Shoot, move and communicate. It seems the Marine Corps and Army are in a race to be the lamdlaocked stranded stupid force in the world. It’s a tie except the Army still
Has their tanks. Artillery, engineers and so on so forth. When we speak of maneuver war fighting a navy with many vessels moving at various speeds to unknown locations on a broad sea with mid and longer range firecrackers seems better than stranded on a desert island. Logistics? We doan need no stinking logistics! We are American military thinkers! What happens when the rockets run out, the food is eaten and the water dries up?? Details I know details. The problem is no one in Washington knows a damn thing about anything, so they claim to know everything about everything. The day will come when the American taxpayer will wake up to very bad news on their local tv station. Defeat in detail will be a shock to the system. As if the NEO at HKIA wasn’t warning enough….
Or, this is the Army dangling a bauble to stone soup their way into more forces in the region, as this structure is clearly unable to defend itself against a ground threat, and so will have to have a maneuver force in support.
I think the Marines have the better solution with unmanned JLTVs. If you can resupply great, If its time to pack up and move islands, they can do so radically easier. Their LSM solution is wrong, but there is still time to fix it.
Dangir.I was hoping to have a "You can't leave things laying around or we'll tinker with them" riff and ask how many bolts were left over when we put it back together, and you go ruin it.
Yes we suck at naming things and have stupid Rumsfeldian-leftovers like "fires battalion." It's a slight improvement over "effects battalion" but still a lame attempt to get us to "think outside the box" by enforcing lexicological conformity. And we desperately want to play in the Indo-Pacific play box. It's all your fault, yanno. You just last week threatened our pie!
Yes on corporate-efficiency=military-risk+ineffective. Unlike a business, we're designed, personed, and equipped under the presumption of massive attrition. Planned redundancy good, if you can keep it affordable. Just ask Rommel, von Rundstedt, Kleist, Goering, Doenitz, et.al.
It stinks that Phib was in on the jointness thing over in the middle east. It does to ruin possible needling. It's good that Phib likes it because he knows the Army has to do most of its fighting well away from the littorals.
Come around and post more. I'm sure the Armoreress won't mind.
The photo of the battery shows five semi’s worth of gear, and you point out that logistics has yet to be worked out. And MSC is taking real cuts. So, who does a big Army think is going to teleport these batteries to their ideal locations, since the USAF C-17 fleet will likely already be committed to other tasks? And how much time will a certain Pacific threat give them to get their batteries in place, while we magically blind all of those PRC watchers on far too many Pacific islands? If weapon separation is good, weapon separation plus mobility is gooder.
And then we can all remember the photos of throngs of military age men crossing our southern border, with no fixed US address or job offer in hand. If I was placing bets, I think I would bet on flocks of grenade-dropping drones, a la Ukraine, hitting all of our C-17s before I would put my money down on Army missile batteries making it to the dance on time.
Look at the Marine's solution for this using JLTV. Unmanned, 6 on a C-17, can hitch a ride on CH-53 or C-130. Multiples on LCAC, LCU etc. Easy to play a shell game with them, easier to shoot and scoot. Easier to be shooting and reloading at the same time. The advantages go on and on.
Uncle Sam's Misguided Children have denuded themselves of so many vitally needed things, like Tanks and tuber arty, that there is some wonder about their battle effectiveness in the future. JLTV is nice to have, but if the price is other vital needs, then it's a loser all around.
There is no reason you couldn't quad pack GMLRS and now you have 4 artillery rockets boogying around. The 30x113mm remote weapon station on MADIS can also mount a Javelin instead of the 2 Stingers. It starts to turn into something very flexible.
The Marine solution uses a smaller missile with shorter range & smaller payloads. And it, too, will still need a significant logistic and security tail.
Let's hope those military age Chinese Manchurian Candidates move to the West Coast, take up surfing, marry a Valley Girl, and own an In-And-Out Burger franchise before the war happens.
If I were China I would see this as a very hostile act and part of a plan by the US to cut her off from the pacific. I wonder how we would feel about missiles in Cuba.
If I were Japan I would not want to caught in a crossfire between the US and China, NK and Russia.
The neocon artists that appear to still control this decrepit administration really want to entangle us in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific simultaneously. How did Pride Week work out in Kabul?
Andy Wong’s article ( a few comments below) could justify China’s concerns about US aggressive military, financial and cultural policies.
I think U. S. policies may result in uniting the Eurasian landmass - Russia, China, NK, Iran, etc. against us and I do not think we could win such a conflict even if didn’t go nuclear.
