YaATW2KT: The Second Mexican-American War

[mpipes]

The discussion on lack of trucks in the Mexican Army reminds me how I planned to solve a lack of vehicles at Kunsan AB, ROK if we went to war in the late 80s.

There appeared to be a profound shortage of logistic and general purpose vehicle for a period of time if war started. We were getting a LOT of additional equipment, personnel, and supplies coming in but really not that many vehicles for at least several weeks. There simply were not enough vehicles on base to support the missions and move the equipment to destinations. What to do

Solution was simple enough. We coordinated with the ROK army on base to get a couple of platoons for support and identified all the local car and truck dealers in Kunsan City. If war broke out, we would get 4 - 5 buses of "drivers" and escorted by several trucks of armed ROK army troops would start hitting the dealerships, seizing their vehicles (providing the proper receipts of course), which we would drive back to the base. As I recall, the plan was to seize about 200 light trucks (pick ups) plus about 20-30 tractor-trailers. Problem solved.

[The Dark]

Answer - yes they replaced the old gas engines with a Detroit Diesel motor back in 1992 - thus for the canon they would have diesel engines not gasoline

According to Zaloga's book on the Greyhound, the NAPCO power package was also bought by Cameroon, Cyprus, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Morocco, Venezuela, and Zaire. In addition to replacing the engine, the transmission was replaced by an Allison AT-545.

[swaghauler]

The discussion on lack of trucks in the Mexican Army reminds me how I planned to solve a lack of vehicles at Kunsan AB, ROK if we went to war in the late 80s.

There appeared to be a profound shortage of logistic and general purpose vehicle for a period of time if war started. We were getting a LOT of additional equipment, personnel, and supplies coming in but really not that many vehicles for at least several weeks. There simply were not enough vehicles on base to support the missions and move the equipment to destinations. What to do

Solution was simple enough. We coordinated with the ROK army on base to get a couple of platoons for support and identified all the local car and truck dealers in Kunsan City. If war broke out, we would get 4 - 5 buses of "drivers" and escorted by several trucks of armed ROK army troops would start hitting the dealerships, seizing their vehicles (providing the proper receipts of course), which we would drive back to the base. As I recall, the plan was to seize about 200 light trucks (pick ups) plus about 20-30 tractor-trailers. Problem solved.

That is a really GOOD idea. I was surprised to see that 40% of the trucks in the US (the total of which is just over 2 Million in 1998 and 4 million today) are generally present in just TWO locations, Long Beach CA and Newark NJ, the two biggest cargo terminals in the US. I didn't realize just how concentrated commercial trucking in the US is until I researched it.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

NOTE: There is a reason my reply is so long.
It does relate to the game I promise!

That is a really GOOD idea. I was surprised to see that 40% of the trucks in the US (the total of which is just over 2 Million in 1998 and 4 million today) are generally present in just TWO locations, Long Beach CA and Newark NJ, the two biggest cargo terminals in the US. I didn't realize just how concentrated commercial trucking in the US is until I researched it.

I believe that is probably the result of the push for "centralizing" by most businesses/corporations and governments.
Centralizing a network (of any sort) results in some large cost savings because obviously, you don't have as many buildings. vehicles, staff etc. etc. to manage and pay for.
But it also makes the system vulnerable if a break occurs in the central part of the network or in the transport system.

For example, many food shops these days don't have a storeroom, what's on the shelf or in the fridge is all the stock they have. They rely on small deliveries every day (or every two/three days) to keep supplied rather than having one or two big deliveries in a week.
If anything happens to interupt the supply chain, those deliveries do not happen and the shop runs out of whatever product was being delivered. I've experienced this myself in Australia when the local shops didn't have bread or milk for a few days due to delays in the transport system.

So the point of all that exlanation The push towards centralizing networks began (as near as I remember) in the early 1990s although the general public didn't really notice much change until the 2000s. If your Twilight timeline starts in the mid-1990s or later, centralizing of networks can be a real hindrance (lethal in some cases) to people away from any distribution centres at the start of the war and more so after the end of the war.
For example, food supplies are not going to reach the smaller locations or those little stores out on the secondary highway for example. In fact, once the transport stops, most stores will run out of basic foodstuffs within two to three days (three or four if they're really well stocked or really lucky).
Hospitals might have good stocks of medical supplies for a while but smaller medical centres or individual doctors offices will be depleted very quickly.

Centralizing is much more profitable than having a distributed network with many smaller warehouses & supply systems but it does literally "put all your eggs in one basket".
However it does provide a "resource rich location" for anyone close to that supply centre. Which also makes the PC's job easier if they want to recover supplies - assuming they can get to the distribution centre!

[swaghauler]

NOTE: There is a reason my reply is so long.
It does relate to the game I promise!


