Long time readers will know the admiration that your host holds for the US Marine Corps, one of the finest fighting forces the world has ever seen and man for man a match for anything thrown their way. All that said, Marines can be fiercely tribal and no small number of the Marines I have come into contact with can scarcely tolerate the Navy, have disdain for the Army and do not deign to think at all about reservists and National Guardsmen.
So it is with some interest that I read the pushback to Marine Capt. Thomas Daly’s “Lessons from Ramadi” post on Steven Pressfield’s excellent blog, especially what probably ought to have been a throway line about a “collection of Pennsylvania National Guard units” that had “not exerted control over (their) sectors”:
We were attacked with over 350 IEDs, discovered/disarmed about 260 more with USMC EOD. We detained 1200 suspected insurgents, of which more than 600 were subsequently sent to Abu Ghraib. 10 SVBIEDs, 2 SBIEDs. Recovered over 3000 rounds of ordnance from multiple cache sites. Neutralized insurgent IED cells and caches. Disrupted insurgent financiers. Executed sniper missions, neutralizing IED emplacement cells and forcing them to go to ground. Dropped bombs and fired LMAVs with our USMC ANGLICO. Innumerable counterfire missions. Executed route clearance operations and MSR security patrols and OPs. Worked with SF, Rangers, SEALs. Not exactly a unit that “had not exerted control over these sectors”. 2nd Brigade, 28th Division had 83 KIA. We lost 16 of that number in our Battalion. These Soldiers and Marines died setting the conditions for the success of 1/1AD.
There are as many views of the battlefield as their are warriors contesting the battlespace, and intra-service rivalry can be a great good thing when it leads us on to greater efforts – every Marine has a right to be proud of his service. But the “everything was forked until we got here and unforked it” thing can get tiresome, and risks blurring the line between pride and hubris. The truth is that pre-surge Ramadi was a chocolate mess and the forces there were under-resourced for the mission they’d been given. The Guardsmen undoubtedly fought as well as they could for as long as they could, and they brought their dead home with them. These citizen soldiers too have a right to be proud of their service.
Read the whole thing.
The lack of response is deafening…for the Marines… its whats the problem ?… its the way things are/should be and always will be…for the rest of us…me in particular… its a tiresomely futile exercise best described as mental masterbation and therefore devoutly to be avoided. Best
I suggest you read on there, Sport.
Take your Class A with the Quarternaster and fulfill your own sort of Hubris.
MotherF*****
Mark, you’re new on board and I’ve been cutting you some huss while being busily engaged elsewhere. But your tone of discourse personalizes the discussion without adding anything to it – we don’t do that here.
If you’ve got a point to make, please make it. But lay off the ad hominem or find another place to shout. You only get one admonition – that was it.
Thanks.
H3ll, the Marines have just gotten to where they’ll tolerate the Army after the way the Korean War was handled, it’ll take them another 50 years or so to warm up to the Guard. Although we do get a lot of prior service Marines…
We had 3 prior service Marines in my NG OCS class, and only one finished. One told the TAC officers to shove their BS up where the sun don’t shine, and simply didn’t come to morning formation. His platoon TAC (also mine) was so mad he lost it in front of the entire class. He hurled the portfolio had held into the pavement (having raised it above his head before throwing down) and walked towards the class’s barracks muttering.
While I am certainly guilty of a certain institutitional pride paid for with 20 years 15 days of active service in the Marine Corps, I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that we were perfect in Iraq and everyone else was hoseheads. I think the troops over there, particularly because they were volunteers and not draftees, did the jobs they were assigned even when those jobs were not always tasks they had the resources and manpower to do. But we enlisted dogs tend to be a bit more realistic than our officer brethren at times. Having said that, if I am taking my people into an assault on a hot position, I want Marines on each flank, Marine air on station and Marine artillery on call before me. Then it will be a good Marine Corps Day. But I will certainly accept Navy aviation for close air support in a pinch.
