"Are amphib operations a thing of the past?" Topic

Here's an interesting article that I thought you guys might want to peruse and comment on.

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I'm an old soldier, but I don't think the Corps should ditch its amphib capability. It's just too dang useful and it's the cornerstone of what makes the Corps the Corps. The Army can easily handle the less than war stuff. The Corps, on the other hand, is the rapid response force. It can plop a medium weight infantry force nearly anywhere and do it quickly. The Army has the air portable side but it has no quickly deployable medium/heavy capability.

What do you think?

A Corps without an amphibious landing capability is unthinkable even in today's AA/AD environment.

The full article isn't coming up for me, but it would be a mistake to drop amphib ops since much of the world's population can be reached from the sea. I do wonder if "nation building" shouldn't be moved out to State Dept and not Defense, is DoD's core role to build nations? Heavy equipment is going to have to come by sea regardless and it makes sense to have the Corps keep their forced landing knowledge and be able to work with the logistics guys. Large amphibs also have helos. A first tier military conflict with the US seems unlikely but going against others without anti-access ability would be more likely.

Ha! If it is "a thing of the past" then Communist China has been wasting massive resources and training of troops on nothing.

Dan

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An opposed landing may be very difficult if not impossible but having the ability to land and support troops"across" beaches would seem to be still necessary . Also having mobile forces at sea gives commanders a lot more options for deploment that would not be available if our forces depenede only on air and ground transport.

I'm not sure that you're going to see too many opposed landings in the future, except for maybe Taiwan. The first reason is that with modern day intelligence gathering you'll have a good idea where the best place to land troops will be and how long it will take for enemy forces to get to the beachhead. Second, the armed forces of most nations are much, much smaller than WW2, so there simply aren't enough units to defend every possible landing point. Modern day amphibious units allow those countries that possess them to get forces to a wide variety of areas virtually unopposed so they probably aren't going away anytime soon.

I believe the appropriate response from the Marines is, "yes, we can do an opposed landing if we absolutely have to. But we would sooner shave with a cheese grater." Extra points if the USMC spokesgrunt is female, to really drive the point home.

What is it, 70% of all nations in the world have a coastline?

Ergo, 70% of all nations can be 'visited' in peace or in anger by Marines over the beach.

It is a very powerful aspect of national force projection that only, only the US has.

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

One of the earliest military operation we have any record, the Battle of Antelope's Nose, was an amphibious operation. Some wars were almost entirely amphibious, from triremes to Jenkin's Ear. We have a lot of equipment now that would make such a thing very difficult, but we have counter-equipment, and not everything is available every where.

Amphibious warfare is not going away.

That sort of goes against what Commandant Neller recently said that the Corps was going to increase its emphasis on amphibious training due to the fact that it often is the quickest response. Read that in an article from Military.com, Marine Insider.

During the first Gulf War the threat of an invasion by the Marines sitting of the coast tied down quite a few Iraqi divisions.

The Kenyans pulled it off against Al-Shabab in Somalia….the first amphibious landing by an African nation. Naval gunfire support,air strikes and helicopter landings against key objectives, landing armoured vehicles and mechanized infantry to follow up.

I think we have to call the Kenyan accomplishment of 2012 the first "modern" or "mechanized" amphibious assault, since the earliest amphibious operation on record involved Africans on both sides.