I believe that is probably the result of the push for "centralizing" by most businesses/corporations and governments.
Centralizing a network (of any sort) results in some large cost savings because obviously, you don't have as many buildings. vehicles, staff etc. etc. to manage and pay for.
But it also makes the system vulnerable if a break occurs in the central part of the network or in the transport system.

For example, many food shops these days don't have a storeroom, what's on the shelf or in the fridge is all the stock they have. They rely on small deliveries every day (or every two/three days) to keep supplied rather than having one or two big deliveries in a week.
If anything happens to interupt the supply chain, those deliveries do not happen and the shop runs out of whatever product was being delivered. I've experienced this myself in Australia when the local shops didn't have bread or milk for a few days due to delays in the transport system.

So the point of all that exlanation The push towards centralizing networks began (as near as I remember) in the early 1990s although the general public didn't really notice much change until the 2000s. If your Twilight timeline starts in the mid-1990s or later, centralizing of networks can be a real hindrance (lethal in some cases) to people away from any distribution centres at the start of the war and more so after the end of the war.
For example, food supplies are not going to reach the smaller locations or those little stores out on the secondary highway for example. In fact, once the transport stops, most stores will run out of basic foodstuffs within two to three days (three or four if they're really well stocked or really lucky).
Hospitals might have good stocks of medical supplies for a while but smaller medical centres or individual doctors offices will be depleted very quickly.

Centralizing is much more profitable than having a distributed network with many smaller warehouses & supply systems but it does literally "put all your eggs in one basket".
However it does provide a "resource rich location" for anyone close to that supply centre. Which also makes the PC's job easier if they want to recover supplies - assuming they can get to the distribution centre!

You are correct in your posting here. What was called "JUST IN TIME DELIVERY (now known as virtual warehousing)" began in the late 80's and became standardized in the mid 90's. The average urban center has just 3 days worth of consumables on the stores' shelves. Most gas stations have just 5 days worth of gas on hand and many large chains now use regionalized "Distribution Centers" which WILL have inventory warehoused for (usually) a dozen or so stores. VERY LARGE chains like WALMART will have either one or a couple of distribution centers in a given State (for the US), or a small country (like in Europe), while smaller chains might have a Distribution Center in a cluster of three or so States (in the US) or a couple in Europe (total). It depends on how hard it is to transport goods in a given region. For an example, WALMART has a distribution center on I80 (SouthEast of me) that services all of Northern Pa (there's another one near Philly somewhere). It is FIVE MILLION SQUARE FEET UNDER ONE ROOF with 180 Truck Docks for big rigs to load and unload at. I've been told this is a smaller Distribution Center for WALMART.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

snip... It depends on how hard it is to transport goods in a given region. For an example, WALMART has a distribution center on I80 (SouthEast of me) that services all of Northern Pa (there's another one near Philly somewhere). It is FIVE MILLION SQUARE FEET UNDER ONE ROOF with 180 Truck Docks for big rigs to load and unload at. I've been told this is a smaller Distribution Center for WALMART.

It's both amazing and frightening to see these sites, they are massive in all senses of the word. There's two near the main airport here in Perth, Western Australia, one each for the two main supermarket chains and while nowhere near as large as the Walmart one you mentioned, they both dwarf everything around them including many airport buildings.

All this reminds me of a story I read decades ago like one of those "weird war tales" published in the 1980s-90s although this one was a collection of short stories rather than a comicbook.
It was a collection of "strange" tales set during the Vietnam War and this particular one involved a US Army soldier telling about the construction in South Vietnam of the largest PX store outside the USA. It was so large it stocked everything from Zippo lighters to motorbikes and everything inbetween. It was so large you could get lost for hours wandering around inside it and it was very easy to hide from someone among all the shelves and goods.

The narrator goes on to tell of one of his comrades who worked in the PX and as far as he knew, never returned home at the end of his tour of duty. In fact, even though the war had been over for some years, there had still been no record of his comrade ever returning to the US. As far as the narrator knew, his friend was still hiding out in the PX store and living off all the supplies there.

[pmulcahy11b]

[

https://www.scribd.com/doc/304960189/Worldwide-Equipment-Guide-2014-FINAL-Vol-1-Ground-Systems

*

A long time ago, I decided to get a subscription to Scribd, charged $9.99 per month. I recommend it to anyone, it is really worth it.

[Targan]

It's both amazing and frightening to see these sites, they are massive in all senses of the word. There's two near the main airport here in Perth, Western Australia, one each for the two main supermarket chains and while nowhere near as large as the Walmart one you mentioned, they both dwarf everything around them including many airport buildings.

Yes, they stand out against the background as you fly in.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Yes, they stand out against the background as you fly in.

Second place I'd be going in the zombie apocalypse - first stop is home to pick up my old army gear (I've still got a full set of the old green webbing and an Austpack).

