As early as August 5, at a press conference, Shi Zhiliang announced to reporters around the world that a joint force formed by troops from more than 20 countries would dispatch 400,000 troops to liberate Kuwait and eliminate all enemy forces entrenched in Kuwait and invaded Kuwait.

Of course, this "400,000" has a lot of moisture.

These include 150,000 Saudi troops, 50,000 Kuwaiti troops with Saudi assistance, and about 100,000 troops from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Obviously, these armies are mainly responsible for the protection of the Saudis and will not be involved in ground combat operations by and large.

In addition, the air power invested in the first and second phases, as well as the naval fleet, which is already in a state of deployment, are deducted.

In this way, the ground forces that are really invested are not even 100,000.

According to the deployment made by the Imperial Army, only part of the 7th and 17th Panzer Divisions arrived in Saudi Arabia on August 6.

Main battle equipment, to be precise.

The officers and men of the 7th Armoured Division had already arrived in Saudi Arabia a few days ago on requisitioned civilian airliners, and had stayed in Dammam and Jubail.

Once the equipment arrives, the division will be deployed near the border by 10 August.

The officers and men of the 17th Panzer Division are still on the way and will all arrive by 15 August, and will then be sent near the border.

The total strength of these two armored divisions is only 43,000.

The number of troops is not very large, but the combat effectiveness is strong enough.

The 7th Panzer Division, which had always been the ace of the Imperial Army, advanced from the northwest of the Reich all the way to the west of the Ural Mountains during the last war, and only stopped on the east bank of the Volga River. Later, it participated in the Polish-Iraqi War and was the last to withdraw the armored troops.

In addition, the division was the only special armored division of the Imperial Army to be at full strength at all times.

The division has 2 armored brigades, 1 infantry brigade, 1 artillery brigade, 1 division of long-range rocket artillery battalion, 1 division of independent reconnaissance battalion, 1 division of field air defense battalion, 1 division of logistics support battalion, 1 division of chemical defense battalion and 1 division of medical company, usually reinforced by 1 independent aviation brigade.

In terms of equipment, the division has 480 main battle tanks, 360 infantry and cavalry fighting vehicles, 240 self-propelled guns, 36 rocket artillery, and more than 2,000 wheeled vehicles of various types. If it is reinforced by aviation brigades, then 400 to 450 helicopters will be added.

To put it bluntly, there are no ordinary infantry in the 7th Panzer Division!

Over the past few decades, the 7th Panzer Division has been facing the Western Continent Group on a huge land, and its equipment construction has been carried out around assault operations.

This division is also the backbone of the Northwest Theater of Operations, and it is Shi Zhiliang's descendant unit!

Of course, Shi Zhiliang came out of the 7th Armored Division, and after 12 years as a division commander, he entered the promotion channel.

In fact, the 17th Panzer Division from the Western Theater of Operations was no worse than the 7th Panzer Division.

In terms of troops, the 17th Armored Division has 21,000 people, which is only 1,000 fewer than the 7th Armored Division.

However, of the 21,000 troops, about 8,000 are from the reserve forces, and the standing strength of the 17th Panzer Division is only 13,000.

Compared to the 7th Panzer Division, the 17th Panzer Division was inferior in artillery, that is, the artillery brigade had one less heavy artillery battalion, and there was no long-range rocket artillery battalion under the division.

In addition, there are also differences in the main battle equipment.

Only one armored brigade received the main battle tank of the "ZT-99B" type, the other brigade - "ZT-99A".

This difference is not a preference for one over the other.

The 17th Panzer Division faced the Caucasus and was mainly responsible for the strategic defense of Anatolia, that is, on the side of the Republic of There.

Because it was mainly fought in the mountains and was scattered in more than a dozen military bases, the 17th Panzer Division did not need much heavy equipment.

According to the Ministry of National Defence, the 17th Panzer Division will be transformed into a rapid reaction force at the next readjustment.

Actually, the difference in equipment does not have much effect.

According to the assault force demonstrated by the armored battalion of the Marine Corps on the night of August 1, two armored divisions of the Imperial Army were enough to liberate Kuwait.

In Shi Zhiliang's words, as long as the logistics support can keep up, and one aviation brigade is reinforced each, he is sure that he will use these two divisions to hit Baghdad.

This is not bragging.

If nothing else, counting the 2 armored battalions of the Marine Corps, there are more than 1,000 main battle tanks of the "ZT-99" series, while the T-72M of the Iraqi Army does not have so many in total. Even on a huge land battlefield, more than 1,000 main battle tanks can launch a campaign-level large-depth assault operation.

If anything, the key is logistics.

