Originally Posted by
racedo
Gets back to original question. A rough estimate of tonnage required to be shipped by air or sea for 10,000 personnel from US to Europe including all their equipment and ammunition / spares. Assumming can use current Military airlift capacity and whatever is required from Fedex / UPS etc.
It isn't just tonnage. There are area and volume limits and flying bulk ammo is also "interesting" in terms of load plans - for ships - and I would assume for aircraft as well. Vehicle transport tends to be measured in LIMS (Linear metres) which are the number of metres of a standard width (somewhere between 2 and 2.2 m if memory serves). There are outsize elements to that (mainly heavy armour which is weight limited and some vehicles / aircraft which are height limited) which need careful planning.
The attached paper, gives you some idea of the quantities of vehicles involved, but not any additional spares, ammo etc. There's a reason no-one in their right mind considers intercontinental large scale deployment by air. You'd probably only get one return sortie a day out of your airlifter, which for a fleet of 50 aircraft (of which you might have 40 available) is going to take a long time to move 5000 vehicles (broadly what's in that paper). You're also assuming the reason for doing so is that they're somehow more survivable.
http://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a264943.pdf
Trying to make an armoured force air-portable is how you end up with a comedy like FRES.....