Optimizing the Marine Corps for small wars

[Norfolk]

Hi Geoff, welcome to SWC. So what are you doing living in Detroit? The beer must be pretty good there, unless you're living out in Bloomfield or Grosse Pointe, and the beer may just be a secondary consideration. Good to see another Commonwealth soldier here, and a man from Transport - someone who knows about the pitfalls of a thankless but vital job. If you haven't already done so, Introduce yourself formally to the SWC on this thread, and tell us about yourself.

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Other than providing the time and resources to bring all USMC infantry battalions up to standards approaching those of the Battalions selected and trained as SOC MEU's, I would imagine that the Corps probably doesn't need to do terribly much to match itself to the demands of Small Wars. I mean, they wrote the book on it, literally, and while other Armies certainly have encountered lessons that the Marines have or can take heed of, the Marines are fairly solid compared to a lot of Armies, and have their own fair share of lessons to teach to others. Other than improving individual and sub-unit training a little bit (and to a lesser extent Unit-level training as well), the Marines don't really need to do too much probably.

Disbanding the USMC is not just politically impractical, it's militarily unsound. Not only is the USMC a potent fighting force, fit and able to fight just about anywhere (well, maybe not so much in Arctic areas if they have to rent heavy equipment from the locals) in just about any kind of war or conflict, but chopping them to the Army would effectively deprive the Navy of its ability to establish and secure overseas naval bases and provide boarding parties for naval vessels - something the Army isn't in much of a position to do properly, even if it absorbed the Marines. And the Marine Air Wings would probably be absorbed by the Air Force!(say good-bye to Marine CAS then - everyone loves Marine Air)...

Sure, Amphibious Operations at the Operational-Level can and should (if necessary) be performed by the Army, like in North Africa and Europe in WWII. But the Marines are ideally placed to handle this, given their Maritime role, and they largely wrote the book on it anyway. Why fix somethin' that ain't broke - and it relieves much of the pressure on the Army to come up with a few more Divisions for major Amphibious Ops when they're already down to just 10 active Divs themselves.

Besides, those Dress Blues (the old No. 2 Dress Uniform in the Commonwealth) sure do look good.