China, like Russia, is always looking for some excuse to show how put upon they are. I'd simply tell them to quit commit acts of war in the West Philippine Sea and go back to being a reasonable country, and they won't have any concerns.
So the army is gonna rotate these into theater? Blue crew / gold crew? Geesh who holds the keys for firing? I guess this battalion is led by an LTCOL? How manpower intensive is it I wonder?
They didn’t show the Battery design but it should be a headquarters and maintenance section plus a transport and ammo platoon. I assume it would be considered an independent company sized unit with 120 or so people.
Hope you all don't mind my slightly shameless plug, I wrote about the implications and my two cents on what is behind US thinking on Typhon and its recent deployment to the Northern Luzon Island of the Philippines as part of US-Philippines military exercises.
So far, even the deployment of one battery has been enough to make Beijing sit up and take notice. If the proposed exercise to deploy them to the Japanese Southwest Islands do come to fruition, we're looking at two pincers firmly aimed at piercing Chinese A2D's bubble within the First Island Chain and giving them pause in assuming safe and secure operations for their forces with maximal response time to any potential US counterstrike.
Yes I am assuming that, because there is no imaginable scenario whereby China starts a war to invade and conquer Taiwan without preemptively taking out US forces in SK, Japan, and the Philippines.
It's the same situation as the run up to Pearl Harbor. China will do the exact same thing that the IJN did on December 7. Because when you go to war in the Pacific and the US is your enemy, the biggest priority you have is to kill every single US asset forward deployed against you as soon as possible and force new reinforcements to make the long journey west all the way from either Pearl or Puget Sound on the continental west coast.
The US does not need to strike first to ensure Taiwan's de facto independent survival free from the communist yoke of the CCP. China absolutely needs to strike first if it wants to have any hope of reunifying Taiwan with the mainland.
And finally, don't you worry about the Philippines giving permission or denying it to the US to launch strikes against Chinese forces from their territories. Not only will Marcos give it (he's no friend of China and increasingly angry about what they're doing against the Sierra Madre), it is also factually true that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
"It's the same situation as the run up to Pearl Harbor. China will do the exact same thing that the IJN did on December 7."
Well, it won't be exactly the same thing as 12/7. In restropect, The IJN would have done well to have small forces hit the West side of the Panama canal and some of the Australia graving docks.
Your scenario of an all out attack is only one possible scenario. Imagine a few missile that destroy Taiwan’s power plants and other critical infrastructure combined with a blockade. Taiwan is then faced with submission or starvations. Does America risk nuclear war on behalf of Taiwan. I think not.
Or NK could strike first at ROK and Japan leaving us incapable of doing anything for Taiwan.
A blockade of Taiwan would not go well for the PRC. Taiwan can hold out far longer than Mainland China. China cannot feed itself. No food coming in and no exports going out. The ensuing blockade of Mainland China would collapse the country in six months. Keep taking the side of the PRC , Pete. Wisdom has chased you all your life. But you are always faster.
Russia can't move as much grain by rail as sea, but the grain can flow a different direction. The other thing people don't think about is the fact tht Japan and South Korea have the same need to import food and need those same supply lines.
When we had Pershing IIs in Germany we used to couple a dedicated infantry battalion to their defense, 1/4 Inf, IIRC. There is a sad dearth of local defense for this task force.
I think they're relying on the Pacific to do most of the local defense. As long as some tourists packing 60mm mortars don't show up, it's kinda workable.
Or a container ship launching 20 cruise missiles <50 miles out.
CDR Sal, you've noted in the past the Army's somewhat jittery, inconsistent, and poorly thought out efforts to remain relevant in the Pacific. Well, they've got a lot of missile defense missions already, but as seems to be with all Army missions, even those require massive logistical move requirements to get to the fight. The alternative is permanent / semi-permanent theater deployed assets. Solves, or greatly alleviates the logistical movement requirements, but opens the door to adversary targeting issues. Somewhat surprisingly, the USMC appears to be aping the Army by becoming an "anti-ship missile lite" shore based force. That effort, apparently to remain relevant in the brutally contested Pacific theater, appears to be having the exact opposite effect by making the USMC vulnerable to force cuts as a "redundant to the Army" force. Scale? How many of these systems can we build and how fast? Answer: not nearly enough, and please don't ask "how much".
