[Webstral]

On the subject of the Rangers, I think there are a couple of possibilities for why a battalion doesn’t end up in Europe or Korea. Once the balloon goes up in Germany, there’s a good 6-7 weeks for the US to move forces overseas. This is plenty of time for the Rangers to go in by air if that’s the decision. They don’t, though. It seems to me that someone thinks the Rangers will be more useful someplace else.

My first line unit NCO while I was on active duty at the beginning of the 1990’s told me that the real purpose of the Rangers was to seize an airfield so the 82nd could go in. If the Rangers did nothing else, they’ve had paid their way by taking the airfield and relieving the 82nd of the necessity of jumping. He had just come off a 3-year stint as the senior enlisted chemical warfare guy at the regimental HQ. He requested a mech slot at Carson because he was a crispy critter after 3 years and thought he’d like to see his family again. Anyway, such observations about the Rangers have to be taken with a grain of salt, but they provide some interesting insight into how the Rangers might get used at the beginning of WW3.

Once the Germans and the Soviets started fighting, the Soviets probably put pressure on their clients to mobilize and put pressure on the Western Allies. A while ago, I wrote a piece designed to integrate Operation Desert Storm into the v1 chronology. If Iraq assembled new forces to go after Kuwait again, this would put additional pressure on CENTCOM. Of course, we’d have to make some adjustments to events in Iran or at least acknowledge that Iran never softened its attitude towards the US.

By the time might have come to send the Rangers forward, the relative density of the European and Korean battlefields might have called into question the cost-benefit ratio of using a Ranger battalion for raiding in either theater. In the Gulf, on the other hand, lower densities might have made using the Rangers and the 82nd in airmobile operations much more palatable. Also, since the heavy gear going to Europe was consuming the transport that would have been bringing the heavy metal to the Gulf, it may be that CENTCOM was offered the full regiment as a sop.