Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull
The thing is by 2000 even if they had started to merge units, a lot of people would lose their jobs due to lack of record keeping and tracking since late 1997/early 1998. It is part of the reason why at times there was some resistance to merging, and no one wanted to lose out of the meager supplies they were still getting into 1998 and 1999.
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What supplies? Where are they coming from? Who is providing them?
As far as I can tell, units of Divisional even Brigade size became responsible for their own upkeep, especially those on the east coast of the US. Smaller units of battalion and company size (on paper) were (in the books at least) apparently supplied by their brigade or division. These smaller units are not dealt with in any detail in the published material as we know.
But we're not talking about Army or Marine divisions merging with each other, but the "orphaned" naval and air force personell and small units who simply aren't large enough to devote resources to supporting themselves. Stragglers essentially without a ship, support units without planes to service, units which no longer have a purpose and even if supplies were still flowing, would very likely be disbanded and their personell reassigned.
How many large naval units would still exist anyway? Many of the land bases were nuked, eliminating a large percentage of those not aboard ships, and as previously stated, it's EXTREMELY unlikely any significant numbers of shipborne personell would remain in units of more than a few dozen to a hundred (at most). Air Force support units would also make good targets for nukes, likewise reducing their numbers. How many AFB's are included in the Nuke target lists? How many would have died?
Omega may have had the effect of reforming some units, but once they hit the US we can surmise many were "demobilised" and sent on their way. The 78th ID for example, one of the closest units to Omega's landing site only received 800 men out of the tens of thousands aboard the ships. We can probably take that as an indication that a large percentage were basically abandoned by the military.