New World Order: Marine Corps

Edward IX

Banned
Well, I'm not sure how much bigger this Marine Corps actually would be. It only has 21 infantry battalions. I'm actually thinking it would be somewhere in the area of 185,000-190,000 Marines. And it also doesn't have OTL's insane optempo. Most operational units are on a 1:2 deploy:dwell ratio, with the rotational RCTs on a 1:3 schedule.
That's about right. I believe at Desert Storm the number was 196,000 Marines. By the time I got out it was supposed to be down to 172,000. I knew a lot of good Marines get involuntarily separated during that time. So, your numbers work for me, keep this up it's interesting.
 
I would have the construction engineers and bulk POL units be Seebees. You could have reserve Marine and Seebee units, but the primary units would be Seebee. These type of units would not be on the ground until after the area is secured and would not have to be a "fighting" type unit, like a USMC one. The bridging units would be Marine but only have one or two active and the rest reserve units. The one or two units could use preposition stocks so they don't have to worry about having to use alot of lift capability and the reserve units would bring their own equipment along with them.

The Amphibious Tractor units could be organized into a east coast/west coast regiment type unit. An example would be the West Coast regiment would have command of all non deployed units and be responsible for getting them ready to join their units before deployment for exercises. This way you could use module for what you want the AmpTrac to do. You could group companies together to form a battalion or two support different types of units.
 
Forgot to post this earlier. This is the OTL MEU equipment laydown.

landscape-1460569296-24th-meu-laydown-1.jpg


I would have the construction engineers and bulk POL units be Seebees. You could have reserve Marine and Seebee units, but the primary units would be Seebee. These type of units would not be on the ground until after the area is secured and would not have to be a "fighting" type unit, like a USMC one. The bridging units would be Marine but only have one or two active and the rest reserve units. The one or two units could use preposition stocks so they don't have to worry about having to use alot of lift capability and the reserve units would bring their own equipment along with them.

The Amphibious Tractor units could be organized into a east coast/west coast regiment type unit. An example would be the West Coast regiment would have command of all non deployed units and be responsible for getting them ready to join their units before deployment for exercises. This way you could use module for what you want the AmpTrac to do. You could group companies together to form a battalion or two support different types of units.

I'm actually looking to see what I can find on engineering requirements right now. If I use the same rule of thumb as I have for everything else, I need three MEU support battalions with all-purpose companies, four MEB support battalions on active duty and two in the reserves, and two GS battalions on active duty and one in the reserves (though GS engineering assets might be better off pushed into the Reserves, since they don't have much use in rotation). I don't want to count on Seabees in the MEU or even the initial echelon of the MEB, and bulk POL is a bit outside what the Seabees normally do. In a maturing theater, a Seabee battalion and NMCR headquarters to control all engineering assets might get added to the MEB and multiple battalions and a Seabee brigade headquarters might get added to the MEU, but the basic engineers required to make the MAGTF fight should all be Marines.

By Amtrac do you mean the AAVs? In this scenario, they're gone completely in favor of a small light landing craft that can get two wheeled personnel carriers through the surf zone.

That's about right. I believe at Desert Storm the number was 196,000 Marines. By the time I got out it was supposed to be down to 172,000. I knew a lot of good Marines get involuntarily separated during that time. So, your numbers work for me, keep this up it's interesting.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1992/WG.htm

Check this out. The post Gulf-war plan was 159,000 Marines. The Marines were still expecting to maintain a "division" of four battalions and similar "wing" on Okinawa, and then only two infantry regiments and a combined armored regiment with a LAR battalion, tank battalion and LAI (infantry battalion mounted in LAVs) on each coast. Even the planners expected this skeletal Corps would exceed 1:1 deploy:dwell, which is absurd. And of course there were no MEB headquarters, because I don't even know why. The 1990's Marine Corps didn't actually shrink that badly, but it also rejected some of the common sense ideas from that plan, like eliminating III MEF and putting I and II MEF under Marine Forces Command.

It makes me wonder how we could maximize the effect of a 160,000 man Corps. Carlton Meyer, who's a bit of a crank, claimed he could do it by consolidating Force-level headquarters, removing everything on Okinawa, and cutting DC-area commands down to the bone. http://www.g2mil.com/rightsizingMarines.htm
http://www.g2mil.com/Marines160K.htm
http://www.g2mil.com/Marine150K.htm
There's a few downright suspect numbers in there, but a 160,000-man USMC isn't impossible. You could even do it within the three division/wing requirement provided you got a bit creative with the definition of "division" and "wing".
 

Edward IX

Banned
@Burton K Wheeler do you know how General Grey was with these plans? He did some things as Commandant that I really disliked, which are still around in some ways but, I can't imagine he was OK with this. One thing about Grey, he probably was the last Commandant who gave any attention to Europe.
 
