Seems nothing is immune from change. US Marines have always been top dog right?

https://www.businessinsider.co...rcise-report-2021-11

Meh, as a former US Marine, Royal Marines are nothing to fuck with. ROK Marines are also pretty badass dudes. I’ll say that losing a simulated combat mission to either doesn’t diminish my opinion of the USMC.

I did some training with Royal Marines and truly enjoyed the experience, especially the evenings at the bar afterwards.

I also cross trained with some Royal Marines, and yes, they are nothing to mess with.

That said, looking at the reports, this was another loss from leadership.

The modern Marines are rigid to plan, and leaders are detached from the units. The Royal Marines are not. They are fluid to ground conditions, and able to adjust freely.

This ability to adapt is critical to respond to changing threats, and prevents an enemy force from predicting your movement.

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:
I also cross trained with some Royal Marines, and yes, they are nothing to mess with.

That said, looking at the reports, this was another loss from leadership.

The modern Marines are rigid to plan, and leaders are detached from the units. The Royal Marines are not. They are fluid to ground conditions, and able to adjust freely.

This ability to adapt is critical to respond to changing threats, and prevents an enemy force from predicting your movement.

This....leadership is so afraid of what their OER will say they are unwilling to actually take chances and lead. When they fail they can just say "well, I followed the doctrine perfectly"

Real leaders/warriors seldom thrive until the nation has their ass in a wringer and looks the other way about things that really don't matter in combat. You cannot have a Patton, Hackworth or Lemay in a peacetime / admin military.

The Royal Marines have always embraced tactics being decided at the lowest level possible (Auftragstaktik) and daring do.

God help us in the coming conflict with China, it will be very painful and if history teaches anything ...will teach DOTMIL nothing.

Yeah - but we have better drone operators and it's a very inclusive program.

(former Active Army here...) much respect to both organizations

that said -- 'war games' are an interesting beast. by necessity -- there are various conditions, set points, constraints, etc that are established from the outset. they are not necessarily 'equal' or designed to be 'fair'. the pre-conditions are generally carefully scripted to maximally test the units involved -- but again -- may or may not be 'fair' to one side at any given time.

another point -- it's not uncommon to throw visiting (international) units a bone -- they came 5,000 miles to train. give them a trip home with a smile on their face. of course the Royal Marines are a great unit. 'mopping the floor with the USMC' makes a great headline -- but i doubt its some wholesale statement of fact.

not the least of which -- the size of the Brit Royal Marines is tiny small -- less than 10,000. they are extremely selective. The USMC is over 170,000 - so there's that. a more direct comparison might be versus the 75th Ranger Regiment in terms of 'selectivity'.

good stuff -- hard training makes for a sharper spear

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This is nothing new. Going back to WW1 and WW2 and even before, the British for the most part had better tactics and training.

The US spends more money, but has ineffective leadership. We often get it done with technology and overwhelming force. We often lose a few battles in the beginning, learn from our mistakes, regroup, and then go win the war. If the political will is there....

I think we as gun owning Americans dismiss the prowess of other nations militaries out of hand sometimes. The British have some phenomenal fighting forces and the Royal Marines, like was said above, are not a group of folks to trifle with. Hell there are a lot of tough ass, mean, brawling REGULAR everyday British folks I wouldn’t want to cross.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig209:
they are extremely selective.

And then the select of the select (picked up at a recruiting booth—no, not recruiting me—years ago):

So, it appears to me, who knows next to nothing about the military, that one group is Special Forces, and the other general forces? What kind of comparison is that?

A number years back, before the turn of the century, I was distantly involved in a NATO wargame in Norway where couple of the other NATO nations were the 'enemy'.

On our 'side' we had elements from the SBS and the Arctic Warfare cadre of the Royal Marines. Everybody had been fitted with the then-new and very spiffy laser-shot target markers, which you had to wear for the duration of the exercise.

The whole thing was due to kick off nice and early, around dawn on this particular day, and the opposition was huddled having a last minute O Group conflab in their hidey-hole.

Zero-hour arrived, and the game started, but as they walked out to join their troops, all six of them were shot 'dead' before they had taken ten paces, all 'killed' by SBS snipers.

It was less than 20 seconds into the exercise, and all the top brass of the opposition had been killed.

Seems that nobody had mentioned the use of prepositioned recce assets with accompanying snipers - a least, to the RM participants.

'Victims' of the opening shots included the Brigade commander and all four of his company commanders, and their SF liaison officer, who had been shot 'through' his SAT-phone as he held it to his head. The referees judged that the SAT-phone was thereafter unusable, as it was well-known that our troops were using the .338LM sniping rifle, and it would have been totally trashed with a pass-through bullet.

Surprisingly, although there were two handsets, they used unique keying, and the op had not had time to pass on the enter/send codes to the guy at the other end of the connection, having been 'killed' before he could accomplish it.

Whoops.

Thereafter, it went downhill rapidly, and had to be restarted the following day, as there was only one dawn per day...many lessons were learned, one of which was that almost anybody who picked up a handset was a certain to 'die' within seconds, as was anybody pointing something out to another person.

