Every 10 November General Lejeune's message is read. For him and for so many that both preceded and followed him, every word of that message has meaning. In these times I find the fourth paragraph both relevant and concerning:
"This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as "Soldiers of the Sea" since the founding of the Corps."
On the one hand some senior Generals are posing in public and before Congress as "worthy successors" even as they in private work to cancel (disinvite, censor, ignore, and slander) the very culture that gave rise to term "Marine" coming "to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue."
In these times, we learn of Generals demeaning fighting as outdated and merely "blowing up stuff;" we read of abject leadership failure from top to bottom in the housing for Marines; we see Generals lobbying for a ship that is "designed to blend in with civilian ships" and "run and hide" when the shooting starts. The list is long and not worthy of the word Marine.
"Worthy successors" --- Not even close..
Most of us truly felt a deep obligation to give our all to earn those words. What has happened? What will it take to recover a true Marine ethos?
As hard as they (“these generals”) try to take OUR Ethos away, they can’t, for whatever reason/reasons it is imbued in us. They can try and be cool and sit at the cool kids table, but they will never be allowed for sleep overs on the weekend, like Candy in Bonanza, he could eat in the main house with Ben, Hoss and Little Joe, but he slept in the bunkhouse. How sad they have lost their own connection to the Marine Corps. Imagine waking up in your dotage and maybe walking through your home to the “I love me” room and seeing the plagues and memorabilia etc and realizing the first years of significance and looking at the end and realizing you had traded everything important, everything that made you different in the best of ways for empty platitudes and position. The worst perhaps realizing even with the stars came grand failure, “crap I was wrong, really wrong…” I don’t know how one lives with oneself well after that realization truly hits home. But we few, we happy few don’t have that concern. We are concerned with turning it around. Anyone want to trade beef and rocks for scrambled eggs? It is evening chow in the field and the Marines are hungry and bartering….who can do anything but their best to support the Corps and our Marines in the face of this failed current “leadership”:which isn’t leadership rather very poor management….
Since the founding of the Corps, Marines have always believed in the words of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest: “War means fighting and fighting means killing.” Now we are being told by a senior Marine general that “War means sensing and sensing means passing data.”
I’m not sure how this new message squares with the ACMC’s recent testimony before a SASC subcommittee that essentially said the Marines are ready to deploy anywhere, at any time, fight any foe, and win. Are the Marines going to defeat their foes with fire and maneuver or by sensing and passing data to the Army, Navy, or someone else to do the heavy lifting?
Words matter. Words are important. Headquarters Marine Corps needs to get the message right. Is Force Design intended to restructure and reorganize the Marine Corps into a more lethal, kinetic killing force or into a passive sensing and passing data force? Given the divestments in infantry, armor, cannon artillery, assault bridging and breaching, and aviation, one may conclude it’s the latter. This could also explain why the Marines are investing in subsonic missiles (as opposed to longer range hypersonic missiles) that will be largely ineffective against a peer competitor in the not too distant future, if not already.
“Right shoulderaaa….Pander! Lefff shoulderaaa….Pander! Port! Secondary Masters degree! Order! Bend a knee! What a load a blarney these foolish senior officers blather forth. Even assuming a fight with a “peer” foe (is there anyone beside China and maybe the Russian Federation that is a peer foe? Antifa students at Columbia??) the Corps would be in a major conflict and the word joint would take on a massively different look. Combined arms? One would think yes, for sure arms combined with the US Army, Navy, Air Force and whatever larger regional forces warranted to come to lethal blows in a fight that would make one’s teeth rattle and knees knock. TBS and IOC crica 1978, “you fight like you train and you train like you fight Lieutenant!” “Your Marines will spot a lazy incompetent platoon commander in three heart beats and two will have died, that is how fast”!
Fast forward, again no real shade at Force and Battalion reconnaissance units, eyes and ears forward are critical, but this notion of all snooping and pooping and passing along the intelligence to higher authority all the time, doesn’t seem to meet or serve Title X mandates. In the “zero defect” Navy and Marine Corps realistic training gets harder to do. Thus when training, well intended training missions can suddenly turn deadly. Again, accidents do happen in training. If it was the result of negligence on the part of the participants that almost always comes out in an investigation. But, sometimes weather or sea state changes fast and things happen fast. But, you fight like you train….
