Marines Flee To Sea

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Subject: Marines Flee To Sea
SYSOP 12/11/2011 7:53:27 AM

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HeavyD 4/13/2012 11:22:06 PM

The Marines, as an ostensibly separate military branch is thoroughly obsolete.

The requirement that the US have 12 ESGs is patently ridiculous and hideously outdated for the following reasons:

1. The Marines will never again assault a contested beachhead. Did you just read that? We will NEVER again assault a beachhead contested by more than a gang of thugs with light weapons.

2. CASUALTIES KILL. Not the jarheads, but public opinion. This is why we will never again take on the most risky military maneuver on any large scale ever again.

3. Precision weapons, increased air mobility (helos and Osprey) and total air domination make it easier and safer to hop over the coast and seize objectives inland.

4. Armor. because casualties kill homeland morale, and because IEDs kill so easily the trend in modern warfare is to have 30-40 ton IFVs and 70 ton MBTs on hand. Somalia ain't gonna happen ever again. So if we're going in, it isn't as a light infantry force. And if it is as a light infantry force then there are far more cost-effective ways to deploy them than by having them sit in tin cans off-shore for weeks at a time.

5. The exponential growth of Special Forces (term used generically). With high levels of intel, stealth and surprise, a platoon of special forces types can accomplish pretty much anything other than seizing and holding territory. Many, many ops are going to them rather than fighting our way in, getting the job done, then fighting our way back out. Panama would be conducted very differently today than in the '80s.

6. From Korea almost 60 years ago, through Viet Nam and the current conflicts the Marines have been used predominantly as high-quality light infantry. Yes it gives the Navy a chubby to actually have a role in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that is ego, ego, ego.

Before y'all light me up, lemme say:

1. Semper Fi. Marines ROCK. They kick ass. They have incredible pride, determination, history, capability.

2. We need SOME ESGs, just not 12. And if we think we need 12 ESGs, maybe we better sharpen our foreign policy chops - if there are that many places in the world where we may need to land a thousand troops within 72 hours notice, we got bigger questions to ask ourselves.

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WarNerd 4/14/2012 5:37:22 AM

The Marines, as an ostensibly separate military branch is thoroughly obsolete.

The requirement that the US have 12 ESGs is patently ridiculous and hideously outdated for the following reasons:

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12 ESGs mean less than 8 will be available at any one time. The rest will be resetting for their next deployment or moving to or from it.

These are also extremely flexible assets that do the majority of the NON-combat emergency response work for natural disasters.

1. The Marines will never again assault a contested beachhead. Did you just read that? We will NEVER again assault a beachhead contested by more than a gang of thugs with light weapons.

2. CASUALTIES KILL. Not the jarheads, but public opinion. This is why we will never again take on the most risky military maneuver on any large scale ever again.

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The idiots who want to assault a contested beachhead only occur in (bad) Hollywood fiction. We will definitely try to never again assault a contested beachhead, but will do so when it becomes necessary, as it inevitably will.

The fact that pundits keep calling light infantry dead (What the hell do they think the Special Forces are?) does not make it so. The foot patrol (that is what light infantry is, some just do it for a living) will be with us long after the last tank, plane, and ship are gone.

3. Precision weapons, increased air mobility (helos and Osprey) and total air domination make it easier and safer to hop over the coast and seize objectives inland.

Sure, but if you do that all you have on the ground is ‘useless’ light infantry. Besides, if you don’t have Marines, then you don’t have their landing ships and helos and Ospreys. That means you need a convenient local (<200 mile) airbase to operate out of.

Please enlighten us as to what those ways are when you do not have a local base set up and the troops waiting.

The expansion of the Special Forces is already hitting the wall, these are very special people and there are just not enough capable of doing the work to do everything they are wanted for. Sometimes you have to settle for the next best thing, and generally that is the Marines or the Airborne. Special Forces usually have backup on call for their missions, because when things go bad they go real bad, and that backup is also generally the Marines or the Airborne.

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HeavyD 4/14/2012 7:45:21 PM

Why do we have 27 battalions of Marines? What are the 15 that are not playing Sardine on assault ships doing that regular Army units couldn't do?

