Marines.

This is coolbert:

DAWN BLITZ.

From the Chicago Tribune of 20 June, 2010.

The very existence of the U.S. Marine Corps is being challenged? The nature of warfare and the role of the U.S. Marines has changed to such an extent that various persons of high position now question the further NEED for the Corps as has been understood.

"Sea change looms for Marines"

"With amphibious assaults perhaps history, fate cloudy"

"CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - - On a stretch of white southern California beach, thousands of young Marines this month charged forward from the sea, leaping from helicopters and jumping off landing craft, echoing the exercises [combat actions] conducted decades prior when earlier generations of Marines trained for Iwo Jima and Inchon." [this landing exercise is "Dawn Blitz"]

Amphibious assaults on the scale of Saipan, Iwo Jima, ARE a thing of the past? NO longer will you ever see those vast armadas of surface ships, landing craft in prodigious numbers carrying ashore and discharging multi-divisional formations of U.S. Marines [or army for that matter]!!

That is all passe' now, a thing of the past!! An anachronistic way of warfare NOT to be seen again!

"the Marines have not engaged in such a fight since the Korean war [sixty years now]. And influential military thinkers . . . have begun to question whether the Marines will again be asked to storm a hostile beach."

For many decades now the Marines have NOT "done" beach landings. So much so that:

"85 % [of the Marines involved in this current exercise] had never been on a ship. Many would vomit [seasickness]."

As has been the case a number of times in the past, the Marines do have a justifiable fear that their usefulness, their entire reason for "BEING" is now a topic for discussion. The Marines might go the way of the dodo [extinction] with cut-backs and such?

There is a very sound reason for the existence of the Marines SOLELY from the standpoint of "approach" to warfare? The Marines are noted for "looking" at the entire subject of warfighting in a manner different from the U.S. Army.

"There is a lot of value in having an independent Marine Corps, simply because they do have a different of view of land warfare than the Army"

Call it what you will - - "second opinion", "devil's advocacy", a "fresh approach", etc. This is no bad thing, this is a good thing. A healthy and spirited and free-ranging discussion on a complex subject [warfighting]!

And THERE IS MERIT IN THIS!! Perhaps even GREAT MERIT! And the Marines do have THEIR OWN WAY of doing things.

See FMFM-1. The Marine handbook, the field manual - - very well written I might add, that describes in a succinct fashion, Marine concepts and doctrine as it pertains to war and war fighting as understood in the traditional fashion!

"When we all think alike, no one is thinking" - - G.S. Patton! As long as the Marines are around, much to the credit of everyone, we will NOT be all thinking alike. And this is to the advantage of the U.S. military as a whole?

I think so!

coolbert.