At one point the vast majority of the dullards on Capital Hill would cringe when a 06 Marine Corps Colonel testified sitting next to a couple two stars from sister services at some armed services committee and or sub committee hearing and use the words and phases like Kill and close with and destroy and not pull a punch. “Senator Blowshitzzz, in answer to your question, we train to kill and destroy the enemy, wherever and whomever it may happen to be.” Generals right and left of the colonel squirm in their seats, Senator Blowshitzzz demonstrates that his or her name is apt as their Depends adult diaper fills.
The sad part is, that at one point these generals were not like this, they were not political animals looking for the next star, and the cushy post retirement directorship or honorary chair at an institution of higher learning, yanking down six figures large every year. They were young and idealistic and believed in OUR Marine Corps. One has to believe that the company and field grades are still such, maybe not as young, but still instilled with a calling to something higher than not screwing up, and getting the next promotion. James Webb, writing in “I heard my Country Calling” summed it up so well with the story of Aunt Lena’s promise. Too long for here, but boils down to not becoming “one of them” and forgetting where he came from, a solid caring tough family that gave him his North Star. The “Generals” need to either toughen up or go. And as it used to be in the Marines Corps Gazette “Nobody asked me but” column, nobody asked me but….since when do we need a bunch of “deputy commandants?” Last time I looked Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse took counsel from their warrior Braves, but there was one Chief under the teepee. Political correctness be damned.
"seizing key terrain for an aerial landing, inserting HIMARS using aircraft,"
How are they doing this? HIMARS are not small. When discussing aircraft with relation to the HIMARS we are talking at least a C-130, in this video a C-17. That means seizing a forward air strip. What troops are doing this? How are they getting there to do the seizing? Why would you waste the manpower to seize it, launch a couple of subsonic missiles at something, and then leave?
If a ship cannot get into this area....what makes these folks think a very unstealthy C-17/C-130 can make it in?
My sense of disbelief grows daily. The General thinks we are a huge electronic reconnaissance organization that observes, senses and reports. Reports to whom? What will “they” do with the information provided? At some point somebody needs to actually do something like “blowing things up” and killing the enemy. The General has decided the Marine Corps will be the cheer leading squad. “ First and ten, do it again.” D-E-F-E-N-S-E. The insanity of this is beyond measure. It is other worldly. Is this Officer serious? How does he look in the mirror at night? When did the Marine Corps get this mission? I guess it gave itself the mission to get out of the warfighting business and morph into the National Reconnaissance Organization. Does it take 175,000 Marines to do this? My guess about 10,000 would be too many as they sit in a fighting hole and are bayoneted to death rebooting their lap top.
When are we going to wake up from this Franz Kafka nightmare? The Corps’ senior leadership are, at this point, certifiably insane. The Corps is not just irrelevant now. It is a fiscal drain on DoD and will soon find its existence questioned. Then it will be disbanded.
Hopefully, those young Marines, both officer and NCO, that read this sub stack are taking the comments made within to heart. THEY are the ones who will cause the course correction and change the trajectory of our beloved Corps.
If those currently in charge cannot or will not listen to the over thousands of years experience gathered all echoing the same message, then our hope lies with those young men and women, the next leaders of our Corps.
Spot on! It is for them that we do research, re-introduce long-forgotten (or "cancelled") history and hard-earned lessons learned. The Nation's adversaries are not deterred by the well-crafted but disingenuous "narratives" emanating from DC area. Soon, those adversaries will call the bluff and fine young Americans will be sent in harm's way. Tragically, they will lack the combat support and combat service support they need.
More importantly, for over five years the Marine Corps has lacked the wherewithal and increasingly the expertise to conduct offensive operations at speed and with coordination. In martial arts, white belts practice many of the same moves as black belts; the difference of course is that black belt through years of practice have learned to execute those moves with speed and power.
This era's battlespaces possess capabilities to quickly and ruthlessly punish the uncoordinated and the slow. Those sent forward may find themselves (the survivors!) engaged in a "campaign of learning" at the hands of massive and well-armed foes.
We write, research, and pass on lessons learned for them.
