USMC active 89-95, served under General Al Gray, there was a MARINE !
I remember green side and black side missions w/ FR and even back then, I knew Army SF was eventually going to be the better funded/mission tasked unit..
I STRONGLY believe in Marines supporting Marines..its how we keep each other safe..

quote:

Originally posted by Warhorse:
Old jarhead here, I trust the Commandant to do what is best for the Corps.

I also hope so, been out of suck to long to have an opinion. Except for the requirement for SNCO's to have a college degree, hell that's why we have commissioned officers.
1977-1985 SSgt

quote:

Originally posted by golddot:

My step son ships in September, can you PM/EM me please for some info , thx

golddot, I don’t see an e-mail in your profile. I have one listed - shoot me a message with your questions and I’ll happily reply.

quote:

Originally posted by CPD SIG:
Army is geared more for Tank vs Tank battles- Think Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The Army was prepared for a few hundred thousand Russian tanks to be rolling westward.

Not trying to be stickler, but this got me thinking. How many did we expect? A quick google search found the declassified (in 2009) CIA report on Soviet military strength in 1985. I just picked that year at random. According to the report, they had a total of 52,000 MBT's with 28,000 of them opposite NATO Europe. Plus 27,000 meters of bridging equipment pre-positioned.

Still a lot of f*cking armor. CIA

quote:

Originally posted by 83v45magna:

quote:

Originally posted by CPD SIG:
Army is geared more for Tank vs Tank battles- Think Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The Army was prepared for a few hundred thousand Russian tanks to be rolling westward.

Not trying to be stickler, but this got me thinking. How many did we expect? A quick google search found the declassified (in 2009) CIA report on Soviet military strength in 1985. I just picked that year at random. According to the report, they had a total of 52,000 MBT's with 28,000 of them opposite NATO Europe. Plus 27,000 meters of bridging equipment pre-positioned.

Still a lot of f*cking armor. CIA

I think I’ve read/heard they were expecting five on one or something like that.

Of course, given everything we know now about the former Soviet Union, how much of their military was actually combat ready at any given time?

Interesting discussion as to why certain amphibious ships are necessary given the proliferation of anti-air weapons and anti-ship weapons available. Discussions like this are likely playing into the larger discussion of how to employ Marines in a peer/near-pear conflict.

Eliminate Aviation Amphibious Ships

LHA/LHD are the second most expensive surface ships in the Navy, lots of assets tied-up on one platform. Unlike an aircraft carrier which can speed around the ocean conducting air ops, its main job; the gator navy is at its most vulnerable, when doing its main job, landing Marines. Is this another check in the box for smaller carriers? In this case, with an entire USMC air wing embarked?

Good article against:

"DON’T GO TOO CRAZY, MARINE CORPS"

The Marine Corps is embarking on a 10-year restructuring to align itself with the National Defense Strategy, but in doing so, it risks ignoring the last 70 years of its history. The commandant, Gen. David Berger, is sensibly seeking to move the Marine Corps away from its two-decade-long focus on counter-insurgency and toward the great power competition that the country’s leaders foresee as posing the greatest threats in the future. However, the commandant and other Marine Corps leaders are hinting that as part of this transition, they would eliminate capabilities for sustained ground combat that allowed the Corps to fight in Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Shifting strategic emphasis is possible without hobbling the Marine Corps in the conflicts that it is most likely to fight.

The Plan

Berger’s guidance has been widely discussed, so there is little need to repeat it here. The guidance lays out many bold goals and concepts, though the only specific change explained is that the Marine Corps will no longer use a requirement of two Marine expeditionary brigades and 38 large amphibious ships for force structure decisions. In a recent War on the Rocks article, Berger is more specific. He writes that the Marine Corps is “over-invested” in such capabilities and capacities as the maritime pre-positioning force, manned anti-armor ground and aviation platforms, manned ground transportation, traditional towed artillery not adaptable to high-velocity projectiles, manned ground reconnaissance, and short-range mortar systems.

