"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
om...
"Paul Austin" wrote in message
.. .


According to a RAND study, the limiting factor in deploying a SBCT
is
ramp space at the entry airport. Assuming the ability to process,
unload and turn around 4 C-17s an hour (which RAND considered
heroically optimistic), the 96 hour deployment range for a SBCT
using
a fleet of 60 C-17s is 1325 miles. That puts a SBCT in place with
3
count them 3 days of beans and bullets but no POL. Time to
Kandahar
with 3 days of beans and bullets is 21 days, by which time the
lead
elements have long ago shot out their basic loads and have run out
of
gas.

Gee, I guess Rand discounted the possibility of resupply, huh? Let's
see, 60 C-17's leaves what, some 140 plus unused? Not to mention all
of those C-130's, which do a fine job of hauling beans, bullets, and
even POL. And they can even use other airstrips (like many highways
in
the world, not to mention the minimum FLS's constructed by 20th EN
BDE
assets on a routine basis), which means no challenge to ramp space
at
the principal APOD, right? All those extra C-17's hauling cargo to
an
aerial staging base outside the insertion area, with C-130's doing
the
short hauls (they could even LAPES the resupply packages, meaning an
airstrip is not even required).

You might want to read what RAND had to say
http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1606/. They are after all
professional analysts.

Staging and transhipping material from C17s to C130s was analysed and
rejected since the time consumed in off-loading, breaking down and
reloading payloads made the C130s. RAND analysed the entire chain of
deployment and determined that established airport with supporting
road networks would move more material than could ad hoc airfields.
Can you prove different?

As for the size of the force, RAND selected 60 C17s because the USAF
(remember them?) consumes a large number of transport sortees itself.
In addition, there are and will be other commitments besides this one.



....

I'm as in favor of improved strategic mobility as anyone but
Stryker brigades sacrifice too much to that end. You get a force
that
isn't tolerant of the misfortunes of war and which is unable to
sustain a momentary reverse.

You seem to be focused on this as a force that is designed to
aggressively strike into the heart of enemy heavy forces and win,
but
in reality it is an effort to provide early entry forces with more
capability than they now have (no way you can argue that it does not
do that), and to fill that "middle" niche that we currently don't
cover between the light and heavy spectrum.

And you seem to say that if it's an improvement over current light
forces deployments then it's worth having. My position is that the
spectrum of opponents that a SBCT can face that e.g. the 82nd Airborne
cannot is too small to be worth while. It doesn't take much in the way
of armor and artillery to defeat a SBCT. Panama and Afghanistan could
not but there are_lots_of places that could.

I believe that concentrating on an "interim" SBCT which under a more
dovish administration could easily become permanent displaces programs
to develop enough lift so that forces with real puissance can be
inserted. That said, the logistics challenge of battle at the end of
such a slender thread hasn't been addressed. Traditionally, the
tonnage of POL, ammunition and other kit dwarfs the TOE tonnage. Given
that SBCT's only chance of success in more than constabulary
operations is to substitute fires for force size, that's unlikely to
change.

You've waived away logistics loads in using SBCTs far from litterals.
Can you support that?