hey do you think the 4th marines will recieve there own battalion and get rid of the UDP and become a full time REG

hey do you think the 4th marines will recieve there own battalion and get rid of the UDP and become a full time REG

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.

 It reminds me of a story a Soldier friend of my told me about when he was assigned to instructor at a training detachment. In the course of two years, without ever leaving the detachments or base, went through two unit re-designations.    So in effect was in three different battalions and brigades. This then involved changing of letterheads new signs in form of the various HQs and barracks (at the costs of hundreds of dollars per sign) new unit crest fo the solider assigned etc. All without any real change in the mission or capabilities of the units involved.

 

 

The USMC has nothing on the Army in the numbers shuffle game.

 

The former Airborne Battalion Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy was, at different times, 1/509, 4/325, 3/325, and 1/508.  Then the 173d Airborne Brigade was re-activated and absorbed the 1/508, as well as having 2/503.  Then the 1/508 was re-flagged to the 1/503 to "regimentalize" the brigade, since all the manuever battalions of the 173d in Vietnam were part of the 503d.  That's just one example.

 

Two Army divisions, the 82d and 101st, have "regimentalized" brigades.  Most other Army brigades are a mismatched hodgepodge of manuever battalions sounding something like "First of the Second, Second of the First, Third of the Fourth, and Fourth of the Third."  Or something sort of like that - you get the general idea.  That might make sense to the British, who've always had a lot of single battalion regiments, but it never made sense to me. 

 

Sometimes I wonder if the Army's effort to same so many bits and pieces of once historic regiments has been worthwhile; in that, in the effort to save a little of everything maybe they've save not much of anything.

This idea makes more sense for the Army, who have dozens and dozens of regiments in their history.  Their combat arms battalions could easily be "regimentalized."  Since the Army is now brigade-centric, they should name their brigades after famous divisions and re-designate Division HQ as Corps. 

The maintiance of several USMC brigade HQ contributes to misunderstanding.  The Marine brigade is a entirely different animal from the US Army brigade.  It operates as a independant combat group.  Aside from the regimental combat team that makes up the brigades Ground Combat Element there is a Air Combat Element made up of a composite air group of several squadrons of heliocopter and fixed wing, and there is a Combat Service/Support Group that allows the brigade to operate independantly of a Marine Divsion or Expiditionary Force HQ.