How would this force do vs the Host of Mordor?

[phongn]

Area bombardment can be quite effective - and was in Vietnam and Desert Storm.

The forces of Morder are unlikely to have real cover against air reconnaisance, and also pack themselves tightly.

A-6E strikes with CBUs might raise havoc though (again, assuming that we're going with the 1980s airwing) against their massed formations.

[greenmm]

CVN-65 Enterprise is with them, so yes, there could be nukes if we go back to the 1980s USN.

Then we have to lose the Wasp and Kearsage. Wasp wasn't even commissioned until 1989, with the next in their class not coming along until 1992 (Kearsage wasn't until 1993). I suppose we could replace them with Tarawa or Iwo Jima class ships, but while the troop complements are close to equal, they don't have the aircraft complement of a Wasp, both in terms of Harrier II's and in transport helicopters.

Besides... nukes won't do any good against the Ringwraiths -- remember, their leader the Witch-King can't be killed by the hands of men; it took a woman and a Hobbit to kill him. And last time I checked, the USN of the 1980's didn't allow female pilots on the front-line (heck, I'm not sure they allowed them as helicopter pilots on the ships).

[greenmm]

Daisy clusters would be a start. Given that Sarumon's power generation facilities are located underground, but are actually exposed, smart bombs could dive straight in and fuck him over royally.

Here's how it could work.

Phase 1: Destroy Sarumon's infrastructure. This is easily accomplished by using the method described above. Bomb the shit out of his exposed underground furnaces to prevent him from manufacturing any kind of heavy artillery or more weapons for his troops.

Phase 2: Wipe out ground forces. This is easily accomplished by long-range artillery bombardment. Set up snipers a mile or so away from Barad-Dur to pick off Sarumon if the opportunity presents itself.

Phase 3: Mop-up actions. Send in the tanks and artillery to dispose of the remainder of ground forces. Bring down the walls protecting Barad-Dur and occupy the area. Set up bases, communications equipment and the like. Use the tower as a beach head to launch an invasion of Mordor.

Assuming they can find the furnaces. Unless they brought their satellites with them, they'll need aerial recon to find them first... and without GPS satellites, accurate target placement will suffer somewhat (not too much, but if you've spent years expecting the use of a GPS system to get you from point A to point B, going back to an INS or plain old map-reading isn't that great). And with the volcanoes making IR and visual recon rather difficult, the ability of aerial recon to pick out any potential underground warrens is going to be spotty at best.

Don't forget the target size, either. The land of Mordor is roughly 350 by 475 miles square at a conservative estimate, based on the map in the LOTR books. That works out to a land area about 40% larger than the entire modern country of Vietnam, or about 2-3 times larger than North Vietnam was during the Vietnam war. Alternately, in comparison it's about the size of the entire country of Iraq. Unfortunately, it's also located 200-400 miles from the coastline in terms of straight-line distance, depending on whether you want the south-western corner of Mordor or Barad-Dur itself, and whether or not you're anchored at the mouth of the Ethir Anduin. May not seem like much, but it affects how far your strikes can go, based on the unrefueled ranges of the aircraft you'll have:
-- A-7 Corsair II: 460 mile combat radius
-- F/A-18: 333/367 mile attack/CAP combat radius
-- F-14: 575 mile CAP combat radius
-- AV-8B: 104 to 684 mile combat radius, depending on attack and takeoff profile
-- A-6: having trouble finding its listed combat radius, but I can't imagine it's much more than the ones listed above
Without carrier tanker support, the only really effective bomb trucks they'd have would be the Harriers.. and for them to get that 684 mile radius, they can only carry 7 Mk 82's and 2 external tanks. That's less than 2000 lbs worth of bombs, as the Mk 82 is the nominal 250 lb bomb.

