Comments by "afcgeo" (@afcgeo882) on "Battle Order"
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@lebron3505 Tanks like the M1 aren’t a “reactionary force” because they have massive logistical requirements to be sent in. They are not maneuverable enough to tackle unimproved beach heads, need a secure landing site with engineers already having shored it up, and massive use of landing craft just to get a few over to land. The alternative is needing a runway to accept C-17s or C-5s, and each aircraft can take just one M1 Abrams at a time.
Considering the amount of people, support (fuel, maintenance, parts, and wreckers) you will need to battle with them, they are simply too large for any quick operation. The Marines have been using them only in long-term, large scale deployments, which they have now walked away from in favor of operating solely as MEUs.
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@lebron3505 Oh Mr Tactician… What MOS did you have? You’re only “over-qualified” in your own mind, I assure you.
I’ve been commenting on why armor doesn’t work for the Marines. You’re welcome to read those comments instead of mouthing off the way you have with everyone here. By the way, 16 years of Marine logistical aviation here, on the CH-53 and V-22. My job is LITERALLY to get Marines and equipment from the ship to the battle and then support the fight. You think you’re an expert? HA! You don’t even get that armor in general is an outdated concept. A single LCpl can defeat a heavy tank with a single shot, from a stand-off distance. My brothers in attack squadrons eat armor for lunch. Armor is useless in what the Corps are designed for - amphibious warfare. Armor has limited usefulness in maneuver warfare, which is the Army’s job, not ours.
So… drop your credentials here, and the next time when we’re all discussing the Army’s need and use for something, you may have an expert’s opinion (if it’s within your MOS’ wheelhouse) and we’ll all listen, but right now, an INTELLIGENT person in your position would listen to those who know the subject matter better than you, and maybe ask some questions if you’re curious.
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@ElkaPME Your example is a bit off into WW2 land.
First off, landings are done by amphibious combat groups of ships, including destroyers and cruisers armed with Tomahawks. The island (or a beach, as it more often would be) is first targeted by F-35s and/or F-18s and major C4 and defenses are taken out via missiles.
Second, amphibious assaults are actually not so hard to do with modern tactics and equipment. It’s literally the whole purpose of the Marines. Without giving away too much, it’s a multi-pronged effort that combines air, sea and land (joint arms) assaults.
Third, anti-ship defenses are used against ships, not landing craft. It is the reason why our landing ships are stationed at stand-off distances. Our landing craft can travel 50+ miles to the shore, and it’s a big part of the tactical plan.
Also please understand that beaches are not ports. There is often no more than a few inches of water for hundreds of feet out, meaning that your equipment cannot get to dry land. Wet sand displaces underneath you in seconds, sinking everything on it (ever try standing on the sand in a foot of water?) Once you’re on a beach, you have natural obstacles like marshes and dunes to scale. Then you often have wetlands beyond them. Once past that, you will often face a tree or heavy brush line or even mangroves. This is all terrain a tank cannot deal with. Even a very lightly loaded 13 ton LAV often has trouble getting stuck. This tank, although “light” and tracked is still 40 tons. An Abrams weighs 80 tons. They simply CANNOT roll into a beach and go through it until days after we take it and engineers have a chance to put down planks, blow through dunes, and cut through the forest growth. Ideally, we find the closest port, take it, and then simply offload armor with cranes, onto pavement.
Keep in mind too that those tanks cannot simply fire while being transported or even once on the beach. They will have no visibility or situational awareness, but will be giant targets. That’s not even considering the fact that landing sites are very often full of anti-armor mines that engineers don’t get to clear before assaults.
Which brings us to beach defenses. The enemy has a stable ground and time on their hands. Very basic beach defense hardening makes it impossible to penetrate with large vehicles. Ditches, steel barriers, etc, added to natural ones just make it hard for anything, but infantry. Add enemy RPGs, arty, and ATW systems and you pretty much make armor obsolete in amphib warfare.
Oh and contrary to your personal beliefs, the FACT is that tanks are LESS survivable today than they were 20 years ago. Modern anti-armor weapons are exploiting all the weak sides of tanks, from beyond visual range (distances) and are simply plentiful. Gone are the days when a TOW missile on top
of a humvee was the way to kill an MBT. A practically untrained guy with a Javelin, sitting in a fox hole can kill one at 2+ miles, fire and forget. We’re not talking T-72s either. We’re talking modern reactive armor heavy tanks. Remember, you don’t need to completely destroy a vehicle and its crew for effect. All you need is to disable it. A lighter vehicle can be disabled by even more basic weapons. Light, 105mm direct fired sabot rounds will decimate light tanks.
There is a big question nowadays in the Army armor community, in light of seeing modern weapons’ effectiveness in Ukraine, of whether armor is really going to be a big part of war in the future at all. It’s one of the reasons the Army is looking at a faster, cheaper tank. A heavy tank simply doesn’t provide the protection to infantry that it once did. In fact, it needs infantry to protect it, unlike in WW2 when you had big tank battles like Kursk.
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@lebron3505 And the experiences of fighting battles the Marines weren’t trained, equipped or missioned to fight taught us that we need to be more specializes at what we do. Ever since the 1990’s the Corps have been fighting an Army fight and a tremendous amount of money and attention was put into traditional Army fighting, which is traditional joint arms, maneuver warfare and asymmetric warfare. Meanwhile, the Corps de-focused from the Marine specialties like amphibious warfare, world-wide QRF, asset security and integrated, organic combined arms. By doing “Army work”, our abilities on those fronts have atrophied by loss of specialized equipment and training. Furthermore, the more you don’t use something, the less the chances of you ever gaining it back because the folks on Capitol Hill start thinking, “eh, they don’t do that anyway.”
The Marines need to be light because the nature of their work demands it, not because it’s more lethal. It’s the reason why the Coast Guard has no big ships. We operate in littoral waters, in wetlands, in sand, mud and the tropics. That dictates what we need, not our egos. What we need is light, easy to transport equipment that can withstand salt water and get into a fight quickly, without a logistical train behind it. Tanks and heavy artillery just aren’t it. Yes, we got rid of 155 howitzers too. We have our own attack planes and helicopters. We have the Navy. Those bring capabilities that the Army typically don’t get to enjoy. That means we don’t need our own field hospitals or large caliber fires.
What the Marines are supposed to do is bring self-sustainable, battalion-sized QRFs anywhere in the world at any moment, and to do it consistently. That is a very different role than the Army’s. What learned that on D-Day in 1944 because despite winning the assault, we took tremendous losses doing it, mostly because our troops were never trained to do it.
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