Marines need to stick to their unmanned JLTV plan. 16 mobile, small, easy to hide targets with no men at risk. More options to move them by air or sea connector. Easier to shoot and scoot. Let China spend the effort trying to hunt these. It will be great when they can load some of those cells with surface to air. It really starts to be a hell of a capability of you play it to the natural conclusion.
Or we could take the lessons learned from mine warfare, invest heavily in updating on mine tech and deployment techniques so the Taiwan Strait becomes a highly improbable amphibious play??? Deterrence much? Meh... best to go with a tried and true slugfest with this particular peer adversary in their own backyard.
Not sure what the support element is for those JLTVs with 1 tomahawk the Marines are using, but 6 fit on 1 C-17. 3 C-17 give you 16 launchers and 2 more for the controllers to get a ride.
That's assuming that missile battery finds a site near the airfield, a Walmart parking lot for example, that is already cleared and leveled, with access to a water supply, restaurants, internet/telephone, electricity, and a local police force to provide security.
Can Poland buy a few batteries? Pretty please?
Anything for "European Texas".
Poland already had in 2023, receiving two units in June 2024…
4 batteries? That's not enough for the Philippines, let alone the rest of the Pacific. The Marines could use about a dozen, too.
Our policy is to make sure we have inadequate forces scattered throughout the world with limited means of reinforcement and resupppy
No, unmanned, single cell JLTV is the better plan. Let it happen.
Shoot, move and communicate. It seems the Marine Corps and Army are in a race to be the lamdlaocked stranded stupid force in the world. It’s a tie except the Army still
Has their tanks. Artillery, engineers and so on so forth. When we speak of maneuver war fighting a navy with many vessels moving at various speeds to unknown locations on a broad sea with mid and longer range firecrackers seems better than stranded on a desert island. Logistics? We doan need no stinking logistics! We are American military thinkers! What happens when the rockets run out, the food is eaten and the water dries up?? Details I know details. The problem is no one in Washington knows a damn thing about anything, so they claim to know everything about everything. The day will come when the American taxpayer will wake up to very bad news on their local tv station. Defeat in detail will be a shock to the system. As if the NEO at HKIA wasn’t warning enough….
Or, this is the Army dangling a bauble to stone soup their way into more forces in the region, as this structure is clearly unable to defend itself against a ground threat, and so will have to have a maneuver force in support.
Unable to defend itself against any threat without significant number of supporting troops.
I think the Marines have the better solution with unmanned JLTVs. If you can resupply great, If its time to pack up and move islands, they can do so radically easier. Their LSM solution is wrong, but there is still time to fix it.
Dangir.I was hoping to have a "You can't leave things laying around or we'll tinker with them" riff and ask how many bolts were left over when we put it back together, and you go ruin it.
Yes we suck at naming things and have stupid Rumsfeldian-leftovers like "fires battalion." It's a slight improvement over "effects battalion" but still a lame attempt to get us to "think outside the box" by enforcing lexicological conformity. And we desperately want to play in the Indo-Pacific play box. It's all your fault, yanno. You just last week threatened our pie!
Yes on corporate-efficiency=military-risk+ineffective. Unlike a business, we're designed, personed, and equipped under the presumption of massive attrition. Planned redundancy good, if you can keep it affordable. Just ask Rommel, von Rundstedt, Kleist, Goering, Doenitz, et.al.
"Think outside the box" invariably means "Think inside this one, instead."
It stinks that Phib was in on the jointness thing over in the middle east. It does to ruin possible needling. It's good that Phib likes it because he knows the Army has to do most of its fighting well away from the littorals.
Come around and post more. I'm sure the Armoreress won't mind.
The photo of the battery shows five semi’s worth of gear, and you point out that logistics has yet to be worked out. And MSC is taking real cuts. So, who does a big Army think is going to teleport these batteries to their ideal locations, since the USAF C-17 fleet will likely already be committed to other tasks? And how much time will a certain Pacific threat give them to get their batteries in place, while we magically blind all of those PRC watchers on far too many Pacific islands? If weapon separation is good, weapon separation plus mobility is gooder.
And then we can all remember the photos of throngs of military age men crossing our southern border, with no fixed US address or job offer in hand. If I was placing bets, I think I would bet on flocks of grenade-dropping drones, a la Ukraine, hitting all of our C-17s before I would put my money down on Army missile batteries making it to the dance on time.
One suspects they're thinking forward deployment in the near future.
Look at the Marine's solution for this using JLTV. Unmanned, 6 on a C-17, can hitch a ride on CH-53 or C-130. Multiples on LCAC, LCU etc. Easy to play a shell game with them, easier to shoot and scoot. Easier to be shooting and reloading at the same time. The advantages go on and on.