Although the National Defense Strategy talks about great power “competition,” the department’s focus is on preparing for conflict. The Defense Department’s FY 2020 budget overview makes this point by stating that it “executes the [National Defense Strategy] by reprioritizing resources and shifting investments to prepare for a potential future, high-end fight.” Berger is particularly focused on China. He asks, for example, if the Marine expeditionary force that commands Marine Corps units in the Western Pacific will “be able to create a mutually contested space in the South or East China Seas if directed to do so.”

There is uncertainty about exactly what Berger’s guidance means for programs and forces. Berger’s guidance and his subsequent statements imply that the Marine Corps will divest itself of tank units and perhaps other armored vehicles like amphibious tractors, light armored vehicles, and armored trucks (such as Joint Light Tactical Vehicles and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles), reduce long-distance ground logistics, and cut artillery on the theory that long range, precision and new capabilities can substitute for mass.

The Wartime Risks

These changes would indeed prepare the Marine Corps for the great power conflicts, particularly in the Western Pacific, that strategists focus on. The problem is that great power wars are not what the United States has fought since the end of World War II. During the Cold War, the fear of massive casualties in an East-West conflict and the possibility of escalation to nuclear weapons meant that great powers, then the United States and the Soviet Union, were extremely careful to avoid direct confrontation. Instead, both became involved in regional conflicts. Thus, the United States fought in Korea (1950–1953), Vietnam (1965–1975), and Desert Storm (1990–1991).

John Vrolyk recently made a similar argument that “insurgency, not war, is China’s most likely course of action.” He argued that the Marine Corps should not divest itself from capabilities geared toward low-intensity conflict. This article broadens that argument to look beyond insurgencies and include wars against regional and local powers and their armies. Dan Gouré of the Lexington Institute made a similar argument in apocalyptic terms. He argued that because “what has primarily occupied the Marine Corps over the last seventy-plus years are crisis response and low-to-medium conflicts against smaller regional powers,” it needs a full-spectrum amphibious capability.

These critiques arise from the same concern. If the National Defense Strategy is successful in that it leads to the deterrence of China and Russia, then this history is likely to continue: avoiding great power conflicts and fighting regional and counter-insurgency conflicts. Yet, a Marine Corps that is custom-designed for distributed operations on islands in the Western Pacific will be poorly designed and poorly trained for the land campaigns it is most likely to fight.

Such a Marine Corps will lack the firepower to take on armies armed with armored vehicles and artillery. The Iraqi army, for example, had hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles, so the Marine Corps had to create its own mechanized task forces to counter them and win in Desert Storm. Although there has been a longstanding argument that tanks are obsolete on modern battlefields, armies are not moving in that direction. The U.S. Army, having done extensive wargaming, added two armored brigades. The Russians have also modernized their armor. Even in counter-insurgency fights like Hue City and Fallujah, armor support gave friendly infantry a major advantage. Leaving infantry to face tanks alone — even infantry with enhanced equipment and training from the Close Combat Lethality Task Force — would be highly risky and not the “best chance for victory“ envisioned by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

A force optimized for operations on small islands will also lack the mobility to operate over the wide battlefields seen in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. On Guadalcanal in World War II — a classic island forward operating base in an anti-access/area denial environment and perhaps a model for future operations — the operations area was a semi-circle 15 miles across. In Iraq, by contrast, the Marine Corps’ area of operations stretched 200 miles along the Euphrates River valley. During Operation Desert Storm, the Marine Corps repositioned itself 100 miles into the desert before attacking 40 miles through Iraqi defenses to the outskirts of Kuwait City. Finally, a Marine Corps optimized for island campaigns could lack the logistics to sustain itself in a long fight. The war in Korea lasted three years, Vietnam seven, and Iraq eight. All required extensive fortifications and bases and long lines of supply.

