The Fortress, a modern day possibility?

[Waylander]

And one the touldn't think that the Maginot Line itself was an utter failure just because french where not able to react to the fast german strike around their flank.

It is not the fault of the fortress that the french high command was unable to adopt to new situations and totally overhelmed and inflexible.
The fortress line might be part of the reason why they acted (or better not acted) like they did but this is not the fault of the line.
Nothing prevented the french high command from being more flexible in their thinking and reactions even with the maginot line in place.

 

[cavalrytrooper]

Remember Viet Nam

Tropical junggle even with current advance technology still considered a respectable fortress if being used properly. That's why, personally I'm a bit sad that we in reducing our tropical forrest, since that (as much as our fast teritorial sea and disperse islands) is the best defence we got.

Off course it's also means a logistical nightmare..

Point is in my oppinion, on modern warfere, seems the most efficient fortress is to blend with your surounding geographics and bleed your opponents while entering your natural fortress..

Kind of what the russian do with German and off course Napoleon before that. Afterall fortress is only used because we assume that the enemy forces that oppose us has outnumbered or better armed.
If we got superiority, in my sense then just go out and face them in the open right ?

The Viet Cong are a excellent and the NVA. You never knew they were there until the opened fire on you.

 

[riksavage]

And one the touldn't think that the Maginot Line itself was an utter failure just because french where not able to react to the fast german strike around their flank.

It is not the fault of the fortress that the french high command was unable to adopt to new situations and totally overhelmed and inflexible.
The fortress line might be part of the reason why they acted (or better not acted) like they did but this is not the fault of the line.
Nothing prevented the french high command from being more flexible in their thinking and reactions even with the maginot line in place.

The Maginot line had a deep impact upon French doctrine to the point where their entire military thinking was built around a linear fixed asset. All their prewar TEWT's and field exercises revolved around the concept of static defence. The French high-command literally retreated into their protected shell hoping that the enemy would bleed itself dry throwing wave after wave against fixed positions. If they had spent the same amount of money, time and effort on new tank divisions, infantry divisions and more fighter-aircraft instead of wasting human resources on manning a white elephant then Germany's advance into France would not have been so swift.

Unfortunately the concept was flawed from day-one, it was heavily influenced by the experiences of the Allies in WWI, who lost thousands attacking well placed concrete German positions along the Western Front. With the arrival of the tank and fast reliable bomber/ground attack/fighter aircraft the Maginot Line became obsolete even before it was finished. The same way that the battleship became largely obsolete once the carrier's arrived in large numbers.

Once the Maginot Line was flanked the garrison contained therein were useless, basically out of the war. The same Francophile British General despaired that during the retreat he had to watch hundreds of brand new Char B tanks being destroyed for the want of crews - why because the crews were sitting in fixed emplacements along the now defunct Maginot waiting to surrender.

 

[Waylander]

I think you don't get my point.

This whole afair was the sole fault of the french government and high command.
Nobody and nothing but themselves prevented them from developing the idea of a mobile, fast reacting defense in Belgium while the southern part of their border with germany was protected by the maginot line.
That they were so limited in their thinking is not the fault of the maginot line. It is the reason for their defeat not the line itself.
They could had very well adopted another way of thinking before the start of WWII which might have seen mobile tank formations followed by infantry divisions rupturing into the neck of the german advance. All this while the maginot line worked as it should --> preventing the germans from entering france directly through the Elsass.

French military thinking and not the maginot line proved to be inadequate for the realities of WWII.

And they defenitely were not totally undermatched when one looks at the equipment on both sides.
It's not like german supertanks would have easily rolled over french tanks and guns if used properly. The same goes for the Air Force.

 

[davh12]

Fortress

It would be possible, but something like that would only be necessary if there were an invasion on US soil or some complete failure of governement and/or social infrastructure.....total chaos and lack of good order within our society. Rotary wing resupply would be the best approach, fixed wing would need alot of space and to extend a wall around something that large, not to mention the size of the garrison it would be alot of work. Security would be an issue on a perimeter wall that size with regard to sentry posts.

