a complete training regemen. Combined with paintball and range time with the actual weapons being used, you have the potential for a decent system. Not as good as what our troops get, but better than nothing. FMs (field manuals) on almost any topic from small unit infantry tactics to countermobility can be found online. In addition plenty of folks out there with some degree of military training and some are real screw-loose types. At least in my national guard unit there were...
 
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smitty237       2/9/2007 9:10:54 PM

I didn't mean to shut down smitty, either...it is an interesting
scenario, and obviously other people are assuming it's more possible
than I am.



I'm a little hampered in this discussion because I'm trying not to
bring in storyline issues to debate here - I have enough people pecking
at me over that elsewhere. I was trying to isolate the place, people
and forces and just talk particulars. I'm realizing that this
particular incident actually calls not for an attack and occupation,
but more of a hit and run type affair, though, so I can drop this line
of questioning.



Here's another question, though. Is there a place in the continental US
about which you would say: "If a foreign force controlled (fill in the
blank), then we'd have a hard time displacing them." Or does our
weaponry make it just about impossible to take and hold onto anything
within the US? Again, I'm not including any lead-ins such as how would
that force get there in the first place; I'm just talking about what
part of the US would be most vulnerable to occupation and most
difficult to rid of an occupying force.







No offense taken, amigo.  I have my own opinions on the whole immigration subject, but I am not emotional attached to the scenario I proposed.  I have doubts about its plausibility as well, at least for the near future.  I was only trying to create a scenario in which an invasion on the Continental Unites States could be envisioned.
 
The biggest problem with creating an invasion scenario is creating a plausible back story.  Few countries would be able to even mount an amphibious invasion, and none have the ability to sustain it...........at least with current world military TO&E as it stands right now.  Plus, you have to address the question of why they would even want to invade and what they hoped to accomplish.  As far as places suitable for invasion go, you would need to find a location poorly populated with beaches capable of handling landing craft.  This could be tough because they are towns and cities planted all up and down both coasts of the United States.  You could concievably land a few battalions of infantry troops relatively undected, but a lot of foreign troops running around the beach wouldn't remain undetected for long.  Police would be the first to respond, but soldiers would be able to eliminate them quickly.  Foreign troops killing cops with machine guns and missiles would attract a lot of attention muy pronto, and soon phones would be ringing at military instillations and air bases all over the country.  Still, depending upon how far the invasion beachhead is from the nearest military post (probably a very critical planning consideration), it could take quite a bit of time before sizable US military units could be sent to the scene (it would take days to organize the National Guard to offer more than small unit resistance). 
 
The biggest immediate problem facing the invasion force would be air superiority.  They would need aircraft carriers to provide support aircraft, and it would be hard to get them close to the United States without detection.  The United States would have fighter and ground attack aircraft and helicopters on the scene within hours of the invasion being detected.  They would make short order of enemy tanks and vehicles, and without those the invasion is doomed.  The invading army could set up anti aircraft batteries, but I don't know how effective they would be able to protect the invasion force long enough for them to establish a defensible beachhead and land more troops.
 
Actually, I feel that the whole Red Dawn scenario, in which invading troops are parachuted into the mainland United States would stand a better chance of succeeding (at least for a little while).  Again, getting a large airborne invasion force (with scores or hundreds of aircraft) deep into our country undetected would be damn near impossible, but I think a large airborne force dropped into the Rocky Mountains would stand a better chance of staying alive for more than a few days than an invading amphibious force.  They would be hard to root out, but I can't imagine any plausible success or escape scenario. 
 
The biggest challenge for either invasion scenario would be the ability to provide logistical support to the invasion forces.  In the naval invasion scenario you c
 
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NOFSC       2/9/2007 10:37:11 PM
Just to clarify, this is for a book, not an rpg, and the enemies have a few advantages over...say...China or Iran. It isn't a straightforward situation - one set of good guys, one set of bad - and that's why my questions are all over the place. It's a present day, everything is just as it is kind of a story with one slice of fantasy to it. Trees of a certain size and maturity can "corporate" - pop out a human being. Those up in the north (Canada's boreal forest) are a closed, conservative, militant society which has long wanted to wipe out humans. Those further south (US) have much more contact with humans and their society is beginning to lose its hard edges. They are all hugely vulnerable - kill their tree and they're dead, so they've held back from taking us on until now. Humans for the most part don't know they exist. Santa Cruz is the place where the status quo begins to fall apart.

The trees have a hell of a lot of manpower, obviously. They are hampered by equipment limitations and their inherent vulnerability to fire, etc.

The smaller invasion, etc, I've been talking about I've got figured out now, but eventually that northern boreal forest is going to have to take on the US, and they are not going to have their vulnerability problems solved yet.

So, here we go - in this case you have an almost endless supply of soldiers, but not limited equipment. That northern army has a lot of resources. The southern branch (already in the US) has more access to technology and could possibly even have infiltrated the US military to some extent. The trees won't have a problem overwhelming Canada's population, and the population won't know for awhile what has hit them. But...at what point would the US military surge over the border, or what other strategy would they use to hold them back? I'm not really aware of any military presence along our border with Canada - how long would it take to get troops and equipment there? Would the US sacrifice Canada and just hold the border?

 
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