The Demise of the Marines?

[downbeatplumb]

The US despite having a vast army seems to have trouble fighting quite small wars.

I think the problem is that the "make work" jobs given to the soldiers in calm times to keep them busy till war comes has become their sole jobs so when war does breakout they say "but who will do this unimportant job I've been doing if I go to fight?" it is certainly a problem I see in the UK Navy.

[popeyespappy]

“The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!” - Eleanor Roosevelt

[Thumpalumpacus]

I don't think their mission is obsolete at all; but they could certainly use much trimming, just as all of our branches could.

[The Grand Nudger]

We should do less occupation. It has not worked out well for us since 1945.

We don't engage/forego conflicts based upon our win/loss record. Nevertheless, agreed, we should occupy less, with a smaller force. Fire all non-combat arms, non intel (civilian contractors do their jobs anyway). The we'd have a smaller force....and we wouldn't be sending cooks and accountants out on armed patrols.

I suppose the flipped side to that coin (the army being so stacked with non-combat arms) is that after combat arms have taken an area...army doctors, army cooks, army this and that's try to keep things running for the people who's c&c we've just smashed. That's something that I doubt Brown and Root wants to do at the price point of a soldier. They're in the business of $50 bowls of corn flakes, and the folks in warzones generally don't have $50.

@DBP
Those "makework" jobs are the majority of jobs in our armed forces (US). It's not even that they are make-work jobs so much as that they are actually the only jobs they've received adequate training for. There's alot of support and logistics behind every boot on the ground. Trouble, recently, is that we've been paying contractors to do those logistics so we try to extract our money's worth from an army plumber by dressing him up like an infantryman and hoping for the best. This was brilliant strategy on the part of people who want to siphon more funds into the service (we have to pay the plumber to patrol....and then pay a civilian plumber to fix pipes). Probably not the best way to win a war though, eh?

[Anomalocaris]

We should engage/forgo conflicts based on our win/loss record.

We have gloried in those military skills which we think we are outstanding practitioners of. But we consistently overlook the fact we lack a full range of other equally vital soft and hard skills to win most types of conflict. Furthermore we appear to be quite dull in perceiving what skills are needed, how we are deficient, and whether we've adequately addressed or compensated for the deficiencies.

So our win/loss ratio becomes our most reliable yard stick on whether we are likely to prevail when we are itching to get into another similar conflict.

So when possible Conflicts should not be entered into if our records show we've consistently found it overwhelmingly difficult to display the full set of skills needed to come out ahead in it.

[popeyespappy]

Fire all non-combat arms, non intel (civilian contractors do their jobs anyway). The we'd have a smaller force....and we wouldn't be sending cooks and accountants out on armed patrols.

You might be surprised. I'm in Okinawa right now doing some network upgrades for the army at multiple bases scattered all over the island. There is a small group of contractors working the tech control and a handful of of DoD civilians performing various functions, but all the technicians are soldiers, sailors or airmen. There are a lot more of them than there are civilian government employees and contractors.

[Anomalocaris]

Just because they are non-combat doesn't mean they can continue to properly support combat forces without being under military discipline. So firing all noncombat arms is a nonstarter if combat arms are expected to continue to function.

Also, composition of military force has a long term social impact on the civil society. Having a military that is nothing but socially segregated class of trigger pullers without skill integration into civil society seems likely to have very negative long term social consequences to the civil society.

[Zack]

Since war isn't going out of style anytime ever; the Marines will have a mission. Sure, they aren't storming the beaches of nameless Pacific atolls anymore, but they can still put a lot of firepower in far away places. A marine expeditionary unit can do so much faster than say, elements of the 1st Cavalry Division in Texas. That ability makes them priceless in my opinion.

[Minimalist]

One of Napoleon's greatest reforms of the French military was the dismissal of civilian drivers for the artillery and replacing them with trained artillerymen and crews.

Civilians were mercenaries who tended to run away and take the cannon with them.

There is entirely too much contracting out in the army. How do you think Halliburton and the rest of the corporate fucking criminals make so much money?