If you take politics and organizational keeping-up-with-the-Jonses out of it there is more problems than benefits: The Marines are simply not equipped for the modern battlefield: their IFVs are too big and too slow and too poorly protected, their armor elements are too small, they don't have enough up-armored Humvees or MRAPS.

Sure, let's keep a few battalions for seizing initial objectives until heavier forces can be deployed but look at their historical usage from WWI on: 90% of the time they are just another infantry unit, indistinguishable in function from a similarly-trained and equipped Army unit.

So why the overlap in function?

No one is saying we don't need light infantry, but their mission is squeezed on one end from Special-type Forces, and from the other end by the need to up-armor in the age of the IED.

An Army unit could have it's Materiel pre-positioned on ships, and the men could be deployed from States-side bases via 6 C-17s and several round-trips from a dozen Osprey to anywhere in the world in 72 hours.

We could easily re-configure our forces to make due with 6 battalions of Marines. OK, that's too drastic. How about a dozen. Yes it sucks for the 200 or so career officers that would lose command opportunities, but sacrifices must be made.

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Bob Roberts 4/16/2012 4:55:21 PM

It amuses me to no end when people make broad sweeping statements on complex issues such as force structure, mission requirements, etc. as if their viewpoint is THE TRUTH. Now for my broad sweeping statements, from what I understand the USMC is the most cost efficient service in the DOD and of our ground components is probably the most flexible. If the political masters had a hard on to further decrease the size of the ground component I'd be more inclined to look at the Army before the Marines for the above stated reasons. As for making an amphibious assault on a heavily defended beach that's probably a good thing to avoid if at all possible but saying it'll "NEVER happen again" is a bit presumptuous. Perhaps somebody with more historical knowledge than myself can comment on this, but didn't the U.S. Navy and Marine Corp carry out several "minor" amphibious operations at battalion level or larger during Vietnam?

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HeavyD 4/16/2012 11:19:28 PM

If it were possible to take organizational politics out of the mix (and of course it isn't), from the perspective of having the financial efficiencies of common equipment and the operational efficiencies of having a common command structure no one would create a Marines sub-branch with 27 battalions.

After all, the definition and role for marines in every other military is:

The principal role of marine troops is military operations in the littoral zone..., operating from ships they are trained to land on and secure key points to around 50 miles inland.

Marine units primarily deploy from warships using helicopters..., landing craft..., hovercraft... or amphibious vehicles....

In addition to their primary role, marine troops are also used in a variety of other naval roles such as boarding operations, ship clean up, naval port security riverine... , mess duty , and field day operations.

The UK has one brigade of Royal Marine commandos. Very useful for the Falklands. We certainly need marines, prolly 2-3 brigades worth. They can secure objectives the Army isn't trained for, or for which even a large Special (type) Forces unit is not sufficient.

If you want to argue that US Army needs to reorganize it's Light Infantry units to give them more flexibility, sure, let's have that discussion. If the Army's Light Infantry and Air-Mobile units could benefit from Marine equipment such as the V22, let's talk about how the golden rule that the Army cannot operate Fixed Wing Aircraft is pure BS.

Also if we were drawing up the military from scratch we wouldn't dream of having 8 battalions bobbing about on the ocean waiting for something to happen. We have more than enough land bases and more than enough airlift capacity to get a battalion worth of troops anywhere in the world in 72 hours notice. The new America class Amphibious Assault Ship is a great example. By all means have it forward-deployed, perhaps with several companies of Marines aboard at all times. But the bulk of the 1600 marines should be on land bases, training or maintaining a more normal family life. 10 - 12 C-17s and/or C-130s gets the men into theater, V-22s and CH-53s get them aboard ship when needed. And we usually know when things are heating up...in fact deploying the Marines aboard the ship is an exercise in saber-rattling itself.

The bottom line is that for maximum cost and operational efficiency the Marines should stick to being, well, marines. I believe that the aviation units are a real asset where the Air Force is unable to provide CAS (any chance of a light-carrier based A-10 though?) so gutting the grunts does not have to mean gutting the air assets.

Ditto the landing craft and hovercraft. But it really doesn't matter if it's a Marine M-1 or an Army M-1 now does it?

And if the Marines need a new IFV, they can adapt the Army's GCV by adding watertight spaced armor for both flotation and RPG protection, perhaps augmented by inflatable or foam-filled floats that could be jettisoned when ashore for rougher sea conditions. Propulsion could also be augmented via twin jettisonable outboard motors (or better yet electric motors if the new IFV is a diesel-electric (hybrid).

So the bottom line is that the US needs Marines. But to try to extend their mission beyond littorals and the initial beachhead and close-inland objectives is problematic because your mission suffers from scope-creep and turf-wars. And hideously expensive and complex/unreliable equipment like the AAV-meets-Bradley-meets JetSki boondoggle: An AAV that needs to be able to run with M-1's? That's one requirement too far.

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SCCOMarine 4/17/2012 6:44:39 PM

The problem Heavy D is you have no Idea what your talking about Operationally. In your head there's X-number of troops here & Y-number of ESGs & 1600 Marines there w/27 Infantry BNs... but you have no clue how that works Operationally.

1st for every Inf BN in the 6mth ESG/MEU deployment phase there's also 1 in a 6mth Unit PTP (Pre-deployment Training Phase), 1 in the Post Deployment (breakdown/rebuild) Phase. Add in A'stan, III MEF/Okinawa, & other worldwide commitments & 27 BNs get used up quick.

2nd, Operationally those Marines at sea are in a Re-Act Status & although your limited understanding comprehends that as "sitting in tin cans" those Marines are spread across their assign Theater (CENTCOM, PACCOM, AFRICOM, etc) training both at sea & on land in various Multi-Lateral exercises or on real world Ops.

EXAMPLE: On Sept 9, 2010 the 15th MEU had 1 ship in the Persian Gulf support Ops, 1 ship was off the Pakistani coast supporting CAS Ops 400mi away in A'stan w/Harriers & a Liaison tm, w/an Inf Co & a CH-53 Helo Det 800mi away in NW Pak supporting Humanitarian Ops, another (USS Dubuque) over 1500mi away in the Gulf of Aden.

Sometime during that day the 15th MEU got that call Somali Pirates Hijacked the crew of the MAGELLAN STAR & responded w/in hours dispatching the USS Dubuque w/the Force Recon DAP (Direct Action Plt). Several hours later in the early morning of Sept 10th they rescued the Hostages of the MAGELLAN STAR & went back to Re-Act status Patrolling the Sea.

They could've just as easily Raided a terrorist camp, or supported CAS missions off the coast of Libya, or Emergency Evacuated Americans fleeing Lebanon, or Rescued a downed Spec Ops team w/a TRAP tm, all of which are real missions the MEU/ESG has run while simultaneously remaining of Re-Act Status for other missions in their "Tin Cans".

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HeavyD 4/17/2012 9:33:23 PM

SCCO - The US Military often gets caught in circular logic:

"We use the Marines in non-traditional ways because we have so many of them. But we need so many of them because look: we're using them in Iraq and Afghanistan!"

If the Marines were right-sized to 12 Battalions and the other 15 were given to the Army, the Marines could focus on being more like the UK's Royal Marines who consider themselves Commandos. The last two paragraphs of your post illustrate the need for this capability. The fact that they are in Afghanistan as well, especially with their hideously-operationally-expensive and ill-suited to the task Harriers is the problem.

Why am I harping on this? Two reasons. The first is equipment and procurement. To do their ostensibly primary mission the Marines need specialized equipment: V/Stol CAS aircraft and AAVs, come to mind. Both of which are ill-suited compared to the regular Air Force and Army offerings of A-10s, Apaches and Bradleys.

Because the Marines fancy themselves as the equal to the Army for in-land ops, but with the ability to get there via amphibious assault they came up with the patently ridiculous set of requirements which crossed a Bradley with a AAV with a Jet-Ski: Something that can do 25 knots for over-the-horizon amphibious assaults (like we ever do those) AND then be able to keep up with M-1s once ashore. MAKE UP YOUR MIND! Are you an amphibious assault force or a Mechanized Infantry unit? This overlap of function is the problem. Plain as day, ain't it?