I think many Marines sometimes listen to their own PR just a little too much. Having served and trained alongside Marine units before, my personal opinion was that there was little to choose between a Marine unit or an Army unit. The cultures were very different, to be sure. But the ability to fight and win was there in each case.
I will say this. After holding the Guard and Reserve in contempt for many a year, I’m coming around to having a great deal of respect for them. They have performed magnificently in this war. The performance of Guard combat units has been almost indistinguishable from active component units.
Brad, when I was in TNANG the Guard was cracking down on training standards (this was from 84-88). The 101st had their choice of Armored units to train against, but they asked for elements from my Brigade (30th ABG, TNANG) and my Battalion spent a number of long weekends with the puking buzzards.
I was out when I was reading training stories about a Reserve Armor unit that was training up for Desert Storm at Hood. One guy whined to the training officer, “are we gonna survive this?” I wasn’t impressed. I don’t blame the regulars for wanting to leave the reserve components behind, but it left a very bad taste in the mouths of a lot of NG troops. One Georgia Armor unit, I hear, is still mad about it.
Isn’t ANGLICO one of the best acronyms ever?
Wasn’t ever much impressed with the USMC types that I was forced to work with over the years in the Gulf. They always seemed to come fully prepared to embrace the stupid and give it a good quality hug. I thought even less of the SEALS when they started replacing SPECOPS detachments.
The high end marine units were the worst when it came to actually reaching an accommodation and professional outcome. I still have tremendous respect for the USMC and SPECWAR but in their early operations in the Middle East with us they showed their ass, a lot.
et tu Brutus?
Oh come on Travis. Have you ever tried to work with the FAST Marines? Stuck on stupid pretty much described their actions early on following their assignment from Diego Garcia to Bahrain after Khobar Towers. Myself and another Navy officer were making at least one and sometimes two calls a day to the Major or his JOs correcting stupid crap that the Marines came up with to wantonly harass us with. Who would find the only puddle in Bahrain and force the residents of the Mannai Plaza to walk through it (longways) in order to show their ID and get their bags searched? Who could be counted upon to pull their asinine terrorism drills reliably at 0200? Who could be counted on with concocting a solution to a terrorism incident that required 400 military personnel to muster in an open field totally surrounded by a Shia village? I could go on and on about that particular FAST company but I won’t.
Then let’s talk about the I-HAWK security platoon that, during a fairly pointless exercise, tried to insist that we drive our 5 ton trucks up a cliffside muddy track in Adak (Zeno Point actually) without lights and 100 foot dropoff. The truck contained the 8 watchstanders that were taking the midwatch on our surveillance system. They were absolutely convinced that we were giving away their position and we’d point to the top of the cliff where our system was operational with red aircraft warning lights and a high power surface search radar and go, position established buddy. As soon as we started radiating we showed up on the bad guys sensors and you don’t see us whining about it. Funny how this same sort of thing came up later operationally in Kuwait. The Army general touring our facility on Failaka asked why we weren’t making more extensive use of chamo netting and we said we aint got no more, plus we’re navy and our idea of chamo is painting stuff gray and air conditioning it. As a concession to the effort we did usually remember not to energize the aircraft warning lights but still, the radar.
I’ve done a lot of work over the years with the MPF, the OPP, the FIE and the FSSG. Good folks. Competent. Oddly, I was less impressed with 13 MEU (SOC) and the 1/5.
Unfortunately Curty, you missed the point.
But by continuing your diatribe about the Navy “unforking” what the Marines “forked up” you have reinforced what I have been saying on this post all along.
Thank you.
BTW, sir, war (and it’s training for) is a mistake ridden enterprise from the word “Go!”.
Always has been, always will be.
Does the USS Forrestal ring a bell?
Maybe that concept was lost in all your years with USN, MPF, OPP, FIE, and FSSG et al.
It’s called lessons learned.
It’s how we get better.
No military in the history of mankind is immune to this.
Why? Because the militaries in history and in the future are/will be manned by human “forking” beings.
We all could come on here and hang everyone else’s dirty laundry.
What for?…The mental masturbation that some forkhead on here referred to earlier?
