Where are the US airforce and Navy ground Units

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by waiting4something

I mean the only way I could see mixing them with the Army or Marines is if units were reduced so badly from what they once had been. Also, if a total break down of command happened and people were deserting I could see that happening.

This is pretty much Twilight: 2000 in a nutshell.

Webstral

[waiting4something]

Originally Posted by Webstral

This is pretty much Twilight: 2000 in a nutshell.

Webstral

Yes, you mean like a bunch of stranglers joining up like how the playing characters are. Yes, that is Twilight 2000. I was thinking of just before you get the "good luck your own your own message".

[Adm.Lee]

IMO, and in any campaign I run, a lot of Air Force and Navy personnel have been funneled (voluntarily, at least at first) into Army replacements. I envision a mass retraining program set up in the winter of 98-99 or 99-00 to retrain them as infantry replacements. Likely each field army and division would have its own training detachment, and then shuffle units out of the line to integrate them over time. To me, the best time to do this would be in the winter, while the formations are in cantonments-- lots of time for small-unit training and patrolling.

Any others, who don't or can't volunteer for combat-arms replacements, would get moved to support & service functions. Possibly the Army could disband its own service functions, and transfer most of the soldiers there to the combat arms, while Air Force & Navy personnel take over the base functions.

OTOH: I remember reading in the '90s that the US Air Force had nearly as many Air police & security squadrons as the Army had infantry battalions. YMMV.

[Raellus]

Precedent is there. Why make this more complicated? Germany's experience in the later years of WWII supports using surplus to requirements airforce and naval personel as infantry replacements. German AF and N personel were given an abbreviated basic training and then attached to a parent Volkgrenadier unit where they would participate in field excercises. Some of these men couldn't handle the relative hardships of army life and did in fact desert but the vast majority fought on, even when it was fairly obvious to all but the most fanatical Nazi that the war was lost. During the time when the Volksgrenadier units were being formed (late '44 and early '45), Germany was under constant pressure on all fronts but they were still able to reorganize many shattered infantry divisions and bulk them up with AF and N people. During the cantonment phase of the Twilight War (WWIII), there would have been plenty of "down time" to integrate AF and N people into Army units.

If you formed them into homogenous "rear security units" you would only create resentment among line army units and actually heighten intraservice rivalry.

I also think the idea that a former sailor, pilot, or aircrewman wouldn't accept or couldn't handle a transition to infantry is kind of insulting to those folks. The vast majority of soldiers, sailors, and airmen do what they are told by their superiors. Do you really think the navy and airforce would be lobbying to have their people formed into independent, homogenous rear area security (or like) units? Why? How are they going to supply them? Aside from airfield and port security, AF and N brass have little to no experience running those types of units/ops. Who's going to supply them with supplies that the army traditionally receives? Army generals are going to be bawling for replacements and someone's going to tell them that they can't have the thousands of beached sailors and grounded airmen because those groups are going to start taking traditional army missions but be placed under navy and army command. They'd be making the same deadly mistake the Germans made in WWII.