Friday, May 28, 2010

Korea

I have been asked by several folks about my take on the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The three reasons for this are that I have been there (stationed at Camp Stanley for a year), I am in the military, and I constantly study stuff like this. So I will put in my two cents worth.

My humble opinion is that militarily the North Koreas are in a world of hurt, but the situation is really bad politically for the US.

The NKs have two strong military cards to play. The first is the King Of Battle, their artillery. They have Corps of Artillery, and by that I mean whole Army Corps made up of nothing but FA, and its all aimed at Seoul. Thousands of MRLs (Multiple Rocket Launchers) and tube artillery (cannons) that can range Seoul and do a world of hurt. These units are in hardened positions (bunkers and caves) and have pre-surveyed firing positions and stockpiled ammunition. It would take a lot of counter-fire missions and air strikes to knock them out, figure (my estimate here, not anything offical) at least 48-72 hours to knock out over 50 to 60% of them. In that time, Seoul would be pretty badly banged up.

However, this isn't as war winning as it seems for several reasons. First off, most of this artillery is OLD, 1960s technology, and so is the ammunition. A high dud rate can be expected and accuracy is not all that (of course with this many guns and rockets you don't need much). Plus there is the fun fact that the really heavy Koksong guns have a design flaw that makes them brust after about 6 to 8 rounds of rapid firing. We know exactly where all these weapons are so knocking them out is just a function of shooting a lot. The ROK and the US Army have some pretty good systems in place to do this. Our Air Forces of course (NK ADA is probably about as good as Iraq's was and their AF is a joke), but also our counter-fire artillery systems. We and the ROKs have MLRS systems that were pretty much designed for just this. And we now have GMLRS that can outrange the NK artillery (80 Km range to their 40 to 60 kms) and never miss. 1 MLRS load of GLMRS will destroy 12 NK FA Systems and it can be fired in less than 1 minute. Computing data is already done since we know were everything is already. The only issue is there is so much of it.

The second big punch the NorKs have is their Special Forces (SF). This is a big item to worry about. They have one of the largest Special Forces in the world and they train constantly to do their worst to the South in the event of a war. They have commandos, ranger-types, SEAL-types, sniper-types, recon troops, fifth column types and air-assault types. They have special miget subs (one is suspected of the torpedo attack that started this), they have Hughes Helocopters modified to look like ROK army or civilian models, they have a whole mess of spies and people who have been passing info for years. Nasty stuff.

However, historically these guys have turned out to not be as good as thought. In 1968, the so called "Second Korean War" was fought. Lots of raids, ambushes on the DMZ, and commando raids into the South to attack ROK government facilities and an attempt on the ROK President. The deep raids failed miserably and no one in the world really noticed because this was a side show compared to Vietnam. While the SF has been training more than the standard army, they have still been cut back on. Worse, the effects of the famine have hurt them as the eligible pool of recruits is much smaller to pick from. The ROK has been training on defending against these guys for years and have gotten better at detection and interception. Even these tunnels dug under the DMZ are not such a big deal as they don't go that far behind them (if you pop up in the middle of a battalion defensive position you are in trouble, SF or not). Once they have shot their bolt, there is no way home. No sub could make south after the shooting started, and the AF would be shot down after about 2 days. Once you are on the run, you are going to get hunted down. The South doesn't have anywhere to hole up and their are no guerrilla bands to join. They would do some damage, but not enough.

And that is the main point. The two major strengths of the NorKs are not enough combined to finish off the south, only enough to do damage and make them MAD. Mad enough to decide to finish the stupidity once and for all and END it. The ROKs have enough men to do it, and their equipment is now 50 years more advanced than what the NorKs can throw (think WWII armies fighting the Coalition in Desert Storm).

The NorK Nuke threat only works on the defensive by the way, they have no method of delivery. No missile they have can carry their bomb design, they have no planes that can carry it. They could bury it and set it off after someone rolls over it, but even that is limited thanks to the mountainous terrain (blast would be channelled so small area of effect on your own soil).

So why is this bad politically for the US? Simple, what if the ROK decides to pick a fight? Or vice versa? The ROKs have every right to confront a rouge nation and the world is actually standing aside on this one. If it escalates, the US is bound by treaty to aid the south. The ROKs are in the clear to DO SOMETHING right now if they want so their is no "we can't help because they are the aggressors".

