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Deleted member 67144 scul
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I’d love to hear your reasoning behind your idea that Marine infantry is expendable but Army infantry is too highly trained to be expendable.
You mean the Army's reasoning or simply how we operate conflicts these days or plenty of former Army and Marine infantry's reasoning? It's because they serve two very different purposes, and have different sets of resources, training, equipment, etc. If you're in any way aware of conflicts since Vietnam or how the Army evolved since the end of conscription, the Army decidedly moved from massive conscripted forces into a substantially smaller force and specialized, elite units with advanced schools and training in airborne / air assault, mechanized, fast deployable task forces, urban warfare, mountain warfare, a dozen other things I'm forgetting (there's just a lot), you name it, the Army has it. Even before that, recruits don't go through standard BCT... they go through OSUT. Hell, there's even standard infantry task forces formed/trained by Rangers... so you have lots of standard Army infantry operating at a special forces level of training and competence but without the special forces designation or missions. Whatever any particular infantry is doing, the Army has the money, resources, equipment, facilities, and innovation to do it. There's a lot more that any Army infantry could give you a 3 hour lecture on and tons of things I'm missing, but there's nothing like an Iraq War combat vet sitting you down and explaining at length how frustrating Marines can be to work with.
Marine infantry are much more of a peanut-butter spread. You go to the same boot everyone does, you go to ITB, both with an overly heavy emphasis on drilling relative to more functional areas, and voila, you're an 03. The Marine Corps is frankly very underfunded and very "traditional" so they're naturally lagging way behind in equipment and training compared to their Army counterparts. Hell, even bayonet drills are still a big thing. Overall, you lose a Marine infantryman, the investment is simply nowhere close to an Army infantryman. They're two different leagues entirely. The one thing the Marines claim to be good at, the Army surpasses them entirely. Considering part of the Army's job is bailing out Marines even in cases where the present Army force is a lot smaller and less equipped than the Marines present (Chosin, Najaf immediately come to mind), the difference in competence is further telling. The Marines can do well with general policing and that's where they shine. The one area the Marines really excel is their propaganda, with President Truman likening it to Stalin's, and the Corps is certainly a lot better at it now than in the 40s-50s.
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