Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: marsh@linus.UUCP (Ralph Marshall)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: What to do with the "Peace Dividend"
Message-ID: <13026@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 11 Jan 90 04:59:08 GMT
References: <12984@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA
Lines: 45
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: marsh@linus.UUCP (Ralph Marshall)
Disclaimer: I have worked on a project for MAC while at MITRE,
but I do not intend to make any official statements here; just
random musings from an interested observer.  Also, none of this
information is classified (obviously, I think... :-))

>From: oresoft.uu.net!richard (Richard Johnson)
>
>2.	Full-scale war (e.g. Soviets invade Germany)
>	Then the civil air transports would overnight be "nationalized"
>	and pressed into service.  In the short run, there would be
>	plenty of transport for just about anything except armor.
>
There is a plan for the Civilian Air Reserve Force (CRAF, although the
'F' could mean Fleet) which includes most airplanes owned by US-flag
carriers.  The problem is that they usually require some refitting, so
"overnight" is somewhat of an exaggeration.  Also, many interesting
bits of military cargo are difficult to fit into a civilian cargo
plane; in particular trucks, tanks, large artillery, etc., require
special loading doors, reinforced floors, and wide fuselages.  The
planners at MAC have ~100 C-5s to carry all of the really big stuff;
it won't fit on ANY other plane.  Thus, the CRAF only really helps
move the guys, their ammo, etc., but no heavy equipment.
>
>Please notice - I agree completely with the earlier comments about
>armor needing to be fairly close to where it is needed, *before*
>it's needed.  We may never be able to adequately carry tanks in
>airplanes...

However, that is the plan!  We have some armored units with equipment
close to the expected problem areas (where possible due to friendly
countries), but not much, and not everywhere.  Moving a single armored
division requires most of the heavy-lift capacity that we have,
considering that an Abrams tank fills a C-5 (in the sense that you
can't get a second one on; there is some residual room for small-sized
objects).  They have to load, fly to the destination, unload, fly back
empty, and repeat the cycle.  This takes very nearly 24 hours PER
TANK, and ignores combat losses, required maintenance, fatigue of
crews, etc.  As noted in previous postings, we have many more heavy
divisions than we can move quickly by air.

Ralph Marshall
marsh@linus.mitre.org