NATO and 48 hours warning

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: Rob322

I heard that the plans were to convert 9th ID into a mech division but that was scrapped with the drawdown; does that sound right?

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

The whole notion of using National Guard brigades as the third brigade of active duty divisions was a huge disaster for that time, most of the Guard brigades just never received the funds nor the training to really take on that mission. The 48th was first selected because it was deemed to be the premier National Guard unit of that size, no doubt their were a lot of politics involved. The 256th Brigade that went to the 5th ID was in pretty horrid shape. I had heard some pretty bad things about the 155th as well as the 48th and saw firsthand the condition of the 256th. At one point an entire company went awol after being at Polk for just a month, but eventually the entire brigade was prepped to deploy. The 256th was entrained as well as the rest of the 5th ID and on their way to the port of Beaumont, TX when the war ended ready or not. I was in the 3-1 Cav at the time and we had an extra ground troop of National Guard assigned to us. I would say these guys were pretty good and would have acquitted themselves well, I have my doubts about the rest of the 256th.

Had we had to actually do a Reforger in the face of a Soviet onslaught, I doubt the roundout units would have made it over there when they were supposed to. Many of these units were pretty understrength in personnel. I suspect the 194th and 197th would have been used as filler brigades for the 1st Cav and 5th ID, and then use the Guard units as the 7th Army reserve assets once they got into country. Getting personnel into the country was one thing, but transitioning them into M1A1's and Bradleys when many of the Guard were still using M60's and M113's is another thing altogether.

Following the Gulf War things changed and all of the active duty divisions that survived the drawdown of the 90's had 3 active duty brigades. The Guard brigades were pulled from being active duty round-out units. As time went by, the overall mindset towards the Guard was changing and during the Iraq war many National Guard brigades deployed alongside their active duty brothers and proved themselves to be equals.

By the way, the 24th was never a Reforger unit, it was part of the Rapid Deployment Force and belonged to the XVIIIth Abn Corps at the time. I have no doubt that they would have been sent to Europe, they just didn't have any pre-positioned equipment in theatre and would have had to bring all of their vehicles with them. The main Reforger units were the 1st Cav Div, 2nd Armored Div, 1st, 4th, and 5th Infantry Divisions, 194th Armored Bde, 197th Inf Bde, along with a couple arty brigades and a host of other smaller units.

The plan was to have all of the Reforger units deployed to Germany in 10 days and then add a few more days to get to their GDP positions. Whether they could have actually done it that quick is anyone's guess. If there had only been a 48 hour warning until the first Soviet tanks crossed the frontier there is no way any Reforger unit would have even left the States. One thing is that the Reforger units would have to bring their aviation assets with them along with their smaller vehicles. So while the personnel would have flown over pretty quickly, all the helicopters and hummvees and what not would have taken quite a bit longer. They may have added smaller vehicles to the Pomcus sites later on but I don't think so.

Yes, that's correct. The 9th was scheduled to go full mech and then become a Reforger unit with Pomcus sites of its own. As it turned out once the Soviets collapsed, it was the first division to turn in its colors with the 199th Bde taking its place at Ft Lewis.

[ComradeP]

I have nothing but the highest regard for all of NATO's and the Warsaw Pacts member nations. What I thought would happen is that 'frontal attack by tanks' would be a hammer blow to a minor nation. Any nation not as well supported as the NATO Big Three(UK, US, WG) would have serious issues resisting a main effort Soviet tank attack.

That might very well have happened, I just noticed that the Dutch didn't fight well in the fiction and found it amusing.

The Dutch army had its serious ups and downs in terms of readiness and capabilities, I'd have to check what kind of deployment and equipment the Dutch would've had at the time, specifically when they upgraded the Leopard 2's to A4 standard. The tanks were fairly modern though (Leopard 1 and 2), so the performance of the tanks shouldn't have been all that different from the West German tank units. Not sure what shape the infantry was in.

[bayonetbrant]

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

Getting personnel into the country was one thing, but transitioning them into M1A1's and Bradleys when many of the Guard were still using M60's and M113's is another thing altogether.

