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Forgive my civilian ignorance, but I was wondering why it seems like the Marines/Seals operate so much in what seems like Army territory. From what I've read, the Marines were created to support Navy operations like ship boarding/security and beach landings. The Seals similarly.
But from watching the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as Vietnam it looks like the Marines mostly overlap with the Army. Is this just about sharing the available man-power while there's no major Naval operations? Were the Marines assigned to attack certain places in Iraq/etc instead of the Army for any particular reason?
Forgive my civilian ignorance, but I was wondering why it seems like the Marines/Seals operate so much in what seems like Army territory. From what I've read, the Marines were created to support Navy operations like ship boarding/security and beach landings. The Seals similarly.
Thanks for any info.
"The United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) Teams, commonly known as Navy SEALs, are the U.S. Navy's primary special operations force and a component of the Naval Special Warfare Command. Among the SEALs' main functions are conducting small-unit maritime military operations that originate from, and return to, a river, ocean, swamp, delta, or coastline. The SEALs are trained to operate in all environments (sea, air, and land) for which they are named.
As of 2019, all active SEALs are male and members of the U.S. Navy. The CIA's highly secretive and elite Special Operations Group (SOG) recruits operators from SEAL Teams, with joint operations going back to the MACV-SOG during the Vietnam War. This cooperation still exists today, as evidenced by military operations in Iraq, and Afghanistan."
The Navy is arguably the greatest deployable force in the world. They can rapidly deploy significant force in a very short time, and sustain it indefinitely, that makes for a very flexible, and rapid tool to deploy on an every changing battlefield with real time intel, changing conditions, etc.
This is just in general sense. There are more factors of course. Now days coordination is pretty close, and yes, the missions overlap and they even do joint missions/battles together. You have SEALs with those USAF spec op guys, using USAF spec op helicopters. You got the Marines jointly attacking a city with the Army. This also spreads the burden more, allowing more troop rotation.
The problem as we've seen recently is that there is too much of that going on.
Hence issues with discipline, one entire platoon of SEALs was sent back recently due to disciplinary issues.
Even Special Forces soldiers were/are being used for a lot of direct action commando type work. Not that they are not capable of doing it, oh, they are more than capable of doing that kind of work. SF soldiers are the best of the best and one of the more technically proficient and deadly soldiers on the planet. However, that is not their main specialty, their main forte is going to foreign lands and training indigenous forces in the art of warfare. They are teachers and mentors.
Forgive my civilian ignorance, but I was wondering why it seems like the Marines/Seals operate so much in what seems like Army territory. From what I've read, the Marines were created to support Navy operations like ship boarding/security and beach landings. The Seals similarly.
But from watching the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as well as Vietnam it looks like the Marines mostly overlap with the Army. Is this just about sharing the available man-power while there's no major Naval operations? Were the Marines assigned to attack certain places in Iraq/etc instead of the Army for any particular reason?
Thanks for any info.
You are correct. Even if the Pentagon wanted to keep their Marines in reserve for a potential amphibious assault or attack a port it is political suicide to force reservist especially around 2004, or draftees in an earlier era, into a fight while those highly trained reserve formations with unit specific specialties just trained and never saw combat while waiting for a potential target that their specialty was optimized for.
As to specific unit targets since 9/11 and the choice of which special operations force, Rangers regular US Army or Marines battalions was made I have no ideal. And I only took notice when SEALS and not Delta Force got the mission to Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden.
Because the truth is the Marines demanded a spot in the fight. And don't forget, when they got to Fallujah and Ramadi, they needed 1st Bde of the 1st ID.
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