S2 Book Club: Logistics in the Falklands

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today we're going to continue our book club series by taking a look at this month's offering which is Logistics in the fauland war a case study in expeditionary Warfare now I know everyone will struggle to contain their excitement when discussing one of the most captivating subjects in the world Logistics and paperwork but like always we'll push through and see what concepts we can glean from this rather unknown military conflict and see what aspects we can apply to our more Modern Life but first up what is the fand's War this conflict largely unknown in American society was a very short war fought between the United Kingdom and Argentina in the year 1982 the reason that this conflict goes largely ignored by American audiences is because well Americans weren't involved in this conflict really Beyond you know support and things like that this was more of a direct uh hot war between the UK and Argentina but also because the war was very short it was only 74 days long however in those 74 days absolutely astounding and grounded breaking military Doctrine was being forged and shaped Doctrine which affects American policy to this day despite many people not really knowing this a lot of the doctrine that we get from The Joint environment a lot of the big push to have a more joint Centric kind of operating style allowing different service branches to work together in the same space this really goes back to the idea of combined arms Warfare and World War I but it's really been shaped a lot by some of the things that the British noted during this conflict especially when it comes to Logistics what is known to the Western world as the fauland War Began on April 2nd 1982 when Argentina invaded the fauland islands the South Sandwich Islands and the islands of south Georgia this war was largely uh the result of very poor relations between the UK and Argentina and the long-standing territory disputes of the islands themselves now before we go any further I want to show a map of the world because this is really kind of the Crux of of the whole argument of why the fauland war is so important to study this is where the fauland Islands are located a few hundred miles off the coast of Argentina and roughly 8,000 nautical miles away from the British Isles we can maybe start to see what the main problem is with this war almost all of the issues that stemmed from the falones war and really the largest problems that the United Kingdom faced during this conflict stemmed from the fact that they're 8,000 mi from home having to conduct an amphibious operation an expeditionary operation where there is no land in sight and the closest island that they had to really rely on as far as Colonial support was Ascension Island which is still about 3,000 Mi away from the end Target so here you have the Royal Navy with their military might having to wage an extremely expeditionary War this is one of the most far-flung regions of the earth and the British military is having to go up against a near peer adversary just as a point of disclaimer before going forward this book was written from the British perspective it includes basically nothing from the Argentine perspective and it was also written interestingly Enough by an American so this was written by Kenneth praty who is a major general in the US Army and has written a few books on different kinds of uh concerns for military logistics so if you're wanting to do a bit of research on your own uh and learn about kind of the other side of the coin and what the argentine's perspective during this conflict was uh this is not the book for you this is purely the British experience in fact the argentines don't even call these islands the Falklands that's the British name for this archipelago they call these islands the mvas so that's definitely something to note if you're trying to get you know the Argentine perspective so rather than go chapter by chapter Page by page I'm just going to list the top lessons learned from this war that we can use to apply to our situation today most of these ideas are very high level thoughts here because I don't know about anybody else but I don't really plan on being a fleet Admiral anytime soon and you know coordinating uh Mass ch chains of logistics on ships and things like that however we might be able to glean some lessons learned here and there one of the main lessons that kind of jumps out right to start with is the importance of planning and to not really do anything at all without a plan and this kind of ties into a larger idea and that larger idea which kind of encompasses the rest of the book is that I think and this is just my opinion but I think that considering the nature of the conflict the expediency by which a response was necessary the distance covered and the time period the United Kingdom really really really did an outstanding job when it comes to Logistics preparedness even combat and things like that but it still was not good enough to result in very little casualties this was a very hot very shooting war that occurred down in the South Atlantic and it ended up killing hundreds of British military personnel in a very short time period this war largely forgotten by most outside the UK was most definitely a near-peer conflict and even though the British Military and the British uh Royal Navy did everything right uh you know in my opinion mostly for the most part they did everything you know uh as best they could it still wasn't good enough and there were still some serious snafus that ended up causing some very serious problems that's kind of the main lesson for the book is that look you know no plan survives first Contact right we all know this but when it comes to Logistics like