Snipers? You gotta love'em.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
So, it appears to me, who knows next to nothing about the military, that one group is Special Forces, and the other general forces? What kind of comparison is that?

No special forces at all.

USMC = RM.

The RM DO have a SF role, it's called the Special boat Service. Similar in ethos and role to the US Navy S.E.A.L. personnel.

Think of it as a kind of web-footed SAS.

Meh. Let each side call for organic air support.

If only the USMC still had a few tanks…

I wonder if the RMs had a few tanks…

Tanks are cool…

Way back in '72 we conducted NATO training with the British Marines in Norway.
Aboard ship we were separated from them but could see them at a distance when we were in one of five chow lines. All of them had long hair and beards like ZZ Top and every one of them looked like they spent their off time at the gym.
I only saw them one other time during the operation. We USMC grunts had been humping along a fyord (forgive my spelling) all day in our Mickey Mouse Boots when we were told to "face inland and lay down". "we will be joined by the British Marines shortly".
After a while you could hear a droning sound from the ships out in the open water coming up the fiyord. Lo and behold the British Marines blew past us in huge hover crafts and disappeared into the distance. We looked at each other in amazement. They were escorted to the front like Johnny Quest while we got there via blisters.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
So, it appears to me, who knows next to nothing about the military, that one group is Special Forces, and the other general forces?

As you ask, a bit of clarification about terminology.

Special Forces is the specific US Army element whose members are authorized to wear the iconic green beret. Although this is somewhat simplified, their primary mission has always been to work with indigenous personnel of the area they were operating in to train and equip them as guerrilla or main forces. In Vietnam they constituted the Studies and Observation Group (SOG) that ran operations, primarily for reconnaissance, along the so-called Ho Chi Minh Trail. Those operations, however, also usually included a majority of indigenous troops, albeit under the command of SF personnel.

In more recent times they have done things like assist and advise the Northern Alliance in Iraq.

Special Forces units sometimes also have “direct action” missions like the SEALs and other special operations organizations. Although sometimes the other SO and regular units have had training responsibilities to a degree, those missions have usually been unlike what Special Forces is trained and expected to do. It’s desired, for example that SF personnel be foreign language linguists and the final phase of their basic qualification training consists of a four-week exercise that tests their ability to work with an “indigenous” forces group.

The generic term for all the various “unconventional” military organizations is usually special operations. Sometimes when they conduct operations they are referred to as “commandos” by the news media.

My father late in his life would take my mother along with him to 'Chosin Few' reunions... and one of those was in London .... invited by the Royal Marines... seems while the 1st Marine division was stuck and surrounded back in November of 1950 and Macs Army was heading south a company of Royal Marines, who had also been ordered to leave the 1st division to deal with the 80-100,000 chinese that had surrounded them decided to turn and fight there way into the reservoir.

The UK press is playing this up and the US press of course is on full cynicism mode. The public gets into their head that because A-team won, that means B-team is inferior. Not the case. Exercises come in all flavors and varieties, just depends on the objectives.

There's not a whole lot we know about this Ex...was it purely an infantry vs infantry, no support, limited comms exercise? Military exercises usually have a number of controls put into place, depends on the focus whether its an Ex for senior leadership, mid-level leadership; how the troops take to new tactics or, equipment; pressure test new ideas; what limitations were put into place for supporting fire, air support, comms...etc.

In short, and on paper, USMC has a WHOLE lot more support and combat power than the RM. The RM, however are some bad-ass hombres with the tools they have.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
So, it appears to me, who knows next to nothing about the military, that one group is Special Forces, and the other general forces? What kind of comparison is that?

The USMC is a general purpose force focused around a combined arms structure...the basic maneuver formation has its own infantry, has its own artillery, has its own air support and its own logistics all organic to the unit. Its main mission is supposed to be amphibious warfare, the last 30-years however has proven otherwise.

The RM is significantly smaller organization who's mission is as a raiding force. They're also known as commandos their principal tactics is harassment, interdiction and reconnaissance from the sea.

Meh.

I was in the marines in the 80s-90s. I have a pretty good view (from the sidelines) with current USMC doctrine. For all those who are talking about the lack of leadership and risk averse nature of the Corps today, I can say from what I get to see from the ringside, they are doing things right.

If this was a “loss”, they “lost” to a worthy group of highly trained individuals. The Corps seems to be evolving. The infantry is specializing more today than it ever has. And from the outside looking in, they are learning from the Brits. They are spending a lot of time teaching basic warfighting skills to all grunts. They are spending a lot of time making the infantry more like reconnaissance. “Cool guy” stuff like spending a lot of time working combat weapons drills, using CAS, fast roping, etc.

Recon seems to be headed more toward being a battalion Raider team.

I’m actually really happy to see them evolving. The leadership thing doesn’t seem to be a critical as what people seem to be reporting. From the inside, the infantry is being trained “woke” as what some fear or what scattered news reports will have you believe.

All we can do at this point is see if their long range goals work. The Corps has “reimagined” itself multiple times in the last few decades. This is the first time they seem to be acting on it.

The way I see and understand it is the USMC is almost like a smaller US Army but more sea-based and with their own air force.

The British Royal Marines are traditional Naval Infantry.