Since the founding of our Corps, one of the main missions of the Marine Corps has been as a naval expeditionary force. This was basically codified under Commandant Lejeune and Colonel Pete Ellis in the preparation for fighting Japan as a naval expeditionary amphibious assault force. After every major conflict the Marine Corps has gone through a period of self-examination to see if it was still a relevant military force and justify its existence. Until recently, it has remained a combined arms naval expeditionary force. That is, and should be, its primary reason for its existence and focus. No other military organization in the United States military offers this mission. None!
The Army, Navy, and Air Force have much bigger budgets than the Marine Corps. Each of those organizations has had a hand in strategic missile development (I have often wondered if the creation of Space Force took money from the Marine Corps budget!). They are only to happy to continue with this development. The Army is standing up Multi-Domain Forces to cover what the Marine Corps is working on. From the Army's Multi-Domain Transformation Staff Paper: "We provide mobile long range fires, sustainment, protection, and forces able to maneuver within an adversary's anti-access/area denial (A2AD) layer." That sounds familiar.
However, there is only once force which conducts combined arms naval expeditionary operations: the United States Marine Corps. This must be our focus and mission. An organization as small as the Marine Corps cannot be focused on two competing missions. We lost our ability to conduct those operations because of the focus on FD. Let the Army, Navy, and Air Force continue their missile work. Prior to FD, the Marine Corps' offensive capability came from the synergy of the MAGTF, and the ground combat elements' triad of ground combat power: infantry, artillery, and armor. This gave the Marine Corps a robust offensive capability. We must be focused on one mission: combined arms naval expeditionary warfare.
A long time ago, when I played with rocket fins and wore a cut up bootie cover in the field, we used to sense in pre assault and deep post assault operations for the MEF, so they could make sense and maneuver. We prepared to pass information, employ (Joint) Combat Support, conduct raids, and pathfind in support of other elements. We also prepared to support other sensing units. So the fascination with 'sensing and make sense' as a service level goal and new idea indicates a bit of amnesia.
Along the same lines, I was discussing the Ukrainian difficulty despite recieving better western equipment. One issue we noted was that it appears while we trained crews how to operate the equipment, no Ukrainian unit spent time conducting a classic CAX or NTC rotation. Updated to include emerging technology and concepts, that makes a vital difference in Combined Arms. Our unvalidated hypothesis was that the Ukrainians just used the same tactics at the company and higher level, as previous, which led to greater difficulties. Those tactics, while effective in the early stages of the war, or in the breakout of '22, aren't as effective in the firm opposition they face now.
This “sensing” approach reminded me of McNamara’s “Quantitative Analysis” approach were his mathematical system would predict with accuracy where the VC would attack, etc etc. We saw how great that worked…. There is a clip in the movie “Go Tell The Spartans” showing when the system was introduced. Patton, who studied warfare starting with Kane and Able concluded that regardless of the changes in warfare, one thing held true, human’s reactions to blast, heat and fragmentation never changed throughout the history of man. The Corps history has demonstrated that our ability to fire and maneuver with tenacity, determination, and agility is what won battles. Combining all capabilities into a crescendo of blast, heat and fragmentation wins battles. MAGTFs are not a thing of the past, and future wars are not different from those of the past. Anyone sensing what we are witnessing in Ukraine, Gaza, China, etc should be passing data that says, “Let’s get back on track and reestablish the Corps as the Nation’s 911 force!!!!!!!!!”
Superbly communicated. We must press on with Our Campaign to inform and to shine a spotlight Marines Generals who are failing to execute their sworn oath of Office. Yes Commandant Smith you as CMC and the Former ACMC are responsible and accountable for every aspect of the Marine Corps to include the “hovels” you used for billeting US Marines.
When will HASC and SASC hear testimony from Generals Krulak, Zinni, and or the rest of Chowder II. War is not around the corner, it is upon us from every direction!
One might add to the focus of combined arms and naval expeditionary warfare “laser focus”, on combined arms and naval expeditionary warfare. Naval expeditionary warfare, that has a clear mission with a short fuse on the execution phase. Let the army be the force of occupation. Get in, accomplish the mission and get out, train hard for the next fight.
Every 10 November General Lejeune's message is read. For him and for so many that both preceded and followed him, every word of that message has meaning. In these times I find the fourth paragraph both relevant and concerning:
"This high name of distinction and soldierly repute we who are Marines today have received from those who preceded us in the corps. With it we have also received from them the eternal spirit which has animated our corps from generation to generation and has been the distinguishing mark of the Marines in every age. So long as that spirit continues to flourish Marines will be found equal to every emergency in the future as they have been in the past, and the men of our Nation will regard us as worthy successors to the long line of illustrious men who have served as "Soldiers of the Sea" since the founding of the Corps."
