Does America need to maintain the Marines?

Actually no, they can’t.

Yes SEALS are elite troops and man-to-man better than any one Marine. But SEALS operate in very small units. IIRC SEALS once were used with regular forces (Panama?) and it did not go well for the SEALS.

A SEALS’ job is wholly different from a Marine’s and there just aren’t that many SEALS such that they can storm a beach effectively. Wouldn’t want them to either because they are too valuable to put into such a position.

I’ve actually heard it seriously proposed (some think tank’s paper on a blueprint for American military power in the 21st century) that it’s the Army that should be disbanded, leaving the Marines behind to fulfill the role of “boots on the ground”.

The argument was basically that the Army is a 20th century organization built to fight nation-level conflicts that are extremely unlikely to occur in the 21st century because nuclear deterrance has replaced “huge army” deterrance. In the 21st century it’s going to be assymetrical warfare requiring more special forces. Keep the Marines to retain a traditional ground combat organization, but move most money into special forces, drones, and intelligence gathering.

Just prior to Saddam invading Kuwait, when Bush Senior was cutting back the military (ending MY career in the USMC), I heard a similar presentation.

The specific angle on that one was to turn the Army into a Reserves force ONLY. Their job would be to provide the necessary bodies for a large scale operation, while making the Marines the only active duty boots on the ground forces. The Marines would be available for any quick reaction, but if we decided to occupy someplace we would call up the Army Reserves.

That sounds like a pretty horrifyingly bad idea. If there’s one thing military history teaches us - from Rome straight through to the Gulf wars - it’s that training matters. You can have all the nice equipment you want, you can have all the warm bodies you might wish - but if your forces aren’t well-trained, they’ll be picked apart by any force that is. I don’t mean to rag on the Reserves, but their level of training probably isn’t as high as that of regular Army forces that are practicing or preparing for combat 24/7.

Didn’t Stalin prove that quantity has a quality all of it’s own? (Something like that.)

Possibly, but history also shows us that when you have a large military sitting around, someone goes looking for a way to use them. The REAL opposition to the current wars started kicking in when Reservists and Guard members started getting killed.

We are already heavily using those part-time forces (one weekend a month and two weeks per year!) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

See the .pdf below for some quick data:

Yes and he was right but that only works IF you have the quantity to spare and are willing to throw them into the grinder.

The Soviets did, the Chinese do (and did).

They took staggering casualties but they had plenty more warm bodies to throw into the breach and just wore away at their enemy.

It worked but was pretty grisly. The US has neither those sorts of numbers nor the willingness to toss troops willy-nilly into the fire. I imagine US troops would mutiny if asked to do the things Chinese troops were or Soviet troops have in the past.

Yup - and that quality is best described as “the capacity to absord astonishing quantities of bullets.” Human-wave tactics are fine if you’re willing to absorb the losses they bring. Stalin was; we aren’t, and aren’t likely to become willing.

You know, Stalin also had interesting ideas on what to do with people who just barely beat him to the post …

Marines are generally better and more highly trained than most other main corps. That’s just the way it is.

SEALS are individually better, but they’re also designed for small groups, for covert ops, and for quick strikes.

Marines work on bigger scales than that, and they’re good at it.

Hell, if anything was going to be combined, the Knee Deep Navy ought to be part of the real Navy, and (total conjecture and it’ll be a few hundred years at least) once we get to a point where actual spacefaring fighters get going, the Air Force and the Navy are going to be in some serious discussions about combining forces. Either that, or the Air Force is going to get a lot smaller, and a lot more archaic. More of an honor guard than an actual standing military.

(2 SEAL paternal uncles, Marine brother, Air Force brother, Navy dad, and Army maternal grandfather and uncles)

Also, they’d all up and shrivel away if they couldn’t talk shit about the other branches, and no one wants that. :smiley:

Is that fat guy really in the Army? How could they let a man get to that point? Aren’t there standards of personal fitness that need to be met?

(Addressed to Whack-a-mole and Mr. Excellent)

If the US were to significantly downsize the military, and keep just a small quick reaction force to “tide us over” until the reserves are mobilized and brought to the party, then we are going to have to face some casualties, right? (I am assuming that the reserve force is going to be a little more green/undertrained than the current Army.)

Wouldn’t that mean that we, as a country, are going to have to expect more casualties, not less, by downsizing the military?

No.

As a non American I’ve always wondered if a young American man was to enlist, why would he choose Army over the Marines ? The Marines are by far the most glorified military force in the world. whether there is any real reason for it, I’d expect it would be much easier to get laid if you were a marine than Army. I like watching NCIS. I enjoyed “A Few Good Men”. Yes they are part of navy, but its like they are special. The Navy serves to transport the marines.

[quote=Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., USA, Chairman of the the Joint Chiefs of Staff
during the assault on Grenada, 1983 ]
We have two companies of Marines running rampant all over the northern half of this island, and three Army regiments pinned down in the southwestern corner, doing nothing. What the hell is going on?
[/quote]

“No” meaning “No, he’s not in the Army,” right?

Many reasons.

Maybe his dad was in the Army and he wanted to continue a family tradition.

Maybe he didn’t think he could hack the Marine training, which is widely acknowledged to be tougher than the Army training.

Maybe he wanted a specific MOS that the Marine Corps didn’t offer but the Army did.

Lol, they should put that on the leaflets.

For one, Marine boot camp is much more difficult to complete than basic training.

More difficult? Only if we define “more difficult” to mean longer. Perhaps I am prejudiced, but I always figured they just needed additional time to grasp basic concepts.

spfflog, how many Army Soldiers do you actually interact with as a Sailor? Funny to hear a sailor talk about how heavy and slow the Army is. How many paratroopers do the Marines have, anyway? Or Air Assault for that matter. Slow to arrive, indeed. It’s all hype.

To answer your question, The Flying Dutchman, there are tons of reasons. For one, a Soldier can choose his job at the recruiting office. An Army recruiter can gauruntee an enlistee’s job in writing. The Marine recruiter can only gauruntee an enlistee’s “job training”. But after that, it is up to the needs of the Corps. Also, the Army is much, much larger so it has much greater promotion, advancement, and assignment oppurtunities. If one wants to travel, there is a much higher chance of getting an overseas job in Europe or somewhere exotic with the Army than with the Marines. There are just simply more openings. Also, I made E-6 in exactly 4 years in the Army. I will likely be promoted again in the next 15-18 months and I have only 7 years in. Can’t imagine someone progressing like that in the Marine Corps.