Regards,
Dav:hul

Hello all,
I was paging through some old sites that I used to visit regularly, and the thought came to me, is it still a viable tactic to build a fortress? One that could be deemed impregnable to today's technology just as castles of the dark ages were to the siege weapons of the day?

If it were possible, what would it need for a supply cache(food, water, arms) Would the presence of airfields be viable? What would it need for structures to maintain a garrison, especially of large proportions, i.e. 75,000.

Just looking for some imput, apologies if this isn't the right thread...though I would be curious if we were able to design one, just how would an opponent go about breaching the compound and destroying it?

 

[EXSSBN2005]

The saying of if we can see it then we can hit it, and if we can hit it we can kill it, is probably going to be true in the modern age. Making a fortress that is impregniable would require a MASSIVE amount of resources due to all the varied weapon systems and delivery systems out there. Starting with most leathal systems, you would need ABM defence, able to intercept everything from high end ICBMs and SLBMs to scuds and various other knockoffs, also need a air defence system capable of stopping bombers, fighter bombers, cruise missles, and smaller air to ground missles (hellfire and the like), (could be the same system). Next your looking at conventional mass combined arms attacks, your base would have to be so large as to be able to function if they blew the top layer of rocks off you with artillery, NORAD would work in this scenario, until they got to the ground assult phase of the combined arms in which waves of infantry would easily take out NORAD as they have pretty little in the way of infantry of their own (I dont know this for sure just building on what another poster said, I would expect a ground assult wouldnt get close or would be repulsed/countered by near by units. Aysemetrical warefare would be an easy counter as you just make the whole area a no mans land or put it on an island, freefire zone means very few sneak attacks.

Whats the purpose of this base? If its to have a sustainable and responsive force on the other side of the planet we kind of have that at diego garcia, no need to worry about asymetric warefare there as its in the middle of the ocean, combined arms would be difficult as you would need to transport them there, anti air is covered by the large ocean distances/ own airplanes, ABM is covered by mainland nuclear shield.

How would they breach and destroy it? same way they always did back then to the impregniable fortress, wear it down and starve it out until it fell.

 

[Sampanviking]

Key phrase then is "If you can see it". Hardly a surprise in he age of Stealth and Precision strike if the definition of safe and protected now means Invisible.

It does rather alter the use and purpose of a fortress though, which through history has often been to be highly visible and very impressive!

 

[Waylander]

Again I (Just like Kato and Firn did before) want to bring the swiss (and to a lesser extent the austrian) fortifications in the alps into the discussion.

As often in such discussions people tend to focus on the US and start to say that their power is going to break every fortress. And that is true as the US is overkill for any country. But one shouldn't forget that most countries don't plan to fight the US or at least don't plan to fight it alone.

The Swiss decided that their neutrality is preserved best by becoming such a hard nut to crack that both NATO and WarPac think that it isn't worth it. Attacking Switzerland would have tied down so many units and so much equipment that using their territory as another playground in a cold war gone hot would have been a no-win situation.

I think that against any opponent their fortifications (together with the mountain and mech troops in the open) would have inflicted a terrible toll on any attacker.
Even modern PGMs aren't the answer to everything. Hitting a deeply buried bunker systems in the side of the mountains is not a piece of cake.

One needs good bunker busters and good mission planning not to talk of very good intelligence accounts. And the modern, well trained swiss air force would have operated out of these bunkers, too. And this is their home turf.

All this is the limit of defence one can expect from a country the size of Switzerland. And the fortfications are what enables them to be such a hard nut to crack. Saying that they are totally useless because everything can get PGMed into the ground is very short sighted.

 

[kato]

waves of infantry would easily take out NORAD as they have pretty little in the way of infantry of their own

Going by how even just regular CRCs in Germany had in excess of 1,000 men infantry as a permanently assigned security detail against airborne assaults during the Cold War (note: the German wartime HQ had multiple times that), i would very much doubt the USA would leave NORAD exposed to ground assault if an enemy ever gets a foot on US soil.

