Obama "Not Commited" To ABM site in Europe.

[Guardsman Bass]

Weird, possibly naive question - wouldn't it be better to, you know, come up with a new defensive alliance that doesn't involve Russia and the US playing "protect/crush the missile sponge in Europe"? It's not like the Russians are some foreign Asian horde sitting on the outskirts of Europe; traditionally, they were one of the Great Powers floating around in the power politics of the area, particularly after Peter the Great and the like. If you could come up with some guarantee so that the Eastern Europeans aren't afraid that the Russians are going to overly meddle in their politics, perhaps you could work out a better defensive agreement. It's not like the Soviet Union; the Russians aren't going to come flooding into Europe in the name of mafia-like authoritarian state-subordinated corporacy.

[Count Chocula]

Stas Bush wrote:

The idea isn't to "protect" Europe, but to sacrifice Europe for the maximum amount of Russian strategic weapons expended on it's destruction

I'm curious. Do you have any facts to back up that assertion, or is that a stalking horse you've trotted out for the sake of argument? After all, most of the offensive weapons the US has are in the States, not Europe. I'm not a War College graduate, but I'd imagine that Omaha has a higher target priority for Russia than Paris or Amsterdam. I'm not buying your argument.

[K. A. Pital]

NATO command and control points, OTH warning and ABM radars, ICBM/MRBM silo and mobile sites, bomber airfields, harbors and Army quarters are NOT targets in a NATO-Russia/USSR war?

Seriously, who is retarded? Europe is closer to Russia than the US, most of it's nations are in NATO: it's offensive weaponry actually can reach Russia within a very small timeframe, meaning bombers in Europe, armies of Europe and radars in Europe all have to be destroyed in the course of a nuclear war. Not to mention US troops and US bombers at European airfields, which would certainly be there if tensios rise high to the point of nuclear war imminent.

The more weaponry you put into Europe, the more nukes would be thrown on Europe to destroy it.

Brussels, where NATO control facilities are, would turn into The Glow almost instantly, and the Polish ABM radar site would be on the very first "wipe those warning systems out" list.

[Guardsman Bass]

Yeah, but wouldn't you nuke Europe anyways even if NATO had vanished after the Cold War in the event of a Full Nuclear War, so they don't conquer what remains of Russia after such a battle?

[K. A. Pital]

If Europe was a truly independent party without a mutual defence treaty with the United States, and boosted a huge nuclear arsenal of it's own, aimed at any possible adversary, why would we risk goign to war with it if we are in war with the USA? It would just make so far neutral European nukes pour on Russia after the US attack and devastate us even more - we woudl be fighting two nuclear enemies while each (US and Europe) would be only fighting one.

If Europe is a US military defense platform and auxillary as it is now, of course we would nuke it.

[Guardsman Bass]

If Europe was a truly independent party without a mutual defence treaty with the United States, and boosted a huge nuclear arsenal of it's own, aimed at any possible adversary, why would we risk goign to war with it if we are in war with the USA? It would just make so far neutral European nukes pour on Russia after the US attack and devastate us even more - we woudl be fighting two nuclear enemies while each (US and Europe) would be only fighting one.

If Europe is a US military defense platform and auxillary as it is now, of course we would nuke it.

You think so? I'd think you guys would be more wary of having an intact, wealthy superstate sitting next door to you after a nuclear exchange.

Of course, that begs the question - if Europe was its own separate power with nukes, is there an realistically imaginable scenario where Russia as it currently is gets into a nuclear exchange with the US? It's not like we're going to invade Siberia over the Bering Strait.

[K. A. Pital]

Of course, that begs the question - if Europe was its own separate power with nukes, is there an realistically imaginable scenario where Russia as it currently is gets into a nuclear exchange with the US? It's not like we're going to invade Siberia over the Bering Strait.

You could get riled up over proxy wars in the Caucasus, post-Soviet republics, Latin America or South-East Asia. Those are still possible points for conflict of interests even if we consider Western Europe molding into a nation equally unwilling to bend to either will and pursuing it's own policy with a large Army and nuclear arsenal.

I'd think you guys would be more wary of having an intact, wealthy superstate sitting next door to you after a nuclear exchange.