[.45cultist]

Second place I'd be going in the zombie apocalypse - first stop is home to pick up my old army gear (I've still got a full set of the old green webbing and an Austpack).

I still have my ALICE gear and the mags to fill the pouches.

[castlebravo92]

I know this is an old thread, but...

I had deep reservations about a successful Mexican invasion of the U.S. Southwest, having bought Red Star/Lone Star as a kid when it first came out in '86 or '87 and being a Texas native. About 15 years later I even traded some emails with Loren K. Wiseman on the subject.

I mean, the 49th Armored Div by itself could probably reduce the Mexican army to giblets by itself.

These days, I'm a little more receptive to the idea.

1. The Mexicans don't invade until June of 1998. By this time, the post-attack "recovery" has begun to fail, cities were starting to starve as the government started routing food to critical areas, and letting the rest twist on the vine.

2. Federal Emergency Plan-D (and a slew of related classified Executive Orders) are pretty draconian. Imagine the government coming, taking everything you own, kicking you out of your house (or moving in 5 additional families), drafting you into a labor battalion - and if you refuse, you don't get to eat (the food they confiscated from you), or they shoot you. In a lot areas, especially rural or semi-rural that weren't actually starving, the government coming in to take everyone's stuff probably isn't that popular.

3. The units the US has in reserve, for the most part, aren't that good. Most are training divisions hastily mobilized, probably are far from full strength, suffer from high desertion rates, and are likely less well equipped and trained than first echelon Mexican forces (but probably on par with 2nd echelon forces).

4. These forces, despite operating on US soil, are not operating with secure rear areas. In fact, there is no rear - their presence in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and beyond are contested by marauders, and anti-government partisans. It's hard to sustain offensive momentum when your whole logistics network is subject to constant attack.

5. Conversely, the Mexican military is advancing concurrently with a mass population migration from Mexico that largely displaces the native population. And at least initially, this would allow the Mexicans to recruit locally as they advanced with the population to offset combat losses. The US 85th Infantry Division would probably struggle a bit to do the same around Tyler, TX in comparison.

6. Using canon resources like Allegheny Uprising, some of these refugee camps or settlements (domestic and otherwise) can have 40k to 80k people in them. If 5% of those camps are "militia", those by themselves represent a non-insignificant amount of potential combat power and threat. How do you deal with those refugees (many of whom want what your military has - food, fuel, weapons) while simultaneously dealing with the Mexican army and the Soviet Division Cuba

7. Net net, you have an American population that's largely hostile to your presence trying to eject a foreign army and large population migration that's also hostile to your presence over a supply line that is long and unstable (it's the same distance from Colorado Springs to Brownsville, TX as it is from Berlin to Moscow), and you're conducting your counter offensive during the most acute phase of the post-attack collapse (Autumn 1998 through mid-1999).

One angle that is hard to rationalize though is that the Soviets nuke Mexican refineries about a month after hitting the US, and a few months later...the Mexicans ally with the Soviets to invade the US (although, I guess technically you could argue the Mexicans don't know who actually nuked them).

[Raellus]

Maskirovka

Great analysis, castlebravo92. Or may I say, bravo

Another factor that might help the Mexican invaders is tensions between Anglo-American and Mexican-American communities, especially if New America propaganda has begun to take hold in the Southwest. This might drive some 1st or 2nd gen Mexican-Americans who would have otherwise remained loyal to the USA into the arms of the invaders. In other words, stoked fears of a Mexican fifth column result in the emergence of a Mexican fifth column.

I've also posited an alliance of sorts between the Mexican military and narco gangs operating in the USA in the lead-up to the invasion. The latter could provide intel before the invasion and undertake sabotage and assassination ops during.

Re the nuking of Mexican refineries, does anyone know who's responsible I remember that question being debated here. I'm not very familiar with CONUS cannon, having focused primarily on Europe and Korea during the length of my fandom. IIRC, canon doesn't answer this question definitively, but I could be wrong.

If the Soviets did indeed nuke the Mexican refineries, one possible explanation is that, for whatever reasons, pre-war, Mexico had better relations with the USSR than with its northern neighbor and were predisposed to suspect American perfidy when the strikes occur. This could be due to a number of factors- trade disagreements between Mexico and the USA (is NAFTA part of the T2kU); tensions resulting from the escalating Drug War; harsh measures taken to stem illegal immigration. This tension would help the Soviets pull off a brilliant Maskirovka, convincing the Mexican gov't that the USA was behind nuclear strikes on Mexican refineries. In all likelihood, the KGB was feeding the Mexican gov't and military intel suggesting that the US was planning to nuke Mexican refineries well before the attacks occurred. So, when it happened, the fait accompli had already been established (and confirmation bias is a powerful thing).

