Does the Pentagon Really Have War Plans For Invading Canada?

You hear this a lot:

The Pentagon has war plans for everything including invading Canada. Or sometimes you hear they have war plans for repelling an invasion by aliens?

Is this remotely true? While I have no doubt that the Pentagon keeps up to date planning for a surprising number of countries and contingencies, the only thing I've ever been able to track down regarding Canada is nearly a century old.

Plus I read a response by a Pentagon spokesman regarding the "alien invasion" war plans. He said that it was impossible to plan to engage an enemy you had absolutely no intelligence about so the Pentagon had no such plans.

 

Geeesh.... Why would we want to?

But yeah, we likely do.

 

Yes. And every other country in the world. They even have war plans designed to control a zombie apocalypse.

 

Assuming you are serious.

How do you know this?

 

It's called continuity of civilization or something like that. It's more designed for bio or germ warfare and a total breakdown of civilization but I chose to lean on the ridiculous side.

It's existence isn't classified, it's contents are.

 

There are contingency plans, yes, and those are still ongoing; some are updated far more than others are, obviously, and I would believe those for Canada haven't been a priority in a while. lol

We have contingency plans for 'invading' ourselves, too, on the premise that the U.S. could under some circumstances be invaded or some states or collection of states fall under control of hostile forces; there are some 'role playing' games out there based on some of these plans, or used to be, can't remember their names off hand. You could probably snoop around in the War College and Naval Academy archives and grad school theses and find plans and OB's for invading Connecticut ...

 

http://nypost.com/2015/05/24/the-secret-canadian-plan-to-invade-the-us/

Maybe would we should dust ours off? ... lol

 

Yes.

The U.S. military has war plans for going to war against every country and region in the world.

War Plan Orange that was used to defeat Japan in the Pacific during WW ll was adopted by the Department of the Navy and the War Department in 1924.

 

That was confirmed by the DoD some years ago.

There's probably even an "Operation Snowflakes" war plan sitting on the shelves in the Pentagon.

 

Can you provide actual evidence of this? I'm not disagreeing with you necessarily just that I've heard it for so long without any actual evidence that I'm wondering.

And by actual "war plans" I mean WAR PLANS. Not just vague notions. I'm talking about designations of actual American combat units, orders of battle, and well defined time tables.

 

All of these war plans are SECRET.


If you want to go back to the early 20th Century and Plan Orange. -> https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/III/USMC-III-I-1.html

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Strategy/Strategy-1.html

The fuse for war in the pacific with Japan was lit in 1905. It was inevitable. Why do you think Japan declared war on Germany during WW l in 1914 ? They had their eyes on the Mandate Islands (Central Pacific / Micronesian Islands) that were German territory. Japan needed the Mandate Islands to defeat America in the Pacific.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_operation_plan

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/th...errifying-world-war-iii-plan-annihilate-19330

After my tour of duty in Vietnam the 5th Mar Div had just been deactivated at Camp Pendleton and downsized to brigade size, the 5th MAB. I was assigned to the 5th MAB.

I would say 70% of our training was still for being deployed back to Vietnam.

But the other 30% of the training was for preparing to fight a desert war in the Middle East, conducting an amphibious assault in Northern Europe along with the Canadian Army. Fighting on a nuclear battlefield.

But I remember one training exercise that was just a reinforced rifle battalion exercise. Everyone was given a small pocket size pamphlet that described who the make believe enemy was, who the make believe country was, what were the make believe cities and villages were and what the mission was. It didn't take long when we all looked at each other saying the make believe enemy and country was Mexico.

 

All of these plans are outlines. They aren't going to add the specifics until the need to activate a plan is present. The outlines will include everything from very limited actions to a full scale invasion with every available unit in the inventory.

 

Not sure what the issue is since Canada is planning on invading us soon anyways. Why wouldn't you want us to be prepared for when it eventually happens..........unless you are one of them.

 

We should concede now, and give them Detroit and Toledo.

 

Here's an example of one:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/war-plan-green.htm

... and somebody sniveling about Homeland Security's coordination with National Guard units and an Army Brigade. Don't know if they're left wing or right wing; they all look alike to me out there, anyway.

https://www.newswithviews.com/BreakingNews/breaking166.htm

 

That's more than 100 years old!

How about something from this century?

 

Good research on your part Strasser.

When I served with the 5th MAB that training exercise back in 70 or 71 was probably part of Plan Green.

It's probably still on the shelf collecting dust in the pentagon and it's taken down occasionally and revised.

 

War Plan Green has been constantly updated for decades, sometimes month by month even, so its an easy find, especially if you live in a border state; the Guard units here are big players in that one as well as the Air Guard. It's very near 100 years old.

 

It's never been shelved.

 

Does the Pentagon Really Have War Plans For Invading Canada?
※→ Dayton3, et al,

OK, without violating my NDA, (although Ive been retired for a very long time) America, had a Plan and actually initiated an Invasion of Canada about 240 years ago. That cat is out of the bag.

