USMC Doctrine Changes

I think Berger's just playing the long game and hoping LRPF is done competently enough the Army will get to pay for new M1s, which the Marines will happily buy once, only they've eaten the massive bitter budget pill that is JSF and H-53K, and those ships' unit costs go down. Seems to be between ACV, JSF, H-53K, and whatever Cottonmouth is going to be, as well as the weird shipborne UAS the Marines waffle on to replace the old Broncos, well the M1s can get sidelined for now, along with a third of the aviation fleet, and all that can probably come back in 15 years or however long it will take to regenerate.

Maybe they'll buy MPF though if that doesn't get killed.
I fear that you may be giving Commandant Berger way too much credit for sense there.

I'm mostly pretending the US Marines haven't gone senile/insane and fully embraced the FCS see-shoot-kill nonsense.

"We need all this cool stuff so we'll get rid of the old stuff," but then they don't buy the cool stuff they say they need? Real.

MUX was the first casualty of the COVID pandemic reported in DOD.

Except the US Army also has three divisions of paratroopers who have better rapid response times than than the Marines?
Fun fact.

Paratroopers are useless in taking island role.

I don't know how to reply to this except to say that Port Salinas is the same size as Firey Cross Reef and sits literally on a peninsular edge so...

1664298564702.png

1664298654764.png

...these are at the same zoom levels from Google maps. As you can see, they are effectively the same target.

Of course if you're actually doing a Port Salinas you'd be landing on the runway, Mikado style, and getting out of the rear ramp guns blazing like a real GI Joe. Perhaps bring the life preserver with you if you think there's a possibility of an assault jump with an WDZ though?

1664299942610.png

1664299993116.png

The water wings are the real reason Airborne doesn't bring reserves on combat jumps.

Enough Joes will hit the dirt they'll be able to capture the dumb sandbar reef before the Marines' silly LST can unstuck itself from the Plastic Shoals and their wheeled death trucks can climb the 10-foot tall concrete embankments the Chinese are soon to install to keep their island bases from flooding over when Greenland melts.

If the Rangers get Hulkamanied by a PLAAF ground crew well damn that sucks. Good thing we got three airborne divisions now hooah.

Except the US Army also has three divisions of paratroopers who have better rapid response times than than the Marines?
Cause we are expecting to need to take islands and the Marines restructuring allows them to do that.

Especially since they kept training to do so since WW2, unlike the Army that stopped after Korea.

And experience all but says that non amphibious tanks suck in island hopping campaigns.

I have no idea what you mean by the rest of this post though. It's just plain wrong.

The Army has done more assault jumps and airfield seizures since Korea than the Marines have done amphibious assaults and port seizures in the same time period. By like an infinite amount too, because I don't think the Marines ever did an amphibious assault against an opposed force after Korea, whereas the Army has done like four or five combat jumps since then. Grenada doesn't count because the Army had already secured the Marines' landing zones, much like how Desert Shield doesn't count because Dammam wasn't occupied.

They've done air assaults under Mattis in Afghanistan and the Royal Marines in Iraq, but only after the Army did the muscle job of taking Kandahar and COL Votel's Rangers took Rhino, and in Al-Faw only after the Royal Marines rolled up the Chinooks and Pumas and seized the beach, but that's impossible now because Berger blew up their assault airlift too. At least the VMFA is sized for the Americas now so each America gets two 10-ship squadrons instead of a single 20-ship squadron?

The only time the Marines were useful in their role as amphibious assault troops was WW2 though.

Tanks were necessary then, and actual tanks, not boats and amtracs playing pretend tanks. The LVTs with the 37mm were as hot garbage as the Japanese special motor launches which is why no one talks about them. The M4 Sherman owned though. Nothing has changed to make tanks unnecessary now either. The Marines are just divesting themselves of their expeditionary capabilities to ostensibly do a job that literally no one needs by copying the Army, but they're copying the Stryker brigades and the field artillery, when they should be copying the armored brigades and the 101st Aerosol.

Paratroopers can't bring helicopters or big boy tanks with them over oceans. Marines can. It's a team effort, not a parochial one, and the Marines being the heavy armor muscle men to help the Rangers and Airborne out of a sticky situation plays to team strengths in the INDOPAC where the paratroopers have faster response times but the MPFs are faster than 1st Armored or Big Red One.

Of course this "muscular forward deployment" concept is hard when your reinforcements are less protected and squishier than the enemy forces they're supposed to fight, and hardly better protected and armed than the paratroopers and intercontinental stealth bombers they're supporting.

Marine leaders just aren't team players right now. No one knows why, except them, but Berger sounds like he has paratrooper envy.

If he wants paratroopers so bad he can send a brigade of Marines to Airborne School and re-establish the Paramarines. Dunno why he has to throw the baby out with the bathwater (2016 MEU) when he could have just made the VMFAs bigger and put the tanks in a separate tank company for the MEB.
 