Even modern PGMs aren't the answer to everything. Hitting a deeply buried bunker systems in the side of the mountains is not a piece of cake.

And you always adapt.

The monobloc bunkers Switzerland was ramping up to build around 1990 withstood direct impact from any ground-based gun system - tank guns, artillery etc - known at the time. Near-hits? Irrelevant. Can take anything that way. Including tactical nukes.

 

[Kiwikid]

Notwithstanding that mobile warfare outflanks fortresses as evidenced by the Blitzkreig of 1940, the modern solution is bunker buster bombs and if one has to go that far check out the old Pershing 2 missile. Designed with an earth penetrating warhead this beastie dug itself deep into the ground before letting off a nuclear warhead. No underground fortress can withstand such devices.

 

[Waylander]

The french maginot line was not a failure in itself. We talked about this before in this thread. It achieved it's aim in preventing the Germans from entering france from the Elsass. That the mobile forces of France were not up to the task (Or better to say their doctrine and C&C) has nothing to do with the maginot line.

With the right doctrine, mindset and command the french troops could have defeated the risky german thrusts in the north. It was not their equipment that prevented them from doing that. Had they done so the Maginot line would have been praised for channeling the Germans into a terrain where the french army could beat them in the field.

BTW, if you have to use tactical nukes to take out a modern fortress system it has already done it's task. It raised the stakes so high that an attack becomes unlikely. And it's not as if troops in the open fare very well when the tac nukes are flying...

 

[Belesari]

As for the maginot line it wasnt the line itself that failed but the military planners.

The french government gave up before it really began to fight. The french people on the other hand.... Over all its a old, old, stew.

Which falls first. The walls or the wills of the people inside.



-----------------------------------

Well to the fortress topic the question is what is the oponent.

A damn near impregnable fortress would be spread out over miles of area. 95% under ground. Like 1 mile or so. This would prevent it being leveled with kenetic strikes from space up to a point. Have spread out anti missile defenses and such.

Like i said it all depends on the fortresses job and the oponent.

 

[Kiwikid]

With the right doctrine, mindset and command the french troops could have defeated the risky german thrusts in the north. It was not their equipment that prevented them from doing that. Had they done so the Maginot line would have been praised for channeling the Germans into a terrain where the french army could beat them in the field.

Good points however I am not convinced by them either. In the junction of national borders known as the gap of Vise was another famous fortress called Eben Emael which fell very quickly. There were also three fortified rail crossings over the Albert Canal which were tricked by special forces approaching from the Belgian side.

Once this fortified line fell there was nothing behind it and the existence of a fortress line actually lulled defenders into a false complacency. Not the right mindset which you spoke of.

In a similar way there was too much dependence on the Ardenne forest as a natural barrier.

The point which unfortunately you don't address Waylander is that a fortress is like putting all one's eggs in one basket.

You don't need nukes to take out fortresses, You just bypass them. Gosh wasn't that exactly what USA did in their pacific campaign, bypassing fortress islands which they did not need to capture?

My reference to nukes is simply that there is no such thing as an invincible fortress. The only scenario today which would justify attack by a ground penetrating Pershing 2 nuke, is perhaps the underground nuclear complexes of Iran. In that case darned right it ups the stakes and I say go for it.

 

[Waylander]

But as you said. Eben Emael wasn't bypassed. It got attacked and cracked by a new form of troops. Had they just put some AP-mines, barbed wire and a handfull of MG-bunkers onto their roofs the German paras would have got slaughtered.

And why do you think that by using fortresses you put all your eggs into one basket? Nobody talked about building one bloody great fortress and putting all the available troops and resources into it.

The french had a big and rather well equipped army besides the maginot line. The whole idea was to force the germans to either bypass the line or bleed them out on it.
So saying that the line failed because it got bypassed is a wrong assumption as this was what they wanted to achieve.