Uncle Sam's Misguided Children have denuded themselves of so many vitally needed things, like Tanks and tuber arty, that there is some wonder about their battle effectiveness in the future. JLTV is nice to have, but if the price is other vital needs, then it's a loser all around.
There is no reason you couldn't quad pack GMLRS and now you have 4 artillery rockets boogying around. The 30x113mm remote weapon station on MADIS can also mount a Javelin instead of the 2 Stingers. It starts to turn into something very flexible.
The Marine solution uses a smaller missile with shorter range & smaller payloads. And it, too, will still need a significant logistic and security tail.
Not NMESIS, this....https://www.twz.com/land/our-first-look-at-marines-tomahawk-missile-launching-drone-truck-firing
Didn't say no logistics, but this has to offer some flexibility and mobility the other system lacks.
Let's hope those military age Chinese Manchurian Candidates move to the West Coast, take up surfing, marry a Valley Girl, and own an In-And-Out Burger franchise before the war happens.
Is China planning to invade Japan?
If I were China I would see this as a very hostile act and part of a plan by the US to cut her off from the pacific. I wonder how we would feel about missiles in Cuba.
If I were Japan I would not want to caught in a crossfire between the US and China, NK and Russia.
The neocon artists that appear to still control this decrepit administration really want to entangle us in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific simultaneously. How did Pride Week work out in Kabul?
Andy Wong’s article ( a few comments below) could justify China’s concerns about US aggressive military, financial and cultural policies.
I think U. S. policies may result in uniting the Eurasian landmass - Russia, China, NK, Iran, etc. against us and I do not think we could win such a conflict even if didn’t go nuclear.
China, like Russia, is always looking for some excuse to show how put upon they are. I'd simply tell them to quit commit acts of war in the West Philippine Sea and go back to being a reasonable country, and they won't have any concerns.
Back in the day: 1987 to 1990, I worked on a technology program related to the INF treaty.
We, hopeful cold warriors that we were, thought we were doing good!
It is a shame that the US is back to surrounding "them" with GLCM's and Pershings!
The problem with INF is that (a) China wasn't a party to it and (b) the Russians started to cheat.
So the army is gonna rotate these into theater? Blue crew / gold crew? Geesh who holds the keys for firing? I guess this battalion is led by an LTCOL? How manpower intensive is it I wonder?
They didn’t show the Battery design but it should be a headquarters and maintenance section plus a transport and ammo platoon. I assume it would be considered an independent company sized unit with 120 or so people.
"combat-credible capability forward..." I guess "missiles in a box" didn't have the same zing.
I had to ask myself if it was really worth paying for a "combat non-credible" weapon system, whatever that may be.
https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/taiwan-defense-usa-filipino-cooperation
Hope you all don't mind my slightly shameless plug, I wrote about the implications and my two cents on what is behind US thinking on Typhon and its recent deployment to the Northern Luzon Island of the Philippines as part of US-Philippines military exercises.
So far, even the deployment of one battery has been enough to make Beijing sit up and take notice. If the proposed exercise to deploy them to the Japanese Southwest Islands do come to fruition, we're looking at two pincers firmly aimed at piercing Chinese A2D's bubble within the First Island Chain and giving them pause in assuming safe and secure operations for their forces with maximal response time to any potential US counterstrike.
You are assuming that it is China that will strike first.
Also it is not clear to me if the US can use those weapons without the permission of the Philippine government.
Yes I am assuming that, because there is no imaginable scenario whereby China starts a war to invade and conquer Taiwan without preemptively taking out US forces in SK, Japan, and the Philippines.
It's the same situation as the run up to Pearl Harbor. China will do the exact same thing that the IJN did on December 7. Because when you go to war in the Pacific and the US is your enemy, the biggest priority you have is to kill every single US asset forward deployed against you as soon as possible and force new reinforcements to make the long journey west all the way from either Pearl or Puget Sound on the continental west coast.
The US does not need to strike first to ensure Taiwan's de facto independent survival free from the communist yoke of the CCP. China absolutely needs to strike first if it wants to have any hope of reunifying Taiwan with the mainland.
And finally, don't you worry about the Philippines giving permission or denying it to the US to launch strikes against Chinese forces from their territories. Not only will Marcos give it (he's no friend of China and increasingly angry about what they're doing against the Sierra Madre), it is also factually true that it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
"It's the same situation as the run up to Pearl Harbor. China will do the exact same thing that the IJN did on December 7."