Then in that case, sir, we’re ALL guilty.
Co*k.
Sorry Travis, mistook you for a Marine.
Going where Angels fear to tread and needless exposing my magnet ass to flak from all sides, let me make the observation that most USMC types I had occasion to work/come in contact with were (both officers & enlisted) either A+ types or F- types and nothing in between. The Army, by contrast, being a larger and, in toto, a less “elite” organization seemed to have plenty of bell-curve Ds, Cs, and Bs, but exceedingly few at the absolute top OR bottom–the onion-shape personnel composition as opposed to the USMC hour-glass configuration.
As for the Naaiiiaveee, I probably knew/met/worked/had contact with more Royal Navy types than USN until
this and other blogs, but self-preservation alone requires me to say all here simply ooze sheer brilliance.
On a serious, professional note, I will say I have gained a much greater appreciation for the complexity of simply making things “work” in even the normal, SOP routine-wise way at even the most basic levels in Naval peace-time ops–let alone complicated war-time mil oplans and multi-service and/or joint multi-service branch ops–the Navy is probably the most “complicated” service to design and build for, organize, train and operate of all…and seems to require a much higher level of professional expertise top to bottom, officer and enlisted, to
operate some very complex equipment and organizational structures. I guess my point is that a VERY MUCH GREATER NUMBER of highly trained personnel have direct responsibilities to operate some very complicated equipment in very complex and hazardous environments
than the other branches in order for everything to go right before combat even begins–even tho combat losses overall for the service as a whole are far less than for either the Army or Marines.
As for “Zoomie nation?” Well………….
(pulls out ear-plugs and hunkers down)
As a former Marine who loves the US Navy, I concur with your view.
I was never a “Navy hater” like so many of my USMC brothers.
I saw the big picture of the Navy/Marine Corps Team and embraced it all.
Some of my fondest memories were aboard ship going “somewhere” and aboard coming “home”.
The Gator Navy was always my home away from home.
A lot of this BS starts in boot camp and is continued in the FMF.
I saw it as light inter service rivalry, but some of the posts here show
a real resentment toward each other as I have pointed out above and below.
Sad, really.
Go Navy/Marine Corps Team!
Marines are good Light Infantry. They’re too light to use against a real Army and would have their clock cleaned if they tried.
They need Army armor, artillery, and Logistics to make a real fight . . . Can you say “Tiger Brigade?”
They have a useful air wing, as long as the other guy has no air force or significant AD assets.
As for the Guard, those were part time Soldiers at First Manassas; at San Juan Hill, in the Meuse-Argonne; on Omaha, Anzio, Salerno, and Sicily, Okinawa, New Guinea, the Phillipines and in Korea.
36,000 individual Guardsmen
went to Nam and 336 units served.
They went to Kosovo, Sinai, and
the Desert, and came back for seconds. They’re still there.
Top, I could not have said it better… well said and well done. Best
‘AIRBORNE!”
Wow snake eater, is this the ‘tiresomely futile exercise best described as mental masterbation and therefore devoutly to be avoided.” that you speak of in your comment above?
I reckon you and the good 1STSGT/AB are fortunate in that mental mastErbation results in no mess.
If it did your forked tongue would deliver cleanup like no other.
Best.
Hmmm your reply is a mirror image of Capt. Thomas Daly’s “Lessons from Ramadi” in tone, direction and emotion.
BTW, seems to me that a “Real Army” was shown the door in Mogadishu.
Ever learn the danger of throwing rocks while residing in a glass hooch 1stSgt?
[...] finds a good article about COIN ops, saying among other things the first step in success is showing up. [...]
Not sure where 1stsgt came up with that. It has never been true in any war we have fought yet, and was not true in Iraq either. The Iraqi divisions that the Marines went up against had plenty of arty, tanks etc. And unlike the First Gulf, they did indeed use it. As for the airwing, it is much more effective and flexible than a comparable level of air force support, and significantly less likely to kill friendly troops while supporting them. When naval aviators have gone up against air force types in exercises, they have routinely done better against them. Sounds like his organizational hubris is showing here.
