Heck you might as well argue against packing sailors by thousands into aircraft carriers waitn hits from sunburn missiles.  Give the Corps and Navy credit where credit was due.  They have have changed amphib doctrine and tactics to meet emerging threats and make amphibious warfare a vaible option for the 21st Century.  They certainly were ahead of their sisters services in the whole  jointness thing.

 

 

 It is a hell of a lot easier to maintain the threat of MEU or two off an potential enemies coast than an Airborne task force pressing up aginst their airspace. Need I remind you the the first large convetinal force into land locked Afghanistan was a Marine one.

Wow, what a link...So the US Navy has done NOTHING right, in the last 30-50 years?  So we need all submarines, we need to build 1,000 A/C per year, who knew?  This is why no one takes Soldiers for the Truth and the like seriously, because the analysis is facile and basically becomes "I'm smart and "they" SUCK"

 

I think packing the Marines and Sailors in like sardines is the nature of the beast, physics and economics dictate it.  So tell me dude, we gonna replace the Marines with Airborne Troops?????  Of course they have no persistence and are limited in weight constraints and the like, but they'd be preferable to Marines?

www.geocities.com/usnavyindanger

Packing marines like sardines in vulnerable surface amphibs is asking for several thousand men to die and self-validate...must we allow this?

Mike

All that your statement tells me is that you know absolutely nothing about current USMC Doctorine.

 

But for the sake of Arguement, let's see

 

Airborne Assualt, Gee all those men packed into little Airplanes with limited supplies and an easy mark for a SA-18

Of course you could find an Airfield in an adjacent nation maybe and do a massive Airlift

You could bomb the hell out of them but that would require 10-15000 sailors crammed into surface ships (Carrier + Escorts) and you know they would be vunerable.

 

Yep you may have a point, myself I prefer the Idea of a Carrier Strike Group near by, a MEU somewhere in the area and the constant threat of an Air Assualt looming. You know the premise, mutliple options so a potential enemy simply has no idea when or where you are coming from, Or maybe even all of them comingh at you at once?

 

Get real, The USMC, the NAVY, the ARMY, the AIR FORCE are all pieces of a puzzle that some poor guy has to plan against, not any one of them but against ALL OF THEM. The fact is there is no nation right now or in the near future that is going to take the US on Head to Head and win percisely because of all the options the US has.

I really don?t think that you respect the fact that the reason an Amphib Assault is still valid is b/c their almost impossible to stop.

 

First off the ARG/MEU(Amphibious Ready Group) sits well over the horizon, which means that combined w/ the electronic jamming; all those Big Ships are impossible to track.

 

2nd, the optimal assault has a range of 200naut miles.  Take a pin poke a map and circle around all water front land w/ in 200nm, that?s 400nm of coast line.  Now imagine how many divisions it would take to secure that much terrain b/c they can land on any spot recon says is open.

 

3rd, they can and will use misdirection to make false landings any where in those 400nm.

 

4th, preceding any assault will be a series of Clandestine Raids fr/ the Boat Co. along the coast to knock out all comm. and defenses.

 

5th, Helo Co can land anywhere 400nm behind the enemy and cause havoc in any lightly guarded areas.

 

6th, by the time the Amtracks hit the beach the enemy will be getting hit fr/ all sides which allows a smoother landing for the tracks anywhere they want.

 

Also, the tops of those sardine cans barely break the wave line so until they hit the beach, at night their almost impossible to see.

  when doing an assault like that i thought the ships would be no more than 20-25 miles offshore from the chosen beach?  a triple digit mile trip to the beach would seem unduly miserable for the guys.

 

The ships sit just beyond the horizon, usually 25 to as far as 50mi, using the curve of the earth to block any land based tracking to shield the location of the pt of launch.  Using that the ARG can shadow coast, picking any pt of launch.

 

Fr/ the pt of launch 25-50mi fr/ the coast they can assault any pt on the shore 200nm north or south.  Leaving 400nm of coast to strike.

 

The key is misdirection & surprise.  Can it be a long trip, fuck yeah!  When they use the AmTracks, I've seen them launch as much as 15hrs b4 hitting the beach, cirlcing the ships for hrs to simulate the trip.

 

Keep in mind that "sardine cans" are only used in a full Amphib Assaults.

 

But the MEU(SOC) can perform Clandestine Raids fr/Boat Co 200nm either way on the coast and up to 20mi deep inland.  And Helo can launch Deep Helo Raids 400nm in either directions and 400nm deep inland.

 

 

15 hours in an amtrak before the party starts.  wouldn't that put the guys at something of a disadvantage for alertness etc though i expect it would amp up the motivation.  i know what i'd feel like after 15 hours in a sardine can and what i'd want to do to the next living thing that crossed my path.

I think you might be overselling the point a bit here.  Troops will be combat ineffective after 15 hours in an amtrac.  I'm not a tracker, but a 1 hour trip is serious suck.  I doubt they're packing the gas.  usmc.mil factfile says 7 hours endurance in water.  The longest duration trip from the sea I've seen is an overnight ride on an LCU. 

 

400 miles inland with a return trip would only be doable with a 53 or 22 with aerial refueling.  MEUs only bring 4 53s to the fight.  V-22s will only start MEU service next year.

 

Amphibious shipping is the only way to project ground combat power that is supportable without foreign basing rights--THAT is the key.  However vulnerable amphibs may or may not be, they're a lot less vulnerable than a C-17 dropping paratroopers, and Marines come ashore with more than what they can carry on their backs.

Yeah, they boosted the # of 53s on the MEU to 6.

 

The Raid in Afghanistan at Rhino was over 400nm as was the TRAP mission to pick up the downed Delta Black Hawk and the east coast MEUs do practice raids launching fr/ off the coast of Myrtle Beach to an Army base in Georgia over 400nm.