We would, but the goal of the USSR (and Russia) was always more of a long-term survival after a nuclear war, not "assured destruction of the enemy" which Sheppard likes so much. Reducing the casualties in your own population is possible by making civil defense drills universal and obligatory, and saturating cities with thousands of shelters, one for each block of houses. Which is what we did, and it also cost quite a lot in monetary terms; the US did nothing comparable for it's own population.

Provoking a neutral party which is not in a state of war with you, and may even give funds to assist post-war reconstruction, into nuking you after an already devastating war seems nothing but stupid.

[Guardsman Bass]

You could get riled up over proxy wars in the Caucasus, post-Soviet republics, Latin America or South-East Asia. Those are still possible points for conflict of interests even if we consider Western Europe molding into a nation equally unwilling to bend to either will and pursuing it's own policy with a large Army and nuclear arsenal.

You'd have to actually put bases in Latin America for that to happen. As for South-East Asia, what can you realistically do? There's already a number of big dogs in that area, like China, in addition to the US.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

South East Asia is much the same as what Europe is to Russia, as SEA is to India or China. Historically speaking, the area is something of an intersection between China and Indian trade. However, because India and China for the most part were more occupied with internal problems for the last few centuries, the Western powers stepped in. Now however, both China and India jostle for influence, though the Indians are failing hard because of their inept bureacracy, similar to the Japanese.

[Axis Kast]

As the attacker, I have to assume that, or risk not taking out the target.

You've abstracted to a full nuclear exchange in which an active ABM is facing off with the Russian arsenal. I'm sympathetic to building one, but that isn't what's happening, specifically, in Poland and the Czech Republic.

It's been pointed out that the existing ABM facilities are (1) small-scale; (2) out-of-place to be able to intercept Russian missiles headed toward the U.S.; (3) incapable of being quietly bolstered with large new missile fields.

As of this point, Russia has considerable overkill against U.S. targets.

You misunderstand. Missiles must be very well secured and coordinated with national command authorities because accidental launches (and failures to launch in the event of exchanges) are completely unacceptable. The birds CAN NEVER FLY unless they ABSOLUTELY MUST. Contrariwise, an KE ABM launch at worst means you maybe shotdown someone's satellite or something, and demonstrated your real-world ABM performance to enemies. You didn't accidentally cause a nuclear war, so the security against false positives which is so extensive with ballistic missiles does not need to exist with KE ABM.

I don't misunderstand at all. Both nuclear weapons and kinetic-kill interceptors have different costs because each gives a different outcome. At this point in time, Russia can still build "just one more" nuclear warhead more cheaply than the U.S. can build "just one more" interceptor.

Why? If the cost/benefit ratio of all likely Vietnam/Iraq scenarios is as bad as the original articles, why have the very costly temptation to indulge them available at all?

Who said that the cost/benefit scenario for large-scale invasion/occupation is always that bad?

The Afghan scenario. If a real Iraq was on the verge of deploying weapons-of-mass-destruction to terrorists for deployment against the United States, we would completely justified in destroying their industrial and military infrastructure. And deterrence works against would-be supposed Iraq's too. We'll nuclear-ly immolate a state which deploys weapons of mass destruction against the United States, conventionally or by proxy.

Afghanistan was a unique case in which we faced an enemy with virtually no conventional military capabilities. Even as such, we are still at pains to send more troops.

Destroying industrial and military infrastructure only gets one so far: it didn't cripple rebels in Iraq, and it didn't do nearly as much damage to the Serbs as once suspected. Stand-off bombardment was also proven ineffective in North Vietnam. In the period prior to Desert Storm, we aggressively bombed a long list of targets that we suspected were storage sites for WMD. Subsequent on-the-ground inspection revealed that our intelligence had missed quite a few caches.

Deterrence only works if the enemy believes he will suffer retaliation. Some nations (Pakistan comes right to mind) are not thought to have viable security measures for their nuclear arsenals. Despite the best of "rational" intentions, it is possible that those bombs could fall into the hands of people with vastly different outlooks and threat perceptions.

The "crazy rogue state might maybe develop WMDs without anyone noticing and give them away to terrorists regardless of the consequences" is a theoretical proposition which is hardly substantiated in reality. Furthermore, maintaining an expeditionary "heavy" force of the type needed to carry out "Desert Storm" and OIF esque operations just in case, just maybe, that the above contingency happens, is stupid. Why can't deterrence work against the same states?