The risk is twofold. First, since the national command authorities will use the tools that they have available, they will employ the Marine Corps in whatever conflict that arises regardless of the Marine Corps’ capabilities or design. Overspecialization will waste lives until the Corps can adapt and risks mission failure if adaptation is too slow. It is the phenomenon that bedeviled the Army in Vietnam, where Andrew Krepinevich argued the Army was “a superb instrument for combating the field armies of its adversaries in conventional wars but an inefficient and ineffective force for defeating insurgent guerrilla forces.” The fact that the U.S. Army of 1965 was designed to fight Soviet tank armies in Europe did not stop President Johnson from sending it to Vietnam to fight insurgents and a regional power (North Vietnam).

Second, the Marine Corps does not want to be in a position where it cannot go to war without Army support for tanks, heavy firepower, logistics, and mobility. That undermines the Marine Corps’ expeditionary nature, which has traditionally been its most useful feature. Indeed, the Marine Corps has long claimed that “one call gets it all,” that the ground-air-logistics-command elements of the Marine Corps can be combined to meet any threat that arises. Though this may be a slight exaggeration — the Army provides niche capabilities like psychological operations units and theater-wide logistics to all U.S. forces, not just the Marine Corps — the point is valid: The Marine Corps has been able to deploy and fight a wide variety of adversaries using its organic capabilities.

The problem with relying on the Army for support beyond these niche and theater-wide capabilities is not a lack of faith on the Army’s part but a lack of capability. The regular Army is at the smallest size (480,000) since the post-Cold War drawdown of the 1990s. It will need all of its scarce rapidly deployable capabilities just to support itself.

These capabilities are scarce because the Army has 52 percent of its total force in its reserve components. This reserve component includes a disproportionate amount of the Army’s support and logistics capability as a result of a deal in the 1970s whereby Gen. Creighton Abrams, then Army chief of staff, built three additional active-duty divisions by putting most support into the reserve components. As a result, the Army cannot deploy more than about a division without calling up large numbers of reservists.

Marines may remember the Army’s Tiger brigade supporting I Marine Expeditionary Force in Desert Storm. That was a helpful reinforcement but resulted from a unique circumstance. As the regular Army shrank from its Cold War level of 770,000 to its post-Cold War level of 484,000, the Tiger brigade’s parent division (the Second Armored Division) was in the process of being deactivated, so the brigade was an “orphan” that could be sent to support I MEF. The brigade deactivated after the war.

Today the regular Army remains at that low personnel level and there are no independent combat brigades. All such brigades are an integral parts of Army divisions. Indeed, although the Army programs forces for theater-wide logistics — port operations units, fuel distribution, long-haul trucking — that it provides to all services, it does not program forces for other kinds of support that the Marine Corps might need. Any such support would have to be taken from Army units that rely on it.

Relying on jointness to force the Army to provide units is a thin reed upon which to rest war plans. Absent specific direction by the secretary, one service does not need to build capabilities desired by other services. Of course, a secretary of defense or combatant commander could override Army force planning and direct that Army units support the Marine Corps rather than the Army, but that is a lot for the Marine Corps to ask, especially seems unlikely in the early stages of a war.

Any Army support for the Marine Corps, if provided at all, will likely come from the later deploying elements of the Army’s reserve components after the Army’s own needs have been met. These units will require 90 days or more to activate, muster, train, and deploy; their equipment is often incompatible with that of the Marine Corps; and unit quality is uneven. The resulting delay and coordination challenges are the antithesis of a rapidly deployable Marine Corps.

Consider Hedges

There is support in the National Defense Strategy for hedging. Although the strategy does, indeed, emphasize great power competition, it also acknowledges other threats: “The Department will sustain its efforts to deter and counter rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran, defeat terrorist threats to the United States, and consolidate our gains in Iraq and Afghanistan while moving to a more resource-sustainable approach.”

Further, the commandant’s guidance emphasizes that “The Marine Corps will be the ‘force of choice’ for the President, Secretary, and Combatant Commander – ‘a certain force for an uncertain world’ as noted by Commandant [Victor] Krulak. No matter what the crisis, our civilian leaders should always have one shared thought – Send in the Marines.” Maintaining a broad set of capabilities is consistent with this vision. (Interestingly, Berger’s article has more of a great-power conflict flavor and less of a force-in-readiness flavor than his original guidance. It is unclear whether this intentional.)

