Is the Battalion Landing Team dead?

via UPI.

The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Pendleton will be training along the central California coast April 15-21 in preparation for deployment to the Western Pacific and Middle East later this year.
The 15th MEU will send its Maritime Raid Force and some of its aviation units to a Navy base in Ventura County where they will practice assaults on offshore platforms near Carpenteria. The exercises will also include "urban flying and navigation" by helicopter crews that could produce some noticeable aircraft noise.
The Marines said in a written statement they were taking steps to minimize any inconvenience to the folks in Ventura County but noted the exercises were critical to their upcoming deployment.
"This realistic training allows the MEU to operate as a complete Marine Air Ground Task Force in an urban environment," said Col. Scott Campbell, the unit's commanding officer. "The importance of an exercise such as this cannot be understated; our future success depends greatly upon the amount of practice repetitions we have during training exercises like this one."

This is a disturbing question for me, but one which must be asked.

SOCOM is taking on more and more missions...even missions that were traditionally done by conventional forces.

But now.

The premier unit in the Marines.  The most visible and forward deployed.  The MEU is sweeping aside its BLT and focusing on its Raid Force.

This doesn't sit well with me but its obvious...just read the article.

My real question then becomes....

Why send a BLT out on these pumps if they're just tasked to play backup for the raid force.  We can chop the BLT down to company size and let them play nurse maid to the raid force.  If all they need are perimeter guards then recruits from Boot Camp can fill that role.

The Marine Corps has been bitten with the Special Ops bug and its destroying its own infantry in order to support SOCOM.

This is a sad day.

A MEU should consist of the Raid Force, a company of Infantry and Aviation.  The rest of the MEU can go home.  Chesty must be punching walls.