This was also the number one reason why the Imperial Army did not send more ground troops into the war.

Logistics support could not keep up, and no matter how many troops were sent to Saudi Arabia, they could only watch the excitement from the rear.

Relying only on the Imperial Army will certainly not solve the problem of logistical support.

The point is that in the desert of the Crescent region, there are simply no transportation facilities necessary for logistical support, especially railways.

Whether it is in the Northwest Theater or the Western Theater, the logistics support system of the Imperial Army is all built on the infrastructure that took decades to build, and it is generally in a strategic defensive posture, so there is no problem that the logistics support cannot keep up.

Take the Northwest Theater as an example, after the last war, in the name of post-war reconstruction, the empire provided tens of billions of gold dollars in aid to the Federal Republic of Luosha through the "Lian Xusheng Plan". In the decades that followed, the Federal Republic of Rosa built tens of thousands of kilometers of railways and tens of thousands of kilometers of roads.

In peacetime, these infrastructures are the backbone of the economy of the Federal Republic of Locha.

During the war, tens of thousands of kilometers of railways and tens of thousands of kilometers of highways will become the main arteries of military transportation and the confidence of the imperial army.

It's a pity that there are not such good conditions on this side of Posha Bay.

This is also the key to the need for many allies to participate in ground operations.

Among the seven allies that have agreed to send troops to participate in ground combat operations, only the Kingdom of Gaoju, the Kingdom of Daiman, and Pakistan have sent combat troops, and the other four countries have sent logistics support troops. In fact, only the Kingdom of Goju promised to send troops to attack Iraq, and promised to deploy at least one armored brigade to the front line before the ground war began, and to complete the transportation and other work on its own.

Due to logistical support, Ding Zhennan left this brigade of the Gaoju Kingdom in the coastal area, and did not let it fight with the armored forces of the Imperial Army.

As a result, there are nominally hundreds of thousands of troops, of which more than 300,000 are "logistics support troops"!

This situation also directly determines the scale of the ground war.

To put it bluntly, unless the imperial authorities promised to commit more troops and send a few more divisions, the scope of the ground war had to be controlled around Kuwait.

To lay down Baghdad?

Don't look at Shi Zhiliang is full of confidence, but if he really wants to use this as his goal, he will fly back to the imperial capital as soon as possible and cry to Shoufu that the troops are not enough.

It's not that he is timid, but in the case of insufficient troops, he will inevitably suffer greater casualties in a ground war.

An excellent commander will never let the officers and men of the commander make meaningless sacrifices.

In fact, Shi Zhiliang has always been famous for protecting his shortcomings.

The strength of 2 divisions, even the liberation of Kuwait seems to be a bit stretched.

The point is that it is impossible to liberate Kuwait for the sake of liberating Kuwait.

To put it bluntly, just because the purpose is only to liberate Kuwait, we cannot only focus on Kuwait and strictly limit the scope of operations to Kuwait.

When making plans, Ding Zhennan mentioned this issue many times.

This battle is not only to liberate Kuwait, but also to completely annihilate the Iraqi army that invaded Kuwait, and it is annihilation, and it cannot be turned into a pursuit war.

To put it simply, the Iraqi army that invaded Kuwait cannot be allowed to escape!

In this way, it is necessary to fight an encirclement battle, and it is necessary to strike from the west, so the strength of 2 armored divisions is really not enough!

Fortunately, there are also Marines.

In fact, at the very beginning, the Marine Corps wanted to take on all combat missions, and proposed that a maximum of three divisions could be deployed to the Poshawan area.

Unfortunately, this is clearly unlikely.

Not to mention that Shi Zhiliang is an army general, he will not let the army combat units sit on the cold bench, even if the first assistant Zhou Yongtao will not let the Marine Corps specialize in beauty.

In addition, the Marines are actually bragging.

The reason is also very simple, the standing combat unit of the Marine Corps is only 5 divisions.

The 1st Marine Division was responsible for guarding all strategic bases from Scapa Bay to Diego, in the Sunset and Fanyan Oceans. The 2nd Marine Division is responsible for guarding dozens of military bases in the central Guia archipelago chain, from the Aliu Islands to the Cook Islands. These two Marine Divisions belong to the strategic level of garrison forces, let alone peacetime, even after the outbreak of a major war, they can only be mobilized after the replacement units are in place.

It can be seen that the Marine Corps can mobilize only three divisions.

In fact, there are less than 3 divisions.

The 4th Marine Division, stationed in the Sagai Empire, the Northern Horse Islands, and the Tuke Fortress, can draw a maximum of one brigade. The Third Marine Division, which was stationed in Sri Lanka and the southeastern region, could only draw one brigade of troops, so only one division and two brigades could actually be mobilized.