Many of the changes the commandant is talking about are sensible regardless of the conflict: Facilitating sea denial by adapting rocket artillery leverages existing systems and builds on a historical Marine Corps capability for defense of forward naval bases. Increasing precision strike helps in all tactical engagements. Moving the Marine Corps toward unmanned and less expensive aviation systems takes advantage of a technology in which the Marine Corps has fallen far behind the other services. Whereas the Air Force has 284 armed drones, the Marine Corps has three. Adding smaller but more numerous amphibious ships reduces vulnerability in wartime and allows forward-deployed amphibious forces to meet more combatant commander commitments in peacetime. “Seek[ing] the affordable and plentiful at the expense of the exquisite and few” accommodates a defense budget that may have peaked. “Demanding superior performance and enforcing high standards” reinforces the Corps’ reputation for individual excellence.

What changes then should the Marine Corps avoid?

The first is overspecialized training. The Marine Corps should keep training to fight “in every clime and place,” even if the balance moves toward distributed operations on Pacific islands. To do this, the Marine Corps should retain both its cold-weather training center at Bridgeport, California and its desert training center at Twentynine Palms. If necessary, both could operate in a part-time status with contractor caretakers when inactive. It would be tempting to close the facilities, arguing that they do not fit a Pacific island campaign, but the Marine Corps should not forget history. From 1950 to 1953, just five years after the World War II battles on tropical islands, the Corps had to fight three winter campaigns in the barren mountains of Korea for which cold-weather training was essential. Similarly, the extensive maneuver and firing areas of Twentynine Palms were essential in preparing Marine Corps units for the 1991 and 2003 operations in Iraq.

The Marine Corps should also avoid completely eliminating capabilities. Although the new guidance implies such eliminations, this creates gaps that might need filling in future conflicts. Instead, the Marine Corps should maintain an extensive toolkit as a hedge against an uncertain future. The reserves can provide a useful mechanism for doing this. Traditionally, the Marine Corps reserves have been structured nearly identically to the active-duty force with a division, air wing, logistics group, and command headquarters. However, it is the only service that does this. The other services use the reserves to provide capabilities that are few or nonexistent in the active-duty force.

Thus, the Marine Corps could put capabilities into the reserves that don’t fit well with a western Pacific great-power strategy, but that would be needed for other kinds of campaigns. Using tanks as an example, the Marine Corps could reduce the number on active duty to one company per division but keep an enhanced battalion of six companies in the reserves. Personnel managers will whine that they cannot sustain the skill base with such a small active-duty community, but the other services have figured out how to do this, and the Marine Corps can also.

Similarly, long-haul trucking on active duty could be reduced but enhanced in the reserves. Trucks are easy to maintain in the reserve component because of the overlap with civilian skills, and they are inexpensive to operate.

Other capabilities — light armored vehicles, heavy engineering, artillery, and whatever the Corps wants to thin out on active duty — could also move to the reserves.

A Plea to the Planners

Marine planners are now devising a new force structure through a process of analysis and wargaming. The initial results of their work will appear in the FY 2021 budget, but most will be rolled out in the spring of 2020 for incorporation in the FY 2022 budget. These planners should not get so caught up in the new strategy that they miss the lessons of history: The Marine Corps fights more regional wars than great power wars. Yet, if structured wisely, the Marine Corps can have it both ways: It can realign toward the new strategy while still hedging against other threats that have historically been more likely.

https://warontherocks.com/2020...-crazy-marine-corps/

It's a great plan. What happens if it doesn't work? Or more likely, the island hopping campaign in the Pacific during WWII was an aberration; that the next war will be like the wars in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, ground wars. Will the USMC just sit it out while the Army and Air Force fight China on the mainland? I don't think so. It will be pulled into the fighting as light infantry and burn itself out fighting Mechanized Infantry.