The round out brigades were already transitioned to whichever vehicle sets their active duty counterparts were on.
That caused some embarrassment for the Pentagon when they chose *not* to take the M1/M2-equipped 48th brigade in favor of the M60/M113-equipped 197th brigade who had to do their equipment transition in Saudi Arabia.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

I have nothing but the highest regard for all of NATO's and the Warsaw Pacts member nations. What I thought would happen is that 'frontal attack by tanks' would be a hammer blow to a minor nation. Any nation not as well supported as the NATO Big Three(UK, US, WG) would have serious issues resisting a main effort Soviet tank attack.

That might very well have happened, I just noticed that the Dutch didn't fight well in the fiction and found it amusing.

The Dutch army had its serious ups and downs in terms of readiness and capabilities, I'd have to check what kind of deployment and equipment the Dutch would've had at the time, specifically when they upgraded the Leopard 2's to A4 standard. The tanks were fairly modern though (Leopard 1 and 2), so the performance of the tanks shouldn't have been all that different from the West German tank units. Not sure what shape the infantry was in.

If you look at the history of WWII, where it concerns the Soviets, you find them seeking out what they consider the weaker defenders. Especially the minor country forces. They did it constantly, during and after Stalingrad, with the Italians, Romanians and Hungarians.

I thought they would do it again in WWIII. They would try the Dutch and see if their military equipment and training would be up to the same level as the US/UK/WG. When I looked at their forces, the location they held in the line and the Soviet penchant for doing the equivalent of a 'tank body slam' I thought the Dutch forces would come out of that in second place.

It was nothing against the Dutch except they were pitted against the wrong opponent, being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the Soviets willing to use whatever force they needed to create a breakthrough. Much like the Destruction of Army Group Center during Operation Bagration in 1944.

Good Hunting.

MR

[Sabre21]

In the two tours I served in Germany, the Dutch tankers almost always won the annual tank gunnery competition that took place between the various Nato allies. Especially in the early years before the Leopard II was fully fielded and the US was still using the original M1 variant and M60A3's.

I think it was in 88 or 89 that the US finally took the completion using the M1A1's. The Dutch and Germans typically shared the top spots from one year to the next.

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: bayonetbrant

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

Getting personnel into the country was one thing, but transitioning them into M1A1's and Bradleys when many of the Guard were still using M60's and M113's is another thing altogether.

The round out brigades were already transitioned to whichever vehicle sets their active duty counterparts were on.
That caused some embarrassment for the Pentagon when they chose *not* to take the M1/M2-equipped 48th brigade in favor of the M60/M113-equipped 197th brigade who had to do their equipment transition in Saudi Arabia.

Some might have been, but the 256th that was assigned to the 5th ID were still using M113's and had to go through a hasty Bradley transition and the tankers had only recently gone through M1 conversion and that was 1990. So pre 90 they still had the M60A3's.

There was no doubt a delay between the active duty and National Guard components getting their newer vehicle transitions. It just so happened that the Gulf War caught some of these units with mismatched equipment.

[Sabre21]

Not sure how this duplicate post appeared.

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

The whole notion of using National Guard brigades as the third brigade of active duty divisions was a huge disaster for that time, most of the Guard brigades just never received the funds nor the training to really take on that mission. The 48th was first selected because it was deemed to be the premier National Guard unit of that size, no doubt their were a lot of politics involved. The 256th Brigade that went to the 5th ID was in pretty horrid shape. I had heard some pretty bad things about the 155th as well as the 48th and saw firsthand the condition of the 256th. At one point an entire company went awol after being at Polk for just a month, but eventually the entire brigade was prepped to deploy. The 256th was entrained as well as the rest of the 5th ID and on their way to the port of Beaumont, TX when the war ended ready or not. I was in the 3-1 Cav at the time and we had an extra ground troop of National Guard assigned to us. I would say these guys were pretty good and would have acquitted themselves well, I have my doubts about the rest of the 256th.

