[MarkSheppard]

The capabilities of the Ethiopian Army.

They use primarily 50's vintage Soviet equipment, except for a small cadre of fairly modern jet fighters which were acquired during the border war with Eritrea. They have this equipment, however, in copious numbers.

Generally speaking the Ethiopian mobilization system has been constantly improved since the war with Eritrea with an eye toward a second conflict with that nation; accordingly, it's probably likely that the Ethiopians can call well more than a million men to the colours with extensive efforts at mobilization but because of garrison duties in various areas of the country and the need to send on the order of 400,000 + men to the border with Eritrea if conflict resumes there, in no case should one expect a commitment of more than 200,000 men to Somalia, and that only after on the order of six - eight months of mobilization.

At the moment it seems that around 35 - 40,000 Ethiopian troops are either in Somalia or along the Ethiopian-Somali border and entering Somalia. They are well-equipped with tanks, but mostly T-55s and so on. Technicals form motorized units for the most part rather than dedicated IFVs. They do have a single elite paratroop regiment. They are well-equipped with artillery; it is entirely towed.

In general, Ethiopian tactics are based around using their immense manpower and mass to their advantage. They are capable of highly sophisticated strategic encirclement operations after achieving breakthrough, which was brought the Border War to a close (and caused them great resentment and hatred toward the UN, which promptly ignored the result of the fighting and awarded the disputed territory to Eritrea).

In terms of breakthrough, however, their tactics are exceptionally primitive. They are best described as the mass tactics of General Brusilov in the First World War. The essential Ethiopian plan for the final Battle of Badme (There were three over the course of the war) was to launch attacks on every point of the front, as thanks to massive attrition they outnumbered the Eritreans by at least 2.5:1 (For instance it's claimed that between 23 February to 26 March 1999, the Eritreans suffered 45,000 casualties, though this is not confirmed); by the final victorious offensives in May of 2000 the Ethiopians had around 700,000 men on the Front; the Eritreans, 250 - 300,000.

With all sectors engaged in massed offensives, the vast Ethiopian reserves were then committed at Badme, supported by concentrated tanks and a paradrop operation behind enemy lines, with Ukrainian-piloted Sukhois providing air cover and engaging in desultory bombing. In three days of fighting at least 15,000 and possibly 25,000 Ethiopian troops were killed or wounded but the Ethiopians broke through and were able to decisively exploit their successes. Had the UN not intervened, they would have quite possibly overrun the whole country of Eritrea.

Their actual field tactics are strictly human waves, and best approximate the sort of tactics employed by the British in 1917. Tanks advance at the front in line after a preparatory barrage, with the infantry following in tight columns, tens of thousands of men being employed in a single attack. Attacks are pressed with utter disregard to casualties. Eritrean soldiers from the battle of Tsorona, for instance, reported firing their AK-47s on full automatic "until they were to hot to hold", lines of Ethiopian troops toppling the whole time, until they were at last beaten back.

The Ethiopians admit to 70,000 combat fatalities and probably on the order of 210,000 wounded in the Border War; the Eritreans admit to 100,000 killed and wounded in total. Both are probably underestimations; the conflict was accurately described as "1950s technology, WW1 tactics, 19th century medicine."

The main Ethiopian hindrance toward operating in Somalia with large forces is logistics. The Ogaden is a vicious wasteland with few roads and to my knowledge no railroads. Conversely, however, the Somalians have no ability to develop vast and sophisticated entrenchments like the Eritreans could, and the Ethiopians have complete air dominance, the same as we do over Iraq, though they can use it to far less effect. Their forces in Somalia or near the border are armour heavy, and they have certainly learned lessons and applied them from the conflict with Eritrea, particularly post-breakthrough manoeuvre after the final Battle of Badme.

The support of the population is largely irrelevant in this case; the government, though democratic in a vague sense, rules over people culturally inured to death and suffering, and they are fully capable of sustaining mass casualties at impressive ratios; if Ethiopia had the same size population as the USA, they would have had 300,000+ dead soldiers. As many as one out of every 500 males in the country died in the conflict.

In terms of their ability to fight the Somalians, as long as they remain in formation and have artillery and prepared machine-gun emplacement support, their positions are essentially unassailable. They have a preponderence of armour, and they do not break in action but their units hold together under even murderous fire, as Tsorona demonstrated. They are the sophisticated army of an organized, Christian civilization, with a long tradition of vigorous combat against the forces of Islam, during which they were always victorious and retained their independence. Primitive by our standards, I nonetheless expect them to perform against the Somalians as well as a colonial army against a tribalist force.

I would not be surprised if they end up not only reaching but rather brutally sacking Mogadishu; one thing is clear, they will not adhere to the laws of war save in a more perfunctory manner, and those mostly traditional rather than Geneva. That said, the conflict will not be a short one, unless negotiations cause a halt in it; nor will their progress be swift. The Ethiopians, perhaps fittingly as they're also an Orthodox and Oriental civilization, will operate methodically in the Russian style to shove the enemy back on every front, and willingly engage in butchery if necessary to suppress partisan resistance. The Somalians don't have the terrain of the Afghanis to resist that, nor a modern benefactor (Only Eritrea and the Arab gulf states). Their main hope is in getting Eritrea to act against Ethiopia, creating a broader conflict.

If this happens, the Horn of Africa could quickly be embroiled in a conflict as devastating as the First World War: The Sudan and Kenya might get involved on the Moorish and Ethiopian sides respectively