Marine Corps to eliminate Scout Snipers

[David Newton]

If the PLAN tangles with the Indian Navy in the Indian Ocean they will lose. Doesn't matter where in the Indian Ocean that is. Now the Indian Navy don't routinely deploy carrier battlegroups all around the world but it does deploy ships all over the Indian Ocean. That's a considerable distance to support things over. India also has unfettered access to the area. Chinese forces would have to deploy through choke points.

People also forget that the Indian Navy has experience of carrier combat operations in the second largest seriously contested naval war post-1945. The 1971 war between India and Pakistan saw extensive naval combat. Now of course no one in the Indian fleet from that era still serves but the institutional experience is there. India also routinely exercises with the USN.

Vendetta you are making a classic error of the novice. Comparing raw numbers is useful but it doesn't tell the whole story at all. Ukraine has massively illustrated this over the last year. By the raw numbers Ukraine should have been stomped into the ground. Yet they haven't been. Why? A good deal of it is vastly better tactical and operational and indeed strategic employment of their forces.

To think about another example: Libya in 1941. This campaign inspired a wry re-jigging of Churchill's famous quote to, "Never in the field of human combat has so much been surrendered, by so many, to so few."

There's also the point to consider that India would do a real number on the Chinese economy. Why? Blockade of oil coming from the Persian Gulf. So the Chinese would quite possibly also not have the fuel for naval operations away from home.

[Craiglxviii]

I would point out:

The RN, MN etc. wouldn’t be operating alone in a war with China. That’s literally THE WHOLE POINT of NATO. It’s also the reason that ships from those navies, plus the Dutch, German etc. can interoperate at almost a modular level. Along with the USN.

Then we have the USN. And ROK. And ROC. And RAN. And IJN… SEATO. They all interoperate too.

Then we have the most deadly anti-surface force in the world, the SSN fleets of NATO navies. Against which the PLAN offers 9 middling-Soviet level nuclear boats. The rest are middling-Soviet level SSKs of the TANGO & FOXTROT classes mainly.

The talk about the PLAN’s carriers. Ok, so? They have literally a few years of working up and operational doctrinal development with them. Against NATO navies that have been doing this thing continuously for 70 years.

The J-20; I have yet to see a fully objective combat analysis of it. Is it likely to be competitive against the F-35? Qualitatively unknown. Quantatively inferior however.

Those large PLAN DDGs? Is it likely that strike planners will slug surface action groups against one another, mano a mano? Or more likely that the numerous, high-quality IJN SSKs may be used to lay mines to attrit them, or the numerous high-quality NATO SSNs sortie to carry out torpedo attacks against them. Please ask Hector Bonzo how this works.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Craig, the USN and RN are at around 100+ years of carrier ops now

[David Newton]

Only four years until 100 since Lexington and Saratoga came into service

[Johnnie Lyle]

Only four years until 100 since Lexington and Sara toga xame into service

100 years and 349 days since LANGLEY commissioned

[Craiglxviii]

Craig, the USN and RN are at around 100+ years of carrier ops now

I know that. I was thinking more, jet fighter carrier ops under NATO. Also, mea culpa, I wrote that whilst on a tram in Nottingham so didn’t have time/ couldn’t be bothered to look up the true date

[Johnnie Lyle]

Craig, the USN and RN are at around 100+ years of carrier ops now

I know that. I was thinking more, jet fighter carrier ops under NATO. Also, mea culpa, I wrote that whilst on a tram in Nottingham so didn’t have time/ couldn’t be bothered to look up the true date

I’m not sure jets changed carrier warfare that dramatically, though. Most of the lessons from propeller aircraft carried over intact.

[Craiglxviii]

Craig, the USN and RN are at around 100+ years of carrier ops now

I know that. I was thinking more, jet fighter carrier ops under NATO. Also, mea culpa, I wrote that whilst on a tram in Nottingham so didn’t have time/ couldn’t be bothered to look up the true date

I’m not sure jets changed carrier warfare that dramatically, though. Most of the lessons from propeller aircraft carried over intact.

No, you may be quite right there too.

[clancyphile]

Exactly.

This is an attack on the soul of the Marine Corps. I am getting the sense that the Commandant absolutely hates infantry in particular, and he's now doing his best to destroy the "Every Marine a Rifleman" ethos. The Scout/Sniper is the purest expression of this ethos, much as the Ranger Tab is the purest expression of the Army Infantry Branch's ethos.