With respect, though I agree in general with your thoughts, there are a few specifics I want to address. I was a 'straphanger' on the 5ID staff during the Desert Storm period. The mass AWOLs (there were two) really did occur, but they occurred from Ft. Hood, and they were smaller than company size. The bulk of 256th Bde was mobilized and then deployed to Ft. Hood for initial training. Many of the kids in 256th Bde experienced a real shock when they began serious training, and two groups organized two separate mass AWOLs, one group going to Shreveport and one to Lake Charles, within about a week of each other. Both were quickly rounded up and returned to Hood and faced disciplinary action, primarily field grade Article 15s, but at least one court-martial. The Shreveport AWOL incident is better known than the Lake Charles incident. Ironically, I'm quoted in this story....

http://articles.latimes.com/1991-02-09/news/mn-685_1_guardsmen-back

In retrospect, there were really some funny aspects of the Shreveport AWOL. Many of the soldiers who went to Shreveport to the tv station were confronted there by their parents, who chewed their butts and placed them back on buses to Ft. Hood.

The incident described in the story involved girlfriends and wives of deploying soldiers who found out that some of the AWOL guardsmen were on the bus. The story was in the news by then. The women, with help from some other people on the bus, verbally and physically attacked the guardsmen,and the bus driver stopped the bus in a Texas town more or less for the protection of the guardsmen.

Following completion of training, the bulk of the 256th was scheduled for a deployment to the NTC at Ft. Irwin, CA before any potential deployment to the Middle East. At that point, of course, with Desert Storm, over, training was stopped, and the 256th was rapidly demobilized.

I had an informal talk with a couple of senior leaders of the 256th after we knew they were going to demobilize. Their assessment of their readiness was that they were not ready for combat and were not trained above platoon level at that point. We weren't going to say that at the time, though.

The whole mess with roundout brigades really woke a lot of people up about the roundout concept.

[Sabre21]

The Cav guys we had with us seemed to do ok and were fairly motivated. As far as I recall they were loading out with our ground troops when it was called off. I do recall much of the 256th was at Hood, but I thought there was a unit that went awol from North Fort on Polk along with the knuckleheads from Hood.

[ComradeP]

If you look at the history of WWII, where it concerns the Soviets, you find them seeking out what they consider the weaker defenders. Especially the minor country forces. They did it constantly, during and after Stalingrad, with the Italians, Romanians and Hungarians.

That makes sense. However, just like most of NATO by the late 1980's the Dutch were finally receiving the means to fight a conventional war if needed, and their equipment was a lot better compared to the Soviet equipment than the minor Axis equipment.

I have serious doubts whether the Dutch mobilisation system would've worked in a Cold War grown hot in an instant system, but the units in the field at least had decent gear by the FCRS timeframe.

[JWW]

ORIGINAL: Sabre21

The Cav guys we had with us seemed to do ok and were fairly motivated. As far as I recall they were loading out with our ground troops when it was called off. I do recall much of the 256th was at Hood, but I thought there was a unit that went awol from North Fort on Polk along with the knuckleheads from Hood.

I have no reason to doubt your memory regarding the Cav. I'm just discussing the main body of the 256th, which was training up as a brigade. There was no mass AWOL from Ft. Polk. But I do know that almost from the start many of the 256th guardsmen did not want to be there. We were encouraged to allow statewide and national media to interview them as they began to train up, but that changed quickly as we began to see so many negative comments from them. It turns out a good many of them had joined the Guard to pay for college and had been pulled out of college. One bluntly told a local tv station, "I joined the Guard to go to college, not go to war." It got worse from there.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

If you look at the history of WWII, where it concerns the Soviets, you find them seeking out what they consider the weaker defenders. Especially the minor country forces. They did it constantly, during and after Stalingrad, with the Italians, Romanians and Hungarians.

That makes sense. However, just like most of NATO by the late 1980's the Dutch were finally receiving the means to fight a conventional war if needed, and their equipment was a lot better compared to the Soviet equipment than the minor Axis equipment.

I have serious doubts whether the Dutch mobilization system would've worked in a Cold War grown hot in an instant system, but the units in the field at least had decent gear by the FCRS timeframe.

