Alternate History / Timeline: Invading the US

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by khorboth

I tend to think of things in terms of late 1980s or early 1990s because that's when I was playing microprose games.
1) Something in SE Asia melts down. Let's call it Korea. The U.S. commits a lot of troops. Vietnam sides with Korea. China supports Korea, but doesn't directly fight.

2) A surprise invasion of the U.S. is launched. A whole bunch of Chinese-trained Chinese-equipped Vietnamese and Korean troops in Chinese equipment ship into the Atlantic northeast where they don't think we'll expect them.

So their supply line is either around Africa (I'm assuming Gilbraltar and the Suez Canal are closed to them) or South America? Probably around Africa, as that's only 15,000 miles. Still, that's 8,000 miles of Atlantic travel while irritable SSNs try to sink your convoys.

Originally Posted by khorboth

3) While U.S. attention is elsewhere, the USSR (I suppose this puts us prior to 1992) is preparing their invasion as covertly as possible. They launch a four-pronged invasion.
a) Amphibious assault from Cuba. With secret stockpiles of supplies on the island built up over a decade, there are now sufficient supplies to keep an invasion force going for years.
b) Steamroll up through central America. Quickly capture Mexico City and then move into Texas over the poorly fortified border. With stores similarly built up in South America, an invasion force can be put together quickly.

III Corp is HQ'd at Ft. Hood, Texas, and while all the active duty units may be overseas, the National Guard units would be called up to replace them. Southeast Texas is great tank country, but that cuts both ways: it's a 600 mile front from El Paso to Corpus Christi, so there's a lot of space for vanguard units to get outflanked. And even after you conquer Texas, you haven't done a lot to cripple American war-fighting industry and any advance out of Texas leaves you vulnerable to a flanking amphibious assault out of the Gulf.

Supply lines aren't great here, as all the SSNs that aren't sinking Chinese convoys in the Atlantic are going to be sinking Russian convoys in the Pacific.

Originally Posted by khorboth

c) Air drop/Amphibious assault on the West Cost. This is the most problematic. Supply lines are tough. They will seek to form a foothold and tie up U.S. resources until the other fronts join.

I actually think this is one of the less awful options, though whether the Russians can pull off a 4000 miles amphibious invasion is debatable. It's no worse than Operation Torch in WWII, though possibly against tougher opposition.

Originally Posted by khorboth

d) Northern assault. Attack across the Bering strait and move by land through Canada. The USSR has plenty of troops well-suited to this kind of terrain.

That's a long, long salient from the Bering Strait to Seattle.

Originally Posted by khorboth

This strategy maximizes the one advantage the USSR forces always had. They had more. More tanks, more troops, more planes, more of everything. They were generally more able to hold a multi-front conflict going due to their superior numbers. Supply lines would still be tricky, but with allies in central America it would be sustainable for a while.

Even assuming that no one decides to go nuclear, this is still a tough row to hoe for the Russians. The Cuba assault has the best supply lines - only 120+ miles across open water - as long as the prepositioned supplies hold out, and everyone else is shipping stuff 1000+ miles from the depots to the front lines by the time they're threatening anything important.

Harald387's socialist Canada is probably the best solution for the Russian supply difficulties. Invading from Canada gives the Russians a 2500 mile wide front, but after they've conquered Alaska, their long supply lines are at least less vulnerable to being outflanked.

If you remove the Cuban element, this might also work better as an early 1950s scenerio: not a sudden flashpoint around Korea, but an escalation of the original Korean War. Setting this in 1952 also justifies why there aren't any ICBMs - there's various nuclear bombers, but Russian might rationally conclude they can intercept/absorb those attacks. The lack of SSNs and SSBNs in the USN also helps the Russians - no need to worry about submerged SSNs relocating to intercept your convoys at 25 knots sustained.

I'd have to look at the force ratios and all, but this really might make more sense in the 1950s: the USSR still has a great deal of surplus WWII equipment and veteran soldiers. Maybe Stalin decides to outflank the US's defenses in Germany by just conquering the US?