Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Marine detachments aboard ships. To what purpose?

via CDR Salamander.
A little something old, a little something new, a little something borrowed, a little something blue. What it has a lot of is goodness.
With a too small amphibious fleet and the positive aspects of a distributed ability to have forces in place to respond to short notice national security requirements - this move is to be welcomed and encouraged.
BZ to those who led the long march back to ... well ... in a fashion, something out Marines have always done, and done to great affect.
Uh excuse me.  But what the hell are Marine detachments aboard DDGs, Carriers and various other ships going to do for both the Marine Corps and the Navy?

Did everyone suddenly forget a very important point?

Rummy made the Marine Corps give up both the riverine mission and ship board detachments in order to maximize available force for the war on terror.

The Navy filled the gap by building up its Master at Arms (doing the traditional ship security and VBSS mission that Marines once did) while also standing up the NECC to handle the riverine mission.

So what are platoons of Marine going to do aboard these ships besides look pretty and get sea pay? 

12 comments :

  1. "While the tests have so far been limited, Capt. Eric Flanagan, a Marine spokesman at the Pentagon, said Corps leaders are open to deploying Marines on more Navy platforms if it could provide combatant commanders with additional options."

    Looks like General Dunford is making changes that vary from some statements he made during his confirmation hearing in July.
    "You expect your Marine Corps to serve as the naval expeditionary force in readiness, a force that is most ready when the Nation is least ready. You expect your Marine Corps they be forward deployed and forward engaged, responding to crises and enabling our Nation to respond to contingencies.
    "If confirmed as the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, I will ensure that marines continue to meet your expectations and the expectations of the American people.
    " I think as I look at the future of the Marine Corps our leadership, the biggest challenge we’re going to have is to balance readiness, the crisis response capability that you expect from the U.S. Marine Corps, with the ability to modernize the Marine Corps for tomorrow’s fights, to sustain infrastructure, to maintain proper levels of training and so forth for those units at home station."

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    Replies
    1. some people accuse me of airing Marine Corps dirty laundry but seems like certain people in high places with the ear of journalist that will write stories that forward there vision are doing that themselves.

      i've thought hard and i think we're seeing an attempt by Amos loyalist to enshrine some of his changes to make sure that history is kind to him. this shipboard detachment non-sense is just that. a bit of inertia that was started under Amos and hasn't been checked.

      it has no purpose. the US Navy is conducting what were once Marine Corps missions without problem. the ship board security role is another thing. they are INCREASING their Master at Arm rating to deal with increased threats. Marines won't do a thing. as far as being able to conduct missions ashore, you're looking at the USMC deploying units piecemeal. that goes against our warfighting doctrine.

      SOMEONE SOMEWHERE DIDN"T THINK THIS SHIT THRU!

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    2. General Dunford recently has been rated as # 7 of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders, here.

      No comment.

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    3. Well, are Marines the "Tip of the Spear" (air, sea, & land), or Shipboard/Amphibious fighting specialists?

      Seems like we, as a nation, need to decide that before proper doctrine can be formulated.

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    4. thats been answered and codified by law and proven by history. the USMC is America's 911 force. it will be ready when the nation is least ready. it will and does operate from the sea and its the world's premier combined arms fighting force (complete). what you're seeing now is a bastardization of the lessons learned during WW2 and perfected up till the 1st Gulf War. the change agents that have arrived and are in the seats of power want change for no other reason than to change. fuck it if it doesn't make sense, will endanger lives or doesn't fit current circumstances...they want what they want and if you don't agree then you're supposedly scared of change instead of analyzing what is and isn't real and expecting ADULTS to make ADULT decisions instead of acting like spoiled children.

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    5. But most ready to do what? Embassy reinforcement, hostage rescue, HADR, amphibious invasion to open the door for the army, amphibious raids, NEO, counter terrorism, fight a full scale ground offensive, conduct counter terrorism raids, destruction of A2AD defenses, partnership training exercises, all of the above?

