Yes, start building, and show pictures!
Ken
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One of the oldest and longest running military errors is to prepare to fight your last war. The USMC has taken that to heart and is instead preparing to fight the next war.
I retired in 1998. The vast majority of the young lieutenants that I spent so much time training and mentoring have also retired. Those still serving are wearing stars now. They report that the CPXs run show that the new USMC strategy is very effective in the Pacific. Very small forces of marines can control very large areas against a numerically superior near-peer enemy.
Now, back to my modeling. I’ll leave force design to those in uniform that will have to fight the next war rather than a bunch of old modelers trying to refight the last one.
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Welcome to the forum. I think your comments are right on. There is VERY much a place for both the Army and the US Marine Corps and any talk of eliminating the USMC is nonsense on its face.
That said, I still believe that configuring AND training the Marines to fight the kind of maneuver warfare FAR AWAY from the littorals (i.e. deep inland say like in the Ukraine) shouldn’t be high on their mission capabilities list.
Are there overlaps? Of course. As you pointed out there will be times when the US Army must assault over the shore and fight its way inland. AND there is an absolute need for the Marines to have SOME sort of armor capability to perform their mission. But the Marines should not have to be called upon to fight in “the Fulda Gap”.
As I said before, I believe we GOT to that point because that sort of warfare was what we found ourselves involved with and it actually didn’t make sense (nor did we have the manpower) to have the Marines sit on the sidelines and have the Army doing the only fighting.
As you pointed out, “calling the Army” for tanks is a BAD idea, for the same reason that “calling the Air Force for close air support” has been evaluated and soundly rejected by the Marines. If that situation ever arises, there will be NO time to figure out HOW to make it work, even if “extra” resources just happen to be sitting around someplace. (They won’t!)
If anyone thinks that organic armor will NOT be needed to be successful in the kind of missions that the Marines will be called upon to accomplish, I agree that they are sadly mistaken.
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