I have no doubt of any of that.

I just know the Russians would have tried it. The Dutch would likely not have been prepared to take on the strength of a Soviet Army and that if the Soviets used vertical envelopment with the sledge hammer on anyone they would have been hard pressed to withstand it. In this case, I wrote that the Dutch weren't able to take that kind of punishment.

Later, we'll have the Dutch fighting hard like everyone else.

As far as the mobilization process is concerned, I doubt if any nations process would have worked as advertised. They just expect too many things to all fall into line. When the stress hits and the cracks start spreading it all tends to fall apart.

Good Hunting.

MR

[bayonetbrant]

people just need to be very careful about how they paint "National Guard Units in Desert Storm" as the 48th had none of the issues the 155th and 256th had. The 48th was more "famous" for not getting out of NTC, but they met every standard put in front of them, and then started rehearsing brigade deliberate breach ops - which wasn't even in their METL at the time (and to be fair, wasn't in the BDE METL of most US active duty units in 1990, as they weren't expecting to be breaching into Poland if the balloon ever went up).

Additionally, there were artillery units and engineer battalions that deployed and acquitted themselves quite well.

[Rob322]

Oh there were definitely NG troops that did well in the first Gulf War, and thanks for the info on the 48th, they apparently were one of the better ones. Still, the overall concept of round out brigades appears to have been finally disproven by the experiences of the 1st Gulf War. I mean, we were fighting the Iraqis, not the Soviets and we also had plenty of time. The Iraqis invaded Kuwait in August and by mid-August we began deploying and steadily built up over 5 months. I doubt the Sovs would've given us 5 months, even if the scenario we're presented with in the game is "worst case"; it's seem doubtful we'd have tme to mobilize fully and work out the kinks in training at NTC.

So I guess I was wondering, what was the plan? Say you were the CO of the 1st Cav Division and you were told to deploy to Germany, collect your POMCUS gear and find your battle position. What'd you do with the 155th? Did you order them onto the planes anyway or did you leave them behind and deploy with your two bdes and hope that somehow they might be able to come over and join you before the end? I'm glad we never had to find out how this would work in WW3 because we would likely have had an opponent far more competent than what we faced in 91.

[bayonetbrant]

ORIGINAL: Rob322

Oh there were definitely NG troops that did well in the first Gulf War, and thanks for the info on the 48th, they apparently were one of the better ones. Still, the overall concept of round out brigades appears to have been finally disproven by the experiences of the 1st Gulf War. I mean, we were fighting the Iraqis, not the Soviets and we also had plenty of time.

The standard was "ready to deploy in 90 days"
From the day the ARNG units were mobilized, most of them were ready to deploy (and many did) within that 90 day window.

There were a great many political reasons that the roundout brigades didn't deploy - it wasn't a training issue.
ARNG units deployed for everything except front-line combat in AR/IN/CAV units. Do you really think the AR/IN/CAV units were that much more screwed up than the FA/EN/AV/QM/MP units?
Or did the active force not want them performing well, prompting Congress (fresh of the fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall "peace dividend") from cutting further into the active ranks?

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: bayonetbrant

ORIGINAL: Rob322

Oh there were definitely NG troops that did well in the first Gulf War, and thanks for the info on the 48th, they apparently were one of the better ones. Still, the overall concept of round out brigades appears to have been finally disproven by the experiences of the 1st Gulf War. I mean, we were fighting the Iraqis, not the Soviets and we also had plenty of time.

The standard was "ready to deploy in 90 days"
From the day the ARNG units were mobilized, most of them were ready to deploy (and many did) within that 90 day window.

There were a great many political reasons that the roundout brigades didn't deploy - it wasn't a training issue.
ARNG units deployed for everything except front-line combat in AR/IN/CAV units. Do you really think the AR/IN/CAV units were that much more screwed up than the FA/EN/AV/QM/MP units?
Or did the active force not want them performing well, prompting Congress (fresh of the fall-of-the-Berlin-Wall "peace dividend") from cutting further into the active ranks?

