I got as far as '80% of the world's population lives within 100nm of the shore' and 'we need at least 50 grey hull amphibious ships to handle the mission' and simply couldn't stop laughing.
These are the people who want to stay out of going ashore missions but want to subsume naval Sea Control, Access Assurance and Power Projection, solely so that they can have a red carpet into the Littorals.
Here's a thought: If you don't want to be trapped ashore, don't go inshore. If the USN cannot insure your safe arrival with ICD threats more dangerous than a carrier can handle, why do you want to be there, stealing their hulls for the suicide mission?
And if the Marines are being tailored for the 90% of the planet which is not SCO or within their SOI, then why do they need so much combat power to fight the Wars Of Misery that the ROW MOOTW represents?
It sounds to me like the Marines are having a SERIOUS culture problem with their size and mission statement as our Ready Force for LOW INTENSITY warfare and are trying to self-rationalize their Big Dreams Shallow Reasons 'vision' by stepping into the Navy and Air Force ASB fight and demanding to be noticed (because that's where the Big Warfighter money is, maybe...).
The problem is that the Marine Littoral Mission is nothing but baggage to the long range strike warfare mission that the USAF and USN are looking to fight as OPP and ASUW against the Chinese.
Useless baggage because of it's short range nature and deadly to support because of it's predictable target location, it doesn't have the Economic (Sea Commerce Threat) ease of execution that is airpower diplomacy.
And the Marines are thus trying to reinvent, less themselves than the gunshy nature of a post SWA military and people who want to go back to the good ol' days of the occasional 'Spank'em Hard!' Libya or Lebanon type missions. But otherwise stay out of other people's problems.
Getting stuck in with the Marine Corps in conditions where an Air/Sea force cannot go it alone bespeaks a major landwar with the attendant risks of a 'Pacific Pivot' that can only mean one Near Peer threat force.
If the Corps was honest with itself, they would cut forces by half. They would then split what was left between SOCOM afloat crisis response with some very special (AIr Mech) options. And Crisis Response forces which more openly accepted the stabilization and capacity recover mission in low threat situations like the Post Tsunami or the Fukushima environments.
This would then leave the Army an RDF mission capability for Central and West Asia. And we could start to talk about alliance building between the East Asians to contain DPRK and China both. Nuclear Weapon keyturn technologies would have to be on the table for that but it would keep us out of the _very_ dangerous PacRim LOMD wars which are coming.
As is, the Marines, like the other services, can see no real mission and thus try to pump and primp themselves up as the All Singing, All Dancing, force in direct competition with the other services and this is simply unaffordable in a BCA11 environment.
I got as far as '80% of the world's population lives within 100nm of the shore' and 'we need at least 50 grey hull amphibious ships to handle the mission' and simply couldn't stop laughing.
ReplyDeleteThese are the people who want to stay out of going ashore missions but want to subsume naval Sea Control, Access Assurance and Power Projection, solely so that they can have a red carpet into the Littorals.
Here's a thought: If you don't want to be trapped ashore, don't go inshore. If the USN cannot insure your safe arrival with ICD threats more dangerous than a carrier can handle, why do you want to be there, stealing their hulls for the suicide mission?
And if the Marines are being tailored for the 90% of the planet which is not SCO or within their SOI, then why do they need so much combat power to fight the Wars Of Misery that the ROW MOOTW represents?
It sounds to me like the Marines are having a SERIOUS culture problem with their size and mission statement as our Ready Force for LOW INTENSITY warfare and are trying to self-rationalize their Big Dreams Shallow Reasons 'vision' by stepping into the Navy and Air Force ASB fight and demanding to be noticed (because that's where the Big Warfighter money is, maybe...).
The problem is that the Marine Littoral Mission is nothing but baggage to the long range strike warfare mission that the USAF and USN are looking to fight as OPP and ASUW against the Chinese.
Useless baggage because of it's short range nature and deadly to support because of it's predictable target location, it doesn't have the Economic (Sea Commerce Threat) ease of execution that is airpower diplomacy.
And the Marines are thus trying to reinvent, less themselves than the gunshy nature of a post SWA military and people who want to go back to the good ol' days of the occasional 'Spank'em Hard!' Libya or Lebanon type missions. But otherwise stay out of other people's problems.
Getting stuck in with the Marine Corps in conditions where an Air/Sea force cannot go it alone bespeaks a major landwar with the attendant risks of a 'Pacific Pivot' that can only mean one Near Peer threat force.
If the Corps was honest with itself, they would cut forces by half. They would then split what was left between SOCOM afloat crisis response with some very special (AIr Mech) options. And Crisis Response forces which more openly accepted the stabilization and capacity recover mission in low threat situations like the Post Tsunami or the Fukushima environments.
This would then leave the Army an RDF mission capability for Central and West Asia. And we could start to talk about alliance building between the East Asians to contain DPRK and China both. Nuclear Weapon keyturn technologies would have to be on the table for that but it would keep us out of the _very_ dangerous PacRim LOMD wars which are coming.
As is, the Marines, like the other services, can see no real mission and thus try to pump and primp themselves up as the All Singing, All Dancing, force in direct competition with the other services and this is simply unaffordable in a BCA11 environment.
you're obviously not paying attention. the USMC is doing EXACTLY what you want with the exception of cutting itself.
Deleteit is turning into a quasi 101st seagoing airborne.
the US is alliance building to contain both the DPRK and CHina.
the USMC is tailoring itself to being nothing but a small wars force/crisis response force.
and that's why i'm pissed. THEORIST are at the helm and i believe their vision of future warfare is flawed and naive.