Recalibrating aircraft numbers based on a different air wing for MPF and Amphibious MEBs. The MPF MEB is expected to deploy into a semi-permissible environment (like Saudi Arabia in 1991) and the amphib MEB is supposed to be able to attack off amphibs. There are three MPF MEBs (the standing MEB HQs plus the Air Contingency RCTs and UDP forces) and two amphibious MEBs in this Marine Corps. The MEUs are being tracked separately and I'm treating the USMCR as having one MPF MEB.

The aircraft numbers are:

VMFA [A6F] 7 active/1 reserve
VMFA(AW) [A6F] 5 active/1 reserve
VMA [AV8B] 10 active/1 reserve
VMGR [KC130] 5 active/1 reserve (this doesn't dedicate any VMGR assets to the MEU. I'll assume that the MPS MEB and MEUs can share fueler support)
VMAQ [EA6F] 2 active (I'm going with OTL numbers and assuming the MPS MEB doesn't need jammer support)
HMMA [AH60] 8 active/1 reserve (numbers are adjusted slightly downward from OTL HMLA requirements, we could also acceptably go 11 and 2)
HMM [Sikorsky S-92] 20 active/1 reserve
HMH [CH53K] 8 active/1 reserve


I'd also need to calculate tanks, artillery, and engineers differently. Tanks we figure one whole battalion per MPF MEB, one company per amphibious MEB, and one platoon per MEU, which gives us 15 active tank companies and 3 Reserve. I'd suggest 7 active and 8 reserve as a more appropriate breakdown. Artillery, we could just ax the EFSS batteries from three battalions and replace them with CAESAR. Or we could have one four-howitzer battalion and one HIMARS battalion per MPS MEB?
Engineers are a complicated deal already. Since I've combined engineer support and combat engineers, the breakdown would be three MEU support battalions, three MPS support (heavy) battalions active and one reserve, two amphibious battalions active, and two MEF GS battalions active and one reserve (or one active and two reserve, or just two reserve). I'm not even going to think about how to break engineers down company by company at this point.

Fiddling with ship numbers next. Running into all sorts of complications with the three MEU rotations.
 
Okay, so here's my thoughts on amphibious lift, after rereading this: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a515729.pdf

First, it looks like six ships, not three, are in maintenance at any one time. So there would need to be at least 11 of each amphib. The OTL Navy was going to use 12 each LHD/LPD/LSD to fill nine PHIBRONs. If I add 12 LKDs, that's an eye-watering 48 amphibs, which is a challenge for sure.

The other consideration I forgot to take into account was that PHIBRONs rotate on a four-phase two-year cycle. That means if I want one MEU per PHIBRON, I'd need four MEUs on each coast on the same 1:3 rotation as the other RCTs, and then one in Okinawa associate with the ships at Sasebo. That's doable, but I'd have to shuffle things around quite a bit. What could be done is to have 3rd Marines rotate through 31st MEU and add a fourth battalion to 1st Marines and 8th Marines and have them double up on the amphibious MEB mission.

The last complication is how exactly to shift amphibs from MEU to MEB. I don't really want a redundant lift capability, but amphibious MEBs would have to be formed ad hoc if every single amphib is devoted to MEU rotation.

So would it be possible to have 40-44 amphibs rotate on a 1:2 basis so three MEUs can stay afloat? That could include either rebasing the amphibs from Sasebo to San Diego or putting a forward based PHIBRON somewhere else, like the Med or Bahrain. Is the four-battalion amphibious regiment a better idea, with four more RCTs available for air contingency or unit deployment and 3rd Marines dedicated to Sasebo? I haven't done the envelope math yet, but the dual MEU/amphibious MEB seems like a suspect idea.
 
Forgot to post this earlier. This is the OTL MEU equipment laydown.

By Amtrac do you mean the AAVs? In this scenario, they're gone completely in favor of a small light landing craft that can get two wheeled personnel carriers through the surf zone

I use AmTrac to mean any unit that, IOTL, uses the AAVP to put people and supplies on the beach. Wheeled personnel carriers are ok, I was using the name of the actual units because of their mission, not what is the equipment.

Do you mean something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-V

Or its big brother:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-LX
 
I use AmTrac to mean any unit that, IOTL, uses the AAVP to put people and supplies on the beach. Wheeled personnel carriers are ok, I was using the name of the actual units because of their mission, not what is the equipment.

Do you mean something like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-V

Or its big brother:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LARC-LX

The LARCs belong to Navy beachmaster units, they aren't personnel transports. They're the successors of the WWII DUKWS, whereas the AAV is the successor of the WWII Amtrac. It's basically a truck for shuttling things around on beaches and in shallow water, I don't know how it would do in surf or for any kind of tactical task.