Deterrence didn't keep Saddam out of Kuwait. In fact, Kenneth Pollack has proven that he expected to engage, and then defeat, the United States in battle.

Nuclear deterrence is not suitable for every contingency. Somalia proved that "light troops" with very good training cannot operate in certain environments and hope to win.

It's also been effectively proven by others that not possessing the tools to "do it properly" was no backstop on the Eisenhower administration. Your theory is simply wrong.

So opportunity cost has NO RELEVENCE to any discussion? We must build-up an armed force of unlimited cost to all possible threat profiles of any kind?

This is a complete red herring. I never said that we must ignore the opportunity costs of military preparedness, much less that we should engage in perpetual expansion of our armed might. I have argued for a large, robust military with an emphasis on "heavy" -- i.e., mechanized -- forces. Heck, I think it's shameful that our airborne and light divisions make do without the combat support once provided by air-deployable armor.

You have offered not a shred of evidence that we will need to launch 1991 conflicts (why couldn't we have simply armed KSA, Iran, etc. and played them off each other; we didn't intervene in Iraq-Iran with heavy ground forces because we needed to maintain the balance of power that bad).

The evidence that we may need to launch Desert Storm-style conflicts again is... Desert Storm. Your best defense is, "You don't know what history will bring." You merely assert that you are sure we will not have to fight such wars again. That's astrology, not argument.

In 1991, Saddam had proven that he had the capacity to crush domestic insurgents. Hostilities with Iran explain the invasion of Kuwait in the first instance. How can you be so sure the mullahs would have taken our guns and played brinkmanship on Kuwait? How can you be sure that Saddam would have been deterred, when Iran had already packed up a few years before?

Or that future Iraqs and Vietnams are reasonable possibilities and would work out better than last time.

Prove that future Iraqs and Vietnams aren't reasonable possibilities. History is my witness. Where are yours?

You also need to prove that such wars will always be mishandled, and that they are impossible when the military is not optimized for a certain type of combat. That's your argument. First, that we can solve political problems by hamstringing our military; second, that presidents will not act when they don't have the best tool for the job. But that's exactly what Bush did, even as Rumsfeld admitted that the current military had shortcomings.

I feel like this is the kind of reasoning a conservative probably used while arguing to bankrupt the British Empire because that extra battleship squadron will really, honestly make the difference in the trend of history, screw the finances.

The British became involved in an arms race with multiple opponents.

I am simply arguing for a certain configuration of military power, not an indefinite series of expenditures, unregulated by common sense or comparison with social requirements. It is more expensive than your program, but not necessarily reckless. If you are wrong -- and precedent suggests that you are -- the U.S. will eventually have to "round out" its forces anyway.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You misunderstand. Missiles must be very well secured and coordinated with national command authorities because accidental launches (and failures to launch in the event of exchanges) are completely unacceptable. The birds CAN NEVER FLY unless they ABSOLUTELY MUST. Contrariwise, an KE ABM launch at worst means you maybe shotdown someone's satellite or something, and demonstrated your real-world ABM performance to enemies. You didn't accidentally cause a nuclear war, so the security against false positives which is so extensive with ballistic missiles does not need to exist with KE ABM.

I don't misunderstand at all. Both nuclear weapons and kinetic-kill interceptors have different costs because each gives a different outcome. At this point in time, Russia can still build "just one more" nuclear warhead more cheaply than the U.S. can build "just one more" interceptor.

The per-unit costs of additional ballistic missiles balloon faster than the number of KE ABMs for the reasons just given. The ABM infrastructure is necessarily. That's why ballistic missiles were deceptively costly in comparison to bombers; bombers do not require as sophisticated C3I structure because you can recall them at will

Why? If the cost/benefit ratio of all likely Vietnam/Iraq scenarios is as bad as the original articles, why have the very costly temptation to indulge them available at all?

Who said that the cost/benefit scenario for large-scale invasion/occupation is always that bad?

Why is it the military is the ONE line-item where people presume THEY do not have to show the investment is worth the cost? You prove to me that its worth it to keep a heavy expeditionary army on the shelf or we can pull that money and put it into something else. Your argument is it is absolutely necessary and cannot be cut. Justify it, Kast.