He is correct about the levels of support, but when your unit gets in amongst the enemy, their arty, armor and air assets don’t really matter since they cannot be effectively employed. And if the Corps got more than 6 cents of each defense dollar, they might be able to have more support. But then, it is not always how much high tech crap you have, but how effectively you use it. And the wars of the future are moving towards infantry battles at the platoon and company level, so all that army heavy division type of thinking is not going to be very effective.
One more thing about logistics that I can directly attest to from First Gulf War experience. When the army came screaming into the theater before the war, they left their logistical support behind, and for some time, they received significant support from the Marine Corps, who brings everything with them ANY TIME they deploy anywhere. Guess he forgot about that or didn’t know about it in the first place.
Steve, things like Iraq are exceptions to what the Marines were built for. They are Naval Infantry meant for use in naval campaigns such as took place in 1942-45. As such, they normally do not have the logistical tail the Army does, simply because you can’t carry it with you. To deploy the Army takes a lot of air and sealift – quite a bit different than what a MAU carries with it.
I have serious doubts about the Navy routinely doing better than AF types in exercises. Both are suffering from the same political stupidity, and both have routinely had high quality training. Tactical doctrines might differ, but when it comes to the merge the news I get it’s hammer and tongs between well matched people.
It should be pointed out that in an exercise with the IAF over 10 years ago, the Navy was put to shame. The IAF backed off putting women in cockpits after that.
Your comment about the Marines providing logistical support in the first Gulf War is really irrelevant. Troops are more easily mobilized than logistics. It was easy to fly them there, but not so easy to fully deploy, which requires the logistical tail. The Army did what they were ordered, and so did the Marines. We’re all on the same team, so tooting your horn only makes the Naval Infantry look like primadonnas.
I wouldn’t sell short the need for those heavy divisions just yet. We heard that song and dance between WW2 and Korea. Then again between Korea and Vietnam. Just because there is an interim period where they aren’t needed, doesn’t mean they will never be needed again. Insurgencies are where you need to de-escalate to Platoon and patrol actions.
Probably setting myself up for being bushwacked by someone who knows better and was “there” but I think the IAF vs USN exercise you are referring to was against the TR’s CVW in ’99. I heard the kill ratio was $hit your pants scary in favor of the IAF, i.e. greater than 10 to 1. Supposedly this was because the Israelis were using the high off boresight capable Python 4 cued from a helmet mounted system while the Americans didn’t have either capability. (Guessing they were using AIM-9M’s then . . . Training and doctrine surely had some effect but the technology impact in this case was considered decisive) After the exercise development and introduction of the JHMCS and AIM-9X probably got bumped up in priority. A similar rumor I heard was that more recently USN Super Hornets with AIM-9X and JHMCS engaged in exercises with RAF Typhoons sans such capability and had similar kill ratios in their favor. Again, don’t know these as facts, but interesting possibilities nonetheless.
“Things like Iraq are the exceptions to what the Marines were built for.”
Maybe true in the early days of the USMC, but we have evolved to deploy and sustain
in not only things like Iraq, Af, Vietnam but did so in WWII and WWI outside of beach landings.
The modern USMC is not your grand daddy’s amphibious landing force anymore.
The invasion of Iraq, the 6+ yrs of ops there as well as the current ops in Af are only the latest chapter of a USMC that can take and sustain the fight without a beach anywhere in sight.
No the USMC is not as big as the USA, never was, never wants to be, for the precise reason Steve outlines above.
Naval Infantry? Sure. But much more is is brought to the fight than the connotation of “Naval Infantry”
“…logistical support in the first Gulf War is really irrelevant.”
The words ‘logistical’ and ‘support’ in this sentence are redundant.
Steve’s comment is not irrelevant -simply a fact- I was there and saw the same thing. (Brits did it too.)
Marine MPS was there (Al Jubail) first logistically and performed pretty much as planned.