I dunno if the commandant hates infantry; he certainly seems to hate tanks even more. If anything, he looks like he’s longing for the glory days of Wake and Midway as the Marine Corps missions. The new organizations look like base defense forces in practice, with only lip service given to opposed landings.

As near as I can tell from the absolutely painful jargon, the goal of the Littoral Defense Regiments is a reprise of Midway, or the Japanese shuttle bombing at Philippine Sea, but with missiles. I think somebody called Sparky’s Chinese cousin, the one who spouts how missiles from the Chinese artificial islands make it impossible to fight in the South China Sea, and had him write the new organization and mission for the Marines. Essentially, we will somehow identify key island terrain, put a littoral defense regiment on it before the enemy recognizes its key terrain, and then somehow integrate missile fires and Marine aviation with a carrier strike group or submarines.

It doesn’t really address what to do if the enemy gets the key island terrain first, or if we’re on the offensive and punching through an enemy island chain. Especially as we’re giving up a lot of the organic assets (like tanks) that you need for opposed landings.

Lets just say I have concerns about how this will work in practice.

Really, what they didn't need were to reconfigure regiments, they needed to reactivate the Marine Defense Battalions. For China, base one at Subic, one on Palawan, maybe another at Darwin, one at Phuket (Thailand), and also have one at Guam (protect that asset).

Marine Defense Battalion
- 4 infantry companies
-- 3 inf. platoons
--- 3 squads
--- HQ
-- 2 weapons platoons
--- 1 mortar squad (3 M224)
--- 1 MG section
---- 3 squads (2 M240 each)
--- 1 SMAW section
---- 3 squads (2 SMAW each)
--- HQ
-- HQ
- 2 weapons companies
-- 1 TOW platoon (8 BGM-71)
-- 2 Javelin platoons (24 Javelin each)
-- 1 Mortar platoon (8 M252)
-- 2 HMG platoons (8 M2, 8 Mk19 each)
- 1 M119 battery (6 guns)
- 1 M777 battery (8 guns)
- 1 EFSS battery (8 mortars)
- 1 Composite Marine Air Defense battery
-- 2 Avenger Platoons (8 M1097 each)
-- CLAWS Platoon (10 CLAWS)
-- LAV-AD Platoon (8 LAV-AD)
- 1 JSM battery (8 truck-mounted quad launchers for Joint Strike Missile)
- 1 EFOGM battery (12 M44s)
- 1 NLOS battery (8 truck-mounted XM501 w/PAM)

Maybe take out the 105mm battery, knock down an infantry platoon.

[Craiglxviii]

Exactly.

This is an attack on the soul of the Marine Corps. I am getting the sense that the Commandant absolutely hates infantry in particular, and he's now doing his best to destroy the "Every Marine a Rifleman" ethos. The Scout/Sniper is the purest expression of this ethos, much as the Ranger Tab is the purest expression of the Army Infantry Branch's ethos.

I dunno if the commandant hates infantry; he certainly seems to hate tanks even more. If anything, he looks like he’s longing for the glory days of Wake and Midway as the Marine Corps missions. The new organizations look like base defense forces in practice, with only lip service given to opposed landings.

As near as I can tell from the absolutely painful jargon, the goal of the Littoral Defense Regiments is a reprise of Midway, or the Japanese shuttle bombing at Philippine Sea, but with missiles. I think somebody called Sparky’s Chinese cousin, the one who spouts how missiles from the Chinese artificial islands make it impossible to fight in the South China Sea, and had him write the new organization and mission for the Marines. Essentially, we will somehow identify key island terrain, put a littoral defense regiment on it before the enemy recognizes its key terrain, and then somehow integrate missile fires and Marine aviation with a carrier strike group or submarines.

It doesn’t really address what to do if the enemy gets the key island terrain first, or if we’re on the offensive and punching through an enemy island chain. Especially as we’re giving up a lot of the organic assets (like tanks) that you need for opposed landings.

Lets just say I have concerns about how this will work in practice.

Really, what they didn't need were to reconfigure regiments, they needed to reactivate the Marine Defense Battalions. For China, base one at Subic, one on Palawan, maybe another at Darwin, one at Phuket (Thailand), and also have one at Guam (protect that asset).

