Stardate 20030217.1439

(Captain's log): When will combat start? It's really anybody's guess, and I'm not sure I believe that even Bush knows. In part it's a question of some decisions which will have to be made. In part it's a simple matter of deployment SNAFUs. And there are political roadblocks.

By far the biggest political roadblock is in Turkey. The government there is demanding that we pay them, and pay a lot. There's been an offer of aid, but the Turkish government doesn't think it's enough. Under the Turkish constitution, foreign troops can't deploy on Turkish soil without an act of Parliament, and the Turkish government won't even ask Parliament for permission unless it gets the deal it wants. They're also shopping around to see if they can get a better deal from opponents of the war.

If Turkey stands in our way and deeply impedes us, they do risk a great deal. Decades of military cooperation and friendship could be imperiled, and in the extreme case they might lose access to vital supplies of replacement parts to keep their American air craft flying. Moreover, they have a vested interest in making sure that the northern Kurds in Iraq are not permitted to create an independent Kurdistan out of northern Iraq after the war.

On the other hand, they know that we seem to need to use their territory, and it is a truism that anyone negotiating under a time limit is at a severe disadvantage. We are; they are not; that gives them the upper hand in negotiations.

If our attack plan requires troops in Turkey, then there's no way we're going to ready before the end of March at the earliest, and it could be the end of April. We haven't even begun serious deployment into Turkey (because we don't yet have permission) and it's not clear yet even when it will begin, because of the diplomatic holdup.

There's also the fact that Blair needs UN action for domestic political reasons. Blair is valuable, and he's shown himself to be a true ally and is deserving of our loyalty. We (the US) should be willing to make considerable concessions to his political needs, and I think that this is now the primary reason we're continuing to screw around with the UN. I think we're willing to go a long way for him, but we ultimately can't imperil our final goal; there will be a limit. (Blair's not a fool, and I think he knows this.)

On a pure operational level, I'm getting reports that the military heavy lift aircraft are running all out, and have been for a long time now, and even though we have by far the largest such fleet in the world it still doesn't seem to be enough for what we really need to do. A reader says:

The critical element is the heavy lift provided by the Air Force. The C-5s and C-17s are all maxed out schedule-wise and their tasking is immense. Maintenance problems with the incredible schedules these birds have been maintaining for well over a year are becoming endemic. ... swapping stories with other "sticks" of troops in transit at intermediate refueling stops and they were all talking about the same thing: maintenance woes and logistics issues trying to get out of CONUS and to the Gulf caused by the dearth of heavy lift. With each delay, the unit tasked with getting that aircraft next is also delayed and so on and so on.

I suspect that in the aftermath of the war the inevitable operational post mortem will reveal that the US needs to acquire even more such aircraft. (And I bet that Sergeant Stryker is glad he's out of cargo ship maintenance now, and IIRC instead working on heavy bombers. His ex-mates are probably doing 12 hour shifts these days.) It sounds like they were late in activating the Civilian Reserve Air Fleet.

In engineering we have a saying that there comes a time when the product has to be ripped out of the hands of the engineers and shipped over their screams. That's when managers earn the big money they're paid.

There's an optimum point; ship too soon and risk that the product will perform badly. Ship too late and you may miss your market window, or given a competitor time to release something which will hurt you. Get it right and you can make millions of dollars; get it wrong and you can lose that much, and maybe even see your company go out of business.

To some extent that's the decision that Bush and Blair face, only the stakes are vastly higher, and the price is lives and not money. At some point out there the time will come when conditions are as good as they will be. They won't be ideal, but earlier and later they'll get worse again. And then it will be necessary to order CENTCOM to attack even though not everything CENTCOM wants is actually in theater.

Time helps us build up our capabilities in the region. For the next month or two, the longer we wait the stronger we'll be in absolute terms. But it may also give various opposing forces the ability to build up their strength. Which means that we may reach a point where we're absolutely stronger but relatively weaker. If so, it means we've missed the window.

And with time the units we already have in theater will start to lose capability. Our carriers can't operate indefinitely, for instance. One of our carriers is the eighth month of a six month assignment; war or no war, it will have to come home soon. The troop