|
|
|
Subject:
End of the Marine Regiment?
oregon_x_marine
7/16/2003 4:33:45 PM
|
| In reviewing the order of battle for Gulf War I & II, it has become quite obvious that the traditional Marine Regiment is "too regimented" for modern combined arms warfare. I fear that the legacy and history of Marine units will be seriously diluted or rendered meaningless if changes are not made.
The Ground Force Element(MarDiv)of the modern MEF fight as combined arms "task force(s)" composed of various combat arms battalions and support elements. Scalability and flexibility are essential organizing principles behind these large command units, thus the MarDiv should be organized around permanent "scalable" brigades. The various combat arms battalions (infantry, artillery and armor) should receive the offical designation of "Marines" and have a unique numberical identifier (e.g. 1/1 becomes the 1st Marines, 2/1 becomes the 21st Marines, etc.), and the re-named regiments (brigades) could be named after a famous battles it had participated in (e.g. 2nd Regiment becomes the Tarawa Brigade). In accordance with naval fleet organization (fleet, task force, task group,task unit, etc.), the MEB should be redesignated Marine Expdeitionary Group.
Such cosmetic changes might first appear to be superficial, but one has only to look at the corporatist structure of the modern Army division, which is organized around indescript brigades composed different battalions of non-operational regiments, to understand what could be lost. |
| |
|
|
|
