Listen Up Marines, We Belong at Sea

[ganulv]

I never understood the SEALs.

I guess my understanding is that the Navy had the UDTs which morphed into the SEALs during the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (a couple of Vietnam veterans have made an association between the SEALs and the Mekong Delta to me, I don’t know if that’s historical memory or solid historiography). Perhaps nowadays it is more helpful to think of the SEALs as part of the Navy’s contribution to USSOCOM than as part of the Navy?

There's little infantry competence in the navy (counting USMC as not-navy), so where do they recruit personnel with already basic infantry skill from?

I imagine there are a few sailors who joined the Navy looking to be SEALs, didn’t make it through BUDS (no shame in that), and are now scraping paint somewhere in the Indian Ocean for the duration of their enlistment contracts.

[Steve Blair]

I guess my understanding is that the Navy had the UDTs which morphed into the SEALs during the U.S. involvement in Vietnam (a couple of Vietnam veterans have made an association between the SEALs and the Mekong Delta to me, I don’t know if that’s historical memory or solid historiography). Perhaps nowadays it is more helpful to think of the SEALs as part of the Navy’s contribution to USSOCOM than as part of the Navy?

The morphing began before Vietnam, actually, although the Navy kept UDTs around (and continues to do so). Kennedy's push for SF had something to do with that growth, so the link between SEALs and the Mekong Delta is pretty accurate as far as it goes when you consider the historical context of the association.

[gute]

Below is an essay I found at the Institute of Land Warfare written July 2012:

http://www.ausa.org/publications/ilw...W_12-3_web.pdf

So with this as a guide what does the U.S. military look like in the coming years?

[slapout9]

Below is an essay I found at the Institute of Land Warfare written July 2012:

http://www.ausa.org/publications/ilw...W_12-3_web.pdf

So with this as a guide what does the U.S. military look like in the coming years?

Good article and those questions need to be asked and answered before a proper force structure can be developed and I would suggest the article goes hand in hand with this one from Parameters (spring this year). The lead author is a Marine Captain. We are not good at Grand Strategy and I don't think we ever will be, however in the past we have learned to set priorities and it worked out very well.

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/P...tzer_Gorka.pdf

After we set priorities we will learn that Amphibious warfare is the only kind of Warfare there is for the USA....unless we want to wait and fight Mexico in California or Texas.....wait we are kinda doing that now

[Dayuhan]

We are not good at Grand Strategy

To have a Grand Strategy you need clear, consistent, long-term policy, and a 4-year election cycle is not terribly compatible with that. Is any democracy really "good at Grand Strategy"?

[jcustis]

Unless we have a persistent threat--and even then--I'd have to agree that the US certainly cannot do it in the polarized political environment that currently exists.