Last edited:
the same target.

Of course if you're actually doing a Port Salinas you'd be landing on the runway, Mikado style, and getting out of the rear ramp guns blazing like a real GI Joe. Perhaps bring the life preserver with you if you think there's a possibility of an assault jump with an WDZ though?

1664299942610.png


1664299993116.png


The water wings are the real reason Airborne doesn't bring reserves on combat jumps.

Enough Joes will hit the dirt they'll be able to capture the dumb sandbar reef before the Marines' silly LST can unstuck itself from the Plastic Shoals and their wheeled death trucks can climb the 10-foot tall concrete embankments the Chinese are soon to install to keep their island bases from flooding over when Greenland melts.

If the Rangers get Hulkamanied by a PLAAF ground crew well damn that sucks. Good thing we got three airborne divisions now hooah.
Wait let me get this straight.

You expect the US Air Force to land a cargo plane on an enemy airstrip to take it with the loaded troops?

No just no. This is not Hollywood.

You dont fucking do that at all. Its a great way to lose entire companys when the thin skin aircraft gets hosed down by an few assualt rifles, let alone a MG or manpads.

No its going to be a paradrop in.

And most of those poor troopers are going to be stuck in the ocean with their water wings.

Likely getting machine gun.

No the best way to take an island air feild like Salinas is a combine arms deal of both air assualt and water borne attacks.

Perferablely after the big carriers do their thing.

Also those water wings? Only are rated for bout 200 ish pounds. Paratroops BASIC gear average about 70 pounds, with the average trooper being bout 170. And dont get issued to paratroopers.

Basically you land in the drink you not doing anything.
The Army has done more assault jumps and airfield seizures since Korea than the Marines have done amphibious assaults and port seizures in the same time period. By like an infinite amount too, because I don't think the Marines ever did an amphibious assault against an opposed force after Korea, whereas the Army has done like four or five combat jumps since then. Grenada doesn't count because the Army had already secured the Marines' landing zones, much like how Desert Shield doesn't count because Dammam wasn't occupied.
The Army down two, 4 counting Grenade and Panama, combat jumps since korea.

One was in Nam irc, another was in Iraq freedom knew for sure. Both had US Armor forces pushing on at the same time.

And the Iraq one was to take an air field that the Armor forces have all but taken already. Like apparently one poor soldier nearly got munlch when his parachute got tangled up in a moving Abrams treads. As is they basically did nothing and took all the credit.

Eyeah the Airborne is as rusty as the Marines are in taking contested things.


They've done air assaults under Mattis in Afghanistan and the Royal Marines in Iraq, but only after the Army did the muscle job of taking Kandahar and COL Votel's Rangers took Rhino, and in Al-Faw only after the Royal Marines rolled up the Chinooks and Pumas and seized the beach, but that's impossible now because Berger blew up their assault airlift too. At least the VMFA is sized for the Americas now so each America gets two 10-ship squadrons instead of a single 20-ship squadron?
Air Assualt is different then Air Borne.

No serouisly both units get pissy at that.

And is also somethkng that the Marines do as well.

The Marines have done air assaults in both Iraq and Afghanistan as late as 2016 when we went back into Iraq. Know that cause my radar was used to help cover one.

And they have their own attack copters thats nearly as good as the apache but is fully sea capable which they kept the full amount with. That hasn't change with this restructuring from what Ive read.
Paratroopers can't bring helicopters or big boy tanks with them over oceans. Marines can. It's a team effort, not a parochial one, and the Marines being the heavy armor muscle men to help the Rangers and Airborne out of a sticky situation plays to team strengths in the INDOPAC where the paratroopers have faster response times but the MPFs are faster than 1st Armored or Big Red One.

Of course this "muscular forward deployment" concept is hard when your reinforcements are less protected and squishier than the enemy forces they're supposed to fight, and hardly better protected and armed than the paratroopers and intercontinental stealth bombers they're supporting.

Marine leaders just aren't team players right now. No one knows why, except them, but Berger sounds like he has paratrooper envy.

If he wants paratroopers so bad he can send a brigade of Marines to Airborne School and re-establish the Paramarines. Dunno why he has to throw the baby out with the bathwater (2016 MEU) when he could have just made the VMFAs bigger and put the tanks in a separate tank company for the MEB.
You literally doing the two face talking again boss.


Marine cant do nothing that the Army Airborne cant.

The Army Airborne cant do what the Marines do.

WHICH IS IT?

Also

Cause Airborne are the guys with patachuts.

Air Assault are the guys in the Helicopters. Who can carry far more stuff.

There is a major difference between the two.
 
Wait let me get this straight.

You expect the US Air Force to land a cargo plane on an enemy airstrip to take it with the loaded troops?

No just no. This is not Hollywood.