It was a lack of training is what was the issue. I have a pdf file that goes thru the Gulf War in very good detail written by the Center of Military History. It goes through the issues that occurred with the 3 roundout brigades and why they never deployed on time.

In short, the FA units didn't need the trainup time that was needed for a maneuver unit nor did the aviation units. The 48th was in the best shape of the 3 and had actually been signed off for deployment on the same day the ceasefire took place. The 155th was entraining to go to NTC after their intensive train-up at Hood. Both they and the 256th had only recently received their M1's and hadn't had much gunnery training on them let alone battalion level battle drills. The 256th was the worse off as it turns out because a lot of their commo and other smaller equipment had been parceled out to other Guard units that had already been called up. It wasn't until later that the decision to call up the 3 round out brigades had been made.

As I had mentioned before, the Cav unit that came to us at Polk never even had M3's. They were still using M113's, so they all had to go thru a Bradley transition, gunnery, and company sized battledrills with the rest of the Squadron.

[JWW]

The idea that combat units required the longest trainup is valid. Beyond small unit training, the training for larger maneuver units to operate effectively, up to brigade level, is exceedingly difficult. Here is a quote from a thesis written for Command and General Staff College by an officer who served in the 256th during its Desert Storm trainup. The thesis discusses all the many problems encountered by the 256th, including the equipment problems mentioned by Sabre21.

A former 4th Infantry Division Commander and brigade commander in the 5th Infantry Division during Desert Storm stated in an interview that,
Maneuver is too hard for anyone at the maneuver unit (Battalion and Brigade level Command of Armor and Infantry forces) to maintain any decent level of proficiency. Active duty units struggle with this one. It is a bridge too far to expect National Guardsmen to be able to execute these difficult tasks with only thirty-nine training days.

Note that the link is direct to a pdf file.

Link to PDF file

[Sabre21]

ORIGINAL: JW

The idea that combat units required the longest trainup is valid. Beyond small unit training, the training for larger maneuver units to operate effectively, up to brigade level, is exceedingly difficult. Here is a quote from a thesis written for Command and General Staff College by an officer who served in the 256th during its Desert Storm trainup. The thesis discusses all the many problems encountered by the 256th, including the equipment problems mentioned by Sabre21.

A former 4th Infantry Division Commander and brigade commander in the 5th Infantry Division during Desert Storm stated in an interview that,
Maneuver is too hard for anyone at the maneuver unit (Battalion and Brigade level Command of Armor and Infantry forces) to maintain any decent level of proficiency. Active duty units struggle with this one. It is a bridge too far to expect National Guardsmen to be able to execute these difficult tasks with only thirty-nine training days.

Note that the link is direct to a pdf file.

Link to PDF file

That was one heck of a read. Pretty good document, I'm glad you posted it. There was one mistake in it though I saw. he indicates there were 10 active divisions with 2 brigades that had a roundout Guard or Reserve brigade. In actuality, several of the divisions that had a round out brigade had 3 active duty brigades. The 1st ID had a forward deployed brigade in Germany as did the 2nd Armored, both had a 4th round out brigade. The 4th and 7th ID had 3 brigades at their Stateside location with a 4th Guard brigade. In fact, the 82nd Abn had a National Guard airborne brigade assigned to it in the 70's, not sure if it was still there in the 80's.

[bayonetbrant]

ORIGINAL: Sabre21
The 48th was in the best shape of the 3 and had actually been signed off for deployment on the same day the ceasefire took place.

And that was within the 90-day window from when they reported to their mob station. They met the standard they were given.
The standard - in this case - was ill-matched to the circumstances on the ground.

[Mad Russian]

ORIGINAL: bayonetbrant

The standard - in this case - was ill-matched to the circumstances on the ground.

Which is by far the norm.

Somebody once said that all militaries train to fight the last war. I believe there is some truth to that. One of the things that always seems to change from one war to the next is speed of operations. Nobody ever seems prepared for the change in how fast things happen currently compared to how fast they happened in the last war.

Maybe Korea is an exception since there was no real technology/equipment difference from WWII on the ground.


Good Hunting.

MR