USA and UKA were regular customers of our logistics and I was damn happy to help out our brothers in need.
Never a disparaging word between any of us-it was what it was-a mission that needed done.
The USA with it’s sheer size would be hard pressed to show up with all their junk right off the bat just as the USMC would if it were that big too.
It’s just the difference between the Army and Marine way.
Again- not right or wrong- just different.
They have a useful air wing, as long as the other guy has no air force or significant AD assets.
I don’t really think you want to compare the number of dedicated jammers the USAF has to the number that the USMC has.
Just like you don’t want to compare the number of Abrams tanks in the 2nd, 10th, 25th, 82nd or 101st divisions to the Marines 1st or 2nd divisions.
Ummm Scott,
2ID is kind of a paper tiger. 10th is known as a “mountain division”, 82nd and 101st are airborne. 25th always struck me as a curiosity, no offense to the 25th intended.
What about 1ID, 1 or 2 AD, 3ID, 4ID? I’m not even sure within an order of magnitude what the National Guard Divisions have for TOA anymore.
Remember back in ODS when the USMC decided it was time to replace their M60s with M1s? It’s a good thing the Army had some laying around idle for Marine use…
That is just my point — 1/2 of the active Army divisions don’t even compare to the combat power of the supposed weak Marine 1st and 2nd divisions. You remember, the ones that would get their “clocks cleaned”? If they would, what would happen to those five Army division that lack any armor?
OBTW — there isn’t a 2AD anymore. By the second week of September, Marine PREPO armor was vastly superior to the 82nd’s Sheridans — even those antiquated M60s (with applique armor). Pick and choose your time frame, and anyone is on top. By November, the tide turned, once the Army could get deployed.
Comparisons to forces on the eve of DS/DS, to forces today, are temporally, like comparisons between the Army at VE day, to the early days of Vietnam. Pretty irrelevant.
As I understand it, General Abrams took over as Army COS after the Vietnam War and concluded that the US Army would never again find itself shoved into an unpopular war that did not have the full support of the majority of the citizenry. He put what Logistics and Transportation, etc outfits as survived the post Vietnam drawdown into the Reserve and left it there. Overseas Army formations contracted for base and logistic support functions. The only way to employ the US Army in an expeditionary role was by calling up the Reserve and/or by spending billions of $ to contract support services from KBR et al.
The USMC and USN adopted a similar posture but it took them much longer to get around to implementing it. Look at how many PhibCB battalions there are and how many NCR and NMCB and how many of them are in the Reserve. The Marines like to brag about how every Marine is a riflemen and that is true if you ignore the 9 in 10 who aren’t.
Ratios, Ratios, Ratios.
All branches have it. All deal with it. As directed by POTUS.
For clarification:
This focus on the infantry is matched with the doctrine that “Every Marine is a rifleman,” a focus of Commandant Alfred M. Gray, Jr., emphasizing the infantry combat abilities of every Marine. All enlisted Marines, regardless of military specialization, receive training as a rifleman; all officers receive training as infantry platoon commanders. Marines have demonstrated the value of this culture many times throughout history. For example, at Wake Island, when all of the Marine aircraft were shot down, pilots continued the fight as ground officers, leading supply clerks and cooks in a final defensive effort. As a result, a large degree of initiative and autonomy is expected of junior Marines, particularly the NCOs (corporals and sergeants), as compared with many other military organizations. The Marine Corps emphasizes authority and responsibility downward to a greater degree than the other military services. Flexibility of execution is implemented via an emphasis on “commander’s intent” as a guiding principle for carrying out orders; specifying the end state but leaving open the method of execution.
The amphibious assault techniques developed for World War II evolved, with the addition of air assault and maneuver warfare doctrine, into the current “Operational Maneuver from the Sea” doctrine of power projection from the seas. The Marines are credited with the development of helicopter insertion doctrine and were the earliest in the American military to widely adopt maneuver-warfare principles which emphasize low-level initiative and flexible execution.
Ignorance is biss, right Curty?
Obviously Curtsey here is comic book hero.