The Afghan scenario. If a real Iraq was on the verge of deploying weapons-of-mass-destruction to terrorists for deployment against the United States, we would completely justified in destroying their industrial and military infrastructure. And deterrence works against would-be supposed Iraq's too. We'll nuclear-ly immolate a state which deploys weapons of mass destruction against the United States, conventionally or by proxy.

Afghanistan was a unique case in which we faced an enemy with virtually no conventional military capabilities. Even as such, we are still at pains to send more troops.

Because of Iraq which you stupidly defend to this day. I cannot tell you how joyous it makes me that just empirically-challenged graduates are what we have to look forward to coming out of Georgetown, and we apparently learned nothing from this foreign adventure other than apparently, have someone other than Bush do it. If it was an objectively good idea, we would have done it in 1991.

Destroying industrial and military infrastructure only gets one so far: it didn't cripple rebels in Iraq,

So what? Rebels in Iraq are not attacking the United States.

and it didn't do nearly as much damage to the Serbs as once suspected.

The Serbs are not a direct threat to the United States. How come foriegn policy interventionism is the thing we decide to pour treasure in at the expense of our national debt and financial security, and economic stability, security, social improvements, etc. all fail that test? Everything you types say drip with the pretense that your pet issue must see everything else cut for it. If we are desperate to balance the budget and fix an energy crisis, I do not give a shit about the Serbs.

Stand-off bombardment was also proven ineffective in North Vietnam.

Because that's an unwinnable war. What is your threshold for necessarily military spending? We could win any confrontation with anyone right off the bat on the planet?

In the period prior to Desert Storm, we aggressively bombed a long list of targets that we suspected were storage sites for WMD. Subsequent on-the-ground inspection revealed that our intelligence had missed quite a few caches.

My point was WMD proxy use will be met with nuclear bombardment, not conventional ones.

Deterrence only works if the enemy believes he will suffer retaliation. Some nations (Pakistan comes right to mind) are not thought to have viable security measures for their nuclear arsenals. Despite the best of "rational" intentions, it is possible that those bombs could fall into the hands of people with vastly different outlooks and threat perceptions.

Maybe maybe maybe maybe. We're broke now now now now now. And they cannot truly believe if they're smart enough to control a nation that we will not destroy them with nuclear weapons (to say nothing of India probably doing it just to be safe if they feel sincerely and comprehensively irrational operators are now in control of Pakistan).

Deterrence didn't keep Saddam out of Kuwait. In fact, Kenneth Pollack has proven that he expected to engage, and then defeat, the United States in battle.

And we could not have used allies and proxy war to our advantage? We had to have 500,000 troops on the ground in order to secure our interests?

Nuclear deterrence is not suitable for every contingency. Somalia proved that "light troops" with very good training cannot operate in certain environments and hope to win.

Why do we need to be able to "win" Somalias in our current economic situation? Why is it the completely invulnerable spending item?

This is a complete red herring. I never said that we must ignore the opportunity costs of military preparedness, much less that we should engage in perpetual expansion of our armed might. I have argued for a large, robust military with an emphasis on "heavy" -- i.e., mechanized -- forces. Heck, I think it's shameful that our airborne and light divisions make do without the combat support once provided by air-deployable armor.

Then what are you going to cut to provide that?

The evidence that we may need to launch Desert Storm-style conflicts again is... Desert Storm. Your best defense is, "You don't know what history will bring." You merely assert that you are sure we will not have to fight such wars again. That's astrology, not argument.

I question the need for American to be omnipresent and omnipotent. Some how other states get along. I don't see why we should be the policeman of the world. Our human development blows and the one thing we can cling to for No. 1 is the size of the military budget. Besides, pouring cash will just get it spent on retarded bullshit like the Future Crap Spreader.

Or that future Iraqs and Vietnams are reasonable possibilities and would work out better than last time.

Prove that future Iraqs and Vietnams aren't reasonable possibilities. History is my witness. Where are yours?

I know they could happen. I'm questioning policies that encourage and suggest we can win them, when we've consistently lost and they've not been worth the investment. I'm sure your generation of Georgetown brain trusts who think poli sci is actually a "science" will conjure up some new theory and convince someone if only the last couple generations had known what you do, then Iraq and Vietnam would've been great ideas. But they weren't, and it will be a bad idea.

You also need to prove that such wars will always be mishandled, and that they are impossible when the military is not optimized for a certain type of combat. That's your argument. First, that we can solve political problems by hamstringing our military; second, that presidents will not act when they don't have the best tool for the job. But that's exactly what Bush did, even as Rumsfeld admitted that the current military had shortcomings.

