Second Land Armies and Excess Combatant Commands

I'm pleasantly surprised to see all these comments and there are excellent points across the board.

Some comments stood out that will add to why I submitted this essay.

_The unit that RIPped us said they "would not be combat operational" until there was a PX in place.

Marines live like Spartans while the other services live like Athenians... just looking for some moderation. Moving more Spartan is advisable. The impulse to chew up and spit out may be short-sighted but "once a Marine, always a Marine" means "once a rifleman, always a rifleman" and by extension, everyone is a warrior. I'd prefer more warriors, less administrators etc.

_I don't agree that on the necessity of JFCOM.
it's functionality existed prior to it's creation, and will continue to exist after it's deactivation

Agreed; the point is more to maintain the institutional focus on experimentation (in the spirit of the 1997 NDP recommendation), but more importantly, to get past the centrality of regional GCCs and think globally about power projection. GCCs know plans and missions, but their boundaries are artificial/arbitrary and inhibiting. EUCOM knows plenty about the MED, but TRANSCOM's intel on en route infrastructure across EUCOM and into CENTCOM is far more substantial.

Doesn't have to be JFCOM, could be "Projection Command", it just had the experimentation and GLOBAL force management roles already necessary for coping with a future marked by uncertainty.

_Take it from me - I expect my job as a contractor to go the way of the dodo and do not feel bad about it at all.

Obviously you are dedicated and prepared to continue working with integrity in a position you know is slated for extinction - the nation needs more of you. And actually, I believe contractors are here to stay. Until labor management is rationalized, contractors will provide the flexibility needed amidst uncertainty. IMHO, the frustration with contractors is borne of the lag in oversight, which was impossible to resurrect in time for the enormous surge in dollars committed right after Sept 11. This need not be a long war and when peace returns, oversight can be reconstituted, catch up, and prepare for the next conflict, which brings me to the last item.

That next conflict better not be another 8 year occupation of a Central Asian moonscape.

_However, without the Army paying these bills (in terms of $$ and force structure), the USMC wouldn't have been in Iraq or be in Iraq or Afghanistan because it couldn't sustain itself.

Fine, sustaining ourself in Afghanistan or Iraq for this long has been a mistake. We should have exited Afghanistan and just continued pounding the adversary everytime it massed forces (e.g. training camps etc.) Having been to Afghanistan, the place is rubble and the Afghans can keep it. Nation-building may represent the altruistic side of American foreign policy, but, in Afghanistan, it would take a century.

On the other hand, Iraq is more strategic and a policy of regime change was merited, but as Frederick Kagan notes in Finding the Target, if that's the policy, then plan backwards and comprehensively --> i.e. plan for an occupation that will achieve the desired end state.

Accordingly, I submitted long-term occupation is to be avoided, precisely because of the point above -- without the Army paying these bills (in terms of $$ and force structure), the USMC wouldn't have been in Iraq or be in Iraq or Afghanistan because it couldn't sustain itself -- well apparently neither could the Army or the US. Before the FCS cancellation, the coinciding reconstitution bill was in the range of $50B.

As asserted in the essay, the [adversaries'] goal is cost-imposition and the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan underscore the cost in both American treasure and blood [AND] it is the tremendous expense in the former that has partly brought the nation to this juncture.

---
My unstated motto for House of Marathon:
"to provoke"

I appreciate all the time given to comments and response; thank you for reading the essay and sharing your thoughts.

Cheers,
RJP

RITW: Thanks for the attempt at a vocabulary lesson, but I am arguing about efficiency, not efficacy. I do believe that the efficacy of the MAGTF is an important point, but I am particularly disputing your characterization that the Corps would cost more proportionately due to inefficiency. I would argue that the self-contained Air Force, for example, in the MAGTF is proportionately significantly less expensive than a similar Air Force capacity due to the much less robust and, I'd say, less inefficient construct of a Marine squadron.