They don't have to land, they can just slowly keep driving while the guys in the back get out. Anyway you're right, it's real life.

Port Salinas's parachute drop was considered a tad too dangerous for the mission because of its proximity to water and it was supposed to be done at nighttime. Which is why the Rangers were going to land, Mikado style, and get out the rear ramp to seize the airstrip. Cubans don't have night vision. How will they hit a C-130 if they can't even hit the orbiting AC-130s and got caught with their pants down? The Rangers were supposed to land on the airstrip at nighttime, get out, and take it, but the Combat Talons had a funny haha happen to their INS and they spent like half an hour flying in a circle or something.

They got word from Deltas on the ground or a AC-130 or something that the Cubans had parked a bulldozer and some other junk on the runway, making it too short for the Hercs to land, and decided to change from an airlanding to a parachute assault. Everyone put on their chutes and made the jump instead. Enough Rangers landed on the strip that they were able to take it and the resort town of True Blue, against a combat engineering battalion of Cubans with automatic rifles, BTRs, and ZPUs. Easy peasy.

The physical geometry of the drop zone was not substantially bigger than Fiery Cross Reef and Port Salinas is also surrounded by water.

It's just a counter example to your statement that "paratroops will land in water" because it doesn't really happen. If wind is too strong to jump, then you can hit the ground and dismount at like 20-30 knots or something slow-ish while taxiing, but fast enough for the plane to get back into the air after everyone piles out the cargo ramp. Or you taxi to a pad and wait while the Rangers take the airbase. There's more important stuff for those dudes with guns to shoot at besides a fat empty plane. Like the guys on the ground shooting back at them.

Is it dangerous? Damn right. Is it useful? If you want to drop dudes right on a target. Have people done it? More or less.

If the Nazis can land dudes in a dozen floatplanes right on a river, get out in their little dinghies, and steal a bridge right from under the defending Dutch Marines; or literally land on top of Dutch anti-air batteries and on the roofs of the infantrymen's barracks in Rotterdam, I'd think the Rangers can do Mikado. Plainly stupider things have been done, and worked fine, and often stupidity is just a synonym for having brass.

Some things from WW2 are worth looking at. Island hopping campaigns ain't one of 'em.

You dont fucking do that at all. Its a great way to lose entire companys when the thin skin aircraft gets hosed down by an few assualt rifles, let alone a MG or manpads.

Better get out quick!

And most of those poor troopers are going to be stuck in the ocean with their water wings.

Oh well. They'll be picked up by a boat when the battle is over. Whether it's American or Chinese is whatever. Beats drowning.

Likely getting machine gun.

That's one less machine gun shooting at the guys who landed on dirt. Fair trade. If I were defending an airstrip I'd be more concerned about the guys on the runway than the guys in the water myself.

No the best way to take an island air feild like Salinas is a combine arms deal of both air assualt and water borne attacks.

Port Salinas was taken by a daylight parachute assault, actually.

If anything, that indicates the best way to take an airfield is by daylight parachute assault. Not that it matters, since the original plan by the Navy called for choppers dropping Marines and Rangers in combined battalions to seize the airstrip. The second plan called for JSOC to take it with the Delta Force or SEALs, who ended up just setting up an observation post instead. The third plan called for Rangers to airland and take it. They went with the last one except it was a parachute assault.

It still worked. Even if the first plan was more "common sense", the subsequent "stupid plan" didn't lead to any undesirable outcomes except when a pair of BTRs rolled into the airstrip and started plastering Hercs with 14.5mm before they flipped over after running into some stray 90mm rounds. That's not really the fault of the Rangers those boys just had some cojones.

In other words: All those are things the Marines can't do with their 10-ship airlift squadrons and increasing lack of LCACs?

Perferablely after the big carriers do their thing.

Why exactly would you want to capture some radioactive ruins? The "big carriers" will just erase the airbase from the map.

Also those water wings? Only are rated for bout 200 ish pounds. Paratroops BASIC gear average about 70 pounds, with the average trooper being bout 170. And dont get issued to paratroopers.

Yes they do on training jumps. Natick even has a new set of water wings in the works.

Basically you land in the drink you not doing anything.

Yes, but at least your water wings will keep you from drowning? Isn't that your original complaint?

"Not doing anything" is different from "drowning".

The Army down two, 4 counting Grenade and Panama, combat jumps since korea.

It's more than four. Way more. Airborne did combat jumps in Vietnam in Junction City and Grenada and Panama are like 5 separate jumps.

One was in Nam irc, another was in Iraq freedom knew for sure. Both had US Armor forces pushing on at the same time.

Here is a list of unclassified operations, there's nine big ones. Even if you discount the two jumps in Afghanistan that were reclassified, it's many more amphibious assaults that the Marines actually did.

Maybe the Marines have threatened to do more amphibious assaults than air drops but they never carried them out.

