The doom and gloom is exaggerated. The Army will do what it needs to do to turn recruits into good soldiers.
Millions will die before the new recruits can be trained. The Chinese will roll the Continent up in weeks, and it takes months to get a military forced trained properly. If they pulled a paratrooper assault, it would take 24 hours before they even had a press conference. Look how long it took to respond on 9/11. They would be running for their bunkers, and leaving the rest of us awaiting the Army/Navy or Marines to show up.