So an Army marches on its stomach?

[dragoon500ly]

Came across this odd little fact in "Dirty Little Secrets of World War II"

In 1943 all 4.4 million pairs of scissors produced in occupied Europe were requisitioned for the use of the German armored forces. The Germans also requisitioned some 6.2 million stamp pads to help them keep all of their paperwork in proper order. It's worth noting that the strength of the German armed forcs at the time was only about 7 million.

Hmmmmm!

[pmulcahy11b]

Every time I hear that old saying (an Army marches on its stomach), I get this weird idea of two armies, millions of troops...all low-crawling.:p

[Graebarde]

This thread title made me start thinking about HOW are some of the units supported by 2000. The one are in particular is the CentCom area. It's DESERT that relys on irrigation for it's meager output. I just can not see how the large force in the Gulf region is subsisting. There can't be THAT many goats left by 2000. Everyone is geared to the amount of fuel the area still has for the equipment (something I find hard to swallow sometimes too in light of the TDM nuclear exchange that targeted refineries) but NEVER the fuel for the two legged boots on the ground. Ideas?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

This thread title made me start thinking about HOW are some of the units supported by 2000. The one are in particular is the CentCom area. It's DESERT that relys on irrigation for it's meager output. I just can not see how the large force in the Gulf region is subsisting. There can't be THAT many goats left by 2000. Everyone is geared to the amount of fuel the area still has for the equipment (something I find hard to swallow sometimes too in light of the TDM nuclear exchange that targeted refineries) but NEVER the fuel for the two legged boots on the ground. Ideas?

I'd wager there's a lot of seafood trade going on in the gulf region. Plus the whole "fertile crescent" area is called that for a reason.

I'm not sure how true the stories are but I have heard tell of US troops being fed by then-grateful Iraqis in 2003 - because our units had outrun supply lines and were short on food...so when you consider that Iraq was being starved from within and without and they were feeding our troops (again, not sure how true this is or isn't), it seems they know something about growing food in those areas.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

So the story goes that during the Cold War at a peace summit, a British, US and Soviet general are talking to each other about the various virtues of their armies and the "an army marches on it's stomach" adage comes up. The Soviet general proudly proclaims "The glorious people's soldier gets fifteen hundred calories per day to subsist on!" The British general smiles and says "Sorry, old boy, but the Queen's fighting man gets two thousand calories per day in rations." The US General says "Hell, that's nothing. A US soldier gets three thousand calories per day to eat!" The Soviet general goes purple and says "This is lie! No man can eat three sacks of potatoes in one day!"

[Graebarde]

I'd wager there's a lot of seafood trade going on in the gulf region. Plus the whole "fertile crescent" area is called that for a reason.

I'm not sure how true the stories are but I have heard tell of US troops being fed by then-grateful Iraqis in 2003 - because our units had outrun supply lines and were short on food...so when you consider that Iraq was being starved from within and without and they were feeding our troops (again, not sure how true this is or isn't), it seems they know something about growing food in those areas.

I agree it is called that for a reason, HOWEVER it relies on IRRIGATION to be fertile. AND relies on people to work the fields. In a world that is reduced in population and going hand to mouth for themselves, HOW are they going to feed an army. I wonder about the seafood trade. It will undoubtedly provide some much needed protien, but carbs, etc will not come from the sea.

The idea of those people helping GIs, I have no doubts about. Generally farmers are generous until you come to TAKE their livelyhood, converting them to serfs. In my war (Nam) all the farmer wanted was to be left alone.

[headquarters]

So the story goes that during the Cold War at a peace summit, a British, US and Soviet general are talking to each other about the various virtues of their armies and the "an army marches on it's stomach" adage comes up. The Soviet general proudly proclaims "The glorious people's soldier gets fifteen hundred calories per day to subsist on!" The British general smiles and says "Sorry, old boy, but the Queen's fighting man gets two thousand calories per day in rations." The US General says "Hell, that's nothing. A US soldier gets three thousand calories per day to eat!" The Soviet general goes purple and says "This is lie! No man can eat three sacks of potatoes in one day!"

good one

[dragoon500ly]

This thread title made me start thinking about HOW are some of the units supported by 2000. The one are in particular is the CentCom area. It's DESERT that relys on irrigation for it's meager output. I just can not see how the large force in the Gulf region is subsisting. There can't be THAT many goats left by 2000. Everyone is geared to the amount of fuel the area still has for the equipment (something I find hard to swallow sometimes too in light of the TDM nuclear exchange that targeted refineries) but NEVER the fuel for the two legged boots on the ground. Ideas?

When you plug the logistical numbers into the situation, it becomes really hard. Here are some details from "How to Make War"

On average a soldier requires 100 pounds of supplies per day, a sailor requires about 600 pounds per day and a airman requires about 1,000lbs a day.

To move one ton of supplies via rail requires 14 ounces of fuel per 100 kilometers travelled. To move one ton of supplies via ship requires 7 ounces of fuel per 100 kilometers. Move one ton of supplies by truck, then one percent of the weight moved will be consumed as fuel for each 100 kilometers. By air, that same ton of supplies will require 2-5% to be consuemd as fuel per 100 kilometers. Helicopters are even worse as they can cinsume 10% of their cargo weight in fuel for every 100 kilometers. Moving supplies by animal or human will have the same cost as aircraft due to the fuel required.

