15th MEU deploys without tanks. Weak, Impotent & Lacking is now a Marine Corps thing?

via Navy Matters Blog

I’ve been waiting for this one for a while, now, and it’s finally happened.  The Marines are deploying a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) without any tanks.  Perhaps it’s happened before and I just didn’t notice.  As noted in the May 2017 issue of Proceedings,

“Despite the maneuverability, lethality, and survivability that tanks provide, the 15th MEU will deploy without its battalion landing team’s (BLT’s) M1A1s.  The unit will embark on the USS America (LHA-6), the USS San Diego (LPD-22), and the USS Pearl Harbor (LSD-52);  these ships lack adequate space for the unit’s equipment, driving the decision to deploy without the tanks.”

The article’s author goes on to note that, in addition to the obvious benefits of armor, firepower, infantry support, and survivability, tanks also offer a great deal of flexibility due to their dozer blades and mine plows which allow the tanks to create and remove obstacles, clear safe paths through mine fields, provide breeching capability under fire, etc.

Story here. 

Navy Matters Blog won't be judgemental but I will.

This is "weak, impotent and lacking".  I didn't know that was a Marine Corps thing.

But in the lust to push for the Aviation Centric Marine Corps, risks have been adopted and two big deck LHDs were built without well decks.

That asinine decision will affect Marine Corps operations for decades.

Congratulations.  The generation of military leaders that have involved the US in two 15 year wars without victory, badly mishandled every social issue that has come down the pike in the last 10 years and committed at the very least fraud, possibly moral turpitude on a level that the Marine Corps has never seen before with the forsaken/ill begotten F-35 have compounded the errors with this latest bit of silliness.

I don't think the Aviation Centric Marine Corps will work.  I'd almost bet body parts that it won't.  What's worse if I'm right?  Leadership has enshrined the mistake so we won't be able to correct it.