And the Iraq one was to take an air field that the Armor forces have all but taken already. Like apparently one poor soldier nearly got munlch when his parachute got tangled up in a moving Abrams treads. As is they basically did nothing and took all the credit.

Yes, airborne jumps are typically used in low intensity actions.

i.e. the most likely future wars that the Marines have built themselves to be entirely unable to support.

Eyeah the Airborne is as rusty as the Marines are in taking contested things.

Except Airborne has taken multiple contested objects from Rio Hata to Port Salinas to Objective Rhino in the past 40 years?

So rusty they maintained relevance in every small war America has fought in the past three human generations? They'll do it again too. Because 1) it's funny 2) they can actually get to places and do stuff because they know what they're about. Marines don't.

The Corps seems to think their little restructuring is going to be a value add component in WW3, which is frankly bizarre. Those stupid sandbar reefs they're wringing their hands about will just be nuked by JSFs, Tomahawks, or B-21s, perhaps literally, since it'll be WW3. Conversely, if the Marines ever have to take a similar obstacle in a totally different war, like Port Salinas, they're poorly equipped to do so. Because their big dogs think a 14 knots LST is faster than a 140 knots Hercules and can do the same job. Wild. I want to live a day in that world.

Perhaps Berger simply doesn't understand the whole purpose of the island hopping campaign has been obsolete since 1955 though? There ain't gonna be no island hopping campaign in the South China Sea. It'll be more like an island regrading campaign from aviation flying in from outside the sea, because supercarriers hate closed seas (at this point we might classify the North Atlantic as a "closed sea") and because the SCS is going to be inhabited by nothing but Chinese aeronaval surface units and diesel sub battling US Navy SSNs and JSFs.

When you do have to take an airfield in Grenada 2 or Nicaragua 2 or Vera Cruz 2, you'd call the Rangers. Now it'll be exclusively the Rangers, because everyone will be playing a dirge for the actually useful-to-American-policy air assault troops of the Marines when they receive their 14 knot LSTs.

You literally doing the two face talking again boss.

Nah, I'm talking about Marines doing air assaults. They had helicopters once. Mattis did air assaults with Super Stallions in Afghanistan to make his FOBs with 15th MEU after Rangers built Rhino. Marines did air assaults again in Al-Faw and amphibious landings after the British Commandos took the beach zone.

The entire history of the US Marines, outside WW2, is showing up after someone has already got a foothold and can't go further.

Marine cant do nothing that the Army Airborne cant.

Nah they're too slow and take a week to arrive to anywhere.

This is still faster than an armored brigade from Ft. Riley which is twice as long.

The Army Airborne cant do what the Marines do.

Airborne can arrive anywhere in the world in brigade strength in 72 hours. Marines would be lucky to do it less than 96.

Also

Cause Airborne are the guys with patachuts.

Yes.

Air Assault are the guys in the Helicopters. Who can carry far more stuff.

I'm not talking about Aerosol. They don't do anything they need boats and planes to bring their dumb whirlygigs anywhere. Useless.

The Marines are the real air assault because they have little helicopter carriers.

There is a major difference between the two.

Airborne is the crowbar. Marines are the forearm. Armored brigade or Aerosol is the boot that kicks in the door. The boot depends on terrain. Aerosol is prime in mountains and jungles and armor's prime anywhere else.

At least that's how it should be. Marines are looking less like the forearm these days and more like the arm's cast.

Forcible entry is just the international form of a B&E after all.
 

The most immediate implication would be the replacement of skids (H-1 family), although this may involve more than just that over time.
 
It seems to me any forward based signal denial system is easier to place on ships than with USMC expeditionary units. There is forward deployment, strategic mobility, tactical mobility, and high power availability built right in to such a deployment. Amphibious units seem ill suited to operate a high energy active emission system.

The entire thing makes me wonder what kind of satellite communications jamming the USN might already employ; it certainly had to be a consideration before now and their ships would be fairly easy platforms to mount a high powered directional emitter on.
 

Again more reason to consolidate NGA, NSA, DIA, NRO back into the svc intell agencies.
 
I finally finished reading the CSIS wargame study. They pretty much panned the USMCs move to littoral regiments, stating they can't be supplied inside the PRC's defensive bubble and that they can't be deployed with enough firepower to be decisive. Which is similar to my view on the subject; if you want missile shooters, actually buy more ships and planes to fire missiles from and save the money and expense of having amphibious lift and single mission units that either won't manage to be delivered or won't be resupplied in a peer competitor environment.

"Ground units will not provide a significant volume of fire. A squadron of bombers armed with longrange cruise missiles has a greater volume of fire than an entire MLR but without the challenges of transportation and logistics. Ground-based anti-ship units must either deploy with a large number of missiles before the conflict begins or act as forward sensors for long-range air and naval power."

 

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom