Posted on 03/25/2022 1:45:03 PM PDT by Wuli
The problem is that this is being dictated, not debated and staffed. Restructuring an entire service is serious business, you don’t do it until you are damn sure it is doctrinally sound and you have conducted field experiments to validate that.
Loosing cannon artillery for missiles pretty much trades off all close supporting fires for long range fires.
The Army restructured itself for counter-insurgency in 2006 and lost a lot of skills, particularly Artillery, Combat Engineering, and conventional tactical intelligence gathering, which has taking years to re-learn and regain proficiency.
During the New Guinea campaign, General Kenney convinced General MacArthur that his Army Air Force planes could replace the artillery. At Buna, the airplanes couldn’t accurately target Japanese pillboxes that blocked the Army advance. The 32nd Infantry Division smuggled a single howitzer in that was able to effectively hit and destroy the bunkers and broke open the Japanese defense.
This stuff briefs well, but creates big problems that cost Soldiers and Marines lives when it doesn’t work in the field.
They are putting the cart before the horse. Create a single Littoral Regiment, exercise the hell out of it, throw every conceivable Chinese tactic at it and see if this concept works.
Then, after it has been proven, restructure the force.
The main goal of a rocket is to punch a hole in the armor. The armor that is detonated on liquefies and is blown into the interior of the tank and any thing or any one inside of it is blown full of holes by molten steel.
Never did like tanks in the 1960's and like them even less now.
Doggies don’t get it done; Marines do.
Bravado is no substitute for ability. It might sound good to the Marines themselves but no one else takes it seriously.
The Marines are great at their light infantry role working with the Navy. That is their mission and is what they should focus on it. Using them on other missions just wastes their special talents and abilities. It diverts them from what they are organized and trained to do, and what they are really good at. There is no need for them to compete in what should be the role of the Army.
My daughter-in-law is a Marine pilot. She also is a USNA graduate. As she is deployed, I’ll have to wait a while before I can get her take.
My son is a Navy pilot - also deployed - a long way from his wife.
You were never a Marine. We fight and we win. Improvise, adapt, overcome. You wouldn’t understand and our ability is unquestioned. Our business is to kill people and blow up things. And business is good.
From what I’ve read that is the plan. But, they will expand to 3 eventually.
This is an editorial that represents one side of the argument.
Here is a better article in USNI that explains much better what the mission is becoming and the reform taking place.
““Where the commandant is going here is, if we’re going to be operating in a disaggregated environment, where you have 75 Marines operating throughout the first island chain, at times under duress, in competition and in crisis, and you need that really seasoned, mature decision-making capability, there is an age component to that,” Smith said.”
Quick shoot and scoot missions to hit Chinese ships or priority targets with the Naval Strike Missile...etc.
Also putting more organic firepower within 75-100 man units versus having firepower in a weapons company for the battalion.
The above USNI article is a good one.
This article gets into the experimentation and testing a bit more for a core concept of the reform...it’s been tested for over 2 years. https://news.usni.org/2021/04/15/marines-begin-experimentation-to-refine-manual-for-expeditionary-advanced-base-operations
*EABO...Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations manual and is kicking off a two-year process of near-constant experimentation and analysis to help refine the document before it becomes formal doctrine.
EABO asks small formations of Marines to move by sea to strategic pieces of land to conduct a mission – surveillance, launching anti-ship missiles, setting up a rugged forward refueling and rearming base, jamming an enemy – and then retreat back to the sea and move elsewhere.
Thank you.
Oh, please. I was in the Army and my father was a Marine. I know all about the Marines, their capabilities and their limitations. Contrary to what they themselves might think, they are not supermen, nor are they any more competent than the Army in small unit operations. Their mission is rapid power projection from the sea in cooperation with the Navy. This is what should drive any discussion about their size and composition. To use the Marines outside of this mission is a misallocation of resources. Every Marine that was deployed for longterm operations in a place like Afghanistan is a Marine that is not available for their primary mission.
“Why were the Marines deployed longterm in Iraq and Afghanistan? Afghanistan does not even have a coastline.”
I think the reasons were the synergies and similarities in the operations styles and standards between the Marines and other services “special ops”. I think the Marines fit right in with the special ops requirements and how much much more that style was put to use in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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