What we support and defend

[Ken White]

When the ground war got going there were almost 700,000 Americans hanging around over there ready to do harm to Saddam. I don't know if that figure includes Navy and USMC people hanging around offshore.

It does and it also includes the USAF and USCG and further includes all those near but not in the theater who were supporting -- to include the VII Corps Rear Detachments in Germany...

For comparison purposes, the Army's Troop Basis for 1942 was 2M initially and that was raised in March to 5M. The Army ended the year in December 1942 with 5,397,674. There were at the time 74 Divisions for the two ocean - two front war and a little less than half, about 30 Divisions (a net of of a little over 1.5M soldiers counting Division slices) were nominally combat ready.

On 30 September 1991, the Army's total strength, worldwide, was 725,445. US on the ground troop strength in Kuwait (and Sailors and Marines afloat in the Gulf) as well as the large USAF contingent never exceeded 500K; the Amy provided about 375K (about 140.000 RC) and was only able to do that because of the 'availability' of VII Corps. Had their continued presence been required in Europe, things would have been different. It is noteworthy that the DS/DS troop strengths were about double Operation Iraqi Freedom strengths.

As an aside and FYI, DS/DS was a total aberration in all aspects of combat. It is not a good example to use for hardly anything pertaining to warfare -- or military logistics. That's not a Ken White opinion, it's a stated Army position that few disagree with.

Now we can't exactly compare a quick little war fought mostly with what we had on hand to WWII when the entire nation mobilized for years...

You're a master of understatement.

...but it is useful to compare some things.

Always -- but which things are selected is important.

Operation Torch started in Nov. 1942 almost a year after the war started and there were about 60,000 American troops landed. Many more followed of course but we couldn't put an especially large force on the beach even almost a year after the war started. And they were not very good at what they did. So that big army in being was able to put an immensely greater amount of combat power much more rapidly than the Army could do in WWII. Which was my point.

That's an example of what not to do. As you mentioned above but apparently forgot:

Even more force when you consider how much firepower they had.

Your comparison, even though you mentioned it, really suffers from that major difference. Further, the Troop numbers for Torch are a function of both the requirement and of available lift more than of trained persons available. Conversely DS/DS deliberately went for 'overkill' -- far more Troops than were really deemed necessary simply because VII Corps was available -- it had already been slated for inactivation...

An added factor is training. We do not yet train as well as we could or should -- but in 1990, training was literally light years ahead of WW II (particularly in the early days before the Germans and Japanese undertook to train us more properly).

Different wars, different Armies, different training, different weapons -- Vastly different in all cases. There is really almost no comparison.

The point being again that it helps to have a large Army in being if you want to invade a place quick.

That's a statement of the obvious and no one is disputing that -- or at least I certainly do not dispute it. What I'm trying to point out is that while your end point is logical to the point of self evidence, the route you follow or lay out to arrive there is rather illogical and quite flawed in concept.

Obviously the situations were not exactly parallel, but if you insist on exact parallels you will never be able to learn anything from history.

No one is existing on exact parallels but some congruity would generally be beneficial...