Alternate History / Timeline: Invading the US

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by khorboth

In general, "sneaking" up on the U.S. with a naval invasion fleet would not mean arriving with boats undetected, but rather unidentified. Even in the modern day, (unclassified) submarines do not exist which can carry the kind of massive cargo a sustained invasion would require. Surface ships have been fairly easy to detect since at least WW2, and the U.S. coasts are well patrolled. Something that looks like a container ship, but turns out to be a military ship, however, could work. In theory. This is something the military and intelligence community is on guard against and for good reason.

Or... Somehow manage to ship 1000 containers of men & material to LA (or another port) at the same time and have them reunite before customs inspection. There are substantial logistical challenges and then they have to contend with both substantial military forces and civilian chaos. If pulled off, however, the element of surprise might be sufficient to take the city. I can't think of any major ports without substantial military presence. I don't think this is a coincidence.

This scenario could work in nearly any era.

Given the reports of customs being overloaded, coupled with the possibility of corrupt customs officials, getting those containers past customs would be less of a challenge than you night think. Truck them to a warehouse, and there's your assembly point. Choose a warehouse on the freight side of LAX, and you quickly secure an air head. (Yes, land-based air defenders will make it harder to land supplies at that air head. No such thing as a sure thing, after all.)

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by khorboth

In general, "sneaking" up on the U.S. with a naval invasion fleet would not mean arriving with boats undetected, but rather unidentified. Even in the modern day, (unclassified) submarines do not exist which can carry the kind of massive cargo a sustained invasion would require.

And the invading nation would have to go to enormous effort to maintain information quarantine. You could put a commando raid on a container ship without anyone being the wiser, but you're unlikely to move enough troops to establish a beachhead on to ships without them being noticed by someone reporting to the enemy (or these days, posting on Imgur).

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by khorboth

In general, "sneaking" up on the U.S. with a naval invasion fleet would not mean arriving with boats undetected, but rather unidentified. Even in the modern day, (unclassified) submarines do not exist which can carry the kind of massive cargo a sustained invasion would require. Surface ships have been fairly easy to detect since at least WW2, and the U.S. coasts are well patrolled. Something that looks like a container ship, but turns out to be a military ship, however, could work. In theory. This is something the military and intelligence community is on guard against and for good reason.

Or... Somehow manage to ship 1000 containers of men & material to LA (or another port) at the same time and have them reunite before customs inspection. There are substantial logistical challenges and then they have to contend with both substantial military forces and civilian chaos. If pulled off, however, the element of surprise might be sufficient to take the city. I can't think of any major ports without substantial military presence. I don't think this is a coincidence.

This scenario could work in nearly any era.

I take your point, but the thing is how much disguised shipping/transport do you need to transport a reasonable amount of men.

Operation Torch was mentioned earlier. There was 18,000 men* sent US to North Africa, but it was a 100 ship convoy! And none of the ships spent space and resources pretending to be something else.

Now I'm sure there are bigger and faster and more efficient ships nowadays so that you'd certainly not need 100 ships to move 18,000 men 3000 miles any more.

BUt unless you're thinking a tiny vanguard force your going to need a lot of troops here!

Now if the plan is to send in a small, hidden surprise force to say secure a port for a follow up conventional invasion, then OK. But the problem is by definition such small force will need to be reinforced very quickly by that follow on force or they will fail to hold on. The problem with that is if your supplyline is say 3-4000 miles away that follow up force will have to be in transit before your hidden badasses spring out of their cargo containers in the LA docks. And well that's not a hidden force, and if it get spotted (and destroyed) your vanguard is kind of left hanging out there.

In fact depending on where and when they are spotted it might clue you into to where those baddasses might be waiting if they haven't already jumped out. (Security would go up anyway). And vice versa, if a bunch of badasses jump out of shipping containers in the LA docks, its not huge leap of imagination to think they're probably not ther to single handedly conquer the US and go looking for likely follow vessels.

A classic way to get around this is question of "er why do you have a significant militarily force under steam in the pacific", is "training exercises". But we tend to know about them in advances and we tend to keep a close eye on them!

Plus of course if the situation warrants it, and you are having trouble winkling that vangaurd out, you have a ultimate option of "denying the resource to the enemy". Since if nothing else that vanguard force won't likely have air cover (you might be able to hide some bad asses isn shipping container, but not close air support, air superiority fighters etc)

And that's two birds with stone (albeit and expense clean up bill)


EDIT:What RyanW said!


Possible a good comparison point (at least in some areas) here is to look at the size of the British forces sent to in the falklands war and the amount of support and transport it needed to do what it did.

*I may be wrong in this but I think that convoy was mainly men, the heavy equipment was concentrated on the conveys from the UK?

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by RyanW

And the invading nation would have to go to enormous effort to maintain information quarantine. You could put a commando raid on a container ship without anyone being the wiser, but you're unlikely to move enough troops to establish a beachhead on to ships without them being noticed by someone reporting to the enemy (or these days, posting on Imgur).

Absolutely true. During the cold war, both sides tried multiple times to keep secrets on this scale with varying degrees of success. Some amazing things were declassified later. Working in favor this time would be the short time frame. The large number of troops would only be in on it for a few weeks (6-8?). Working against it would be the sheer scale. Any time a country moves millions of troops or armies worth of equipment, there's lots of points where someone could notice. There are lots of points where information containment could be lost. Again, this is true of any invasion scenario.

An interesting option would be shipping innocuous goods a month ahead of time and storing them in a warehouse. Getting a warehouse full of MREs, one full of medical supplies, and another full of trucks near where you plan to land would really just take money. Heck, in the U.S., with a little work, you could probably get most of your small arms ammunition and a reasonable supply of handguns warehoused ahead of time too. Then there's a forward supply point waiting for you.