On the one hand some senior Generals are posing in public and before Congress as "worthy successors" even as they in private work to cancel (disinvite, censor, ignore, and slander) the very culture that gave rise to term "Marine" coming "to signify all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue."
In these times, we learn of Generals demeaning fighting as outdated and merely "blowing up stuff;" we read of abject leadership failure from top to bottom in the housing for Marines; we see Generals lobbying for a ship that is "designed to blend in with civilian ships" and "run and hide" when the shooting starts. The list is long and not worthy of the word Marine.
"Worthy successors" --- Not even close..
Most of us truly felt a deep obligation to give our all to earn those words. What has happened? What will it take to recover a true Marine ethos?
As hard as they (“these generals”) try to take OUR Ethos away, they can’t, for whatever reason/reasons it is imbued in us. They can try and be cool and sit at the cool kids table, but they will never be allowed for sleep overs on the weekend, like Candy in Bonanza, he could eat in the main house with Ben, Hoss and Little Joe, but he slept in the bunkhouse. How sad they have lost their own connection to the Marine Corps. Imagine waking up in your dotage and maybe walking through your home to the “I love me” room and seeing the plagues and memorabilia etc and realizing the first years of significance and looking at the end and realizing you had traded everything important, everything that made you different in the best of ways for empty platitudes and position. The worst perhaps realizing even with the stars came grand failure, “crap I was wrong, really wrong…” I don’t know how one lives with oneself well after that realization truly hits home. But we few, we happy few don’t have that concern. We are concerned with turning it around. Anyone want to trade beef and rocks for scrambled eggs? It is evening chow in the field and the Marines are hungry and bartering….who can do anything but their best to support the Corps and our Marines in the face of this failed current “leadership”:which isn’t leadership rather very poor management….
Since the founding of the Corps, Marines have always believed in the words of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest: “War means fighting and fighting means killing.” Now we are being told by a senior Marine general that “War means sensing and sensing means passing data.”
I’m not sure how this new message squares with the ACMC’s recent testimony before a SASC subcommittee that essentially said the Marines are ready to deploy anywhere, at any time, fight any foe, and win. Are the Marines going to defeat their foes with fire and maneuver or by sensing and passing data to the Army, Navy, or someone else to do the heavy lifting?
Words matter. Words are important. Headquarters Marine Corps needs to get the message right. Is Force Design intended to restructure and reorganize the Marine Corps into a more lethal, kinetic killing force or into a passive sensing and passing data force? Given the divestments in infantry, armor, cannon artillery, assault bridging and breaching, and aviation, one may conclude it’s the latter. This could also explain why the Marines are investing in subsonic missiles (as opposed to longer range hypersonic missiles) that will be largely ineffective against a peer competitor in the not too distant future, if not already.
“Right shoulderaaa….Pander! Lefff shoulderaaa….Pander! Port! Secondary Masters degree! Order! Bend a knee! What a load a blarney these foolish senior officers blather forth. Even assuming a fight with a “peer” foe (is there anyone beside China and maybe the Russian Federation that is a peer foe? Antifa students at Columbia??) the Corps would be in a major conflict and the word joint would take on a massively different look. Combined arms? One would think yes, for sure arms combined with the US Army, Navy, Air Force and whatever larger regional forces warranted to come to lethal blows in a fight that would make one’s teeth rattle and knees knock. TBS and IOC crica 1978, “you fight like you train and you train like you fight Lieutenant!” “Your Marines will spot a lazy incompetent platoon commander in three heart beats and two will have died, that is how fast”!
Fast forward, again no real shade at Force and Battalion reconnaissance units, eyes and ears forward are critical, but this notion of all snooping and pooping and passing along the intelligence to higher authority all the time, doesn’t seem to meet or serve Title X mandates. In the “zero defect” Navy and Marine Corps realistic training gets harder to do. Thus when training, well intended training missions can suddenly turn deadly. Again, accidents do happen in training. If it was the result of negligence on the part of the participants that almost always comes out in an investigation. But, sometimes weather or sea state changes fast and things happen fast. But, you fight like you train….