I am looking for a withdrawal from interventionism, not just reducing the military budget.

I am simply arguing for a certain configuration of military power, not an indefinite series of expenditures, unregulated by common sense or comparison with social requirements. It is more expensive than your program, but not necessarily reckless. If you are wrong -- and precedent suggests that you are -- the U.S. will eventually have to "round out" its forces anyway.

And what about finding the money. What would you cut? Personally, I'd slash the USMC, which has no purpose except to throw parties celebrating WW2. But we need a robust strategic force and a ground force according to you, how do we not keep growing costs while you want both to be larger and more extensive.

[Axis Kast]

The per-unit costs of additional ballistic missiles balloon faster than the number of KE ABMs for the reasons just given. The ABM infrastructure is necessarily. That's why ballistic missiles were deceptively costly in comparison to bombers; bombers do not require as sophisticated C3I structure because you can recall them at will.

Reciting the cost of C3I to oversee an ICBM field is not an effective rejection of the similar high cost of ABM defenses, which require more specific electronic tracking data during flight, and demand much greater accuracy by several orders of magnitude.

Then there's the point that, if the matter becomes sufficiently destabilizing, we may opt to sign a treaty arrangement with the Russians that limits deployment of ABM, thus satisfying their security fears. That isn't admission that Russia could join an arms race, however -- the fact is, they couldn't, and we have every reason to be as hard-headed about the pursuit of ABM as the Russians intend to be in opposing it to throw a wrench in our plans.

And what about finding the money. What would you cut? Personally, I'd slash the USMC, which has no purpose except to throw parties celebrating WW2. But we need a robust strategic force and a ground force according to you, how do we not keep growing costs while you want both to be larger and more extensive.

Costs will be higher than if we adopt a strategy that depends only on "light" assets. The gain is in being able to deter or respond to a wider variety of threat scenarios more credibly.

If I found myself in the positing of having to make cuts, I'd search for pork-barrel targets outside the defense budget, or scale back on the speed of certain programs.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Costs will be higher than if we adopt a strategy that depends only on "light" assets. The gain is in being able to deter or respond to a wider variety of threat scenarios more credibly.

Define "light". As it is, the FCS is ridden with cost overruns and such. It is not cheap to be light because it means you need lots of miniaturisation and engineering tricks and lots of compromises to get it "light". Not least, you run into inflexibility. As it is, the US Army has resorted to even upgrading its M1 MBTs just so they can provide vital fire support and protection.

If I found myself in the positing of having to make cuts, I'd search for pork-barrel targets outside the defense budget, or scale back on the speed of certain programs.

Of that you will find lots, and lots .. and lots. The current ABM program itself is a hallmark for a lot of things that has gone wrong with military procurement.

[Axis Kast]

Define "light". As it is, the FCS is ridden with cost overruns and such. It is not cheap to be light because it means you need lots of miniaturisation and engineering tricks and lots of compromises to get it "light". Not least, you run into inflexibility. As it is, the US Army has resorted to even upgrading its M1 MBTs just so they can provide vital fire support and protection.

Why are you asking me?

Of that you will find lots, and lots .. and lots. The current ABM program itself is a hallmark for a lot of things that has gone wrong with military procurement.

Indeed.

[Guardsman Bass]

Personally, I'd keep the marines, and shrink the size of the army. You'll need those marines if you ever get into a Korea-like situation where not intervening would result in much worse outcomes, and you don't have any land-bases or seaports under your control to disembark your ground forces from. You might even want to expand the Marines, and broaden their mission into overall "shock trooper" territory.

I question the need for American to be omnipresent and omnipotent. Some how other states get along. I don't see why we should be the policeman of the world.

Then you can look forward to the return of "Great Power" style politics in the international realm, but this time with nuclear weapons and cyber-warfare.

Moreover, many of these states "somehow get along" because they can fall back on the assurance that the US ultimately won't let something go down, and we have the best military to prove it. If that goes away, you can look forward to a re-armament in Europe (with effects on the "human development" you pointed out), as well as in the Middle East and East Asia, with effects on trade and things like refugee flows.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Personally, I'd keep the marines, and shrink the size of the army. You'll need those marines if you ever get into a Korea-like situation where not intervening would result in much worse outcomes, and you don't have any land-bases or seaports under your control to disembark your ground forces from. You might even want to expand the Marines, and broaden their mission into overall "shock trooper" territory.