you really have to over prepare like to an extreme degree when it comes to Logistics and you have to be okay with accepting that even if you do everything right even if you go above and beyond the Call of Duty that still may not be enough and a lot of times some of the more you know uh everyday kind of concerns get left out like one of the main concerns for the British moving forward is look this is 8,000 M away when uh Henry leech the uh Navy Chief of Staff uh first kind of brought the military plan to Margaret Thatcher and kind of uh out La what they were going to be doing and what this uh military force might look like to go back down there and take these islands back from the argentines he told uh he told Margaret Thatcher that this uh the preparations would take three weeks uh to to put together mostly because they had to commandeer civilian Freighters uh and convert them to military use to just haul the massive uh Logistics train with them and when he told her it would take 3 weeks she said oh you misspoke that you mean 3 days right and he said no ma'am going to be 3 weeks we're going 8,000 miles and uh that's no picnic right the sheer distance itself if if you just look at a map and realize that there's really no land that was friendly in the area having to run an entire expeditionary force and a logistics Force at the same time is is really really challenging but marketer's initial reaction to this is uh really the second lesson which is that governments are always too slow to act to military threats this is a story as oldest time but the leadup to the Argentine invasion of the Faulkland was absolutely predictable in every conceivable way uh local media in Argentina was talking about it uh tensions were very high uh you can just look at the statements of pundits and locals in the area local newspapers but the British Empire because Argentina was a far-flung quasi adversary at the time they didn't really care and by the time the invasion happened they just got caught with their trousers down even though every indicator was given prior to this military action that Argentina was absolutely going to invade the fauland islands so that's something to keep in mind is that politicians and a lot of times even military leadership is really really slow to react to very large very obvious strategic threats which kind of sounds familiar in today's context a third lesson learned is a classic story again in that maps are always a problem when Argentina invaded the Faulkland basically nobody in the military knew where it was a lot of dudes literally as they were getting on the boat to uh you know form up this expeditionary force and head to the South Atlantic they were all wondering wait a minute why did how did the Argentina get all the way up to Scotland they thought that the argentines had invaded Scotland because Faulkland is kind of like a Scottish sounding name I guess so they had to explain no uh this is a very unknown sparsely inhabited Rock in the South Atlantic and we're going to be going on 8,000 Mi uh to go take it back from the argentines so but again nobody had any maps of the area so literally the uh mapping offices of the the Royal Navy had to get all these nautical charts together and maps for the ground force and everything and they had to parachute them uh via aircraft uh over the expeditionary Force as it was heading south so basically they just had to print what they had and uh and kind of meet up along the way so again maps are always a problem the fourth lesson learned is that HF radio is absolutely mandatory uh I don't know how much more uh clear this can be uh even though you know I don't want to say like oh look this is a war from 1982 let's let's use this as a way to sell ham radio even more it's not really that way but it is interesting considering our modern context of uh you know modern infrastructure and Communications networks and things like that not really being so reliable um you know radio is a great way for that back in 1982 in the'80s the early 80s the faulon islands did not have any external communication other than shortwave radio that was it they had snail mail from you know ships that would visit and that's basically it it was one of the most remote places on Earth and of course they had to use radio to get down there this is something that I think the US Army in today's military has kind of Forgotten and this is one of those little lessons learned that turns into kind of a big digression but I I'll keep it short the US military right now and the US populace at large is looking to the Far East right we're looking to China and we're looking to see a great conflict potentially breaking out in the South China which will probably involve the majority of the Pacific at some point I don't think it's a foregone conclusion yet uh but clearly the US military is moving that way we call this the Pacific pivot right all service branches suddenly coming out with technology Doctrine uh ways of operating in a more amphibious lural kind of way well the fauland conflict was basically the first shot at this a military force which had to take an island that was very small 8,000 Mi away from their Homeland and they had to do it with nothing but what they could carry with them because they had no Logistics sounds very familiar as to what might be going on in the Pacific if a hot war between the United States and China breaks out or some kind of limited expansion or something like that now I know China's kind of the big Boogeyman at the moment so I don't want to stress this too hard but look the US military really if they aren't already should really be looking at uh improving their HF radio communications and not just relying on satellites so much almost all of the communications that the US military uses are going