The Marines as currently organized and equipped are about as relevant as the Army’s horse cavalry in the 1930s, Douglas A. Macgregor says — speaking in 2012 — and the Marines are not alone:
They have company in the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps.
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Today, enemy forces will mine approaches from the sea, and rely on stand-off attack to drive surface fleets away from coastlines. They’ll employ their ground forces, particularly mobile armored forces, inland, away from the coast. These mobile reserves will attack within the range of the defending forces’ own artillery and airpower to destroy elements that attempt to come ashore whether over the beach or through ports.
Most of today’s Marine force consists of airmobile light infantry. This Marine force is designed for use in the developing world against incapable opponents from Haiti to Fiji, but not much else.
The use of Marines to assault Iraq’s southern coast during Desert Storm was dismissed out of hand as too dangerous, particularly when Navy surface combatants struck sea mines in the Persian Gulf. Subsequently, in 1991 Marines were used ashore to augment the Army where Marines followed an Army armor brigade from Fort Hood, Texas, all the way to Kuwait City.
The point is simple.
The capability to come ashore where the enemy is not present, then, move quickly with sustainable combat power great distances over land to operational objectives in the interior, is essential. The Marines cannot do it in any strategic setting where the opponent is capable (neither can the XVIII Airborne Corps!).
The Marines cannot confront or defeat armored forces or heavy weapons in the hands of capable opponents. Nor can the Marines hold any contested battle space for more than a very short amount of time, after which the Marine raid or short stay ashore is completed.
Adding vertical-and/or-short-takeoff-landing (V/STOL) aircraft like the F-35B, to compensate for the lack of staying power and mobility on the ground is not an answer, particularly given the severe limitations of VSTOL aircraft, and the proliferation of tactical and operational air defense technology in places that count.
The real question is how much Marine Corps do Americans need? The answer is not the 200,000 Marines we have today.
Many of the same observations apply to the Army’s vaunted XVIII Airborne Corps. The Army’s airmobile infantry in the 101st have been used sparingly for similar reasons. Airmobile forces were used in 1991, but most of its value resided in its attack-helicopter force, not in its air-mobile infantry.
Proposals to use Army airborne forces to seize Tallil air field in An Nassiryah during Desert Storm were dismissed out of hand given the threat of Iraqi air defenses. A similar assault planned for Haiti was cancelled in 1994, and the large-scale use of airborne forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was also ruled out in 2001 and, again, in 2003.
There are several reasons for this:
- First, like the Marines ashore, Army airmobile and airborne forces are “soft targets,” extremely vulnerable to long-range air and missile attack, as well as heavy weapons in the form of self-propelled artillery, mortars and auto-cannon.
- Second, the Army’s airmobile division, the 101st, is extremely slow to deploy. Moving it requires as much cubic space as an entire armored/mechanized division. Its performance in Iraq in March-April 2003 was poor. Its alleged combat potential was never put to the test for the reasons already cited.
- Third, the rotary-wing aircraft in the Army are very maintenance-intensive with often-poor readiness rates. The airmobile force in the 101st is also a major consumer of fuel and requires enormous support, as well as expensive contractor help. Their rotary-wing aircraft are also susceptible to detection and vulnerable to widely-dispersed small arms and MANPADS, potentially resulting in substantial casualties and equipment losses even before the airmobile force is ready to engage the enemy on the ground.
None of these attributes make the force attractive for employment against any enemy with a modicum of capability in its armed forces.
The first deployment of helicopter-borne troops in the Ia Drang valley in 1965, the subject of a book and movie, was a disaster. One battalion suffered 80% casualties (40% dead) and the other suffered 40% casualties (20% dead). The remnants had to walk out, because there was no safe LZ.
So what’s new? Contested landings in WWII were bloody affairs — in the Pacific as well as in Europe.
The more important question is, What is a better option that the author is proposing?
Throughout history, the balance has swung between offence & defense. Defenders in a castle were supreme until the invention of gunpowder. Defenders in a trench were supreme until the invention of the tank. What we are seeing in the Ukraine is that modern man-portable weapons give defenders the ability to make things hard for attacking aircraft & armor.
It seems nations need some constructive fresh thinking about the circumstances in which they will attack, and the technology they will need.
>What is a better option that the author is proposing?
Implied by all the things he spoke of as very easy means of ruining their day.
There’s a kind of joyful irony in the most gung-ho, hoo-rah branch of the U.S. military being the one whose greatest use in deployment is to beat up goatherds and take their lunch money.
“Don’t punch down” is just something people say.
It’s stupid to punch up. Everybody punches down and then makes excuses.
In my totally non professional opinion: Gulf war one is the model for conventional war and I don’t think it’s mentioned enough.
Have limited reasonable war aims, establish air superiority as your first sine qua non priority, then shellack the enemy so he can’t “see”, can’t talk, can’t move, can’t resupply. The bombardment was so long and sustained chunks of the Iraqi Army couldn’t even get much real sleep for weeks on end, they were surrendering just to get some sleep.
It’s “expensive”, but costs a lot less than the blood of your own men.
May be wrong, but I feel like Gulf War One is studied less because of how well it went. The Iraqi Army is reinvented as some sort of paper tiger, and because there weren’t very many disastrous engagements there were fewer “heroes” and less drama.
But that’s ideal isn’t it? We had a limited reasonable war aim (“get the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait” vs. “turn Iraq into Ohio”), and sustained very few casualties while accomplishing our goals. Schwarzkopf even let much of the Iraqi military escape, as I understand it, he didn’t kill the enemy just to kill the enemy.