To bypass these chokepoints, the wargamers experimented with a concept called "seabasing," putting an entire Army Stryker brigade afloat on ships and then landing them at minor harbors -- fishing villages, for example -- or even bare beaches without ever going through the ports. In some ways it was a 21st century version of the D-Day landings 68 years ago, albeit with much smaller forces going much longer distances. Army leaders were excited about the idea, but the actual players struggled with how to implement it. Unlike some past simulations, this year's wargame didn't handwave the logistical difficulties of such an operation or postulate future technologies that would somehow make the problem go away.Notice whats at work here?
"This time they forced us to only play capabilities that are in the current [budget] program, which added a good dose of reality," said one participant, who asked to remain anonymous. Today, for example, the US military flies personnel overseas and only sends their equipment and supplies by sea, which means it has few ships designed to accommodate large numbers of troops. So the wargamers improvised by chartering two civilian cruise liners. They also had to hire civilian vessels to carry some supplies; that proved a problem when the simulated enemy mined the sea lanes, scaring some commercial transports into turning around without making key deliveries - something military crews would not have done.
The wargame also showed a bottleneck in the ability to get troops from the transport ships to shore without going through the easily targeted major ports. To unload from the big seagoing ships onto small landing craft while both are out at sea, the military relies on something called a Mobile Landing Platform, a kind of floating, self-propelled pier that can serve as a port facility in mid-ocean. The problem, the same participant said, is that "there's only three mobile landing platforms that are currently resourced" in long-term budget plans, and some of them were needed in a second simulated conflict underway at the same time in the Pacific. "We had to fight for those to enable the seabase," he said.
So while seabasing is a neat idea, it turns out the Army needs more ships of specific types, such as those Mobile Landing Platforms, in order to implement it. But those additional ships aren't only not in the current budget plan: They would never be in the Army's part of the budget at all. Like long-range cargo planes, seabasing is something the Army has to beg its sister services to buy so they can get it to the fight. That's not a happy fact for the Army to encounter, but it's a lot better to encounter it in simulation than in a real shooting war where it's too late to fix anything.
"One of the great challenges is being honest with yourself: You have to actually identify what you can do and where you have real difficulty -- and that is happening," said a civilian participant. "The thing is, we have to be very clear now. The stakes are much higher from both a bureaucratic and strategic sense... Right now DoD [the Department of Defense] is making hard choices about what capabilities they have to invest in and what capabilities they feel can take some risk in, [and] it's very important that the Army test their real demands pretty hard before DoD makes any of their choices permanent."
They didn't include the 82nd Airborne...they could have flown straight into the warzone and parachuted in...right on top of the refugees.
They didn't include the 101st...they could have teamed with Marines on an LHA or even converted an oil tanker and flown straight to the refugees.
But a mechanized brigade...that you have to supply and replenish? That you have to support in the field? That isn't designed for amphibious operations?
The game players in this scenario probably had to play the game with certain units. The problem for the Big Army is that its choosing the wrong units to get into the Pacific. Light Infantry divisions. Airborne and Air Assault divisions will be the Army's saving grace in the Pacific.
Not Stryker Brigades.
The sooner the Army realizes it the better it will be.