to be very you know short range comparatively VHF UHF kind of stuff or satcom stuff which would be UHF so using satellites in an era where satellites are maybe not the most reliable way of working things and maybe just an old-fashioned HF radio that can be used to talk from one tiny Island to another tiny Island a th000 miles away you know maybe there's some value in that and I think the faulon kind of Illustrated that comms was a massive nightmare as it has been a massive nightmare going all the way back to before radios or electricity even existed back in the days of Runners and penants on the battlefield Communications has always been a problem and it's amazing to me again to continue the digression that the US military in their Pacific pivot they're not really looking at long range coms they're looking at mesh networks they're looking at Manet kind of stuff they're looking at putting a drone up or a helicopter up and putting a sensor on every person or Soldier and I just don't see that level of investment going into HF infrastructure Point to Point Unit to unit Island to Island kind of thing maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm just an idiot and haven't seen it yet but it sure seems like there's a big push towards things like individual Soldier radios and not so much a huge push to revitalize the HF Spectrum there was a big push for this uh back a few years ago but uh that was a few years ago and it doesn't seem like there's been a lot of hot new radios come out a lot of hot new doctrine coming out on the HF side of things it seems like us all more along the lines of individual Soldier Solutions you know integrating aack into every Soldier integrating a you know wave relay into every Soldier as opposed to more HF kind of stuff but anyway rant done uh radio is very important especially if you're at a far-flung part of the world and for those of you who are located in extremely extremely remote areas it's even more important for you guys to realize the importance of Ra radio if I was living in a strategically important place you know if I was living in a very very remote place I would have uh a substantial uh portion of my communications infrastructure being related to radios so that I could relay and serve as a uh link to the outside world for other people that's just my own personal opinion is that if you're in an extremely remote area uh you can justify investing quite heavily in things like HF radio and the technology of it not just uh you know the expensive radio themselves but investing more heavily in developing technologies that allow you to talk over long distances without using a satellite or the internet I guess the reason for this digression is because I mean just me thinking you know what would I have done if I lived on the fauland during that conflict and I think that since I end up spending a lot of time you know in the woods in the middle of nowhere by myself with a radio I tend to think in terms of that a lot of times and I think man if there was one guy with a long range HF radio on a m mountain top and a pair of binoculars that dude could have done some serious damage to the Argentine Force as a resistance member but um you know that's that's just me fantasizing I suppose it's uh really interesting though to to kind of think of things from that perspective what can you do if your Homeland or your home island is at risk or is being invaded in the worst case scenario in many cases like in the case of the fauland the locals couldn't really do anything at all uh however maybe working on some comms kind of stuff in that situation could have been very very important moving on to the next lesson learned is that weather will ruin your day and it is the number one factor that you can't really plan for like I've said many many times and along with many many others weather specifically like the daily forecast down to the day is going to be extremely extremely important especially when it comes to amphibious operations or any kind of expeditionary operation weather is going to be the worst uh right when it needs to be the best so weather is very very important to be able to predict at least over the next few hours now of course it's not as easy as all that a lot of times you're not going to have the resources of you know weather radar and Aeros son and things like that weather balloons you're not going to have these resources that a nation state might have but being able to whip out your kestal meter and say hey guys it's going to get down to this temperature tonight because the due point during the day was uh this level so uh it's going to get pretty cold tonight being able to discern that and determine is it going to be foggy tonight or is it going to be cloud cover tonight or what this is a little easier to do than predicting the weather many many days out and it's something that an individual can certainly do another lesson learned is more strategic and that is the importance of a jumping off point of course in reference to Ascension Island the uh really the only other sort of colonial territory protectorate kind of thing uh for the UK was Ascension Island and that was still a few thousand miles away from the Faulkland but like is stated in the book If Asin Island wasn't there the British would have had to have built it herself so the importance of having a jumping off point a staging area somewhere that's not necessarily just like a bugout location but more along the lines of a staging area to help you move throughout an area that's very very important and this kind of leads to the next point which is something that is definitely more of a strategic thing but I'm going to talk about it in the context of the average person out there and that is the idea of fighting with a Ruck on your back speaking