The US military normally tries to keep between 30-90 days of supply on hand, just in case of any problems with the supply lines.

A typical NATO division will maintain 3-5 days of supplies in the division trains. This breaks down into food, fuel, ammo and general. A 15,000 man division would therefore have (for five days) about 300 tons of foodstuffs, 25,500 tons of ammunition, 25,500 tons of fuel and about 375 tons of general supplies.

The placement of these supplies is critical, they must be positioned close by roads, railroads or have water access due to the sheer volume of traffic in and out. To make matters worse, ammunition and fuel are perishable. You cannot store fuel for more than a year before it starts to break down checmically, ditto for explosives (they deteriorate and become unreliable over the sourse of several years). NATO gets around this by shooting more often in peacetime and maintaining between 30-45 days of stocks. The Soviets maintain larger stockpiles of up to 90 days. Some intresting facts have started to filter from behind the wall, most Soviet ammo had MAJOR manufacturing issues, it is believed that their failure rate would have exceeded 50%.

One of the little known facts about logistics, is that the smart players try to obtain their supplies locally. Living off the land may have worked in the past, but it must be organized and conducted in an efficient manner in order to avoid starving the locals and creating ore problems for the soldiers. A nearyby country with a strong local economy is a priceless advantage. An example is the Korean War when Japan produced much of the material that UN forces needed.

When you add the Air Force and the Navy, the situation gets even worse. On average, to fly one combat mission, by one aircraft can take hundreds of man-hours and up to 20 tons of supplies. In an initial surge of combat, the fighters can expect to fly three sorties, 300 sorties translates into 4,000 tons of supplies, for every day of combat. A aircraft carrier stores enough materail to support 1,000 sorties and a carrier and its attached air wing can consume 5,000 tons of supplies in a single day.

Lack of supply slows down the tempo of combat, leading to fewer casualties. Lack of mobility prevents units from getting into the fighting. In order to maintain combat power, units will start to strip and abandon excess vehicles, which starts a vicious cycle as the abandonment of trucks will soon lead to nothing available to tranport what supplies do exist.

[HorseSoldier]

By 2000, the cantonment system in most places is most likely an essentially feudal situation where the local populace are raising food to support the military garrison that keeps marauders and other armed groups at bay. I would expect that this also includes the military side of the equation using things like engineering assets to repair or expand things like irrigation systems or otherwise provide improvements to help with food production.

I'd also suspect that given what the T2K has to say about agricultural productivity by 2000 that in most places the system is barely allowing people to get by and what little surplus is produced is oftentimes needed for fuel production. (In the CENTCOM AOR the access to petroleum probably offsets the comparative complexity and difficulty of farming, for something like no net gain compared to Europe or the US.)

What this means, among other things, is that offensive action that requires a unit to pull up stakes and leave their cantonments is extremely difficult to organize. The NATO summer offensive in 2000 and the WP counter attack both probably required some minor miracles of logistics and planning and even then also most likely mean cantonments for other units got stripped of resources to the point that there will be elevated loss of life among civilians in those cantonments (as well as farms outside the cantonment system that were stripped by units passing through). The inability to logistically support offensive action circa 2000 appears to be be why there is such limited active fighting going on in Europe, the American Southwest, etc. Even trying to move a unit a couple hundred miles without any expectation of major fighting beyond some minor marauder encounters and such is way deep into the realm of Clausewitzian friction and is only feasible within narrow windows of time based on the agricultural cycle.

[Adm.Lee]

Now you've gone and reminded me of something I read/wrote years ago. In a paper on the Duke of Marlborough, I uncovered that in the 16th/17th century, one of the most effective ways to organize a campaign was to send parties of officers ahead of your line of advance to buy up food & supplies and stockpile them in "magazines" along the way. This worked for long marches, such as the 1704 campaign, when Marlborough took his English army up the Rhine from Netherlands to fight alongside Prince Eugene at Blenheim.

I wonder if something might reappear in 2000: even if your unit isn't leaving its cantonment, you may be tasked by higher headquarters to set aside some stuff for some other unit's move through your area.

Hmm, now there might be something of a game idea: one of your PCs (or an NPC) is the staff officer charged with preparing a march, heading across several cantonments to check up on preparations, while the rest of the party are his escort, say prior to the summer 2000 Third German Army offensive. They could be on horse or motorized, but they've got a lot of ground to cover. There could be:
- marauders
- unhelpful cantonments (your own army or an ally's) Maybe a side mission of the party is to spy out who's holding back?
- enemy raiders, hoping to find just such a party. If they could capture the guy who knows which way the army is heading, or even his papers, that would be a prime intel coup!
- smugglers, who might be able to help, or might be competitors for the business of supplying the army?

[Legbreaker]

The whole logistics issue is one I've thought a bit about while looking at the wider situation in 2000. In my opinion, it's likely the offensive required at least a years preparation - food and fuel in particular. When you look at the numbers, the amount of stores required is just plain staggering. Then consider alcohol isn't as efficient (in the T2K world at least) and roughly 3 times as much is needed.

It gets very, very scary, very, very fast.