Additionally, I would rather they war game and plan for extremely implausible scenarios, than have them not bother because of course, those scenarios could never happen. ISTM that the things that could never possibly happen are the ones that bite you in the ass when they eventually do, because you were unprepared for that impossibility.

This applies to businesses too, not just the armed forces. Here in the US, I'd bet you many businesses, even those that have some measure of emergency disaster preparedness, had not made any plans around a plague disrupting their China-originated supply lines, much less that same plague hitting this continent. But some had. I can't find the link ATM, but a month or so ago, there was an article here on HN, about how a grocery chain in Texas had managed to keep their stores stocked and their supply chains running, in part because they had gamed out a pandemic scenario and made plans accordingly. Some businesses in my have area managed to become (more-fully) operational sooner than others as local COVID-related restrictions have been eased. And others are still completely shut down, even though they could start operating partially again under the current restrictions. Dollars to donuts, I'll bet the many of former had gamed out pandemic or similar scenarios, and planned accordingly, while many of the latter had not.

This is what you're thinking of: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-p...

That is indeed it. Thank you.

Or Wimbledon having paid pandemic insurance for over a decade

> These plans were made not because we really had any intention of invading Canada or Mexico

To be fair, Americans and/or pro-US Texans and/or pro-US “filibusters” fought wars in and opposite one or another Mexican regime (sometimes alongside a competing Mexican regime, as in a war between the Mexican Republic and the Empire of Mexico) in the 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1900s, and 1910s.

So, having military contingency plans for invading Mexico in the 1930s wasn't unreasonable, and not just as some kind of abstract exercise.

That's true, a US-Mexican war in that era wasn't nearly as far-fetched as an invasion of Canada. A better example would have been War Plan Gold, which involved war with France

While it had been over a century since our last attempt to invade Canada by then, there has always been a certain flavor of American in love with the idea of continuing the doctrine of Manifest Destiny until the entire continent has been conquered.

(Those snooty Australians lording their continent over us, we'll show them.)

Given how much we spend on the Pentagon, they should probably have a war plan for just about everything.

Is there any reason to believe similar plans and contingencies don't exist anymore?

I hope there are even more of them now. It would be pretty cool to read about a contingency plan for an insurgency against a Klingon or Cylon occupation of the earth. That would be an interesting scenario.

Think about it, would it be better for the US military (not to mention the world) to spend it's money on training simulations to improve officer quality, or actual drones and bombs being used in actual wars? Scenario 1, IMHO, is much better for humanity.

There are likely more now than there were in the 1930s. The US officer corps has expanded greatly since then, and computers and better information likely makes creating war plans much easier. Planning a campaign is much easier when you have a database containing a topographical map of the entire planet and the suspected arsenal and troop distributions of every nation, instead of having to dig deep through archives for the right atlas and hoping a military mapmaker has happened across that beach before. Fun fact: the Allied forces lacked military maps of the beaches of Northern France, so had to enlist civilians to send them copies of any vacation photos they happened to take there, and tried to re-assemble them to figure out which beaches they could land at.

EDIT: In terms of war plans the pentagon most likely has, there's the obvious war plans against North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran. I'd expect there to be several variations of each of those: like one for rebuffing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, another for a naval conflict in the South China sea, the North Korean war plans probably have different variants depending on whether or not China supports North Korea, etc. Probably some for interventions in various world hot spots: Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC, maybe the Gaza strip. And those plans would likely also have several variations based on the scale, from a couple special forces operations and an airstrike to a few peacekeeping troops to a full invasion involving multiple carrier groups and multiple divisions. In terms of far-fetched ones, I'd expect at least one preparing involving the breakup of NATO, like two NATO members going to war. One case where it's a NATO member attacking the US, another where two other NATO states go to war and the US tries to negotiate a peace, and maybe one where it's an all out civil war where each NATO member picks a side. Invasion plans for any of the US allies where the relationship is complicated or strained: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Turkey off the top of my head. Oh, and invasion plans for anywhere that control major sea lanes: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Panama, Egypt

Every new generation of officers to come out of the military colleges writes a few new ones. Nobody is born being good at planning, you have to practice.

The Pentagon had a plan for the invasion of Iraq that was loosely followed. The State department did not however, leasing to the mess predicted by the Pentagon's plan. Additionally, limited information is available about several North Korea plans.

Canada and Mexico may still have some plans, but the US's primary strategy is just to ensure an anti-US regime can never get power. So more the CIA's area.

No, in fact there is reason to believe there's more of them.