Most war plans that are on the shelf are obsolete or no longer needed for reference. The plans were written at a time when the US was capable of fighting two and a half wars. When I was in the Army, we thought in terms of Divisions. Today, we think in terms of Combat Brigades. Today, the Army is only worth about 30-33 BCTs. But, saying that leaves you with a false sense of security. You can only deploy what you can support. You might have 30 BCTs; but they need food, water, medicine, a maintenance capacity, ammunition, fuel, and intelligence on the battlefield, and building materials for the appropriate theater (just to name a few items). During the Iraq Campaign, the Army pressed, not only their air assets, but the Air Force as well; putting a lot of hours on a lot of aircraft. In my time, we called this "support to the warfighter."

Each of the military services has their unique logistics requirements. Without the logistics piece no matter how good the combat arms are, the intelligence services for the over 100 potential conventional warfare adversaries know that simple fact; you cannot deploy more than you can support. Soon we will only have 360 ship Navy. Remember most of these ship are very venerable. A small fiberglass boat completely disabled the USS Cole. The US Navy had to hire the Norwegian owned MV Blue Marlin to pick it up and transport it home.

What plans the Pentagon had, are probably useless. Even the OPLAN 1003 for Iraq, when the time came, was virtually scrapped. By the time that the US turned over the control to the Interim Government July 2004, there was no viable PHASE IV Post-war Phase. The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq was written in November 2005.

We expect that the next military adventure will be just as hasty. We can only hope that it runs more smoothly. But I would not worry about an OPLAN. The Pentagon could not organize a descent bordello (let alone a war), without going back to Congress from additional funding every six months.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

It is a good way for those who may need to do these things on the fly in real time to stay sharp at doing those things in having them come up with such plans.

BTW I have seen the old documentary film in which the Army actually occupied my city for a day as part of a military exercise back before there was color film as part of their war games. It is kind of neat to see video footage of the streets and city buildings back in the day. Just silly stuff like seeing the giant trees in places today when they were small trees, buildings no longer there, etc.

 

I wonder how many war plans have been forgotten about and just collect dust without being revised or updated ?

It happened with the Marine Corps "Small Wars Manual" -> http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/FMFRP 12-15 Small Wars Manual.pdf

From lessons learned by the Marine Corps from 1890 to 1939 a manual was written on the tactics to be used fighting a small war. And it was adopted in 1940 and was being put to use then on December 7th, 1941 America found itself in a really big war.

The "Small Wars Manual" was put on a book shelf at Marine Corps HQ's and completely forgotten about after WW ll and collected dust.

It collected dust for over 60 years. Then in late 2001 or early 2002 some butter bar or 1st Lieutenant was snooping around and saw a book covered in dust and blew off the dust and started thumbing through the book. He gave the book to his superior and it worked its self up the chain of command.

The discovery was reported in the USNI "Proceedings. "Marine Corps Gazette" and other military trades publications.

One of the most comments made was what if the "Small Wars Manual" were have been rediscovered 40 years earlier like in 1961 and the Vietnam War was fought as a small war instead as a big war, the world would be a different place today.

Well the Marine Corps revised the "Small Wars Manual" and brought it into the 21st Century.

The U.S. Army got their hands on the original "Small Wars Manual" and wrote their own version of the "Small Wars Manual."

This is just hearsay from my son who's a Major in the Marine Corps but he said in 2006 the Army and Marine Corps got together and wrote a new "Small Wars Manual" still based upon the original "Small War Manual" but one manual for all so everyone is on the same page since today every thing is so joint operations.

 

I remember the 'Small Wars Manual' being discussed a lot for a while then, but never actually saw one. It would great if that were what is going on.

My personal opinion is that there is so much overlap in Branches and their missions now we should just go back to where there are just two, Army and Navy, and simplify that way. Even with the super communications and the like it's too fragmented, authority too diluted, and responsibility non-existent, at least to my eye. Having SAC pasted on during the Cold War seemed to work out well; we didn't accidentally nuke Paraguay or Santa Fe or anything.

 

Like ApacheRat said, you aren't going to get detailed plans of what they have, they're secret. Best I can do is give you a Google Search page and an example or two. This Wiki page has the color codes used for many:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_color-coded_war_plans

And there is this declassified thing here that mentions one, not the actual plan itself:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/LOC-HAK-448-8-7-9.pdf

Google Search page on contingency plans. I thought the Zombie Apocalypse reference was just a joke, lol :

https://www.google.com/search?q=declassifed+military+contingency+plans&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Maybe you have time to find an actual plan in there somewhere. I don't. A quick scan seems to indicate the NSA now handles a lot of it these days.

Off-topic, but I find it interesting ... People these days are 'shocked' to find out we drew up serious, detailed plans for invading the British Isles, but at the time there were serious doubts about the British resolve to stay in the war, and Marshall didn't want to risk sending U.S. forces there, only to have Britain surrender. The reason was almost the entire British 'ruling classes' at the time were pro-Hitler, with few exceptions, and they still had considerable political influence as well; their support was so prevalent it defined almost the entire 'class' as a view, and Hitler thus tried to restrict his bombing campaigns to the poor and working class neighborhoods almost exclusively, so as to prevent losing their support. Churchill had a hard time convincing Marshall and FDR to trust the British resolve and commit there.

 

That's probably the last time they put together such a plan.

I've worked with guys from the planning section at the Pentagon. Believe me when I say they focus on conflicts that are likely. They "have" plans for pretty much every country but most of those plans are way out of date or barely fleshed out.