Marine Defense Battalion
- 4 infantry companies
-- 3 inf. platoons
--- 3 squads
--- HQ
-- 2 weapons platoons
--- 1 mortar squad (3 M224)
--- 1 MG section
---- 3 squads (2 M240 each)
--- 1 SMAW section
---- 3 squads (2 SMAW each)
--- HQ
-- HQ
- 2 weapons companies
-- 1 TOW platoon (8 BGM-71)
-- 2 Javelin platoons (24 Javelin each)
-- 1 Mortar platoon (8 M252)
-- 2 HMG platoons (8 M2, 8 Mk19 each)
- 1 M119 battery (6 guns)
- 1 M777 battery (8 guns)
- 1 EFSS battery (8 mortars)
- 1 Composite Marine Air Defense battery
-- 2 Avenger Platoons (8 M1097 each)
-- CLAWS Platoon (10 CLAWS)
-- LAV-AD Platoon (8 LAV-AD)
- 1 JSM battery (8 truck-mounted quad launchers for Joint Strike Missile)
- 1 EFOGM battery (12 M44s)
- 1 NLOS battery (8 truck-mounted XM501 w/PAM)

Maybe take out the 105mm battery, knock down an infantry platoon.

Yes, but that wouldn’t <takes a deep breath> be transformational.

[Vendetta]

Vendetta’s response counted hulls and airframes, but hulls and airframes don’t matter much if the officers and senior enlisted don’t know their business. China’s rapid expansion has to be stressing their officer and NCO corps, and putting lots of people into positions they lack the experience for, or crews that are a lot less experienced than their Western counterparts. It’s going to take time to build that tradition, a tradition Western navies take for granted because we’ve been in continuous existence for decades to centuries.

This is true, proficiency matters, and rapidly expanding militaries often struggle to train skilled personnel as quickly as they manage to acquire new weapons. Until China goes to war, we can only guess at how competent they will actually be. Perhaps they will perform shockingly badly. Or perhaps surprisingly well, or maybe just mediocre.

But we’re arguing which is more powerful, and I believe that “who is more powerful” and “who would win in a fight” are two different questions, and sometimes they can have two different answers. Which country was more powerful, Finland or the Soviet Union? There’s zero question the Soviet armed forces were more powerful than the Finnish ones, vastly outnumbering them and possessing all sorts of heavy weaponry that the Finns did not. But who got the better of who in most of their battles? The Finns, by being vastly more competent.

When I argue about one country being more powerful than another, I am talking about potential strength, the raw firepower and numbers each side has at its disposal. A more powerful force can still be defeated by a less powerful one if it lacks the leadership, the organization, and the training to convert that potential strength into actual strength on the battlefield.

Who would win in a war is a question we can only make educated guesses at because we can never be 100% certain about those soft factors until war reveals them. Could Japan defeat China in a war? Certainly, if the Japanese are vastly more competent than the Chinese. Are they? Maybe, maybe not. You can believe one or the other, but you can’t prove it.

Who has more power at their disposal? That’s something we can answer more objectively, and that answer is China. I don’t think that point can seriously be contested. There is only one navy in the world with a more powerful fleet of ships and aircraft under its command than the PLAN, and that is the US Navy.

Could a less powerful navy like Japan’s or India’s still defeat the PLAN? They could, but they would have to overcome a very large material disadvantage in order to do so.

Does anyone disagree with this?

[Craiglxviii]

Vendetta’s response counted hulls and airframes, but hulls and airframes don’t matter much if the officers and senior enlisted don’t know their business. China’s rapid expansion has to be stressing their officer and NCO corps, and putting lots of people into positions they lack the experience for, or crews that are a lot less experienced than their Western counterparts. It’s going to take time to build that tradition, a tradition Western navies take for granted because we’ve been in continuous existence for decades to centuries.

This is true, proficiency matters, and rapidly expanding militaries often struggle to train skilled personnel as quickly as they manage to acquire new weapons. Until China goes to war, we can only guess at how competent they will actually be. Perhaps they will perform shockingly badly. Or perhaps surprisingly well, or maybe just mediocre.

But we’re arguing which is more powerful, and I believe that “who is more powerful” and “who would win in a fight” are two different questions, and sometimes they can have two different answers. Which country was more powerful, Finland or the Soviet Union? There’s zero question the Soviet armed forces were more powerful than the Finnish ones, vastly outnumbering them and possessing all sorts of heavy weaponry that the Finns did not. But who got the better of who in most of their battles? The Finns, by being vastly more competent.