The Soviets would therefore have two motives for nuking the Mexican refineries. One, deprive the USA of Mexican oil and two, prompt the Mexicans to retaliate against USA.

It wouldn't be the first time a European power tried to foment conflict between Mexico and the USA. The Germans failed to sway the Mexican gov't with the Zimmerman Telegram c.1917, but maybe the Soviets succeed with the "Fisherovich Fax" in 1998.

-

[castlebravo92]

Re the nuking of Mexican refineries, does anyone know who's responsible
-

Logically, it would have to be the Soviets, in order to deny access to the United States. For the same reasons, the US wouldn't nuke Mexican refineries in December of 1997, since those would be potential resources the Americans could use to rebuild, if they could trade or extort for it. In fact, most of the neutral countries that were nuked had to have been nuked by the Soviets.

In my head, this is how I picture it:

- Russia nukes US on Nov 27, 1997, with some exchanges continuing into December.

- Russia extends nukes to Canada on Dec 12, 1997.

- Presumably, they nuke Mexico some time after nuking Canada but before year's end (after all, Canada was a NATO member active in the war, while Mexico was a neutral nation).

- Mexico's government unravels, PRI-PPS take back control, and invade.

[ToughOmbres]

Mexico

Logically, it would have to be the Soviets, in order to deny access to the United States. For the same reasons, the US wouldn't nuke Mexican refineries in December of 1997, since those would be potential resources the Americans could use to rebuild, if they could trade or extort for it. In fact, most of the neutral countries that were nuked had to have been nuked by the Soviets.

In my head, this is how I picture it:

- Russia nukes US on Nov 27, 1997, with some exchanges continuing into December.

- Russia extends nukes to Canada on Dec 12, 1997.

- Presumably, they nuke Mexico some time after nuking Canada but before year's end (after all, Canada was a NATO member active in the war, while Mexico was a neutral nation).

- Mexico's government unravels, PRI-PPS take back control, and invade.

Eminently reasonable. If all else fails the narrative background for a GM could go something like "Mexico, taking advantage of the chaos and to protect the burgeoning refugee population, launched an all-out attack across the Rio Grande."

[ToughOmbres]

I agree with you that many Mexicans harbor resentment towards the U.S., resentment that can be traced back to the 1848 war and even earlier to the Texas War of Independence. But the 1/2 of Mexico "stolen" by the U.S. did not have "all the cities and highways and industry in it". In fact, most of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona were very sparsely populated with Mexican citizens and their distance from the Mexican national capitol in Mexico City made administering and controlling said territories extremely difficult for the Mexican government. Furthermore, the territories in question were extremely underdeveloped when the U.S. decided to attempt to take them by force. In fact, the Mexican government originally invited U.S. settlers into Mexican Texas in order to "civilize" it (i.e. suppress hostile Native American tribes and develop the region economically). This was easier for the Mexican government than trying to settle and control the region itself. Of course, this turned out to be a bad idea for the Mexican government as soon the American settlers in Texas far outnumbered the Mexican population there and began agitating for independence.

I'm not justifying the 1848 Mexican War or the annexation of Mexican territory that followed, but I wanted to clear up the misconception that the region annexed by the U.S. was a particularly "rich" prize, at the time.

For Context, the U.S. and Mexico had an incredibly difficult relationship to try to navigate.
1. As early as Andrew Jackson's presidency, the US offered to buy California. Mexico refused to even discuss the matter.

2. US admittance of Texas into the Union was another friction point.

3. Mexico welcomed US settlers into TX-up to a point. Mexican officials wanted some presence against Native Americans and lawless elements. American migrants such as S.F. Austin were glad to have the land, less then enthusiastic about observing the terms and conditions that came with the land.In particular, the Mexico Constitution at the time banned slavery. Americans came in huge numbers and brought slaves with them in direct violation of Mexican law which infuriated Mexican officials.

4. By the Polk Administration, President Polk was very aware of the potential of the China trade for both missionary and trade ties-San Diego was a potential port, naval base AND and possible end for a southern-route Transcontinental Railroad. One of the leading advocates of a southern route for the Transcontinental Railroad was Secty of War Jefferson Davis btw.

5. Candidly, Polk was willing to settle for dividing Oregon with Britain but more than willing to go to war with Mexico. When asked about this seeming contradiction, Senator Thomas Hart Benton put it best-"Because dear sir, Britain is so strong and Mexico is so weak." (His words, not mine).

6. Last but not least, an increasingly democratic America was a sharp contrast to autocratic Mexico under Santa Anna-there were also border disputes (Rio Grande vs. the Nueces River) and the question Mexican debts owed to the US and US citizens.

Just context from a historian and my .02 for background. "Alas, Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States." -author unknown.