Well the official word came out today: all USMC tank battalions (1st, 2nd, 4th) are in C-5 status. Deactivated as of 1 May 2020. Prepare for divestment.

End of an era.

This sounds like a return of the Landing Ship, Medium.

quote:

Navy Wants To Buy 30 New Light Amphibious Warships To Support Radical Shift In Marine Ops

Fleets of small, low-cost amphibious warships are absolutely critical to how the Marine Corps' plans to fight in the coming years.

BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK

MAY 5, 2020

The U.S. Navy wants to buy as many as 30 of a new class of Light Amphibious Warships that would be significantly smaller and cheaper to operate than its existing fleets of large amphibious ships. The service is already exploring possible designs, including a roll-on-roll-off type with a stern ramp. These vessels will be a critical component of how it supports the U.S. Marine Corps' new and still evolving plans for how it will conduct future expeditionary and distributed operations.

Navy officials from PMS 317 said that the "objective number" of Light Amphibious Warships (LAW) it hopes to buy is between 28 and 30 at a briefing for defense industry representatives on Apr. 9, 2020. Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) posted the briefing slides, as well as responses to questions, on the U.S. government's contracting website beta.SAM.gov on May 5.

PMS 317 is the program office within NAVSEA's overarching Program Executive Office for Ships that is presently responsible for the San Antonio class landing platform dock program, as well as a program to acquire a replacement for the Whidbey Island and Harpers Ferry classes of landing ship docks.

"Evolving threats in the global maritime environment causing the Naval Forces to re-evaluate/adjust their CONOPs [concepts of operation] to meet the new challenges associated with maintaining persistent Naval forward presence to enable sea control and denial operations," is how PMS 317 described the underlying need for the new class of amphibious ships at the April briefing. The LAW is "intended to provide Naval Forces the maneuver and sustainment vessels to confront the changing character of warfare."

The Navy is still in an information-gathering phase, but does already have some key requirements for any potential LAW design, which it expects to be about 200 feet long overall and have 8,000 square feet of cargo space in total. Each LAW will have a crew of no more than 40 sailors and be able to accommodate at least 75 Marines.

The ship has to be capable of "beaching on sand, gravel, shale, small stone, and man-made marine ramps" just like a traditional landing craft or larger landing ship. It has to be able to deploy all Marine Corps vehicles and other "rolling stock," such as towed howitzers and equipment trailers, onto a beach with at least a two-and-a-half percent gradient, if not more, or into a situation where the vehicles would have to ford at depths of 42 inches or less.

The LAWs also need to be capable of open-ocean operation in conditions up to Sea State 5, defined as "rough seas" with waves between eight and 13 feet high. The Navy wants the ships to be able to cruise at 14 knots and have a maximum range of 3,500 nautical miles. The vessels will need sufficient accommodations and amenities to support weeks-long, trans-oceanic voyages.

The Navy says that it is willing to consider either adapting an existing commercial design, using a commercial hullform as a starting place, or a so-called "Build to Print" ship based on proven design elements and components. The goal in all of these courses of action is to focus on relatively low-risk, low-cost, mature designs, or at least design features, in order to both keep the ships cheap and make them faster and easier to build. The Navy has said it is interested in awarding at least one preliminary design contract by the end of this year with the hope that it could begin buying actual ships as early as late 2022.

[...]

https://www.thedrive.com/the-w...-shift-in-marine-ops

The US Navy had some form of this ship for 50 years (LST’s) and got rid of them because they were not suitable for the supposedly future literal operations and anti ship defenses. They were also old as hell and wore out. 20 years later we need a ship for the same mission. This is why I have no faith in this remake of the Marine Corps......

quote:

Originally posted by Valpo Fz:
The US Navy had some form of this ship for 50 years (LST’s) and got rid of them because they were not suitable for the supposedly future literal operations and anti ship defenses. They were also old as hell and wore out. 20 years later we need a ship for the same mission. This is why I have no faith in this remake of the Marine Corps......

