Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
This is one of three things to me
1) This is a intentional misdirection, similar to Britain setting up false rally points prior to the D-Day invasion by putting false vehicles and training soldiers under the command of a for real heroic face slapping general like Patton to convince the Germans that the D-Day invasion was going to happen somewhere else.
You basically as so well stated force the enemy to move its forces away from where you want to go and then stab them in the back from another direction.
2) Psychological warfare. Its equivalent to you getting into the bar fight and before the fight starts your opponent tells you that he's going to kick you in the face and there's nothing you can do about it, then he outright kicks you in the face and you doubt your abilities and it puts you off balance.
3) this has become a political exercise where the US can basically say look we're doing something and then watch the home polling numbers rise because they've flexed their muscles with very little potential cost. Look at all we're doing in fighting ISIL.
I'm cynically leaning towards three by the way.
In terms of the briefing its really not giving much information. I'm assuming that there will be an increased demand for allied air strike capabilities, I would also bet that there will be an increased demand for allied helicopter airlift capability for this to work.
I don't know what the makeup is in terms of the different attacking units. But if we're talking infantry on infantry warfare against an enemy with 5 weeks to dig in then the Iraqi and other units are going to use. 30,000 isn't going to be enough. If the estimates are correct that ISIL have 200,000 troops in place, then they are on the right side of the forces calculation in terms of repulsing an attacking force. And I get that ISIL is fighting on multiple different forces, but there's a reason why the Russians believed in a 3 to 1 force advantage because the Russians are the all time champs in terms of fighting in an urban environment, and they understand that an urban setting is a 3x force multiplier for a defending force.
The only way to counter this is to bring in massive air strike and artillary assets to pound defensive positions, have at least one mobile armored formation on call to dig enemies out. And on top of that have your special forces attacking from different directions to create chaos and incertainty.
If they basically zerg rush (bad gaming term, sorry) we're going to see a lot of dead Iraqi's and others and a ISIS terrorist group with a high moral level.
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Can't it be all three?
3) is happening right now, even if 2) is also happening. BUT, you can go ahead and run with 2), and still have 1) happen. Kind of like telling you "non-allies" what you are planning on doing at a certain time, so they can get busy at the same time. Iran, Jordan, Assad, the other Syrian rebels, all preparing for using an American offensive at the same time, by using the media to co-ordinate? Could that even work?