That the other part of the equation, the army in the field, failed to perform it's part is not the fault of the line. In the end the only thing that worked within the french strategy was the maginot line.

As for fortifications in general being a waste of time and resources. How else than by using the natural terrain can a country like switzerland hope of becoming such a hard nut to crack that other countries think twice before invading them?
As I said before we are not talking about one big fortress but about an immensely huge system of connected and deeply buried bunkers, gun/MG/artillery/mortar positions, storage facilities, aircraft bases, etc. in the whole of the Swiss alps.
Besides that they operate a well equipped mechanized/armoured force as well as mountain infantry in the open. Now you tell me if they would fare better with all their troops in the plains slugging it out with a possible invader.

If you have the resources, manpower and favourable terrain some good fortifications can help you win the day. The attacker has to use more resources to attack them, looses more men and equipment, is slowed down and channelled into areas of the defenders choice. All this might very well not save a fortress from getting destroyed but it may very well help the defender to win the war.

 

[Chrisious]

Although fortresses in the Alps may have some purpose not sure about anywhere else. One problem with fixed fortresses is that your opponents have good time to study and understand them. If your opponents take them to be a threat, then more likely these will end up being in the wrong place when hostilities begin. Even if your opponent fancied taking these on you would still need backup on the outside to avoid becoming prisoner on the inside. At least you would have to consider calling in strikes on yourself to clear your surroundings. Then be prepared to rush out and defend yourselves or risk your opponent finding weak spots to attack you. Temporary fortresses may be a better proposition as these could be placed as the conflict dictates, your opponents would have less knowledge of them. Being of less value to yourself these could even be abandoned(a few thoughts at least).

 

[Waylander]

For sure fortresses change and adopt.

What the Swiss did in the Alps is for sure pretty comprehensive and hart to crack even for a big and well equipped enemy .

But also other kinds of fortresses have their merit and exist thorughout the world.

Be it the firebases of Vietnam, the FOBs we see in Afghanistan and Iraq, the well prepared Israeli positions in the Golan or the extensively fortificated defense structures in Taiwan.

All of them give some advantages to the defender. It is easy to say that any kind of fortification is defeatable because it is right. But such a statement neglects all the effects such a fortification has on the overall outcome of a battle. The higher amount of men, equipment and time an enemy has to invest in order to crack fortified positions may very well be too much to achieve some follow on objectives or gives the defender the time he needs to mobilize, react or counterattack.

Finding modern fortifications is also something one should not underestimate. If well prepared modern fortifications are hard to spot until one walks into the killzone. Especially if one hasn't the same amount of recon assets the US has.

 

[davh12]

With any fortified area, there will be ways to exploit it's weaknesses. History has shown us that the small numbers of any insurgency can walk circles around the "big guys"...........the natural mountain fortifications in Afghanistan.............look what that particular insurgency did to the Russians.............We're doing our best as well.......tough job.

Regards,

Dav

 

[Palnatoke]

The Maginot line had a deep impact upon French doctrine to the point where their entire military thinking was built around a linear fixed asset. All their prewar TEWT's and field exercises revolved around the concept of static defence. The French high-command literally retreated into their protected shell hoping that the enemy would bleed itself dry throwing wave after wave against fixed positions. If they had spent the same amount of money, time and effort on new tank divisions, infantry divisions and more fighter-aircraft instead of wasting human resources on manning a white elephant then Germany's advance into France would not have been so swift.

Unfortunately the concept was flawed from day-one, it was heavily influenced by the experiences of the Allies in WWI, who lost thousands attacking well placed concrete German positions along the Western Front. With the arrival of the tank and fast reliable bomber/ground attack/fighter aircraft the Maginot Line became obsolete even before it was finished. The same way that the battleship became largely obsolete once the carrier's arrived in large numbers.