By the 80's with the introduction of the LCAC hovercraft, their ferry speed and lift capacity made movement of heavy equipment/vehicles so fast, that the LST's became liabilities on the beachhead. Which brings up the problem of why an entire MEU is concentrated onto just 3-ships; take out the LHA/LHD and you've removed nearly all your air support, heavy lift and most of your vehicles, not to mention over 1000 Marines and 800 sailors.

Due to the nature of where the Marines' future fight will likely be, South China Sea islands/atolls, quickly landing and massing enough combat power in the initial assault will be paramount given all the area denial weapons that China has. Getting tanks and armor will be incredibly difficult thus, I can see where the Commandant's direction heading is pointed.

My bet is there just isn't enough money to go around after the Navy (and Army and Air Force) buys all the new shit it wants.

Ten Ford class carriers, a new SSBN class, continuing the Virginia class builds, a new Frigate class, another half dozen America class 'phibs, more LCS ships, the f35, no way the Navy doesn't jump on the new Fighter x/f15 replacement program coming up to eventually replace the Hornet fleet. All this is going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion bucks over the next 10 years or so.

The Army wants a Bradley replacement, a new Tank and of course all new rifles. Oh yeah, new dress uniforms, and maybe powered armor sometime in the next decade. The Air Force will spend nearly a Trillion on the f35 alone, plus additional hundreds of billions on the afore mentioned Fighter X/f15 replacement, and whatever drone and B52, B1, and B2 bomber replacement programs they have coming up.

Then there's SPAAAAAAACE FORRRCCCCCCE. They're gonna want warp drives and photon torpedoes and shit. Anybody want to guess how much money will get pissed away on that pipe dream?

Marines don't need tanks. Or jet fighters. Or an AAV replacement. Or an LAV replacement. Or artillery. They're light infantry.

They can keep their MARPAT though.

For now.

During planning for Desert Storm, the Commandant of the Marine Corps wanted to stage an amphibious landing in Kuwait City. In the modern era with guided missiles and other defensive measures, planners estimated they would have had to level the city for about a half mile from the beach. Even then, one of the Joint Chiefs said the Commandant 'just wanted ti build a monumnet to all the Marines he was going to kill.' Thank God, it was cancelled because it was not practical.

If an amphib landing against Kuwait was too dangerous, what about Iran? Or Russia? When was the last real contested amphib landing - Inchon?

I respect the Marines, but the concept of a modern massive amphib landing against a peer or near-peer is suicide.

quote:

Originally posted by von Trakehnen:
It's a great plan. What happens if it doesn't work? Or more likely, the island hopping campaign in the Pacific during WWII was an aberration; that the next war will be like the wars in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, ground wars. Will the USMC just sit it out while the Army and Air Force fight China on the mainland? I don't think so. It will be pulled into the fighting as light infantry and burn itself out fighting Mechanized Infantry.

This is what scares me. Commanders in general, and the US in particular, are notorious for wanting, equipping and training light, fast, forces, and then asking them to do heavy fighting. That's great if you are only going to use them for recon, raiding, flank security, low intensity conflict, and asymmetric warfare. Commanders have to remember, however, that after the recon, after the raid, it takes a lot of ass to actually take the hill from the bad guys. And that still means heavy forces. Tanks, artillery, mechanized infantry, forward air support, and all the lift, fuel, supplies and maintenance that goes along with it.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

Originally posted by Valpo Fz:
The US Navy had some form of this ship for 50 years (LST’s) and got rid of them because they were not suitable for the supposedly future literal operations and anti ship defenses. They were also old as hell and wore out. 20 years later we need a ship for the same mission. This is why I have no faith in this remake of the Marine Corps......

By the 80's with the introduction of the LCAC hovercraft, their ferry speed and lift capacity made movement of heavy equipment/vehicles so fast, that the LST's became liabilities on the beachhead. Which brings up the problem of why an entire MEU is concentrated onto just 3-ships; take out the LHA/LHD and you've removed nearly all your air support, heavy lift and most of your vehicles, not to mention over 1000 Marines and 800 sailors.

