A U.S. Marine won the Medal of Honor recently. Well deserved, and then some. Where did he win it? In a location far from any ocean. With the defense budget in dire trouble, we do not need, nor can we pay for, a second land army.
The USMC is useful; but how much?
Amos wrote a letter the other day marketing the USMC to the big DOD boss. The operative word is "marketing". Not mentioned in the letter is that the USMC is doing work that the U.S. Army can and should do.
Amos goes on in the letter to paint faulty, poor and expensive weapons systems as needed and of high value. Examples; being the F-35 and EFV.
Death traps.
The U.S. will struggle to keep amphibious task forces going. They have already. We can't pay for the kinds of large boat exercises common in the past. Additionally the wide spectrum of threats available to take on a USMC boat exercise means that we will see another Tarawa (without the win) against a real threat and for what?
The USMC is described as useful door kicker. Maybe so for wars that don't involve a large traditional threat. The other part, known as the U.S. Navy won't be able to protect them in a big threat war.
Maybe Congress can see through the USMC spin. If not, we will be spending billions to support a weak theory based on WWII history instead of a valid need.
5 comments:
Totally agree, why do you need two armies and three airforces? Clinton asked the same question years ago.
I disagree. If you are going to get rid of one of our armies then get rid of the US Army. The US Army is bloated and you get more fighting force per dollar with the US Marines then you do with the US Army. The US Army has given up any pretense of defending the USA and so why should the US have two expeditionary forces, keep the US Marines and dump the US Army
Why then is a thinly-veiled unified small ADF maintaining 3 separate air forces? The RAAF operated quite successfully from RAN warships between 1925 and 1944 and similarly provided very effective helo support for the Army between 1963 and 1989.
The Australian DoD fallaciously argues that a unified 'purple' approach achieves improved jointery, yet the contradictory budgetary waste in operating 3 separate air arms is just huge.
B71, yr thts may b relevant, may b not, we're talking US forces, not Oz, comparisons are meaningless however tempting.
DJF, one or the other but its hard to call a land army marines, one surely has to go, can't c the army going away.
While there are some very professional bits to the US Army, it is somewhat a huge unemployment soak which has been very evident from the Vietnam War onwards. 'Tis politically unrealistic that the force could ever be disbanded as suggested by DJF.
The hugely expensive human cost of amphibious assault during WW2 should make defence planners question its merit considering weaponry advances and many choose to overlook the lessons from the Falklands War.
Some nations are orienting more toward smaller scale amphibious logistic support vessels with just a few helos and landing craft, which calls into question concepts for employment of large LPH and LPD. Perhaps that is how the USMC should also be reshaped!
Anonymous; military organisational inefficiencies ought not be viewed in isolation for a particular nation, especially by Australian contributors when there are glaring examples in the ADF structure considering it is only a small regular force of around 53,000.
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