When I argue about one country being more powerful than another, I am talking about potential strength, the raw firepower and numbers each side has at its disposal. A more powerful force can still be defeated by a less powerful one if it lacks the leadership, the organization, and the training to convert that potential strength into actual strength on the battlefield.

Who would win in a war is a question we can only make educated guesses at because we can never be 100% certain about those soft factors until war reveals them. Could Japan defeat China in a war? Certainly, if the Japanese are vastly more competent than the Chinese. Are they? Maybe, maybe not. You can believe one or the other, but you can’t prove it.

Who has more power at their disposal? That’s something we can answer more objectively, and that answer is China. I don’t think that point can seriously be contested. There is only one navy in the world with a more powerful fleet of ships and aircraft under its command than the PLAN, and that is the US Navy.

Could a less powerful navy like Japan’s or India’s still defeat the PLAN? They could, but they would have to overcome a very large material disadvantage in order to do so.

Does anyone disagree with this?

Define “defeat”. Does that mean, winning a peer-level war across multiple theatres of combat? Or does it mean employing armed forces to affect changes in foreign policy?

Both definitions are fully valid; the smaller, more professional, older armed forces have been used in the foreign policy game (not “the level before war”, more “several levels beyond needing to fight one”) for a long time now and successfully so too.

[Johnnie Lyle]

I dunno if the commandant hates infantry; he certainly seems to hate tanks even more. If anything, he looks like he’s longing for the glory days of Wake and Midway as the Marine Corps missions. The new organizations look like base defense forces in practice, with only lip service given to opposed landings.

As near as I can tell from the absolutely painful jargon, the goal of the Littoral Defense Regiments is a reprise of Midway, or the Japanese shuttle bombing at Philippine Sea, but with missiles. I think somebody called Sparky’s Chinese cousin, the one who spouts how missiles from the Chinese artificial islands make it impossible to fight in the South China Sea, and had him write the new organization and mission for the Marines. Essentially, we will somehow identify key island terrain, put a littoral defense regiment on it before the enemy recognizes its key terrain, and then somehow integrate missile fires and Marine aviation with a carrier strike group or submarines.

It doesn’t really address what to do if the enemy gets the key island terrain first, or if we’re on the offensive and punching through an enemy island chain. Especially as we’re giving up a lot of the organic assets (like tanks) that you need for opposed landings.

Lets just say I have concerns about how this will work in practice.

Really, what they didn't need were to reconfigure regiments, they needed to reactivate the Marine Defense Battalions. For China, base one at Subic, one on Palawan, maybe another at Darwin, one at Phuket (Thailand), and also have one at Guam (protect that asset).

Marine Defense Battalion
- 4 infantry companies
-- 3 inf. platoons
--- 3 squads
--- HQ
-- 2 weapons platoons
--- 1 mortar squad (3 M224)
--- 1 MG section
---- 3 squads (2 M240 each)
--- 1 SMAW section
---- 3 squads (2 SMAW each)
--- HQ
-- HQ
- 2 weapons companies
-- 1 TOW platoon (8 BGM-71)
-- 2 Javelin platoons (24 Javelin each)
-- 1 Mortar platoon (8 M252)
-- 2 HMG platoons (8 M2, 8 Mk19 each)
- 1 M119 battery (6 guns)
- 1 M777 battery (8 guns)
- 1 EFSS battery (8 mortars)
- 1 Composite Marine Air Defense battery
-- 2 Avenger Platoons (8 M1097 each)
-- CLAWS Platoon (10 CLAWS)
-- LAV-AD Platoon (8 LAV-AD)
- 1 JSM battery (8 truck-mounted quad launchers for Joint Strike Missile)
- 1 EFOGM battery (12 M44s)
- 1 NLOS battery (8 truck-mounted XM501 w/PAM)

Maybe take out the 105mm battery, knock down an infantry platoon.

Yes, but that wouldn’t <takes a deep breath> be transformational.

It’s budgetary.

The Marine Corps budget doesn’t allow for expansion. Any new organizations and units can only be afforded by reorganizing others.

[clancyphile]

Yes, but that wouldn’t <takes a deep breath> be transformational.