Sure, they could use tanker aircraft from the Big E to extend their strike craft range, but that means they'll use up their fuel even faster. Just for the AV-8B, that's 3.5 tons of internal fuel per aircraft per sortie. A 20-craft force would use up 70 tons of fuel per flight, not counting any external tanks. Throw in the strike craft from the Big E, and we're talking about nearly 1000 tons of fuel per strike. How much does that tanker carry in it -- i.e. how many days can they sustain operational tempos before they run out of gas? And it's not like Middle-Earth has any refineries handy to make JP for the fighters.

And let's not forget that Sauron had forces in other places besides Mordor. He had forces in the southern part of Mirkwood -- an area equal to about 10-15% of Mordor's territory. Plus the forces he had sent against the dwarves in Erebor, which prevented them from helping out Gondor, as well as the allies he apparantly had east of Mordor -- the ones that came from lands so far away that they didn't even have maps for them?

And while we're on the topic of Sauron, don't forget his powers. For one thing, we're talking about a creature that was originally nearly as powerful as the deities that created Middle-Earth (according to The Silmarillion). Besides his native powers, he also had the palantir to keep tabs on Middle-Earth, so forget being able to surprise him. Throw in the nearly-indestructible Ringwraiths, as well as the need to destroy the One Ring if you wanted to completely destroy Barad-Dur and Sauron's fortifications (as long as the Ring exists, they can't be completely destroyed), and you're talking about a difficult time for the ground forces should they even get to a cleanup stage.

Which brings up the final point... how are less than 4000 marines (about a regiment or brigade size unit) going to effectively patrol and "clean up" Mordor, when each Marine is responsible for "securing" 44 square miles? That's right: force density for the Marines works out to 1 Marine in a square about 6.625 miles per side. Even if they were to sweep across Mordor in one long line, there'd still be about 480 ft separating each Marine from the others -- and that's assuming that every single Marine is a front-line soldier. Realistically, you can only expect 40-50% of them to be front-line troops, with the rest being rear support personnel. That means every front-line Marine gets a 9.37x9.37 mile square all to himself, or a line across Mordor with about 975 ft (about 3 football fields) in between each soldier.

Even if they could manage to kill off 90% of Sauron's forces, this force just doesn't have the manpower to clean up, let alone patrol and hold the land of Mordor. And for them to manage to destroy that much of his forces would require them to expend the majority of their fuel and ordnance, thus leaving little to none available for any cleanup operations. And that's assuming that Sauron doesn't just move them out of range of the airstrikes.

[jodathalas]

Just ask for them to give up Mordor. If they refuse..................... NVM. Im no war tactician.

[phongn]

-- A-7 Corsair II: 460 mile combat radius
-- F/A-18: 333/367 mile attack/CAP combat radius
-- F-14: 575 mile CAP combat radius
-- AV-8B: 104 to 684 mile combat radius, depending on attack and takeoff profile
-- A-6: having trouble finding its listed combat radius, but I can't imagine it's much more than the ones listed above
Without carrier tanker support, the only really effective bomb trucks they'd have would be the Harriers.. and for them to get that 684 mile radius, they can only carry 7 Mk 82's and 2 external tanks. That's less than 2000 lbs worth of bombs, as the Mk 82 is the nominal 250 lb bomb.

A-6 has a combat radius of nearly 1600km. (from FAS - not the more reliable of sites but what I've found in a short period of time). It doesn't give the warload, but the A-6 has considerably longer legs than the above craft.

You don't use the Harrier for long-range strikes. You can use the F-14 for that, but IIRC the 1980s versions didn't have the "Bombcat" upgrade.

[paladin]

Just NUKE the fuckers till they glow!!!!

With what? Unless we want to jump about over a decade back in time, there are no nukes deployed with USN surface ships or aircraft carriers.

This is a special mission. Nukes could be available to give the force commander some options.

[phongn]

Just NUKE the fuckers till they glow!!!!

With what? Unless we want to jump about over a decade back in time, there are no nukes deployed with USN surface ships or aircraft carriers.

This is a special mission. Nukes could be available to give the force commander some options.

Where are you getting them from? IIRC, most of that arsenal is gone.