in the context of the gear World we all know the difference between like a ruck sack and an assault pack right what's the difference between the two and why do we have this Doctrine right why does that Alice pack from way back in the day have that quick relase shoulder strap why is that well largely it's because of military Doctrine developed over a very long period of time really since World War II is that the average soldier's weight that's on their back has been increasing since Korea really and the general idea is that a soldier patrolling uh with their unit out in the field is going to be carrying a very heavy ruck sack on their back because they need to live out out of that backpack for a long period of time but if they get into a situation where they get ambushed or they start uh taking contact or something like that they need to be able to quickly drop that ruck sack off their back so they have more maneuverability and it's a lot easier to fight when you don't have 80 lbs of you know junk on your back that's the reason for this Doctrine and this is the reason for the assault pack as well the kind of implication being all right look you move to a staging area you take your ruck sack off you leave that at the patrol base you put your assault pack on and that back stays on your back during the conflict this is very generally the way that military Doctrine has kind of outlined this now interestingly enough and this is not at all linked to the faulon conflict but I'm drawing this link is that in the prepared Citizen Space we a lot of times don't have the option to drop that 80 PB Ruck we don't have the option to do that we have to fight with it on our back because we can't afford to drop it and come back to it later after the Skirmish or action is over we have to take what we've got with us this is especially poignant in the mountains where uh the general theory among Mountain Warfare is that if you get separated from your ruck sack your life expectancy goes down drastically because you just need a lot of stuff to survive in high altitude conditions well the British kind of had the same idea when it came to the faulon war and that is that they had to fight with a stream of cargo vessels basically on their back they had to fight the argentines while also protecting their cargo vessels and Landing ship from the Argentine planes and things like that now it turns out that after the war after interviewing a lot of Argentine Pilots uh they found out that one of the reasons why uh the argentines did not attack so many British vessels and why so many ships were not targeted is because they had trained on ground Targets on the land so if the argentines had spent more time training on anti-ship targeting oh man the British would have had a much much harder time and as is uh what few vessels did get sunk on the British side definitely hindered Logistics efforts so here you have this expeditionary Force 8,000 mi from home having to deal with a foreign adversary with near-peer weapons and you're also having to protect a fleet of largely unarmed uh civilian craft which contain basically all of the things you need to wage this war this is something that often gets forgotten because again in the American context of things we don't really do things this much anymore we have staging bases and Patrol bases and we have all different kinds of logistics hubs and things like that that are largely more separated but in a naval war at Sea thousands of miles away from the nearest friendly land you know your ships are very very very vulnerable which is why it kind of highlights the importance of of thinking outside the box when it comes to military Doctrine and today's you know prepared citizen you may have to fight with that Rook on your back you may not have the luxury of dropping that sucker and then coming back to it later you might actually have to do the impossible and return fire and you know move off the X while carrying an obscene amount of gear with you not ideal by any means but this is uh something to think about for sure along those same lines improvisation is absolutely key it does not matter what it was designed to do it matters what it can do if you have a piece of gear or a piece of equipment or whatever you have to be able to plan for that to act outside of its intended role with the British forces one of the very first things they had to figure out how to do was convert a lot of the ballast tanks on board commercial uh Freighters into gas tanks basically so they had to modify a lot of commercial shipping vessels so that they could have that extended fuel range to actually make it down to the fauland or at least Ascension Island when it comes to the prepared Citizen Space this definitely applies and I'm really uh working through some challenges on this when it comes to radios uh because a lot of the times or rather almost all of the time when it comes to civilian-based ham radio the the gear itself is exceptionally fragile you know it's very difficult to find something durable and versatile in the ham radio world and when you do you're going to end up paying a lot of money for it right now I understand that you know kind of minimalistic setups are kind of the thing but you know I just it's really frustrating A lot of times to see just really fiddly and brittle and delicate stuff being in the prepared citizens space when it comes to radios and things that when you put that gear into a contingent situation is it going to be able to perform most of the time probably not like I guarantee you that if you take at least 95% of all ham radio equipment out there in the civilian space and you try to use it in the rain you're going to have a lot of problems or you're probably going to just break it right so this is something important to consider