[PTTG]

One thing you could do is give the USSR subconscious brainwashing technology that works through video. It allows the USSR to be stronger internally, and to try and infiltrate the US media industry. Maybe it doesn't work in 95% of cases, but that's still a staggering number of sleeper agents ready to be activated right before the invasion.

[thrash]

Perhaps it's time to ask: what's the strategic objective of the invasion?

-- total occupation of the US and incorporation in the World Soviet? Minimum of ~30 divisions just for a peacekeeping force, never mind what would be required for wholesale defeat (100 divisions?).

-- disruption of the US as a political or economic entity? Might be possible with a 5-10 division force. If you occupy or destroy ports, oilfields, pipelines, and power grids and then cut off the coastal cities from resupply of food, you could probably bring the whole structure down in six weeks. Hugging the population centers makes it difficult for the US to respond with carpet-bombing.

-- preventing the US from using its nuclear arsenal (say, in response to a full-scale invasion of Europe)? Decapitation raid on Washington, DC, and conventional forces attacks on 8-10 key facilities (Cheyenne Mountain, Offutt AFB, etc.) -- maybe 2-3 divisions, mostly airborne and special operations. Recovery and evacuation would be the tough part.

Any scenario could be enhanced by a nuclear detonation outside the atmosphere above the south-central US, for EMP effects. Extra points if you can obfuscate the ownership and origin of the device, or pawn the move off on non-state actors. A suborbital launch from the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, *not* projected to land within the Continental US, might do the trick.

Similarly, if you could engineer a national longshoreman strike in the weeks leading up to the invasion, that would give you a plausible reason to stack up commercial flag container and RORO ships off the major ports (Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baltimore, New York, at a minimum).

Ships moored in the Chesapeake Bay waiting to get into Baltimore are 30 minutes by air and maybe 60 minutes by ground from DC. The nearest major US active duty combat units are at least seven hours away by ground, in North Carolina and Tennessee, and consist of mostly light units (airborne, air assault, and Marines). The nearest heavy division is in Savannah, Georgia.

Remember, too, that all wars are the result of miscalculation. The Russians don't have to be able to actually win their objectives -- they just have to convince themselves that their objective is winnable.

[Randyman]

Originally Posted by thrash

-- preventing the US from using its nuclear arsenal (say, in response to a full-scale invasion of Europe)? Decapitation raid on Washington, DC, and conventional forces attacks on 8-10 key facilities (Cheyenne Mountain, Offutt AFB, etc.) -- maybe 2-3 divisions, mostly airborne and special operations. Recovery and evacuation would be the tough part.

If the stakes were perceived to be high enough, recovery and evacuation (of the troops used) would be left out. Sacrifice 2-3 divisions of troops for a decapitation strike on the whole enemy nation/command structure/nuclear arsenal control? Done.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Randyman

If the stakes were perceived to be high enough, recovery and evacuation (of the troops used) would be left out. Sacrifice 2-3 divisions of troops for a decapitation strike on the whole enemy nation/command structure/nuclear arsenal control? Done.

After the initial strike is done, they become history's largest raiding force.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by RyanW

After the initial strike is done, they become history's largest raiding force.

Genghis Khan and his boys want to see some hard numbers before they give up the championship belt.

More to the point, though, they become history's most diffuse raiding force. Americans would be jumping at "Russkis in the woods" and shooting each other by mistake for years afterwards.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by thrash

Perhaps it's time to ask: what's the strategic objective of the invasion?

-- total occupation of the US and incorporation in the World Soviet? Minimum of ~30 divisions just for a peacekeeping force, never mind what would be required for wholesale defeat (100 divisions?).

-- disruption of the US as a political or economic entity? Might be possible with a 5-10 division force. If you occupy or destroy ports, oilfields, pipelines, and power grids and then cut off the coastal cities from resupply of food, you could probably bring the whole structure down in six weeks. Hugging the population centers makes it difficult for the US to respond with carpet-bombing.

-- preventing the US from using its nuclear arsenal (say, in response to a full-scale invasion of Europe)? Decapitation raid on Washington, DC, and conventional forces attacks on 8-10 key facilities (Cheyenne Mountain, Offutt AFB, etc.) -- maybe 2-3 divisions, mostly airborne and special operations. Recovery and evacuation would be the tough part.

Any scenario could be enhanced by a nuclear detonation outside the atmosphere above the south-central US, for EMP effects. Extra points if you can obfuscate the ownership and origin of the device, or pawn the move off on non-state actors. A suborbital launch from the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico, *not* projected to land within the Continental US, might do the trick.

Similarly, if you could engineer a national longshoreman strike in the weeks leading up to the invasion, that would give you a plausible reason to stack up commercial flag container and RORO ships off the major ports (Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Baltimore, New York, at a minimum).

Ships moored in the Chesapeake Bay waiting to get into Baltimore are 30 minutes by air and maybe 60 minutes by ground from DC. The nearest major US active duty combat units are at least seven hours away by ground, in North Carolina and Tennessee, and consist of mostly light units (airborne, air assault, and Marines). The nearest heavy division is in Savannah, Georgia.

Remember, too, that all wars are the result of miscalculation. The Russians don't have to be able to actually win their objectives -- they just have to convince themselves that their objective is winnable.

As for the nukes, that's why I handwaved it with orbital shrapnel combined with "other countermeasures," and left it at that.I like your thoughts, though. Gonna steal some of that for my campaign, if you don't mind.