So the POTUS would get another war, and a nasty, knockdown, bloody one at that. He can fight with the allies and loose support from his base, or he can pull out and loose a LOT of international clout and a LOT of independent votes. Loose Loose if you are the current POTUS. Even worse, he has a ROK that is set up to actually want to do something, and CAN do something this time around.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Book Review: The Soviet-Afghan War

The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost was a book written by the Russian General Staff after the end of the USSR and translated by Lester W. Grau and Michael A. Gress. It is the third in a triology of books by Grau, the other two being "The Bear Went Over The Mountain" and "The Other Side Of The Mountain", both dealing with the tactical level of the fight, Soviet and Muj sides.

This book is, or was, to be the offical Soviet General Staff study of the war. The Soviets had made a point to do this after every fight (starting with WWII) for future study. Since they lost, this was somewhat of a backburner project. When the USSR became Russia again, there was really no offical desire to write it. But being a "free" society, a couple of officers got together and published it on their own dime with some help from Grau. So its a pretty interesting book to start with just for that.

This is the offical look at the war as fought by the Soviets. The "Big Picture" if you will. Not a whole lot of tactical fights (some examples to explain a point usually), but lots of "This was the doctrine, this is what worked or didn't, this is what we developed" and so on. As a division staff officer, I found this to be very useful reading.

I learned a couple things that went a long way to explaining why the Soviets blew this fight. First, the book explains the Soviets focus on being an "Operationally Based" army. Since most of you won't get that term here it is: The Soviets don't fight battles at a battalion or BCT (Brigade) level, they fight in terms of Divisions, Corps, Armies, and Army Groups/Fronts. Like us (NATO/US) they viewed Western Europe or Northern China as the next big fights and were looking to repeat WWII. Lots of tanks, troops and FA moving straight ahead. Where we would be maneuvering a company or battalion, they thought in terms of moving a division or corps. Scale is vastly increased.

Now, for Europe this idea has a good deal of merit (Northern European Plain is ideal for this, not so much Central or Southern Germany though excepting the Fulda Gap). Afghanistan, not so much. Mountains, deserts, few roads, high altitude and so on. Afghanistan is a TACTICAL fight. In the US Army, a Corps is the highest level of tactical fighting you get. Usually we mean something like a company or battalion, maybe a platoon or BCT (Brigade Combat Team), a small combined arms team. Its our great strength. And the Soviets greatest weakness. The leaders in this fight are NCOs and junior officers, again our great strength. The USSR had a absolutely pathetic NCO corps and its junior officers were pretty much overpaid sergeants. Which was exactly the thing they couldn't afford to have and win. They didn't win so you can figure out how it worked for them. That fact alone was worth the read.

This book had sections on every branch and service and how well they did or did not do. FA, Transportation, Supply, Maintenance, Air Support (fixed wing and helio), armor, special forces, engineers, chemical (smoke and flamethrower units, no gas although there were rumors of its use), and even PXs and pay. A very useful insite to how they did business and where they came up short which was all too often.

The other major issue that this book brought out was one I thought interesting. The political lens that the 40th Army had to put on everything in order to be in line with the communist party political views. You would think that wasn't something you needed to worry about but it ended up being a major issue. The Soviets could not successfully explain what was going on to the political leadership due to this war being something that didn't exist. According to Marxism-Leninism theory, a country that has become communist will never want to be anything but that so it will never have a home grown revolution against it.

I am NOT making that up. The Russians tried to pin this on the US, Pakistan, China, Britain, Japan and Gulf Arabs, but since none of them actually ever showed up to actually fight they had to conclude that it WAS a home grown anti-communist revolution. But they couldn't tell that to the political bosses, or if they did (once or twice) that couldn't be sold to the people. So they couldn't devise a political strategy to support the military one (sound familiar? not for Iraq though, we did manage that). Confusion at the top had some bad effects.

