>* unless it’s merely a catastrophic nuclear exchange.*
That's exactly what the next great war will look like, because you just nuke enemy formations and flotillas. Then you move on to nuking their cities when you realize they did the same to you and you no longer have an army or navy to fight with. Like I said, maybe a matter of hours. Days if we get lucky. No way it would last 2 weeks though.
That's kind of why our entire discussion is irrelevant. It would never happen. You don't really fight against nukes, you just die.
But for the sake of our hypothetical discussion:
As far as sending helicopters to Minnesota, those better be fairly long range helicopters. And then what's your attrition getting there? That's on top of the attrition getting enough helicopters for an invasion force into position to even be launched. Texas, you just take the attrition getting into position, but the beaches you can hit easily and with everything at your disposal without taking much additional attrition.
Minnesota, North Dakota, all that northern stuff is just bad business. Take the coastlines, and starve the midwest out, that's the best course of action. Going to Minnesota to fight through to Washington is just really bad business. If you can't even handle Texas, Minnesota will literally freeze you to death.
> As far as sending helicopters to Minnesota, those better be fairly long range helicopters.
The range needed to fly helicopters from the Gulf of Mexico to Minnesota is fairly comparable to the range needed to fly helicopters from the Arabian Sea to Afghanistan, which has been done. This would require air supremacy and effective SEAD, but so would an amphibious landing in Texas (though admittedly, you need air supremacy and SEAD over a smaller area if you're only invading Texas). You might even end up using helicopters even for your "amphibious landing" in Texas; landing in boats like Normandy these days can be a dubious notion. Even so, you have the exact same set of questions re. landing craft that you do re. helicopters.
I dunno about Minnesota, but an enemy would occupy North Dakota for the same reason they would occupy Texas and the Gulf Coast: to secure the oil and gas supply. Even if Washington has already surrendered, The Bad Guys would need oil, and that means they would need Bad Guys on the ground to secure it. But they would need a lot of Bad Guys, because there are a lot of Texans with the inclination and ability to fight back.
That's exactly what the next great war will look like, because you just nuke enemy formations and flotillas. Then you move on to nuking their cities when you realize they did the same to you and you no longer have an army or navy to fight with. Like I said, maybe a matter of hours. Days if we get lucky. No way it would last 2 weeks though.
That's kind of why our entire discussion is irrelevant. It would never happen. You don't really fight against nukes, you just die.
But for the sake of our hypothetical discussion:
As far as sending helicopters to Minnesota, those better be fairly long range helicopters. And then what's your attrition getting there? That's on top of the attrition getting enough helicopters for an invasion force into position to even be launched. Texas, you just take the attrition getting into position, but the beaches you can hit easily and with everything at your disposal without taking much additional attrition.
Minnesota, North Dakota, all that northern stuff is just bad business. Take the coastlines, and starve the midwest out, that's the best course of action. Going to Minnesota to fight through to Washington is just really bad business. If you can't even handle Texas, Minnesota will literally freeze you to death.