The Army did amphibious and better in WW2. The USMC is a redundant appendage.

[thejester]

Personally, I'd keep the marines, and shrink the size of the army. You'll need those marines if you ever get into a Korea-like situation where not intervening would result in much worse outcomes, and you don't have any land-bases or seaports under your control to disembark your ground forces from. You might even want to expand the Marines, and broaden their mission into overall "shock trooper" territory.

The Army did amphibious and better in WW2. The USMC is a redundant appendage.

Even ignoring the highly debatable nature of that assertion...it was before they were a professional force. Unless you created the amphibious equivalent of the 82nd the USMC does clearly bring unique capability to the table - and if you did just make it a separate capability you wouldn't end up saving much money.

[Commander 598]

The next 'conventional conflict' waged between superpowers will be fought with nuclear weapons anyway...

I got $10 that says otherwise. I like to think that major world leaders aren't retarded enough to effectively commit global suicide without even much in the way of ideological and cultural differences anymore. I don't really get why some people automatically think that if US/NATO and Russia start shooting at each other that nukes are going to be on the table, especially considering that the closest thing to a NATO/Russia war would probably be a minor conflict over a nation named Nowhereistan.

If the US had gone in guns blazing in Georgia, no nukes would have been fired, the conflict would've probably been called by now, one of the two sides would be bitter, and approximately half the internet would be eating crow over technical details...oh and "some people" in "some defense companies" in one of the two sides would likely be out of a job, just like "some people" involved in budgetary matters.

[Guardsman Bass]

That depends. There would be a temptation to start bombing (not nuclear; conventional) targets in Russia proper for the US if they really went into the conflict with guns blazing.

[K. A. Pital]

Escalation from large conventional war to nuclear war was computed to take three days in the 1970s. It doesn't change much. The USSR didn't want to nuke-apocalypse the world either.

And ideological hostility? Are you saying that confrontation of socialism and capitalism is more likely a cause of war than a confrontation of nationalism vs. nationalism? Unlikely statement... And US and Russian nationalism are prevalent today.

[Medic]

Personally, I'd keep the marines, and shrink the size of the army. You'll need those marines if you ever get into a Korea-like situation where not intervening would result in much worse outcomes, and you don't have any land-bases or seaports under your control to disembark your ground forces from. You might even want to expand the Marines, and broaden their mission into overall "shock trooper" territory.

The Army did amphibious and better in WW2. The USMC is a redundant appendage.

Even ignoring the highly debatable nature of that assertion...it was before they were a professional force. Unless you created the amphibious equivalent of the 82nd the USMC does clearly bring unique capability to the table - and if you did just make it a separate capability you wouldn't end up saving much money.

The Marine Corps specializing in ONLY amphibious operations means you get an entire branch, with a 4-star at the top, to vie for funding which goes ONLY towards that. It is redundant. Furthermore, if you roll USMC capabilities into the Army, you can realign and close even more bases, and bring extant Marines under Army basing and control. That's LESS overhead; it's just a slightly bigger Army.

A few "rude" questions for you to consider, in a conversation between our very own Shep and another person I will keep anonymous since I've not asked their permission to repeat these views:

1.) What is the requirement for the EFV? We're not assaulting over sunken coral reefs anymore, and we now have landing craft which can land on like 75% of the world's beaches or more. So why do we need a modernized LVT? Wouldn't it be cheaper to have a Marine Upgrade Program enabling Bradleys to wade ashore from landing craft?

Two reasons skimmer and me came up for why that question was never asked by the Corps was:

1.) The ships have those welldecks, and chopper slots are limited
and
2.) Historical inertia -- the Corps' is always trying to relive it's glory moments in WWII.


