Here's how I see it.

Note: These two assumptions arbased on what follows.
- The Army needs to get bigger.
- The Marine Corp should stay the same size or (don't get angry) perhaps should be smaller and have a even higher level and standard of training. The Marine Corp's size, like special forces, has a dwindling relationship to the population. Yes, during major conflicts the Marine Corp was able to grow significantly while maintaining relatively high standards, but this was partially due to so many men enlisting to avoid being drafted into the Army (I've met a lot of people who enlisted in the Marines for this reason in Korea, WWII and even Vietnam.)

But in my eyes it's impossible. Can any of you imagine a major conflict breaking out, and the national command authorities specifying that the Marine Corps will wage the conflict because it's a counterinsurgency or because it's in Nicaragua and the Army as an institution accepting it? Absolutely not. There would be an immediate and self-righteous fury within the Army and probably a stampeding rush by senior brass to send as many assets as possible to the theater.

Likewise, a sudden conventional conflict against North Korea would not be limited to a few Army heavy divisions. The Marine Corps would storm ashore anywhere on the Korean peninsula in order to get into the fight.
As much as I get what you are saying this argument just doesn't hold up. Even if the services are divided by specialties almost every conflict, with the exception of the smallest of small wars, will require a broad are of specialties. Yes, the proportions of Army/Marines will be determined by this but no matter the conflict they will need each other. This is assuming the specialty breakdown is reasonable.

Before I go any further I have to adress the AF. The AF needs F22 (but don't dare call the F/A) to maintain air supremacy. Despite their low numbers they will be necessary to take on our enemies equivelant fighters. The only problem with them is how few there are. If for some reason we ever had to take on, for example, China we might run into the situation where they are so badly outnumbered that their technological superiority means nothing. Also, with the price to maintain these marevels I don't know if our fighter pilots will get enough time to practice dogfights (the f22 only carries 8 missiles.) On the other hand the AF desperately needs to decide what they are going to do about bombers. Although the B52's are probably good for another 40+ years, we need to figure this out. Although they may not have the image the AF is going for these days they are more economical the fighter-bombers. They also will be needed if we really get into a big one.

Marine Corp:
- Amphibious Operations
- Securing Littoral Regions
- Expeditionary Warfare (the Marines should be our high mobility/quick reactions force)
- COIN (Overlapping duty with sections of the Army. Too many of our small wars are too big.)
- Non-Combatant Evacutions (Again this area should be overlapped based on the size of the evacuation and location. Anything neer the ocean is a given.
- The Marines should be used as shock troops to break through, or leapforg over, enemy lines due to the expeditionary capabilites lending themselves to this capability.
- Humanitarian Operations and Peackeeping (again the expeditionary capabilities lend themselves to this)(there will be more overlap here.

Army:
- Everything else and the areas I outlined for overlap. For the Army the issue is more that they ned to understand their job is to have the staying power in smaller operations. Again, most small wars today are too large for just the Marine Corp.

Annother area that has to be dealt with for all services is special operations. The Marine Corp should have special operations units. What we should be trying to avoid is what appears to be happening today. SOCOM looks as though it is trying to (whether by its own opinion or our former secretary of defense) turn all of the services special operations units into the same thing. Again, they should be able to handle each others jobs, but they should stick to and be utilized according to their specialties when possible. This is almost the same situation as whats happening between the Army and Marine Corp.

There you have it. Its an outsiders point of view.

Now that I've said all of that please tell me whats wrong with it.

So I can fix it. LOL

Adam