Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
However keep in mind that a tank plant takes years to get up to speed, especially if they dont have experience building them, which they dont. They would have had to start production, tooling, etc.. years earlier - and by that I mean 1992-93 - they would be lucky if by mid-98 they had made a dozen tanks with start point of when the Soviets invaded China - its just not that easy to start building tanks from scratch and get any significant numbers made
Plus Mexico suddenly going on a crash program to build a ton of MBT's and deploying them on the US border would have been seen big time as a threat to the US - and their whole invasion, as scripted by GDW- works as it does because no one considers them a serious threat.
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That's why I decided on a military build-up starting in 1982, with a production rate for AMX-40s only reaching 52 in 1995 (and yes some went to China). As far as evaluating threats.....anyone hear of ISIS/ISIL....you know, the JV team of wannabe Islamic baddies..... Plus, all our intelligence attention and assets would have been concentrated on the Soviets, and Washington is notorious for concentrating on only one threat at a time and missing developing new ones....look at the sudden surprise that the Russians are moving into Syria...then there is the Kuwait invasion...Benghazi.... etc.
Thus, I don't view the ignoring of the Mexican threat as particular surprising or even a relative ignorance of just how much military competence Mexico had gained by the invasion. After all, a LOT of intelligence and analysis ability/ capacity of the US disappeared on TDM. The war in Europe would have absorbed most of the intelligence assets remaining, and anyone trying to advance the idea of Mexico invading would have found their concerns dismissed in the face of "real threats" confronting CIVGOV and MILGOV. Just as with the Pearl Harbor attack, or Hitler's initial invasions, no one would be able to really grasp that a "second rate" military would undertake such a monumental task.