Well, it won't be exactly the same thing as 12/7. In restropect, The IJN would have done well to have small forces hit the West side of the Panama canal and some of the Australia graving docks.
Also Alaska oil. Also the China will not ignore merchant shipping the way Japan did.
Your scenario of an all out attack is only one possible scenario. Imagine a few missile that destroy Taiwan’s power plants and other critical infrastructure combined with a blockade. Taiwan is then faced with submission or starvations. Does America risk nuclear war on behalf of Taiwan. I think not.
Or NK could strike first at ROK and Japan leaving us incapable of doing anything for Taiwan.
Or maybe China will use germ warfare.
Many possibilities.
A blockade of Taiwan would not go well for the PRC. Taiwan can hold out far longer than Mainland China. China cannot feed itself. No food coming in and no exports going out. The ensuing blockade of Mainland China would collapse the country in six months. Keep taking the side of the PRC , Pete. Wisdom has chased you all your life. But you are always faster.
Russia can't move as much grain by rail as sea, but the grain can flow a different direction. The other thing people don't think about is the fact tht Japan and South Korea have the same need to import food and need those same supply lines.
So? Stop the ships going to China, not the ones going to Japan or South Korea.
"there is no imaginable scenario"
I can think of at least one.
When we had Pershing IIs in Germany we used to couple a dedicated infantry battalion to their defense, 1/4 Inf, IIRC. There is a sad dearth of local defense for this task force.
I think they're relying on the Pacific to do most of the local defense. As long as some tourists packing 60mm mortars don't show up, it's kinda workable.
Or a container ship launching 20 cruise missiles <50 miles out.
Which is, ya know, overly optimistic. The enemy gets a vote.
Pershing II; *that* was a “fires battalion”.
CDR Sal, you've noted in the past the Army's somewhat jittery, inconsistent, and poorly thought out efforts to remain relevant in the Pacific. Well, they've got a lot of missile defense missions already, but as seems to be with all Army missions, even those require massive logistical move requirements to get to the fight. The alternative is permanent / semi-permanent theater deployed assets. Solves, or greatly alleviates the logistical movement requirements, but opens the door to adversary targeting issues. Somewhat surprisingly, the USMC appears to be aping the Army by becoming an "anti-ship missile lite" shore based force. That effort, apparently to remain relevant in the brutally contested Pacific theater, appears to be having the exact opposite effect by making the USMC vulnerable to force cuts as a "redundant to the Army" force. Scale? How many of these systems can we build and how fast? Answer: not nearly enough, and please don't ask "how much".
Marines need to stick to their unmanned JLTV plan. 16 mobile, small, easy to hide targets with no men at risk. More options to move them by air or sea connector. Easier to shoot and scoot. Let China spend the effort trying to hunt these. It will be great when they can load some of those cells with surface to air. It really starts to be a hell of a capability of you play it to the natural conclusion.
Yup, you've been reading too much of the Chowder 2 groups propaganda. Little of what you say is accurate.
Or we could take the lessons learned from mine warfare, invest heavily in updating on mine tech and deployment techniques so the Taiwan Strait becomes a highly improbable amphibious play??? Deterrence much? Meh... best to go with a tried and true slugfest with this particular peer adversary in their own backyard.
Only 5 C17's?
Which are ALREADY tasked out from now until the second coming?
Sure, why not? Makes more sense than the Navy planning on airlifting repair parts to Guam or wherever to repair broken ships.
Not sure what the support element is for those JLTVs with 1 tomahawk the Marines are using, but 6 fit on 1 C-17. 3 C-17 give you 16 launchers and 2 more for the controllers to get a ride.
If Mobility Command doesn't cooperate, then a well placed, accidental of course, hit on Scott AFB might get through to them.
All those priority AA requests can just get in line behind the other priority AA requests.
That's assuming that missile battery finds a site near the airfield, a Walmart parking lot for example, that is already cleared and leveled, with access to a water supply, restaurants, internet/telephone, electricity, and a local police force to provide security.
cute yes.
Useful from the PI? yes
Worth it? don't know. But it does have an advantage over the Navy VLS. you can reload it short of Pearl
"But it does have an advantage over the Navy VLS. you can reload it short of Pearl"
Known gap that should have been addressed two decades ago, but it's not seexy enough.
or maybe the dirty secret is there aren't enough reloads to bother
Ding ding