[WarriorDiplomat]

Well it isn't a new idea the Marines started off as security for commerce on the high seas and eventually became an expeditionary force securing our commerce on land in foreign countries sugar, coffee etc....the banana wars etc....the Army always was historically for long duration warfighting let the Marines do their job as maritime infantry and let the Army stay trained, equipped and prepared for major war....no issues with me.

When I look at our Army now I see a fragmented former war machine no longer synced as a lethal million man force with carefully designed purposes like a engine built and tuned for durability and resiliency but today we have an Army divided. How do we bring all these fragments back together for a major threat?.... revise the old doctriine!....what was old will be new again...some officers will revise an old doctrine and get promoted for it as if they reinvented the wheel.

Its all a joke to have some GO stand before us and give us the sales pitch on how exciting the future is with these new fragmenting its all a f'ing joke. We have redundancy upon redundancy in every type of mission that the older I get the easier it is to see as nothing but career enhancing competition for short term gain....

We had an expeditionary force in the USMC the USMC had a direct action force called Raiders so we needed Rangers .....we needed an intelligence branch separate from the dept of war so the OSS was divided into what would become the Alphabet agency and SF then........we had military recon in Force Recon so we needed LRRP's and Recces for every unit their was an Army UW capability so the Alphabet boys created their UW boys then the Navy created SEAL's under the premise but god only knows their definition of UW...then the AF created CCT's(which ironically enough seems to be only supporting capability)...the Army created it's version of CCT's within SOF followed by everyone else then the SF blue light teams led to a CT force in one branch of course a copy of the british followed by the other branches followed by the USMC creating a black side Force Recon separate from green side and SF creating their own CT force doing the same thing then the intelligence provided by the A-boys wasn't good enough a COL led the development of the Activity which led to the CT guys developing their own within the CT specific community and th other CT force doing the same thing followed by SF doing the same the whole thing is ego and power, professional jealousy and piggybacking of ideas justified by rhetoric speaking branch salesman. At the end of the day everything they do revolves around two approaches diplomacy or warfighting everything above is for leverage the nearly forgotten infantry is the foundation of the entire thing ground pounders closing and killing.

Branches duplicating each other seems like an excellent reason to merge and eliminate the fraud waste and abuse of branches spending money developing capabilities that are already in existence but under employed. Do we not see why their is incentive to spin reality and employ units for minor inconsequential crap.....it happens in intel world with a little word smithing we can maniplulate and activate combat employment the pen & quill in action the difference between Silver Star and an Arcom w/V has always been in the skill of the author.

I know the military is worried about talent recruitment but the military is not 1 man (oooops subliminal masochism) I think it is fair to say that those who serve are attracted to service even if it is corrupted by the competitive business model implementation creating sycophantic upward focused leadership. Merge the Military into one branch and eliminate the redundancy the branch competition is not working and has led to a bunch of competitive good idea fairies brass making it top heavy....we are too cumbersome. To put it in laymans terms too many chiefs and not enough Indians. The sneeches with stars on their bellies is what it is.