Listen Up Marines, We Belong at Sea

[Morgan]

I don't think there is a large demand signal for "building partner capacity" or "counterterrorism" either one.

Perhaps we can substitute "building partner capacity" (BPC) for a large standing Army......reduce the Army to 400,000 (the worst-case scenario according to the CNAS report, as I recall) and the USMC to 100,000 (maybe less) and we will still have an active land combat force of 500,000 (do we want to go smaller?).

The active duty force would become a bit more specialized (I know many strongly disagree with this), particularly within the Army and even Marines, while the generalists would be maintained in our reserve forces. Through BPC, the Army (and USG in general) would develop allied forces who bear the brunt in any flare-up of any land-based hybrid threats we expect as part of the norm during this century and the Marines & SOF handle CT, A2AD, UW, DA, anything that might fall under the moniker "small war" (as in wars/ conflicts of very limited duration with narrow, well-defined objectives).