      I read the paper and what I see is that a what the combatant commanders really want is the "floating K-mart," what the USMC wants to provide is a full on MAGTF. AFRICOM wanted to bomb Libya and have a tiny TRAP force available if it was needed, and it was. CENTCOM wanted more ground troops to conduct COIN, and more rotary wing support to lessen the losses of transporting logistics by the ground.

      Also a MEU is already stretching the definition of full spectrum capable because of how small it is. Too look at it form the "mass" perspective of warfighting there is not a lot there. The invasion of Iraq had 4 divisions, Fallujah had 6 battalions. Historically MEUs have never been called on to engage in combat operations outside larger joint force and there is good reason for this.

      The MEU/MAU was originally floating around during the cold war as part of a larger plan to fight the Soviet Union and the USMC has too main tasks. One was to conduct amphibious raids along the Soviet coastline and tie down large numbers of Soviet troops as garrison troops to protect ports, air fields, oil refineries, and so on. The second mission assigned to the USMC was to protect the western oil supply in the middle east. Thus we needed to be to rapidly a deploy a mechanized task force from the Med or Persian gulf to reinforce our Turkish/Arab/Persian allies and protect western oil that was going to fuel the war machine. A MAU/MEU was just the first step in the process of rapidly building up a MEF to conduct the middle east operation and MEUs would be combined into MEBs for the amphibious raids.

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    6. this is a place where friends speak, not papers at the War College. how many times have you had to decipher what i've written or do a mental spell check? so no. proof reading is not necessary here. but i agree.

      the MEU needs more infantry and especially artillery. i don't care if its tubes, cannons or rockets, but the days of depending strictly on Marine Air is winding to a close. the GCE commander needs support that won't get taken away or re-directed by the component air commander for other functions.

      the real deal is that CC's are going to have to start realizing that the resources they can call on are finite. have to be shared and must be carefully resourced...quite honestly its time for the SecDef to do his job and say no when a CC gets crazy with the requests.

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    7. But what, specifically, should the Marines' primary role be? Water-related operations? Special-Forces type of missions? Fast advances? Raids? Hard-hitting front-line battles?

      Being bad-ass fighters is good and all, but what kind of bad-ass fighters should the Marines be? Therein lies the answer to what kind of equipment and organization they need to focus on.

      My feeling is that the Corps should always be the first responders. The most ready-mobile (but not necessarily hard-hitting) fighting force the US has. When the shit hits the fan, they're in immediately. Until the Army can arrive in force with the bigger, heavier, slower-to-position forces. Then they withdraw, to get ready for the next response.

      That would mean not getting bogged down in fights that the Army is already there to prosecute. It would mean developing/buying simple, proven, low-logistics weapons systems that can keep up with a fast deployment and advance into enemy territory.

      The Abrams is the wrong tank for that. The old M60s were a much better fit.

      The F35 is the wrong airplane, as NAV-Air will be anywhere the Corps would go. They only really need low-flying CAS, for which the Harrier worked just fine.

      The Osprey is the right general idea, but it can’t operate alone in combat, and there’s no other system designed to escort it.

      Any artillery should be self-propelled to maximize mobility. But we’re not even developing systems like that anymore.

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  2. [quote]So what are platoons of Marine going to do aboard these ships besides look pretty and get sea pay? [/quote]

    Painting, standing in line, working out, painting, standing watch on crappy places, painting, standing watch with binos, and more painting.

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  3. Most useless job ever foisted on the Marine Corps.

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  4. There you go, back to basics..

    "The history of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) begins with the founding of the Continental Marines on 10 November 1775 to conduct ship-to-ship fighting, provide shipboard security and discipline enforcement, and assist in landing forces."

    even the romans put their legions onboard ships and used them to board enemy ship , counduct ship seizure and hand to hand combat with enemy sailors, thus thats how romans beat carthage..

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