oh another pleasant thought. we gutted the Victorians air force right before cali intends to rise up. So their about to have a hickup in their source of airframes right when they need to replace their airforce. Cali also might pull a fast one and do something like insist on upfront payment and then tell them to go fuck themselves instead of following through.
The flip side of that is, they're a lot more likely to go "oh shit" and have to arrange supply of new jets through some other means like buying secondhand Russian surplus MiG-29s from another Russian client state, and wind up with planes that don't suck and aren't sabotaged.
Speaking of this,
@PoptartProdigy Considering the Victorians mobilized their entire army,
Navy Coastal Force, and I presume all their actual jets...
I'd actually be surprised if this was all their jets, and frankly I doubt it was all their "Coastal Force" ships.
What we sank wasn't "the Victorian Coastal Force," it was "the part of the Coastal Force that happened to be at Buffalo on that day." Which probably wasn't all of it given that Victoria has a sizeable Atlantic coast and at a bare minimum needs to be able to keep up some semblance of a capacity to do customs patrol.
On the other hand, they may well have sent Buffalo much of their best, and much of the force the Victorians sent the
second time would include stripping any Atlantic assets they have to provide crews, hulls, or both so we may have eventually gotten more of it than the Victorians originally planned to throw at us.
Meanwhile, the Victorians almost certainly have airbases distributed throughout their territory, and would probably not
completely strip their ability to shoot down intruding planes around New York or other areas.
[I bet that the flight paths in and out of New York's airport(s) are a major matter of contention, since on the one hand the Viks don't want their airspace constantly getting poked at, there are a lot of foreign powers with an interest in being able to fly in... hm. I suspect that LaGuardia has been largely shut down in favor of air traffic coming into JFK, exaggerating the real life trend. JFK is a lot deeper into the city from the point of view of being farther from Victoria and less likely that your airliner gets shot down over a "misunderstanding."]
...why weren't the other two CMC Divisions (or at least one of them) sent out as well? I imagine there was some concern about sending away everything, but in that case, wouldn't it have been better to maybe just hold back a single Army division and send another CMC one instead?
Now, I'm quite happy they didn't send more than one CMC division at us, but I'm curious as to their mindset and reasons for why that was the case.
I doubt Poptart will give an official reason, but off the top of my head:
-Because that CMC division isn't actually there to strengthen the army, it's there to
control the army by providing a military asset capable of restraining any likely-sized defection or revolt among the Victorian troops.
-Because the CMC divisions are an important part of Victoria's internal control and policing asset, and cannot be freely committed at will because they're a regime protection force.
-Because the Victorians are dealing with some kind of active rebellion or military threat on their borders and are using the CMC to contain it
-Because the CMC's higher-ups are in on the conspiracies and "big lies," more so than most in their government, and had a clue just how risky the expedition is, and didn't want to gamble everything they have on a poorly conceived assault plan that might well fail for reasons that might give their forces no way to fight back.
Any of those four reasons, or a combination of them, might apply. There might also be others.
Toledo is the obvious choice, but what the hell, let's take Buffalo. It's not garrisoned, and it completely cuts them off. As long as we're pissing them off, let's piss them off hard and take a piece of their home territory.
Taking Toledo with a surprise amphibious landing would be remotely possible, The big problem is that without cost-intensive maintenance, the land to the east and south of Toledo has probably reverted towards its natural state: "The Great Black Swamp." So landing east of the city gets us bogged down, while landing west of the city means we're in considerable danger of getting hammer-and-anviled by the remaining Victorian field army forces. Or at least by enough of them to be serious problem.
It MIGHT be crazy enough to work, mind you.
Trying to take Buffalo with an amphibious landing would be fucking stupid. Firstly, our invasion fleet would be big and hard to miss, and they DO have radar. They'd see us coming, and while they might not be able to sink enough of our ships to matter, they could definitely alert defenders and begin moving to reinforce the city.
Secondly, there are enough militia units in Buffalo that we can't treat it as 'ungarrisoned.' Yes, those units are even worse trained than our own forces, but by a relatively narrow margin. They can tarpit us in place with swarms of hastily raised militias from the surrounding area while bringing in scraped-together forces from elsewhere- recalling men who joined the military and later mustered out, pressing recruits through the boot camps they still have, and mobilizing one or both of the remaining CMC divisions.
We might be able to hold Buffalo for a while, but we'd be under constant threat from the Victorians, with no real way to cut the supply lines they'd be using to push armies towards and into the city. It'd provide them an excellent opportunity to avenge the destruction of their army with a big Dien Bien Phu moment.
Then take it, loot it, wreck it, and sail away laughing. Redeploy to take Toledo while they're freaking out. New York State is part of Victoria proper. When was the last time they suffered a loss on their home turf?
I mean, other than the last time we wrecked their face.
A raid might be doable, but we need to be careful about sending large land forces onto an enemy-controlled shore as part of a raid. The big problem is getting your guys back onto the boats when the raid is over, because the enemy will be pissed, increasingly numerous, and converging on your troops from all sides except the shore.
Like, that might not be our version of Dien Bien Phu (with us cast as the French), but it could totally be our version of Dieppe (with us cast as the Canadians).