I have to admit this book was very interesting, but it was hard to read. It took me about 3 months off and on to finish. General Staff Officers are not exactly great writers to begin with, but the topics were not exactly light reading either. You can't make a chapter on the Theater Maintenace Program for vehicles to be very exciting even if you hire Tom Clancy to write it. But it was very informative and I really have an understanding of how the USSR fumbled this war.

As a counter to what we are doing I can say that it appears we are not making nearly as many mistakes as the Soviets did. We are doing vastly better at the Combat Support and Combat Service Support functions the Soviets jacked up and we are doing much better at the political side of the house in that our problems are completely different than what the Russians faced. Yes we have major ones, but we managed to make ours original so at least we are not guilty of repeating past mistakes on that level.

This book is also great for its huge amount of "They did WHAT?" items they hit on as well as explaining many confusing items due to different army setups. Things like the fact that Soviets counted smoke artillery as chemical rounds so technically they did use chemical weapons in Afghanistan were as we count them as a type of artillery round. Or that they used LOTS of flamethrowers on about everything that moved. Or that 67% of their entire force serving in Afghanistan was hospitalized due to sickness at one point in time (we haven't ever gone past 5%, and probably not even that).

One of my favorite items: when the Soviets pulled out 6 regiments of troops in 1986, they laggered them together prior to moving them home. They had a Hepatitus outbreak and rendered all six regiments combat ineffective for 2 months until they could get them healthy again. They didn't identify it in time, they didn't contain it well and they couldn't get their soldiers to obey simple hygine rules to stop the spread.

Another fun fact: pay for a Soviet soldier was between 350 to 8 rubles a month for pay. 350 for senior officers, 8 for lowest private. Each ruble was worth (offically) $1.59. That was including the combat pay bonus, so if you were a private you made offically less than $15 a month for serving in Afghanistan. The comment was that a soldier who saved his money might be able to buy a pair of bluejeans when he mustered out. And to add another fun fact: the actual exchange rate of a ruble at this time was actually about 20 cents. Nice, thanks for your service.

The list goes on and its full of stuff that makes you do double takes. And this is written by the Soviet General Staff, which makes me wonder what they didn't talk about.

Over all, a very good book. This book is not meant for a casual read or someone with a superficial interest. You need to want to know what this book has in it to finish it or to read all of it and not skip parts that seem dull. I recommend it for people who also really want an understanding of how different our militaries worked and function.

As a professional aside, I have heard from several sources that the Russians are of two minds about our involvement in Afghanistan. One, many want some payback so are for us being there. But many others are really pissed that we are doing so well compared to them. We have been there going on nine years. We just hit the 1000 KIA in Afghanistan. The Soviets lost in a same amount of time at least 25,000 KIA (new number, numerous sources in Russia have published this number as the actual loss number instead of the offical 13,000, and its been independently verified that the 25K is correct).

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Why I like Rifts

Rifts: a role-playing game by Palladium Books that combines every type of game style in existence (D and D type stuff, Sci-Fi, modern combat, superheroes, supernatural, etc.) and combines it into one system. Rifts itself is based on a future earth where a huge disaster killed nearly 7 billion people and destroyed pretty much everything else. Rifts are rips in time and space and they suck stuff in and dump stuff out (like aliens, monsters and demons). Magic and physic powers returned to the world and basically the entire earth had the Wackyland sign put on it (IT CAN HAPPEN HERE).

This of course makes for a great game where you can play any type of character and use magic, technology, superpowers, physic powers, magic swords, summoned terrors from beyond and so on.

I love this game for many reasons, but the biggest one has to be the storyline. They start with the Golden Age of Man (late 21 century) with high tech stuff, the disaster itself (which you can actually play in the game Chaos Earth), and then the Dark Ages where mankind barely hung on. And then the period known as "NOW".

NOW in the time period rocks. You have new nation-states and groups, some good, some bad, some with parts of both because lets face it people, grey is the standard human color. You can be the noblest nation on earth and still do bad things in the name of good because they need to be done (such as dropping two nukes to end a war, or assassinating someone in order to stop a genocide or a war, possibilities are endless).

Palladium Books is the one group that really captures that aspect. They even encourage play like that. You can be good guys fighting for a bad nation for a good reason. Nice mix that.

