New Focus on China Fight Could Rob Marine Corps of Versatility....MUST READ ARTICLE!

Read this entire article but I want to pop out a few concerns I've raised on that blog that some of the panelist seem to echo.  Via USNI News.

“This restructured Marine Corps is not designed to be versatile. The Marine Corps likes to think of itself as a Swiss army knife, but this will be a Swiss army knife whose owner has ripped out a couple of blades because he doesn’t think he’s going to need them anymore,” said Mark Cancian, a former Marine who also worked in the White House Office of Management and Budget. “And a Swiss army knife that’s missing key functions is really just an ordinary jackknife.”

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“I’m not sure that the changes are complementary to the joint force,” Hoffman said. “I’m not sure that I would like some of these changes to be implemented without some consideration to what mission or burdens we’re placing on the Army and if the Army’s prepared or not prepared to work complementary with the Marine Corps.” 

SNAFU! Blog Note.  This is the easiest of the problems to solve.  If the Marine Corps is going to do less and ask the Army to do more then the Army must grow and the Marine Corps DRASTICALLY SHRINK!  Quite honestly if the China fight is the end all be all for the Marines then it should number no more than 50K....MAX!

 “My chief concern is that this restructuring is focused on a single future conflict, an island campaign in the western Pacific against China,” he said. “And that’s indeed one possible future conflict, but it’s one of many possible conflicts.”

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 Berger has maintained that if the Marines are trained for a high-end fight with a competitor like China, then the force will be ready to engage in other low-end conflicts. Cancian disputed this notion, pointing to the Army’s preparation in the 1960s for a land fight in Europe, only to then pivot to fighting in the jungles of Vietnam.

“Of the major conflicts the Marine Corps has been involved with since the second World War — Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq 2003, Afghanistan, — only Iraq in 2003 was arguably foreseen,” he said. “The rest have been totally unexpected. And I think the future will be like that. The next conflict will be some place we are not expecting.”

Story here. 

I would love to see the video of this discussion.  FINALLY WE'RE GETTING SOME REAL DEAL DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS CONCEPT!  While the Missile Marine Commandant is rushing to finish the hatchet job to the Marine Corps, it seems that at least a few people are bold enough to call this for what it is.

BULLSHIT!