when you're trying to operate you know more autonomously or you're by yourself and you're trying to get more capabilities out of something you really have to consider all right war game time let's just say the power went out now can I run this can I run this piece of gear oh okay uh the sun isn't shining for 3 or 4 days because it's raining can I run this gear uh now it's going to be u a blizzard you know this weekend can I run this gear during that being able to take something and actually use it in a contingent situation is a lot different than you know operating a radio in a sunny park on a on a nice uh comfortable weekend right and this sort of Segways into the final Point uh which is kind of a hard to explain concept but one of the biggest problems that the ground force had in the fauland was seizing an objective and then having to sit there and wait for their Logistics to catch up this is again a tale's oldest time going all the way back to World War II where the panzers rolling through France had to sit and wait for fuel to get to them before they could uh seize the objective and uh capitalize on a retreating enemy same thing in the faulin and pretty much every military conflict that's relied on maneuverability but really this is why Logistics is important to over prepare for because if you're going into an objective if you're trying to do something and you get there and you and you realize the situation has changed and now you can go further that's something to plan for as well maintaining flexibility is super super important and you can really only be flexible if you have prepared to do so like many many military strategists have observed going all the way back to Napoleon and and Beyond some of the best military leaders throughout the history of the world have not been great military leaders because they were exceptionally clever or outwitted their enemy but rather they were highly effective combat leaders because they were able to leave themselves more options than their adversary during a contingent situation if you have the option to pursue a retreating Force that's a good option for you then you can choose you can make the decision to stay where you are and top off your your uh logistical reserves or you can pursue that adversary but if you took if you assaulted a hill and you took an objective and you're out of food and ammo and water you're not going anywhere and that's option that's reduced for you so the same thing kind of applies to whatever a prepared citizenry you know group or whatever might want to do there are certainly a wide variety of concerns that the average citizen has to have especially in today's world here in the United States we've got a lot of concerns we've got everything from natural disasters one weekend to you know hostile aircraft over American soil the next weekend it's just a a hot mess right we've got a lot of different things to prepare for and be concerned about and track and monitor and all kinds of stuff like that and the interesting thing is that this stuff is the Baseline for a more prepared citizenry who's trying to be you know capable and hard charging and stuff like that and trying to overcome some of the the problems that we're facing in the country today the fauland conflict really highlights The Importance of Being able to struggle through a a tough time and take an objective in a far away land with no food no water no ammo and once that goal is achieved looking at the next goal and keeping moving even when you're at the absolute limit of your logistical chain that's probably one of the bigger strategic lessons we can learn from this book and from this conflict not too many of us are going to be taking a substantial Naval force and uh conducting amphibious Landings on an island 8,000 Mi away but the average citizen might be called to go sit on a hill with a pair of binoculars and when their time there is done they might be called to move on to the next Hill and the next Hill and so on and they've got to be able to self sustain bring their Logistics with them and if necessary fight with those Logistics a lot of times it's challenging to take a lot of these military Lessons Learned and put them in context of a prepared citizenry which may or may not have military experience but that's okay the larger strategic lessons are are something to work from and we can drill down on this and expand on a lot of these topics in the future the faland war is what happens when a whole empire has to fight with their Ruck on their back and bring everything with them that they're going to need for situations that they might not even understand at the time preparedness doesn't necessarily equate to Bringing more stuff with you this isn't necessarily A proof of concept or a confirmation that that 150lb ruck sack is a good idea no it's more along the lines of being able to pick and choose what you're capable of doing understand that Logistics is really hard work and if you're trying to do Logistics or you're trying to operate in very remote terrain like many of us are going to have to do it's very very challenging especially considering you're going to have to either pre-stage or bring a lot of this logistical uh stuff with you so I think that'll wrap things up for today uh I know kind of a random assortment of thoughts but uh I promise we will be getting to some of these uh more complicated ideas in the future and we're going to cherry-pick a lot of this content uh for future videos so don't think we're done talking about the Falcons we're going to be definitely diving into this a little bit more but for now this is kind of an introduction to the conflict itself especially from the perspective of logistics so thank you all for listening and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade