Listen Up Marines, We Belong at Sea

[Bob's World]

I have never seen anything a Ranger Battalion does that the 82nd didn't used to do before we had Ranger Battalions and still could do. It is the Ranger training that is important and should be spread through all Infantry units like it used to be.

Are you saying the Ranagers could have handled the Mayaguez incident any better?

The Marines would probably say......can you say "Black Hawk down!"

No tab, badge or brand makes a man or unit the end all, be all for every situation. That is why we have a mix of types of units, each with its own unique advantages and disadvantages for a savvy commander to mix and match as necessary for best effect.

The problem of the conflicts of recent years is that they came to call for a lot of a couple different types of activity, and units all started abandoning their respective bases of specialization and expertise to fall in on some degree of competence on those common themes.

Pick your metaphor. From a sophisticated tool box into a bag of hammers; or from a symphony orchestra into a brass band. May meet the current requirement (as defined), but is not a good long-term solution.

Time for everyone to get back to their core competencies. Then, it is time to balance the relative size of each of those capacities to challenges of the modern era. We have been a military in conflict, but we are a nation at peace. Time to re-size and re-focus for the real challenges that are out there, not for the noises we hear in the dark.

For conventional ground forces this probably means we need a lot less, with most warfighting capacity relegated to the National Guard, and a smaller, more expeditionary capacity retained in the active component. Marines should pick up the lion-share of expeditionary missions as they invoke far less strategic risk for the nation when they are employed. SOF also provides an effective peacetime engagement tool, from building relationships and cultural understanding in critical locations, to taking out point targets on rare occasion. The Navy is the Navy. We are a maritime nation. Nuff said. The air force? Born of the Cold War we don't really have a model for what to do with these guys in the real world. We need to figure that out. They play a critical part of our deterrence mission, as well as our ability to move forces quickly and secure the airspace of critical locations for critical periods of time (not all air space all the time as the A2AD crowd seem to imply).

But DoD needs to take this serious. It is not our job to be as big as possible and do our job, it is our job to be as small as possible and do our job.