Again, I buy that the lack of its own sustainment commands, etc, does skew the statistics, but I would say that, at best, you'd be looking at proportional parity, not worse. The Corps is lean to a fault and the big Army and Air Force are big to a fault, from overdoing the sustainment, to turning that overdone sustainment into strained buttons on uniforms all over the AOR, except for the few that are out shivering and starving chasing ghosts around. Your economies of scale are more than erased by volumes of waste. Now, when it comes to trying to procure niche weapons systems, specifically the MV-22 and the F-35 STOVL variant, the argument begins to have some validity. I think that is more due to unrealistic dreaminess on the part of a few people who fancy themselves visionaries than the construct of the Corps.

RITW: What in the world are you talking about? From what data or premises are you deriving the assertion that the Marine employment structure would be dramatically more expensive than what is currently in place in other services? That is absurd. Would the Corps be more expensive if it did not have Army logistics and Air Force transport, tanking, etc to rely on? Absolutely. But to say that the Corps is "sinfully" inefficient and would be proportionately more expensive than the other services is ludicrous. The Marine Corps is "efficient" to a fault. The Corps' answer to being understaffed and underfunded is to make do with what other services would and do refuse. The bloat in big Army and big Air Force is partially because they are the big services, but it is also incredibly, I'd argue criminally, wasteful in all the wrong places (i.e. fraudulent waste an incapacity in the tail, combined with funding and manpower issues in the tooth). Your comment has zero credibility.

I agree that if the USMC provided its own infrastructure it would be far more expensive to maintain it than it is now, and that in reality it is far more expensive than it seems because so much is "borrowed" from other services. I'm just saying that "more expensive than it seems" probably does not equal "more expensive than other services".

So, the point that the author made, that the USMC is cheaper than the other services, is valid.

I'll agree on the point that the USMC relies significantly on other services for the "heavy lifting." In many cases, this is literally the heavy lifting of strategic and theater transport, as well as the provision of services required in theater beyond a limited timeframe. That being said, the other services' "retention model," if that is what you want to call it after Realist in the Wilderness, is an excuse for the most egregious fraud, waste, and abuse. And nowhere is this worse than forward deployed locations. I spent several months at a FOB that a Marine unit built out of scratch living off of ROWPU water from a drilled well, MREs, and bathing/laundry out of a plastic tub. The unit that RIPped us said they "would not be combat operational" until there was a PX in place. There is a happy medium in there somewhere. Furthermore, the main bases, like Kandahar, are the most disgusting examples of the "big services" gone wrong. More garrison than garrison, with the emphasis wholly backwards. Comfort and services come before accomplishing the mission. The amount of tail to tooth is disturbing, much of the tail feeding the tail that has time to go to 3-4 meals a day, sneak in a few hours shopping and snacking at the boardwalk, and do organized unit PT every morning. No matter what the retention model is, I can't help but thinking that we'd be doing a lot better off as a nation if the big services could pare down some of the b.s. and focus on the task at hand with a little more mission oriented mindset. The answer is in the middle. The Marines can't exist or operate for anything but a very limited time without the heavy lifting of the other services, but the other services are egregiously wasteful even considering a different retention model.

The point is that the Marine Corps is less expensive to maintain than the other services, and yet provides great capabilities. Do you have any data that this is not the case? Does the infrastructure paid for by other services total up to a level exceeding any other services? I doubt it.

Acknowledged, but, in jest, the USMC is not the service building its bases around the golf course.

The difference between a USMC base and a USAF base is substantial -- ex. Camp Smith vs. Hickam AF Base, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Thanks for taking time to read and comment.
Cheers, RJP

Finally, the Corps executes its mission frugally; the Corps constitutes 17 percent of the military's active ground combat maneuver units, 12 percent of the fixed wing tactical aircraft, and 19 percent of the attack helicopter,<b> but consumes only 6.5 percent of the baseline defense budget.</b>

I'm sorry. That is a bit misleading, especially considering that a lot of infrastructure is paid for by the other Services.