Does the Army need airborne? The question is finally asked!

NOTE!!!!  I've obviously ruffled a few feathers!  READ THE ARTICLE BEFORE YOU COMMENT!  I'm just the messenger!  Oh and for the paratroops in my audience...bicycle hard, turn into the wind, don't stare at the ground (you don't need ground rush)....do a proper PLF...and chill!  You can take debating the USMC but when it comes to Army Airborne you get your panties in a bunch!

via Army Times

“It’s a great opportunity for us to show what we can do on the Global Response Force,” said Col. Joseph Ryan, the 2nd Brigade commander who jumped along with his soldiers.
The GRF, generally a rotating brigade in the 82nd Airborne Division, is the nation’s quick reaction force designed to rapidly deploy in an emergency. As the Spain exercise demonstrated, Army regards large-scale combat jumps as a crucial capability of the GRF.
But some consider this tactic to be impractical, disconnected from modern war and an unnecessary expense, if not a virtual suicide mission in a real war. Mass combat jumps have been rare since their introduction in World War II, and rarer still in the last 20 years.
“(The) current composition of the United States airborne forces appears more a product of the airborne community’s lobbying efforts in favor of their own size and autonomy than cold calculations about national interests or military requirements,” writes military scholar Marc DeVore in his 2015 Army study “When Failure Thrives.”

Read the entire article.  I found it overly long, unwieldy and it failed to properly get to the point.  This is the pro side of the article in a nutshell..... Army Airborne says it can be wheels up in 24 hours, fly thousands of miles away, drop onto an objective and fight and win.

I say bullshit.

C-17's aren't penetrating aircraft and will need massive support on the run in to the drop zone.  Once on the ground paratroopers will need to be resupplied which means that the same massive effort to get them there in the first place will have to be repeated if they're engaged in heavy combat.  Casualty evacuation is practically impossible unless God himself has smiled on this far flung op.

In short.  Airborne Operations against a peer foe is a no go.  The same applies to Air Assault.

For better or worse the only form of forcible entry that the United States has against a peer threat is provided courtesy of the United States Marine Corps!