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Future of Marine Corps
- Thread starter FastEddie
- Start date
Reading an article it sounds like manning is increasing by 12k personnel. That's about all that's been mentioned. I personally wouldn't expect large, rapid, changes to government organizations in a short period of time. There's too much institutional inertia for that to happen.
I can say with a high degree of certainty that:
- it will always have the least per capita funding
- it will deploy to the worst locations/ have the worst bases
- and continue to do "more with less"
Forever. Because that is the niche.
- it will always have the least per capita funding
- it will deploy to the worst locations/ have the worst bases
- and continue to do "more with less"
Forever. Because that is the niche.
True story...
I was sitting around a camp fire in Afghanistan as a couple Marines and an Air Force dude are discussing their deployment living conditions.
The Air Force dude laments at how the single room he has is the smallest and shittiest he's ever lived in. The Marines tell him that that small shitty room is the best they've ever experienced. They all spent the next 30 minutes describing their living conditions back home and the Air Force dude is half convinced they're lying about how bad they have it.
Moral of the Story: Marines have a way worse QOL at home than the AF does deployed to austere environments, and QOL in Afghanistan beats QOL on the boat.
The boat doesn't get mortared or rocketed.
QOL is half living conditions and half how you and those around you deal with it. However good or shitty your accommodations, do you band together and get through deployment, or do you bitch, snipe, backbite, and turn things into High School 2.0?
My worst experiences on the boat had nothing to do with being on the boat. They had to do with being surrounded by other people who were being assholes. My best experiences on the boat had to do with being around people who were making the best of things, and didn't feel the need to (metaphorically) beat down other people and take out their frustrations on them because "dammit, this sucks."
I'd argue Miramar is pretty clutch for the wing, we were lucky to snag that one from the Navy. Beats El Toro.
The boat doesn't get mortared or rocketed.
Pretty Sure the crews of STARK, MASON, PONCE, ASHLAND KEARSARGE and a few others would disagree with you...
QOL on the boat is definitely better for the guys who get away from the boat bullshit on a regular basis. Remove the readyroom from the picture (since the personalities would be the same regardless of where you deployed) and everything else being equal, you've got better: food, rooms(with less roommates), and air conditioning/ heat, gyms, PX, mwr facilities and connectivity with the outside world on bases in the desert than you do on the boat.
Best part is no Cleaning Stations with Big XO, engineering drills, weekly GQ drills, man overboard drills or stupid bells.
And El Toro would beat pretty much everywhere else excluding North Island/Coronado
Hmm. What do they all have in common? Ah, yes. No catapults or arresting gear.
Rare events over the past 30 years and not the constant danger that IDF has often been in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 15 years, happening thousands of times.
Hmm. What do they all have in common? Ah, yes. No catapults or arresting gear.
There's the constant danger on the flight deck during flight operations where the risk of injury/death is probably just as great if not greater for the ship folks and aircrew working on it daily.
No denying there are risks from IDFs in the desert. However 15 years into it, there is a fair amount of risk mitigation as well. Besides, that "constant danger" keeps the good idea fairy in check- command PTs just because, running PRTs on deployment, standing around at quarters for daily turnover etc, don't happen. Also good for "sorry I missed (insert stupid meeting), there was an IDF earlier."
Having done desert and a boat deployment, My personal opinion is that the desert deployments suck way less. There's a chance my opinion would change if I was with a squadron and flying on my boat deployment but from a brand X ships company guy perspective I'd take the desert deployment, with all of the constant danger, over a boat every time.
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It is all about perspective. If you are an ops cell guy the only difference between life on the boat and life in the desert is the lack of ladders to get to chow. I knew guys in Iraq that spent a year there and had a roaming diameter of no more than 2 or 3 miles for the entire time (CHU, DFAC, TOC, DFAC, TOC, GYM, DFAC, CHU...wash, rinse, repeat). Camp Victory was far better than LSA Balad which was better than FOB Sykes which was heavenly when compared to COP Eagle (or any Combat Outpost). I was in Afghanistan at the beginning (2002) and we were living more like 19th Century frontier cavalry than 21st Century soldiers...but at least I didn't have to shave. So, QOL is in the mind of the complainer...you sissys!
Its an outlier, and its only nice because we got it from the Navy. We could have 5 Miramars, and Camp Lejeune would still bring us to below AF average.
Being on the LHD as a Marine sucks. It is worse than being the Air Wing on the carrier, because at least you are both Navy and you can see through the bullshit when they try to fuck you over. The enlisted Marines on the boat live significantly worse than their Navy counterparts of the same rank.