At one point the vast majority of the dullards on Capital Hill would cringe when a 06 Marine Corps Colonel testified sitting next to a couple two stars from sister services at some armed services committee and or sub committee hearing and use the words and phases like Kill and close with and destroy and not pull a punch. “Senator Blowshitzzz, in answer to your question, we train to kill and destroy the enemy, wherever and whomever it may happen to be.” Generals right and left of the colonel squirm in their seats, Senator Blowshitzzz demonstrates that his or her name is apt as their Depends adult diaper fills.
The sad part is, that at one point these generals were not like this, they were not political animals looking for the next star, and the cushy post retirement directorship or honorary chair at an institution of higher learning, yanking down six figures large every year. They were young and idealistic and believed in OUR Marine Corps. One has to believe that the company and field grades are still such, maybe not as young, but still instilled with a calling to something higher than not screwing up, and getting the next promotion. James Webb, writing in “I heard my Country Calling” summed it up so well with the story of Aunt Lena’s promise. Too long for here, but boils down to not becoming “one of them” and forgetting where he came from, a solid caring tough family that gave him his North Star. The “Generals” need to either toughen up or go. And as it used to be in the Marines Corps Gazette “Nobody asked me but” column, nobody asked me but….since when do we need a bunch of “deputy commandants?” Last time I looked Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse took counsel from their warrior Braves, but there was one Chief under the teepee. Political correctness be damned.
Bravo!
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/921727/b-roll-1st-bn-11th-marines-executes-hirain
"seizing key terrain for an aerial landing, inserting HIMARS using aircraft,"
How are they doing this? HIMARS are not small. When discussing aircraft with relation to the HIMARS we are talking at least a C-130, in this video a C-17. That means seizing a forward air strip. What troops are doing this? How are they getting there to do the seizing? Why would you waste the manpower to seize it, launch a couple of subsonic missiles at something, and then leave?
If a ship cannot get into this area....what makes these folks think a very unstealthy C-17/C-130 can make it in?
What are these people smoking??
Sorry, you know what I'm going to say: "Pelican Dropship from low earth orbit".
My sense of disbelief grows daily. The General thinks we are a huge electronic reconnaissance organization that observes, senses and reports. Reports to whom? What will “they” do with the information provided? At some point somebody needs to actually do something like “blowing things up” and killing the enemy. The General has decided the Marine Corps will be the cheer leading squad. “ First and ten, do it again.” D-E-F-E-N-S-E. The insanity of this is beyond measure. It is other worldly. Is this Officer serious? How does he look in the mirror at night? When did the Marine Corps get this mission? I guess it gave itself the mission to get out of the warfighting business and morph into the National Reconnaissance Organization. Does it take 175,000 Marines to do this? My guess about 10,000 would be too many as they sit in a fighting hole and are bayoneted to death rebooting their lap top.
When are we going to wake up from this Franz Kafka nightmare? The Corps’ senior leadership are, at this point, certifiably insane. The Corps is not just irrelevant now. It is a fiscal drain on DoD and will soon find its existence questioned. Then it will be disbanded.
Hopefully, those young Marines, both officer and NCO, that read this sub stack are taking the comments made within to heart. THEY are the ones who will cause the course correction and change the trajectory of our beloved Corps.
If those currently in charge cannot or will not listen to the over thousands of years experience gathered all echoing the same message, then our hope lies with those young men and women, the next leaders of our Corps.
God bless them.
Spot on! It is for them that we do research, re-introduce long-forgotten (or "cancelled") history and hard-earned lessons learned. The Nation's adversaries are not deterred by the well-crafted but disingenuous "narratives" emanating from DC area. Soon, those adversaries will call the bluff and fine young Americans will be sent in harm's way. Tragically, they will lack the combat support and combat service support they need.
More importantly, for over five years the Marine Corps has lacked the wherewithal and increasingly the expertise to conduct offensive operations at speed and with coordination. In martial arts, white belts practice many of the same moves as black belts; the difference of course is that black belt through years of practice have learned to execute those moves with speed and power.
This era's battlespaces possess capabilities to quickly and ruthlessly punish the uncoordinated and the slow. Those sent forward may find themselves (the survivors!) engaged in a "campaign of learning" at the hands of massive and well-armed foes.
We write, research, and pass on lessons learned for them.