The second reason is operational. Joint Operations sound lovely, everyone holding hands and getting along and everything. But we all know that it ain't all that grand all the time. Better to have one command structure, better to have similarly-equipped units from the same branch rather than have one minority sector run by those other guys. Logistically it's better too.

But the Navy likes having a role on the ground as well as in the air in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the nature of fiefdoms to resist contraction and go for expansion. Consequently instead of right-sizing the Marines, the force will prolly grow.

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SCCOMarine 4/18/2012 11:52:25 PM

"We use the Marines in non-traditional ways because we have so many of them. But we need so many of them because look: we're using them in Iraq and Afghanistan!"

We use Marines in non-traditional ways because the USMC has & will always train to excel in austere & ambiguous environments where their flexibility allows them to play roles & fill gaps other units can't.

If the Marines were right-sized to 12 Battalions and the other 15 were given to the Army, the Marines could focus on being more like the UK's Royal Marines who consider themselves Commandos.

The USMC doesn't need 12 Commando BNs at the price of not meeting its Global commitments w/flexible, timely, & cost effective forces. USMC Inf BNs train head up w/Commando & Specialized Units fr/around the world. The USMC prefers to train Extremely Disciplined, Hard, & Adaptable Infantrymen, having Baseline units able to train for Multiple Missions based on Combatant Commander's need through tailored PTP, in other words TASK ORGANIZED to the need. At any given time the USMC has 3 Commando-style MAGTFs roaming the seas, they're call Marine Expeditionary Units & they can do anything a Commando BN can do & many things they can't.

Specialized Equipment like the Harrier are perfect for A'stan, it can be based at the large Airbase w/the other fighters but when needed to stay on station for prolonged periods an Airboss can establish a FARP at a nearby empty field or stretch of road. So when other fighters are headed home hours away to refuel & rearm the AV-8B is landing 10min away & is back in the fight.

As for the EFV, a tank that was as fast on open water as any speed boat, its potential was limitless it was just too expensive & complex.

To argue the point of being "equal to the Army in land ops" is retarded the USMC's Combat Record is 2nd to none & speaks for itself, US Army Generals & Foreign Military & quotes of respect speak for themselves, the success Marines have where ever they deploy speaks for itself.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND! Are you an amphibious assault force or a Mechanized Infantry unit? This overlap of function is the problem. Plain as day, ain't it?

As far as making up its mind on what it is, taking a MEU for ex. it is an Amphibious Assault Force, a Special Operations Force, A Clandestine Raid Force, A Heli-borne Raid Force, & A Mechanized Raid Force all rolled up in a compact 2200 Marine Assault Package. It doesn't have to make up its mind it smoothly transitions through missions or runs them all simultaneously.

In 1993 those Rangers wished their commander had 16 AAVs (IFV) on QRF for when the sh*t hit the fan. A MAGTF provides a Commander the Opportunity to "TAILOR" a force to a mission, then the Flexibility to adjust for unknown factors. Plain as Day, Ain't It?

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HeavyD 4/19/2012 1:23:26 AM

1. I have referred to the marines as 'elite' forces, and their performance is beyond reproach. Clearly you cannot replace a battalion of jarheads with a battalion of regular GIs and call it even. 2. I have agreed that the MEU is a necessary component. 3. You will get no arguement from me that the Army has been criminally negligent in not providing air-mobile armor. But... What have the marines done in Iraq that an Army unit couldn't have done? Mission flexibility is great but when you are deployed as a large unit sandwiched between two large Army units, you are just over-trained, poorly-equipped light mechanized infantry. Over-trained & ill-equipped means amphibious training and tracks in a freaking desert. And yes, shame on the Army for completely giving up M113 like river crossing capabilities.

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JFKY Puh-leese 4/19/2012 9:45:49 AM

3. You will get no argument from me that the Army has been criminally negligent in not providing air-mobile armor.

You might as well claim the Army is "Criminally negligent" in not providing a floor wax that is also a dessert topping or "criminally negligent" in providing its troops the ability to fly without aircraft.

Any armour that is air-mobile is barely armour....please don't bring Mike Sparks and his idiocacy back here and start talking about "Gavins" and the like.....You will NOT be able to deploy and sustain any heavy UNIT, beyond a company team, via air.

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