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Originally Posted by lksteve
my experience with Uncle Sam's Misguided Children in Somalia left me unimpressed with the Marines as an organization capable of sustaining long-term operations...hell, they don't even have their own medics...how are they going to sustain a force they are training...? they don't have their own engineers...how are they going to construct training facilities...? if it ain't on the boat, where are they going to get stuff from...?
IMNSHO the Marines make a good strike force...but at all levels, and especially the JTF level, they are inflexible, short-sighted, and dogmatic...these are not good characteristics for training foreign troops...
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Having spent two years working in operations, the Marine Corps is not designed for long term operations. We are set up and trained for short 30-60 day operations, that may, or may not be piecemeal based off of a 6 month deployment schedule (not OPSEC, you can find this out on Google). Things like NEO's, TRAP missions, Embassy re-inforcements, Global AT duties, ect. That is why our operational force is designed around the concept of the MEU(SOC). The Marine Corps is not designed to be an occupational force. We cannot and should not do the job of the Army. This includes training indigenous troops. We are not trained to accomplish this type of mission, and lack of training will produce similar results to that of stupidy in a situation where proper training is required to function.
That being said I believe that Force Recon was added to SOCOM for two reasons.
1. To windfall a precieved shortage in trained SF operators brought on by lagging numbers in our armed forces (resulting in lagging SF recruitment).
2. Force Recon is set up to operate reconassance missions that no other branch of SF is designed to do. SEAL's are designed for direct action and amphibious missions, DELTA for AT, army SF (I won't use the GB word
) for infiltration and Force Recon for deep recon. Each can function in different operational roles, but they function best in the role they were set up for. Thus adding Force Recon to SOCOM gives the additional capabilities without the hassle of inter agency coordination (which in my limited experience can be quite painfull).