Compass Points - Special Units
Marine Corps special operations.
Compass Points - Special Units
Marine Corps special operations.
August 14, 2024
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Is the Marine Corps turning itself into a collection of small reconnaissance units?
Across the history of the Corps, Marine special operations units of different sizes and capabilities have always been an important part of the Marine Corps.
In his article, "Marine Corps Special Operations: A Brief History" author Fred Pushies reviews some Marine special operations units.
For example, on August 15, 1941, the 1st Parachute Battalion was officially formed at Quantico under the command of Capt. Marcellus Howard.
It is not well known but Marines were involved in the early days of the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA.
On January 7, 1943, the Marine Corps stood up the Amphibious Reconnaissance Company under the command of Capt. James L. Jones.
Then, on June 19, 1957, Force Reconnaissance, as it is known today, was started with the creation of 1st Amphibious Reconnaissance Company, FMFPAC (Fleet Marine Force, Pacific), under the command of Maj. Bruce F. Meyers.
Today, Marine Forces Special Operations Command operates as part of US Special Operations Command. MARSOC is organized into a Marine Raider Regiment with a Headquarters Company and three Marine Raider Battalions. Each Raider battalion has four companies. Each company has 4 Marine special operations teams, with 14 Marines in each team. The Raider Battalions are supported by the Marine Raider Support Group and the Marine Raider Training Center.
Marine reconnaissance units have always been an important part of Marine Corps global forces.
The Commandant's recent FRAGO 01-2024 provides a description that sounds like a description of Marine reconnaissance units.
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We are the eyes and ears for the joint force, ideally positioned within the WEZ to conduct both reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance, to act as a Joint Fires integrator for the combined force, and to strike the enemy from land and air to sea with organic sensors and precision fires, when necessary.
-- FRAGO 01-2024
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Strangely, the words, "eyes and ears for the joint force, ideally positioned within the WEZ to conduct both reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance" are not intended to describe Marine reconnaissance units, they are intended to describe the Marine Corps. As a description of the Marine Corps, that simple quotation reveals a dangerous misunderstanding.
The Marine Corps is not primarily a reconnaissance organization. It has never been primarily a reconnaissance organization. The Marine Corps is a warfighting force, organized, trained, and equipped to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy assault by fire and close combat. It is unfortunate the quotation from the frag order does not talk about combat and does not talk about warfighting; it only vaguely talks about striking the enemy "when necessary" and only with "organic sensors and precision fires."
Across the history of the Corps, while Marine special operations units of different sizes and capabilities have always been an important part of the Marine Corps, they are only a portion of the larger Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is not a reconnaissance force. The Marine Corps is a middle weight, warfighting force that uses reconnaissance as one tool to help it deliver devastating combined arms, crisis response combat power.
Special operations units are small and specialized. They focus on a narrow range of missions. As critical as they are in specific situations, small, distributed units can never accomplish the range of missions that can be executed by the Marine Air Ground Task Force.
Starting back in 2019, the Marine Corps began to put its focus on small units of Marines spread across isolated Pacific islands. These small, isolated units have been described as the "eyes and ears for the joint force." Perhaps they are. But the focus on small, Marine units conducting "reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance" has taken the focus off the combined arms, crisis response MAGTF. When a MAGTF is embarked on amphibious ships with robust combined arms capabilities and, when it can be quickly expanded and augmented through prepositioning ships and fly in echelons, that deployed MAGTF can do much more than the most highly skilled and equipped recon teams.
Compass Points salutes all the talented Marines of MARSOC and all Marine recon units. While reconnaissance units are a useful tool, it is time for Marine leadership to stop focusing on turning the Marine Corps into a reconnaissance force. The Nation does not need a Marine Corps stripped of its global combined arms capabilities.
The fuse is burning at crisis locations around the world. When the next crisis explodes, US policy makers will need more than small, isolated Marine units conducting "reconnaissance and counter reconnaissance," they will need the unmatched combat power of the Marine MAGTF to rapidly arrive off a troubled shore ready to deter, assist, or fight. While Marine reconnaissance units are described as “special,” in a much more powerful way, the most special unit of them all is the global, combined arms, crisis response MAGTF.
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The History Reader
Marine Corps Special Operations: A Brief History
By Fred Pushies
https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/marine-corps-special-operations-brief-history/
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Marines.mil
Marine Forces Special Operations Command
https://www.marsoc.marines.mil/
US Marine battalions are “specialty” units. Marines are specialist in amphibious assault and MAGTF operations. Marine Raiders are top notch but for combat operations they work for SOCCOM and not the Marine Corps. Why are we providing our best Marines to SOCCOM? Doesn’t SOCCOM have enough Army Special Forces units? Every Marine Raider I have met is an exceptional and experienced professional. I am acquainted with two Marine Raider Gunnery Sergeants, if I were a rifle company commander, I would cut my right arm off to get either as my Company Gunnery Sergeant. The specialty battalions of WW2 (Raiders, Parachute, and Defense Battalions) were used to fill the amphibious assault waves of Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The WW2 Para-Marines had a saying; the last Para-Marine died on Iwo Jima. The Marine Corps needs those experienced combat professions in the rifle battalions as enlisted leaders to those shifty eyed, foul mouth, hard charging MARINEs. Semper Fi
The Marine Corps IS a large Special Unit. By its very nature, structure and Title X mandate. It all went off the rails when some senior “managers” no doubt full of civilian higher education degrees and “joint” command posts, decided to make the Marine Corps so special that it damn near became irrelevant. This should come as no surprise in a way. When politicians want antiseptic warfare, drone attacks on order and take no responsibility for failures it seeps down, at some point human nature takes over, and values become for lack of a pleasant word, corrupted. Lions lying down with jackals soon compromise their status as king of the jungle.
The simple fact remains a fully complemented Marine Air Ground Corps with MAGTF combined arms to include MARSOC integration becomes a fighting force, not “eyes and ears” for whomsoever. By the way. why are our Marine “special operations” units part of another command or is the writer missing something important in that regard. Happy to be corrected but I want my Marines back, reporting to Marine commanders. Okay a little too parochial, but the point is made none the less.
FD whatever is a mess that needs unwinding fast, the more it lingers the more it rots the Corps from within. That all said when one listens to Major Schwartz and Major Keating on The Connecting Files in the last interview one can’t help to be enthused at the great and talented leadership at the ready to take charge of a reconstituted, fully integrated combined arms Marine Corps which is fully mobile and able to attack in any direction, at any time as directed. Helping to get things sorted and right for these guys only seems right.