The Fifth Marine Division, which can be dispatched in formation, is still a strategic reserve.

Although unlike the Army, there is no shortage of five divisions of the Marine Corps, the combat readiness rate of the Fifth Marine Division, which serves as a reserve, has always been not very high.

In peacetime, only about 60 percent of the officers and men of the Fifth Marine Division were on duty.

Of course, this also has to do with the rotation system of the Marine Corps.

However, it does not mean that the Marine Corps cannot commit three divisions, but if it really wants to commit three divisions, it must be mobilized immediately.

In the establishment system of the Marine Corps, there are also 5 reserve divisions in the formation.

However, these five divisions actually only have division headquarters, and their peacetime establishment is less than 3,000 people, so they have to be recruited from reserve forces.

Although theoretically, it would only take 15 days at most to complete the reorganization, but after the Great War, the Empire never called up these 5 Marine Divisions.

The reason is also very simple, it is too troublesome, and it is too expensive.

The key is not personnel, but the main battle equipment.

Because only the command framework was retained in peacetime, these five reserve divisions were not equipped with main battle equipment, and only mothballed equipment could be used during reorganization.

Not to mention the performance of the mothballed equipment, it is very troublesome to put it into use, and it requires a lot of money.

After it is used up, it costs a lot of money to re-seal it.

It is in this way that the Marine Corps has established a unique rotation system. In peacetime, the officers and men of each Marine Division are rotated alternately, so as to rely on about 60 percent of the main battle equipment, so that all officers and men on duty can get enough training time and maintain a sufficiently high combat effectiveness.

Of course, you can't dispatch 3 divisions, and it's okay to send 1 division into battle.

Herein lies the problem, though.

Which division the hell!?

Even now, the Marine Corps has not sent any confirmation information, only assuring that it will definitely be able to deploy one Marine Division before launching a ground offensive.

In fact, all Ding Zhennan needed was the strength of 1 Marine Division.

In accordance with the operational plan drawn up by him and confirmed by Shi Zhiliang, during the stage of ground warfare, the Marine Corps carried out an amphibious landing at the mouth of the Lianghe River.

To put it simply, it is to land southeast of Basra and assume the posture of storming Basra.

Actually, just log in.

Highway 3, south of Basra, was the only high-grade road to Kuwait on which the Iraqi forces invading Kuwait depended.

That is, as soon as the marines landed in the estuary delta, the Iraqi army had to counterattack.

Whether it is to continue to occupy Kuwait, to fight the coalition forces here, or to withdraw its troops from Kuwait, the Iraqi army must defend Highway 3.

Actually, that's enough.

Ding Zhennan did not count on the liberation of Kuwait by the Marines, and on a strategic level, the mouth of the two rivers was not very suitable for large-scale armored battles.

The main force is still the 2 armored divisions of the army.

As for the tactics, it's not really a secret.

To put it simply, the Marine Corps made a feint in the east, and the Army armored units launched a surprise attack from the west, detouring back to the rear of the Iraqi army.

This tactic has been approved by Shi Zhiliang.

However, the specific plan has not yet been decided.

The number one problem is, in fact, the roundabout scope.

The commanders and senior officers of the two armoured divisions hoped to expand their scope to attack Basra and not just to annihilate the Iraqi forces that had invaded Kuwait. Shi Zhiliang believes that in the situation that the investment of troops is insufficient and the logistical support may not be able to keep up, it is still necessary to focus on prudence.

Ding Zhennan also believes that there is no need to make it too big.

It is not that they are afraid of losing the war, but that at the political level they will not allow the capture of Basra, or that they will have to withdraw after they have been defeated.

Why, then, did it bother to attack Basra?

If it was to fight the Iraqi army, massive bombing would be enough.

In addition, Basra does not mean that you can fight if you want to.

According to Ding Zhennan's assessment, even if two divisions are invested, fire support is not a problem, and the operational difficulty of storming Basra is very great.

If you don't do it well, you may capsize here.

This is also the problem that Shi Zhiliang is most worried about!

Of course, the most important thing is actually the preparation time.

Preparing for the attack on Basra would require more time to stock up on combat materiel, especially fuel and ammunition, which are highly dependent on the armoured forces, which would mean extending the second phase of operations and expending more resources in the air strike phase.

The logistics support can't keep up, and more materials will be consumed before and after, which will be even more problematic!

If you lower the target, the pressure on logistics will be reduced a lot!

However, how to fight is not decided by Ding Zhennan, nor by Shi Zhiliang, but by Shoufu, who is far away in the imperial capital.