And least we forget a special unit, The Beach Jumpers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Jumpers

Don't have anything in particular to do with the Marines. The Navy used the term "beach jumpers" for their pseudo-PSYOP force in the 1990's, though.
 
The LARCs belong to Navy beachmaster units, they aren't personnel transports. They're the successors of the WWII DUKWS, whereas the AAV is the successor of the WWII Amtrac. It's basically a truck for shuttling things around on beaches and in shallow water, I don't know how it would do in surf or for any kind of tactical task.
Don't have anything in particular to do with the Marines. The Navy used the term "beach jumpers" for their pseudo-PSYOP force in the 1990's, though.

Beachmaster units are part of any Marine amphibious unit. Unless you are giving the Gator navy to the Marines, Beachmasters would be included in the TOE for any unit doing a amphibious landing. The Navy controls all the landing assets up to generally the High water mark/tide line, unless otherwise specified. The Senior Naval Officer afloat is the person in charge of the landings. The Marines don't take control until they pass a certain line.

Beach Jumper units would be a good job for Marine Psyops combined with Force Recon to create diversions and make them think other things are happening elseware.
 
Beachmaster units are part of any Marine amphibious unit. Unless you are giving the Gator navy to the Marines, Beachmasters would be included in the TOE for any unit doing a amphibious landing. The Navy controls all the landing assets up to generally the High water mark/tide line, unless otherwise specified. The Senior Naval Officer afloat is the person in charge of the landings. The Marines don't take control until they pass a certain line.

Beach Jumper units would be a good job for Marine Psyops combined with Force Recon to create diversions and make them think other things are happening elseware.

I don't know enough about beachmaster units to suggest any changes to them. They aren't really part of the amphibious connector equation.

The Marines only recently created a sort-of PSYOP capability, which was in response to the Army not being able to support afloat MEUs. They created Marine Civil Affairs in response to failures of Army Reserve Civil Affairs during OIF I. In this timeline, the Marines get their PSYOP and CA support from Army special operations through MARSOC (seven PSYOP detachments and CA companies on active duty dedicated to supporting MAGTFs through the MSOU, and support to the MEF coming from Reserve units). One draft version of USASOC in this TL had Army PSYOP detachments supporting the Navy, but I wound up deciding I couldn't justify it.

One version of the Marine SRIG in the early 1990's was supposed to have a "military deception detachment", but I don't know what ever happened with that idea. There haven't been dedicated MILDEC units in the U.S. military since WWII and it isn't specifically a PSYOP discipline, though PSYOP can support it. "Beach jumpers" is a cool name but a hard concept to recycle.
 
Beachmasters are the interface between the Navy part of the amphibious operation and the Marine part.

From the Wiki:
Mission
Beachmaster Unit One deploys and supports combat ready Beach Party Teams in support of amphibious operations around the world. Their function is to control landing craft, lighterage, and amphibious vehicles in the vicinity of the beach from surf line to high water mark, and coordinate movement over the beach of equipment, troops, and supplies. They also maintain observation of wind and surf conditions, and provide limited assistance in local security and beach defense. They have the capability to provide beach and surf zone salvage with use of their LARC-V vehicle and provide the evacuation of casualties, prisoners-of-war, and non-combatants.

Beachmaster Unit 1 reports to Naval Beach Group 1.

Beach Party Teams are responsible for controlling the boat traffic in the surf zone, controlling the beaching and retracting the landing craft, and directing the smooth and efficient flow of personnel and material over the beach. Beach Party Teams are led by the Beachmaster Team Commander. Beachmaster Unit One has 8 deployable departments.

And from the Wiki for Naval Beach Group 1:

Mission
Since its inception 19 July 1948, Naval Beach Group ONE (NBG-1) and its component commands have participated in a variety of amphibious operations. From the early years of assaults during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts to the modern and technically sophisticated amphibious operations in Somalia and Iraq, the men and women of NBG-1 have served throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans in support of US policy abroad.[1]

Commander, Naval Beach Group ONE (CNBG-1) functions under two distinct missions. During amphibious assaults, he provides personnel to support and operate causeway lighterage, LCACs, LCUs, buoyant ship-to-shore bulk fuel systems, beach traffic control, and beach salvage equipment. The second mission is under the Maritime Preposition Force (MPF) concept which uses the equipment and supplies prepositioned on board forward deployed Maritime Prepositioning ships (MPS). Joining forces with the Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB), CNBG-1 forms and commands the Naval Support Element (NSE) and is airlifted into an objective area to establish camp support, conduct ship-to-shore movement, beach party operations and debarkation operations in support of the offload of each MPF ship.[1]

CNBG-1 is also responsible for conducting Amphibious Specialty Training (PHIBSPECTRA) for all US Pacific Fleet amphibious ships. The PHIBSPECTRA Team provides in-depth training in well deck operations to prepare Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG) ships for deployment to the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans.[1]
 
Top