The chat boards have a lot of people who really don't get that part though. Coalition (the High Tech, human supremest nation in North America) is bad period. Anyone fighting them is good period. Not really in depth viewpoint for some of these folks. Also not very military either. The Coalition is THE military powerhouse in North America. So when it starts a fight, its usually going to win.

The biggest thing I love about this game is centered around that aspect. Palladium Books avoids the "good guy" trap that so many other games fall into. This is know to many gamers as the "Star Wars Trap", "The StormTrooper Rule" or the "Rebel Alliance Clause". Because the rebels/non regular military establishment/militia are the "good" guys they will win, no matter what the real ground military truth is. Any professional military force will be defeated by a rag-tag bunch of heroes, and the nameless soldiers in bad guy armor can't shoot straight except during the opening scene when we are establishing the fact that they are the "bad guys" when they gun down some unarmed women and children. Unless of course the "military" is a group of scruffy, unshaven, graffiti all over their armor and vehicles misfits who are constantly in trouble for doing things "their way" in which case they will pull it out after being ordered not to do something by an superior officer who graduated from the academy.

The Tolkeen War (a recent storyline) focused heavily on that. The Tolkeens (a magic focused kingdom in Minnesota) fought against Coalition invasions. They won some fights, but the Coalition professional military machine ended up crushing the entire kingdom. Which makes perfect sense as the Coalition Military was well equipped, well trained, and after some sorting out, well lead. But many were surprised by this, as the Tolkeens were the "good guys" so they should have won. They didn't and I am thankful that the storyline worked out that way.

I bring this up because I just got "Triax 2" which deals with the other big human technological power: The New German Republic. I won't get into the huge details behind this group, but they are fighting for their lives against Gargoyles and Brodkil demons in Europe. And they just scored a huge victory by using actual military strategy and thought. In the book/series timeline, they were able to cut the demon zones in two by using an amphibious/airborne assault behind the lines and have wiped out nearly a third of their enemy using realistic military tactics. The NGR's army is disciplined, shaves, keeps their equipment clean and well maintained, and has officers that are smart and listen to their NCOs on occasion. In short, completely opposite of every effective Sci-Fi military in existence. I so love that about this game.

Yes, I know its a game. Yes I know we are talking about fantasy and sci-fi. Yes, I know none of this is real. But its nice to see some realism in certain things.

Book Review: Queen Victoria's Little Wars

Well, I have finally finished a book after having been stumbling around reading four different ones over the period of the move from Fort Sill to Fort Drum. And this one is a recent purchase I saw at Borders about a week ago. So here we go.

Queen Victoria's Little Wars was first released in 1972. Written by Byron Farwell, it is about the various conflicts, expeditions and outright wars fought during the reign of Queen Victoria starting in 1837 and going up to 1900 when she died. Quite a lot of area to cover historically speaking.

First off, this book is considered a classic by many history and war buffs. It gives a pretty fair listing of and short run downs of the whole expansion of the British Empire and how its politics changed. It hits on how the Empire actually did expand, the politics behind it and how they shaped and pushed things. And often as not, how the guys on the ground did stuff that was opposite of what the guys in charge (but back in England) wanted, but once done couldn't be undone. Pretty much how most Empires happen really.

It was a great read, but for me that was all it was. Due to the size of the topic, it couldn't give more than a short chapter to many huge topics (The Second Boer War was only one chapter as an example, and the Indian Mutiny was three). If you were looking for huge amounts of detail and information, this book isn't for you. If you are looking for a starting point, this is a good one. I did learn a lot about conflicts I knew nothing about or very little, but I knew much more about the Boer War and Zulu War than was presented.

I also need to add that this book had two great features going for it that makes it worthy of reading. The first was the bibiliography that was included. The author pulled from a HUGE amount of sources, so if you want to learn more about one fight or war, you have the prefect list to work off of and he linked it to each conflict so instead of having to hunt down books throughout the whole list, it was already done. Second was the list of medals and the appendix dealing with the British Army Regimental system. If you have never dealt with the British system, the regiment can be a difficult thing to understand. This appendix (read it first before the book) is a great source of info and explains a lot. It also includes an explanation of all the medals given out so you can figure out what all the "VC, DCO, SRC, etc" mean in terms of who did what when.

I recommend this book, I enjoyed it.