It’s budgetary.

The Marine Corps budget doesn’t allow for expansion. Any new organizations and units can only be afforded by reorganizing others.

Maybe it's time to expand the budget for that, and move money from DEI to actual... warfighting,

Who'd have thought?

[Vendetta]

Could a less powerful navy like Japan’s or India’s still defeat the PLAN? They could, but they would have to overcome a very large material disadvantage in order to do so.

Does anyone disagree with this?

Define “defeat”. Does that mean, winning a peer-level war across multiple theatres of combat? Or does it mean employing armed forces to affect changes in foreign policy?

Both definitions are fully valid; the smaller, more professional, older armed forces have been used in the foreign policy game (not “the level before war”, more “several levels beyond needing to fight one”) for a long time now and successfully so too.

Either definition is valid, though the first would probably be much harder for a less powerful force to achieve than the second.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Yes, but that wouldn’t <takes a deep breath> be transformational.

It’s budgetary.

The Marine Corps budget doesn’t allow for expansion. Any new organizations and units can only be afforded by reorganizing others.

Maybe it's time to expand the budget for that, and move money from DEI to actual... warfighting,

Who'd have thought?

Good luck with that.

[Craiglxviii]

True. But also perhaps not necessary either, depending on either country’s goals in the conflict.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Vendetta’s response counted hulls and airframes, but hulls and airframes don’t matter much if the officers and senior enlisted don’t know their business. China’s rapid expansion has to be stressing their officer and NCO corps, and putting lots of people into positions they lack the experience for, or crews that are a lot less experienced than their Western counterparts. It’s going to take time to build that tradition, a tradition Western navies take for granted because we’ve been in continuous existence for decades to centuries.

This is true, proficiency matters, and rapidly expanding militaries often struggle to train skilled personnel as quickly as they manage to acquire new weapons. Until China goes to war, we can only guess at how competent they will actually be. Perhaps they will perform shockingly badly. Or perhaps surprisingly well, or maybe just mediocre.

But we’re arguing which is more powerful, and I believe that “who is more powerful” and “who would win in a fight” are two different questions, and sometimes they can have two different answers. Which country was more powerful, Finland or the Soviet Union? There’s zero question the Soviet armed forces were more powerful than the Finnish ones, vastly outnumbering them and possessing all sorts of heavy weaponry that the Finns did not. But who got the better of who in most of their battles? The Finns, by being vastly more competent.

When I argue about one country being more powerful than another, I am talking about potential strength, the raw firepower and numbers each side has at its disposal. A more powerful force can still be defeated by a less powerful one if it lacks the leadership, the organization, and the training to convert that potential strength into actual strength on the battlefield.

Who would win in a war is a question we can only make educated guesses at because we can never be 100% certain about those soft factors until war reveals them. Could Japan defeat China in a war? Certainly, if the Japanese are vastly more competent than the Chinese. Are they? Maybe, maybe not. You can believe one or the other, but you can’t prove it.

Who has more power at their disposal? That’s something we can answer more objectively, and that answer is China. I don’t think that point can seriously be contested. There is only one navy in the world with a more powerful fleet of ships and aircraft under its command than the PLAN, and that is the US Navy.

Could a less powerful navy like Japan’s or India’s still defeat the PLAN? They could, but they would have to overcome a very large material disadvantage in order to do so.

Does anyone disagree with this?

I’d say it’s more potential than power, depending upon the extent of the learning curve to use it. Lots of stuff isn’t very powerful if your ability to use it means you’re just a target for someone else. Right now, a lot of that stuff would end up just kill marks on a somebody else’s ship or aircraft’s side, with minimal damage to the opposition.

Now, given enough time, that potential could mature into power - but that assumes the Chinese learn the right lessons and get the right experience. As the Russians have shown, that is not a given, especially if your military analysis system is corrupted.

Frankly, China’s power right now is economic, but that’s also their greatest vulnerability.

[clancyphile]

Imagine if George H. W. Bush had shown the guts to cut off MFN after Tiananmen Square.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Imagine if George H. W. Bush had shown the guts to cut off MFN after Tiananmen Square.

Unlikely, given the prevailing beliefs about free trade at the time. Pretty much everyone believed that the most effective way to correct said behavior was more integration and especially selling them stuff we made.

And, arguably, the most effective weapon we have is American culture.