OVERPROJECT SIGMA FOUNDRY
PROJECT RED TOME
OPERATION TUNDRA FLOWER
OPERATION IRON BOX

Following Grenada the various Congressional and Senate investigation and recommendation committees issued their recommendations regarding preventing operational confusion as well as non-combat related deaths.

Of particular note was the confusion regarding military equipment. Thousands of military units, spread across four continents and many Pacific and Atlantic Islands, had a wide breadth of military equipment that had been manufactured at various points of the first two thirds of the 20th Century. From vehicles and weaponry manufactured after World War One and designed during the war years to experimental computer systems in inertial navigation for nuclear warheads designed to be launched from artillery systems designed during World War Two, the blatantly obvious problem of uniformity of equipment across services and units was finally realized by the Military Oversight Committees.

Additionally, what was considered to be 30 days of supplies to fight the Soviet Union were exposed as being only 20-24 days worth if all of it was provided to combat arms with nothing left over for support units.

Ammunition shortages, which had bogged down the defense of South Korea after the Chinese attack, which had damaged the US military's ability to fight in Vietnam, were shown to be near critical levels.

Overproject Sigma Foundry was brought out of the archives and went live. Nominally designed for rearming the US military during World War Three, it was adapted and put into place.

Designs, including the much beleagured Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicle Project, were hurriedly stamped "APPROVED" and rushed into production. New weapon systems, requiring new ammunitions, were pumped out every hour of every day for nearly a year. Munitions companies, from Remington to Dow Chemical, worked double or triple shifts to fill the massive orders of weapons.

Ammunition in storage depots in the United States were destroyed or sold on the open market to allies and civilians quietly and in large bulk to make room for the newer, but still decades old, ammunition that would be moved from military bunkers to the storage depots.

Overproject Sigma Foundry was put in place in order to coordinate the largest rearming and resupply in world history as the massive force that made up the US military was stripped down to bare skin and bone and completely regeared.

Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training was revamped. Ranger School and Special Forces Q Course were rebuilt, virtually from the ground up.

Overnight, decades of doctrine was revamped by the lessons learned from two world wars, two massive UN peace keeping missions, and dozens of successful and failed military operations spanning a hundred years.

The rank structure of the US Army was completely rebuilt. The Specialist ranks, previously used for non-combat arms, was discarded (with the exception of Specialist-4/Spec-4/Specialist) and the military members holding Technical Specialist ranks were folded into the previously Combat Arms ranks structure. This was due, in part, to the fact that promotion boards were often staffed by combat arms soldiers who looked down on "Persons Other than Grunt" or "Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers" and often passed them over for promotion as the rank structure was divided but the promotion slots and available slots of the Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) were not separated.

Thousands of vehicles were shipped out of Europe and Asian and back to the US for destruction or sale. Billions of tons of munitions and equipment had the same happen. Almost twice the weight and amount of the same were shipped back into those same spots, with "hot-swapping" taking place. A tanker, trucker, or other vehicle mounted personnel would exchange their old vehicle for a new one directly.

This exposed a fault in planning in Europe that would effect the entire US military's doctrine.

Transportation, which an army lives or dies by (Amateurs talk tactics and strategy, experts talk logistics), was shown to be a critical levels. A lack of trailers, semi-tractors, cargo trucks, left ammunition sitting on the ground when it should have been loaded and shipped within six hours of being offloaded from the ships.

This resulted in multiple transportation units being activated from the National Guard and Active Reserve, emergency PERSCOM draws to fill the ranks, and the units being deployed with less than 24 hours notice to Europe.

Non-Combat Arms companies were found to be at less than 60% strength, the difference between actual manpower and paperwork manpower being not quite a lie but the way it had been presented sure was.

To top it off, the US military had been facing, before Reagan, constant force cuts and drawdowns since the end of Vietnam. This resulted in the Congress and the Senate quietly increasing force levels to unprecedented heights.

"All the weaponry, vehicles, and ammunition in the world can't stop the Soviet Union or win wars if there's nobody to fight," was a quote.

Instead of combat arms force levels being increased, the force increase instead went to logistics and support, over the screaming and wailing of combat arms commands. There would be very few new combat arms units reactivated, but rather supply, transportation, medical, ordnance would all be increased.

Ten support personnel for every combat arms soldier was the new watchword.

Combat Arms would no longer be so detached from their logistical support, instead combined training would take place in order to foster more cooperation and less of a division between the two parts of the service. Support personnel would undergo more combat training in order to free up combat arms to fight the enemy rather than solely be tasked to provide security for non-Combat Arms.

The entire US military underwent a force restructure at the same time as doctrine was changed, new munitions were deployed, and new vehicles were issued.

EVERYTHING changed.

Those service members who could not adapt within six months to the massive changes were put out on failure to adapt no matter how long they had in service. For officers the military declined to offer reenlistment, for Senior NCO's they were retired early, for enlisted, including what used to be called "Professional Privates" (someone who spent 20 years in the military never getting beyond E3) they were simply discharged with an Honorable Discharge.

Huge gaps were blown in command and control and replaced with people who would learn to act like a team together, who understood it was team-work.

The old "The Regiment is a man's home" system was discarded. No more "Homesteading" in a single regiment, division, or even just Brigade, but now officers and Senior NCO's would find themselves assigned to different Armies, Corps, Divisions. Officers would learn command in both Combat Arms and Logistics no matter what Corps they belonged to, which meant Infantry Officers could find themselves in charge of a platoon or company of supply or even medical, although logistics would not be put in charge of combat arms units. This was to familiarize the infantry officers and NCO's with the massive effort that logistics units put forth to supply the combat arms and to hopefully ease the tensions between what had been slowly becoming a two-tier system.

ALL of this took place in the face of huge geopolitical shifts. The Soviet Union had been bloodied and battered by Afghanistan, had taken public image losses by being beaten at the Olympics, and on the world stage, Communism was taking a severe beating as starvation and infrastructure failures wracked Communist nations.

In order to refit the entire European NBC stocks, Operation Iron Box rolled into place. A massive reshifting and reorganization of the NBC arsenal as well as rearming with "modern" weaponry. With advances in inertial navigation systems leaked to the Soviet Union by traitors within the US government, advances in nuclear capable submarine technology, and perceived advances in long range penetration nuclear bombers, it had become apparent to the US command that US forces in Europe had to be able to react to an NBC war without any control or command from CONUS, if nothing else to carry out their part in the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine.

In the end, it took several months, billions of dollars, and, in Europe, 143 lives and nearly 2,000 injured badly enough to be separated from service in 7th Army, before Operation Tundra Flower was finished.

When the bunker doors thudded shut, when the motorpool gates closed, and the Arms Room doors were locked, the entire US military had been rebuilt as well as could possibly be expected.

And in the ultimate irony, less than 10 years later...

...it didn't matter.

Peace, terrible terrible peace, won.

Nuclear war was averted.

Horrible, horrible victory.