Posted on 09/14/2002 5:12:42 AM PDT by maquiladora
Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, arrives back from Kuwait this morning with full details of what America wants Britain to provide towards the forces lined up against Iraq.
Although officials continue to insist that no decision has been made on whether to go ahead, they admit that contingency plans are in place.
The Ministry of Defence has set up a Target Planning Group to select targets for attacks by US and RAF aircraft on the no-fly zones in Iraq.
Senior defence sources confirmed that Tornado GR4s patrolling the zones would be equipped with precision-guided Storm Shadow missiles to provide "more punch".
Gen Tommy Franks, the US commander in the region, is known to want an extremely strong force of about 250,000 - including a British armoured division - to attack Iraq on three fronts.
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, insists that all possible options must be examined and that Gen Franks should think "out of the box" to come up with plans, but a full-scale invasion is seen as the only realistic choice.
That would require three thrusts, one by US airborne troops, probably accompanied by elements of the Colchester-based 16 Air Assault Brigade, to occupy Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
British and US special forces are already on the ground in the region and US air force engineers have already relaid three large air bases.
The second thrust would be an amphibious assault on the south via Bubiyan island by a US Marine Corps expeditionary force, possibly including the Royal Marines 3 Commando Brigade.
This would be bound to involve the Royal Navy, since the area is heavily mined and America has no specialist mine-seeking ships. It is also expected to involve the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and the amphibious assault carrier Ocean.
Ark Royal is on its way to the Mediterranean, where it will be joined by the destroyers Southampton and Edinburgh prior to carrying out amphibious landing exercises with other Nato forces.
The third and final phase will be a classic armoured advance from Kuwait into southern Iraq by five armoured divisions, one of them the Army's main armoured force, 1 Armoured Division, based at Herford in Germany.
It will be stripped of one of its brigades, 20 Armoured Brigade, much of which is currently serving in Kosovo and Bosnia to form a two-brigade "light" division.
The most famous of the two brigades is probably 7th -Armoured Brigade, the "Desert Rats", based in Bergen-Hohne and Fallingbostel. The brigade was due to take part in an exercise in Poland but this was cut down to a single battalion in anticipation of a possible deployment to Kuwait.
The other brigade will be 4th Armoured Brigade, which is based at Osnabruck and Munster, and like 7th Armoured Brigade took part in the 1991 Gulf war.
Kuwaiti government officials confirmed yesterday that Britain planned to deploy a "light" armoured division there in the coming months.
Maybe it's misinformation. Maybe it's not. :-)
Just to play it safe, Saddam should divide his forces and defend against all of these possibilities. That's what Hitler did when he defended Pais de Calais, the "main invasion site" that was going to be attacked by Patton's fictitious First US Army Group (FUSAG).
That diversionary tactic the Allies pulled at Normandy wasn't going to fool old Adolph. :-)
The World War II spy thriller "Eye of the Needle" is based on the Donald Sutherland character, a German spy, discovering that FUSAG did not really exist and his need to get that information back to Germany.
The fictitious divisions of the non-existant First US Army Group even had their own patches.
Shown below, in order, are the patches of the fictitious 6th, 18th, 21st and 135th Airborne Divisions and the 22nd, 46th, 48th, 59th, 108th, 119th and 130th Infantry Divisions.
Agreed. Makes's "asking permission" a bit useless, as the plan is ALREADY under way, wratcheting up a notch at a time.
Agreed. Makes's "asking permission" a bit useless, as the plan is ALREADY under way, wratcheting up a notch at a time.
Like Sun Tzu said, if they think you will attack from the north, from the south, from the east and from the west, then they will have to guard all theses areas, then they will be weak in all areas. Whereas if they know exactly where you will attack they will be able to stongly defend that area.
There is an agreement in the UK with all media, which enables the government to blank out or hold all news relavent to national security. I do not know if they have the same agreement in the US media. I know they do not have an agreement with the congress or the senate, as histroy shows./sarcasim
A. The US Marine Corps isnt gonna be stranded on some friggin island that has close to zero tactical or strategic importance and even if taking Bubiyan[sp?] is part of the plan....it hardly qualifies as a "thrust".
Oi...
All these armchair reporter soldiers...
Completely securing Western Iraq will be a very important part of any assault. This ahem...plan doesnt even go into that.
Look it is pretty easy...
SF operators will go in [if they havent already] and identify two or three airbases in western Iraq that we can take. Ala the airbase south of Kandahar, Afghanistan.
We'll take those and secure western Iraq...
You'll see armour & US Marines roll up from Kuwait.
You'll see airborne forces secure the roads and highways to Iran...[IMHO you can bet on this!]...and you'll see forces spill in from the north....Kurds or Turks? I dunno.
Oh yeah...mix in one hell of an air assault and you prettty much have the lay of the land.
Add some fog of war here....some tactics not seen before there...and you've got all the fixins for "Slap Iraq Part II".
I agree that the assault might be accomplished much leaner, but I think that many troops will be needed to manage the POWs and establish security.
Give me a break...
Yep! I understand the sentiment but don't put a lot of stock in the things that get published. Does anyone seriously think, for example, that it hasn't already occurred to Saddam that invading forces would come from both Turkey and the Gulf through Basra? Duh, football!
Plus, Bush is pretty good about pulling the fast one on his opponents. He just snookered the entired United Nations last week, for goodness' sakes, and some still think that he's a dumb cowboy! Very little gets out that Bush doesn't want to get out. All we can do is sit back, smile, and hope that the Iraqi high command swallows these "top-secret" articles as much as some people do here on FR.
He he he :your right i just think its funny people say loose lips sink ships then try and post "sensational news" like it matters it was posted here.
Its just darn funny!
I wouldn't worry too much about chem/bio weapons. 95% of that stuff will be incinerated by air power before any of our troops reach the area. Any remaining chem/bio weapons will be priority targets for fighter jets, tanks, and artillery, so those weapons will have a useful life of about 30 minutes. I think the ground phase of this attack will be more methodical than Desert Storm because of the need to destroy chem/bio weapons before any area can be invaded. It will be more like a 3 week ground war. Bio weapons are highly over-rated as a military weapon, because they have to be delivered in high concentrations and that's just not possible against fast-moving US forces that don't allow the enemy to get close to them. Bio weapons are more effective against unsuspecting people who don't even know they're being attacked. I'm afraid the Iraqi soldiers and civilians are going to be damaged by their own chemical weapons as we're destroying them. Looks like one last month of suffering by the Iraqis before the evil regime is gone.
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