Since the founding of our Corps, one of the main missions of the Marine Corps has been as a naval expeditionary force. This was basically codified under Commandant Lejeune and Colonel Pete Ellis in the preparation for fighting Japan as a naval expeditionary amphibious assault force. After every major conflict the Marine Corps has gone through a period of self-examination to see if it was still a relevant military force and justify its existence. Until recently, it has remained a combined arms naval expeditionary force. That is, and should be, its primary reason for its existence and focus. No other military organization in the United States military offers this mission. None!
The Army, Navy, and Air Force have much bigger budgets than the Marine Corps. Each of those organizations has had a hand in strategic missile development (I have often wondered if the creation of Space Force took money from the Marine Corps budget!). They are only to happy to continue with this development. The Army is standing up Multi-Domain Forces to cover what the Marine Corps is working on. From the Army's Multi-Domain Transformation Staff Paper: "We provide mobile long range fires, sustainment, protection, and forces able to maneuver within an adversary's anti-access/area denial (A2AD) layer." That sounds familiar.
However, there is only once force which conducts combined arms naval expeditionary operations: the United States Marine Corps. This must be our focus and mission. An organization as small as the Marine Corps cannot be focused on two competing missions. We lost our ability to conduct those operations because of the focus on FD. Let the Army, Navy, and Air Force continue their missile work. Prior to FD, the Marine Corps' offensive capability came from the synergy of the MAGTF, and the ground combat elements' triad of ground combat power: infantry, artillery, and armor. This gave the Marine Corps a robust offensive capability. We must be focused on one mission: combined arms naval expeditionary warfare.
A long time ago, when I played with rocket fins and wore a cut up bootie cover in the field, we used to sense in pre assault and deep post assault operations for the MEF, so they could make sense and maneuver. We prepared to pass information, employ (Joint) Combat Support, conduct raids, and pathfind in support of other elements. We also prepared to support other sensing units. So the fascination with 'sensing and make sense' as a service level goal and new idea indicates a bit of amnesia.
Along the same lines, I was discussing the Ukrainian difficulty despite recieving better western equipment. One issue we noted was that it appears while we trained crews how to operate the equipment, no Ukrainian unit spent time conducting a classic CAX or NTC rotation. Updated to include emerging technology and concepts, that makes a vital difference in Combined Arms. Our unvalidated hypothesis was that the Ukrainians just used the same tactics at the company and higher level, as previous, which led to greater difficulties. Those tactics, while effective in the early stages of the war, or in the breakout of '22, aren't as effective in the firm opposition they face now.
This “sensing” approach reminded me of McNamara’s “Quantitative Analysis” approach were his mathematical system would predict with accuracy where the VC would attack, etc etc. We saw how great that worked…. There is a clip in the movie “Go Tell The Spartans” showing when the system was introduced. Patton, who studied warfare starting with Kane and Able concluded that regardless of the changes in warfare, one thing held true, human’s reactions to blast, heat and fragmentation never changed throughout the history of man. The Corps history has demonstrated that our ability to fire and maneuver with tenacity, determination, and agility is what won battles. Combining all capabilities into a crescendo of blast, heat and fragmentation wins battles. MAGTFs are not a thing of the past, and future wars are not different from those of the past. Anyone sensing what we are witnessing in Ukraine, Gaza, China, etc should be passing data that says, “Let’s get back on track and reestablish the Corps as the Nation’s 911 force!!!!!!!!!”
“
Superbly communicated. We must press on with Our Campaign to inform and to shine a spotlight Marines Generals who are failing to execute their sworn oath of Office. Yes Commandant Smith you as CMC and the Former ACMC are responsible and accountable for every aspect of the Marine Corps to include the “hovels” you used for billeting US Marines.
When will HASC and SASC hear testimony from Generals Krulak, Zinni, and or the rest of Chowder II. War is not around the corner, it is upon us from every direction!
“The Freedom Of The World and Its Enslavement."
“The Pacific” (2010)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/e3oqIBpItB8
Chesty knew exactly what to do and did it.
One might add to the focus of combined arms and naval expeditionary warfare “laser focus”, on combined arms and naval expeditionary warfare. Naval expeditionary warfare, that has a clear mission with a short fuse on the execution phase. Let the army be the force of occupation. Get in, accomplish the mission and get out, train hard for the next fight.