No doubt indoctrinated at a Naval Base that no longer exiss.
Convenient for Curtsey but not for the 1000′s of those that actually commisioned.
And was sent to frontlines for duty.
Snake eater, care to comment?
realizing the plural of anecdote is not data but I know who came out on top when we went to Red Flag in ’85.
I still can’t believe that Orange Force AF AWACS let us talk him into dumping his whole Link 11 picture into ours. Never. Knew. What hit them.
I will give it one more try and respond to a few of the comments above, then let it go, as no one is going to change their opinions obviously.
Quartermaster, the logistics statement was in response to an earlier comment that the Corps aint got the logistical capabilities of the Army. Maybe not but we managed to support both army units as well as ourselves in first gulf, so obviously our logistics worked just fine and for units much larger than ourselves. So yes, it is indeed perfectly relevant. The army screwed the pooch by not establishing their logistical support and just slamming in troops that did nothing but look for supplies for several months before the war started. As I said, the Corps took EVERYTHING it needed with it and did more than fine on the logistical front. As regards the doubts about naval aviation in general, I can definitely say they do all manner of ground support better than the air force without killing nearly as many friendly forces. I was in units that would not call in tac air if it was air force because they didn’t trust them at all.
One thing I am seeing here is that the institutional biases are certainly not all on the part of Marines.
“One thing I am seeing here is that the institutional biases are certainly not all on the part of Marines.”
Ironic isn’t it?
All it takes is for someone to highlight Marine hubris and everyone piles on like no other branch does it too.
Glass houses anyone?
Much like the BS between democrats and republicans… never ending I suppose.
I remember a story that ran in the Navy Times back in the early 80′s.
It showed a cuffed Sailor in white crackerjacks coming out of a court martial.
The headline read- “Ex Marine convicted of murdering wife”
While the Sailor was prior service Marine, he was in the Navy at the time of the offense-just as the picture in the story reflected.
I guess a picture IS worth a 1000 words…
Due to host “malfunction” or Curtis pidgeonholeing..
I submit the following…
This is what Curtsey posted:
“Sorry Travis, mistook you for a Marine.”
(BTW I was in for 12 “Forking years”)
No apology needed, your comments explain your position cleary.
Funny, that you don’t explain your experience in the US Navy.(filtered of course)
Just your disdain of Marines fully.
Might your concern about this matter define what as known as “Projection” wherein you throw hate where you actually admire but cannot aspire?
Contesting the Battle Space, Cont’d.
As an AF type with an Army Dad I served in I-Corps in DaNang where I saw it all–Navy Army Marines and AF and got at least a flavor for the pluses and minuses of the different doctrinal approaches the services take and their various service-specific
manning/logistical limitations etc. The spirited discussion here once again reminds me of the scholar Graham T. Allison’s (He of his seminal work of the Cuban Missile Crisis) point that “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” LOL. You’ve ALL got good, valid points to make, pro AND con. (Note to QM on Army’s superior logistical tail. I read years later of about an action up near the DMZ that I flew cas msns in support of in which an Army arty unit was diverted to help out the hard-pressed Marines. They arrived ahead of their ammo train and when , in the process of manning the Marine’s positions the Army Co asked his USMC counterpart how many rounds they had/ gun tube to last the night. “Fifty” was the reply. “Hell” the Army guy wrote, “We were used to shooting off that many just to sight in the tube before we bedded down for the night!”
LOL!!
Exactly Virgil.
No service is the know all, end all that so many profess theirs to be.
Once again you shown have the light.
thank you.
(Opens door, hears an echoing empty sound…) Hey, Mark, you enjoy being in a room by yourself and talking to no one? That conversation sounding good to you?
(Closes door, locks it, walks away whistling…)
Byron, Thankfully the mental masterbation has indeed subsided. Best
The enjoyment is all yours.Looks away MofO. Division cocksucking anyone?
Much like snake eaters instabilty
Byron, Thankfully the mental masterbation has indeed subsided. Best.
Snake Eater rules….