Due to the nature of where the Marines' future fight will likely be, South China Sea islands/atolls, quickly landing and massing enough combat power in the initial assault will be paramount given all the area denial weapons that China has. Getting tanks and armor will be incredibly difficult thus, I can see where the Commandant's direction heading is pointed.

That’s not the way it played out in reality. LCACs struggles to lift anything in rough sea states. In fact M1s made it onto the beach far less often than the lighter M60s did. LCACs also seemed prone to maintenance issues. I never saw a LST beach as part of any planned major operation (Team Spirit, Cobra Gold). I have about 2 years of sea time on LST’s. I am not convinced this is the path the Marine Corps should follow.

quote:

Originally posted by Valpo Fz:

That’s not the way it played out in reality. LCACs struggles to lift anything in rough sea states. In fact M1s made it onto the beach far less often than the lighter M60s did. LCACs also seemed prone to maintenance issues. I never saw a LST beach as part of any planned major operation (Team Spirit, Cobra Gold). I have about 2 years of sea time on LST’s. I am not convinced this is the path the Marine Corps should follow.

No argument as the LCACs, while interesting, have their limitations. I recall their ability to perform during the latest Northern Edge Ex (Iceland/Norway, above Arctic Circle) was less than stellar, causing Marine leadership to rethink how they plan on conduct future landings with a peer enemy. There hasn't been the same type of revolution in technology in amphibious warfare that has occurred with airpower. Ship to shore connectors are a little faster with LCACs and the MV-22's; their speed and range increases the terrain Marines can assault. But at the same time the ability to threaten amphibious shipping has negated whatever incremental advances in transportation, pushing the ARG further out from the littorals. There isn't any technology which can quickly get mass and firepower over the beach. The current AAV is simply a safer version of the old Vietnam era LVT. The Marines are hard pressed technologically to fight a near peer fight.

quote:

Originally posted by Hound Dog:
When was the last real contested amphib landing - Inchon?

Al Faw/Um Qasr, March 2003.

But the bulk of the "real" amphibious assault work was done by SEALs and British Royal Marine Commandos. (The main USMC component actually traveled overland from Saudi Arabia to capture their objective.)

A few pics from the last days of 2nd Tanks as they rolled out for the last time.

”Masters of the Iron Horse”

2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division. Established in December 1941. Survivor of countless engagements with the enemy throughout multiple wars in defense of The Nation. Killed by a Commandant who can't see straight from Jerkwater, USA.















Now personally, I'm a 1st Tanks guy. It's where I started and it's where my heart lies. The official deactivation of 1st Tanks is on 13 May 2021. I will be there. Throughout my time all of us from 1st Tanks (and the 1st MarDiv) knew THE song. It has been played at many a 1st Marine Division retirement ( )

Taken when the last tiger left the ramp at 1st. 29 Palms , California.



When I go out next year to see the deactivation of the 1st Tank Battalion I'm sure it will be sung.

Out of curiosity, has anyone seen what the naval force increases will look like?

Basically I’m asking will the loss of marine rotor wing squadrons be matched by an increase in similar wings in the navy? I have a hard time with the marines standing down their ospreys....it was for them that the damn things were developed

I’m an old army armor guy so it pains me to see the marines lose tanks. There is something that a tank brings in direct fire support that just cannot be matched by anything man portable that a light infantry company will carry.

I got to go to sea for a day on the Wasp when it was first entering the fleet. Watching LCACs go in and out of the back of that thing was a sight to behold. At the time the marines were in the process of switching from the M1 to the M1A1 and there was concern about the much heavier M1A1 on LCACs

My grandfather was a Marine from 1938-1975. He was on the original Wasp (CV-7) when it sunk off Guadalcanal. His grandson, my cousin, is currently an O5 in the engineers, so will get to be part of the brave new Corps.