Once the Maginot Line was flanked the garrison contained therein were useless, basically out of the war. The same Francophile British General despaired that during the retreat he had to watch hundreds of brand new Char B tanks being destroyed for the want of crews - why because the crews were sitting in fixed emplacements along the now defunct Maginot waiting to surrender.

I agree with your analysis of the faults of french military thinking, I just don't think it was the fault of the maginot line, at most the maginoline was one consequvence of the faulty thinking.

I think that a much better source of this french military thinking is found in:

A) Two numbers: 1 million dead and 6 million wounded in WW1. That in a country with some 50-60M inhabbitants and a low birth rate for decades.
These huge looses were of natural reasons traumatic to the french people. And influenced millitary thinking away from the overly aggressive "Grand Maison" thinking who had resulted in huge looses.
B) It was not thought that French industry and economy could keep up with an all out german rearmament effort, hence you needed to level the playing field.

It should be remembered that french millitary thinking was behind the "Mannerheim line" across the Karellian pennensulla, that allowed the finish army of some 9 ill equipped divisions to contain the greater part of the USSR advance, an army force of 22 well equipped divisions.
Eventhough Finland lost the war (as the USSR unleashed an army force greater than the adult male population of Finland), the Mannerheim line can only be considered as a huge succes.

 

[Waylander]

With any fortified area, there will be ways to exploit it's weaknesses. History has shown us that the small numbers of any insurgency can walk circles around the "big guys"...........the natural mountain fortifications in Afghanistan.............look what that particular insurgency did to the Russians.............We're doing our best as well.......tough job.

Regards,

Dav

As some others you look at these fortifications with a much too narrow view.

They have to work within a concept in which one doesn't rely solely on fortifications but uses alot of different kinds of forces to achieve a certain target.

So with Afghanistan as an example one needs alot of mobile troops (light, motorized, mechanized and airmobile) to take the fight to the enemy but one also needs big bases and FOBs to hold the ground, deny it to the enemy, and provide support and fallback positions to the mobile forces.

What happens when the troop levels are to low can be seen with the examples of US FOBs in some godforsaken valleys or UK platoon houses in some shitty towns.

The idea of mixed assets also led to the Swiss or Taiwanese having small but effective mechanized and armored formations. Only this mix allows an army to really exploit the advantages fortifications offer. Hitting an enemy force which just bled itself dry at some mountain fortress with some companies of Leopard IIs is going to have a much bigger effect than just waiting for the enemy to attack again.

With insufficient numbers of available troops which go out and become active these fortifications are left to killing shitloads of OMFs which attack them but are not really helpfull to the overall war effort.

 

[davh12]

As some others you look at these fortifications with a much too narrow view.

They have to work within a concept in which one doesn't rely solely on fortifications but uses alot of different kinds of forces to achieve a certain target.

So with Afghanistan as an example one needs alot of mobile troops (light, motorized, mechanized and airmobile) to take the fight to the enemy but one also needs big bases and FOBs to hold the ground, deny it to the enemy, and provide support and fallback positions to the mobile forces.

What happens when the troop levels are to low can be seen with the examples of US FOBs in some godforsaken valleys or UK platoon houses in some shitty towns.

The idea of mixed assets also led to the Swiss or Taiwanese having small but effective mechanized and armored formations. Only this mix allows an army to really exploit the advantages fortifications offer. Hitting an enemy force which just bled itself dry at some mountain fortress with some companies of Leopard IIs is going to have a much bigger effect than just waiting for the enemy to attack again.

With insufficient numbers of available troops which go out and become active these fortifications are left to killing shitloads of OMFs which attack them but are not really helpfull to the overall war effort.

Way Lander....good points made in your post..................well rounded and diverse tactical assets. More ways to approach a given threat, allows forces whom are diverse in tactical "everything" as well as the needed arms,/equipment to be more flexible. That would build confidence in it's memebers so when the opposing elements try something new and more extreme, it's not such a shock to that more diverse military...they can flex to react.

Regards,

Dav