Another really uncomfortable question we asked was: "If the US Marine Corps is no longer centered around classical over the beach amphibious warfare, but on over the horizon expeditionary warfare utilizing aero-landed and supplied forces via V-22, etc; then what is the point of the US Marine Corps, when putting a few brigades from the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) onto a US Army Seabasing ship would do the job of moving people over the coastline just as well?" // none at all. Okay that's not fair. The differences are: barrel length of their front-line rifles / carbines: Army 14.5" M4's and USMC 20" M16A4, uniform colors and accouterments

The third uncomfortable question was:

Is there any advantage that we gain from having Marines floating around doing nothing in very expensive to maintain assault ships? They can only handle very light threat environments, which begs the question:

If rapid deployment to light threat environments is required; wouldn't it be cheaper and faster to airdrop a brigade of 82nd Airborne in? If they can't handle the threat, it's not very likely a BLF of Marines would be able to, either.

Another thing to consider: having a USMC just means the Army is missing opportunity after opportunity to get interservice experience with the US Navy, because obviously USMC has a "lock" on that. A Marine Corps, while not entirely superfluous in our current DoD, in the context of cutting fat from a DoD so it could capitalize on strategic strength and not conventional strength of arms as I understand what we are talking about, is not parsimonious, either. Not with an Army capable of such operations extant side-by-side. According to Shep the Army has the ships; here's the doctrine, btw.

[Guardsman Bass]

Well, there's that. I just figured it would be politically impossible to either chop the Marine Corps or dump it under army control, so I thought it might be better to broaden its mission into more of a "shock trooper/seize the landing points/sea ports/urban areas" type of force.

One other question - how would the manpower be handled in such a reduced force? Someone raised a point in an earlier thread that it would be more difficult to make good use of conscripts in a modern force, since you have to train people to use all of the equipment and so forth. Do reservists have that problem?

[thejester]

The Marine Corps specializing in ONLY amphibious operations means you get an entire branch, with a 4-star at the top, to vie for funding which goes ONLY towards that. It is redundant. Furthermore, if you roll USMC capabilities into the Army, you can realign and close even more bases, and bring extant Marines under Army basing and control. That's LESS overhead; it's just a slightly bigger Army.

But you could make that argument about any branch of any service you wanted to. Why let any aviation assets exist outside the Air Force, for example?

The basic argument - or reason it hasn't worked in real life, particularly with the Air Force example - is that if you push an institution centered around a capability into another service the capability will die. I think the Marine/Army thing is cute, and an argument could easily be made that in an ideal world Marines would simply be the amphibious equivalent to the Airborne, but that ideal world doesn't exist. The other argument being a somewhat harder to define one; by having a different institution you have different ideas, an example being the differences in approach between the US Army and USMC in Vietnam.

Finally...how much money would you save? How many bases could you actually close? I understand you'd clip some of the top ranking stuff, but the units and their infrastructure would presumably stay. Equally the Army keeps most of its major formations in separate bases. In the end I don't think you'd save that much money, because the whole premise of IP's initial comment was that USMC as a whole would get the arse.

A few "rude" questions for you to consider, in a conversation between our very own Shep and another person I will keep anonymous since I've not asked their permission to repeat these views:

Those questions display a pretty abysmal understanding of Marine doctrine and US force structure, I would have thought.

1. Isn't the whole point of modern Marine doctrine that the amphibious group stands back 'over the horizon' in order to greatly minimize the danger to it from SSMs, air strikes, mines, SSKs etc? The reason the EFV exists is so that Marines can have armour coming onto the beach from those ships over the horizon.

2. That's not the case as far as I know; the Marines still believe in going over the beach via the EFVs and LCAC, with all the armour that brings along. They also have organic fixed-wing support, which the 101st would not, but I suppose that could be changed.

TBH I think that says more about the 101st though. Why does it exist again? Anyone can get in and out of a helicopter, as was demonstrated in Vietnam.

3. Again...those 'very expensive assault ships' bring heavy armor and heavy weaponry to the conflict, something that The 82nd simply cannot do. And again, you could easily turn the same logic on the Army...the 82nd hasn't made a combat jump since 1944, and the only two combat jumps by the US Army as a whole have been pre-planned operations by the 173rd. So why bother keeping a brigade on alert? Surely they're just a waste of money

[MKSheppard]

Of that you will find lots, and lots .. and lots. The current ABM program itself is a hallmark for a lot of things that has gone wrong with military procurement.

In what way? Prove it.

We've gone from having virtually no capability to intercept ICBMs aimed at CONUS to having one, in less than eight years. When you compare it to all the other items in the budget, it's really cheap.

[Darth Wong]

You know, that begs the question: how does the military spending actually break down? In other words, where is the bulk of the money going?