Marines Will Depend on Army, Allies, Private Sector To Get Ashore

[unhappycamper]

http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/08/marines-will-depend-on-army-allies-private-sector-to-get-ashor/



While the Marines are famous for amphibious landings, they depend on Army assets (shown here) for large-scale logistics.


Marines Will Depend on Army, Allies, Private Sector To Get Ashore
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
Published: March 8, 2012

Going back to the future ain't easy. After a decade largely spent waging land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. Marine Corps wants to reemphasize large-scale amphibious operations, like its recent "Bold Alligator" exercise. But to do that in the face of rising threats, shrinking budgets, and limited assets, they're going to have to rely not only on their traditional partners in the U.S. Navy but increasingly on the Army, friendly nations, and even the commercial sector for logistical support to get them ashore.

"As time goes on, we're going to get driven to more commercial solutions," Marine Lt. Col. Dutch Bertholf, a Joint Staff planner, told participants at the Marine Corps' annual "Expeditionary Warrior" wargame, as he displayed a slide showing the projected decline in the Navy's logistics fleet after 2020. Already, he noted, "we got to see this a bit in Haiti," where the U.S. hired contractors to bridge the gap in earthquake response until its over-committed military assets could arrive. "Part of the future will be looking at commercial industry to help us out...especially as we become more fiscally challenged," he said: Commercial shippers use tugs, barges, and other equipment to move goods all the time, including through the kind of austere or non-existent port facilities that the Marines expect to encounter in Third World countries, and the government can hire them as needed without having to pay the ownership cost.

The Corps' interest in help from foreign militaries was also strongly in evidence at Expeditionary Warrior. The fictional scenario included key roles for Spanish and Australian forces, while a glance around the real-life participants revealed uniforms not just from traditional allies like the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan but also from Singapore, Brazil, and even Finland. "We're doing several things here a little bit different this year," said Brig. Gen. John Bullard, deputy chief of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, in a roundtable with reporters. "First off, it's an unclassified wargame. We did it in an unclassified venue [in large part to] pull in a lot of international officers and international participation."

Then there's the Army, itself a foreign culture as far as some jarheads are concerned. While the Army has signed over its share of the Joint High Speed Vessel (JHSV) program to the Navy, it retains its own fleet of boats, landing craft, and even a 313-foot-long small ship called the Logistics Support Vessel (LSV). "The Army's going to hold onto its watercraft," Bertholf said in a response to a question about potential consolidation. There are two reasons: First, the Army has a huge logistical role in supporting the other services; second, it needs to deal with lakes and rivers that the Navy may not reach.

[RC]

1. Oh goodie, another reason for private companies to want wars.

"Part of the future will be looking at commercial industry to help us out...especially as we become more fiscally challenged,"

Maybe if we started paying attention to this country, we could start finding reasons for not goading other countries into giving us excuses to attack them.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Right until you get into a high intensity conflict

Which the last ten years have not been.

Right then you will see all those private contractors say no thank you.

[bluedigger]

3. They will be made an offer they can't refuse.

[Uncle Joe]

4. There is most definitely an inverse relationship between

"private contractors," "mercenaires" and "We the People"s military.

Sort of like a tapeworm, the private profit motive will only serve to sap funds from the public defense and as the armed forces deteriorate there will be increased demand for private contractors and mercenaires to make up the slack in filling ever more numbers of critical needs.

As a result the people's power via their government will diminish and corporate supremacy will soar to new heights as corporate supremacists sink to new lows in regards to their policies and behaviour placing our nation at even greater risk.

Thanks for the thread, unhappycamper.