7 ms·

Why not combine the forces.

by sidegrid 10y ago

lithos 10y ago
The social conflict would be the same as combining IBM, Dell, and Google.
- BJBBB 10y ago
  Agree. Each service branch is a different culture. The different branches' cultures are reflective per their mission and the resultant qualifications and standards for the 'type' of person that would be able to pass the training requirements respective of the mission. Air Force and USMC are the most profoundly dissimilar, where a more appropriate analogy might be a comparison of Google to IH.
  - Ericson2314 10y ago
    This is true. But as a civilian, I'm not sure why I'd give a shit. Moral wil sink for 20 years, but any major conflict should snap 'em out of that.
    - unit91 10y ago
      Combat veteran here (Afghanistan, 2012). You have no idea what you're talking about. War is very hard on morale. You're away from your family killing people who are trying kill you, hoping to live through it, and most of all hoping that in the right moments you'll be able to summon all your strength and courage to fight bravely and honorably. In spite of all your hopes and fears you see death in the most inglorious circumstances. I had a friend of mine who was killed while taking a dump. Try that for a morale booster. To answer your question directly, I hope you care because you vote, and because regardless of what you think we fight and die for you because we believe your life and liberty are precious. Mistakes and inefficient equipment and organizational structures cost lives (maybe mine, certainly others). And if a "better" organized military only results in us being a little happier day-to-day, is that really so much to ask?
      - Ericson2314 10y ago
        To be clear I was working under the (unjustified, hypothetical) assumption that while tradition gives us the separate branches, a different organization would be more effective in the long run. Obviously moral is very important, I don't mean to dispute that. I was saying I don't care for the branches' cultural continuity prima faciae. A temporary drop in moral is bad, but if the new organization really is better the drop should only be temporary and moral should recover long term. The second part of my argument is a mere whip that if we got ourselves into a "big moral/self-evidentally important war", that would bost moral more than the reorg would hurt it.
        Ericson2314 10y ago
        A good concrete example of this principle is integrating women into all combat rolls. In the short-term I imagine this absolutely will distablize the culture and probably hurt moral in certain quarters. In the long term, I hope the culture(s) will change and moral will recover.
    - wtbob 10y ago
      > But as a civilian, I'm not sure why I'd give a shit. I hope you give a shit about the effectiveness of theprotection others are delivering you. The sort of person who works well in the Air Force is not the same sort of person who works well in the Army is not the same sort of person who works well in the Navy is not the same sort of person who works well in the Marine Corps. The jobs of the services are fundamentally different, as are the mindsets & aptitudes of those in them. The Air Force is a mid-century corporation: it has metrics and deliverables (literal deliverables), and is oriented towards long-term sustainment of whatever it is asked to do. It's very, very good at building an organisation to do the same thing for years, with good morale for its people because they are never tasked too hard, and excellent safety results because that's important when operation a mid-century concern. On the downside, most of it is not really all that flexible, and its culture is not, in the main, oriented towards enduring long-term suffering (there are exceptions). If you have something you want done, you ask the Air Force. If you ask an Air Force officer to secure a building, he'll buy it. The Army is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. It's all about mass, directed according to very strict orders. If you need to pave 1,000 miles of road, the Army Corps of Engineers will do it, according to its plans. If you need to garrison a town, the Army will do it, all nicely and neatly and according to plan. If you have a problem someone's faced before, you want the Army. There's a field manual for everything: a field manual for improvised munitions (because of course there's a manual for improvisation), a field manual for executions, a field manual for skiing. If you ask an Army officer to secure a building, he'll surround it and not let anyone in or out without authorisation. The Navy is a floating, violent industrial plant. It never does the same thing twice; it's always going to one new port or another. It's not as laid-back as the Air Force, nor as regulation-bound as the Army. It speaks an entirely different dialect of the English language, for no particularly obvious reason. If you have a problem that no-one has ever seen before, you ask the Navy for a solution. If you ask a Naval officer to secure a building, he'll make sure a sailor sweeps & swabs the decks, and puts out the lights. The Marines are a cult. They worship at the shrines of Chesty Puller, Dan Daly, Smedley Butler & John Basilone. They think that war is a racket, but they don't particularly care: they enjoy the racket. If you absolutely, positively need it dead or destroyed within 24 hours or less, you call the Marine Corps. If you ask a Marine to secure a building, he will take it by force, killing or capturing everyone inside. If he does a particularly good job of it, he'll be deified and join the pantheon along Puller &c. If you put someone well-suited to the Marine Corps in the Air Force, he'll be fired for getting into a little trouble on the weekends. If you put someone well-suited to the Navy in the Army, he'll go out of his mind from boredom. If you put someone well-suited to the Air Force in the Army, he'll be miserable and quit. If you put someone well-suited to the Army in the Navy, he'll just be generally appalled. The different services have different roles, different strengths and different weaknesses. Those differences are why they are well-prepared for a major conflict.
Animats 10y ago
The Marines do, which is one of their strengths. The USMC has ground-pounders, tanks, rotary and fixed wing air, and landing craft. Doctrine is to use them together under one commander. "All operations are combined operations." The package is intended to win small and medium sized battles without needing other resources for 2-4 weeks. That's enough to deal with many crises. For the big jobs, it gives the Big Army time to position its heavy resources. Right now, there are four US Navy amphibious assault ships at sea, loaded up with Marines, weapons, and aircraft, spread around the world just in case they're needed in a hurry. The U.S. Army, when not in combat, is a resource pool. Deployment involves pulling together various units and equipment from different locations and sending them somewhere. The mix of units depends on the task. "Moving Mountains", by Gen. Gus Patronis, describes how this was done for the Gulf War.

Why not combine the forces.

lithos 10y ago

The social conflict would be the same as combining IBM, Dell, and Google.

BJBBB 10y ago
Agree. Each service branch is a different culture. The different branches' cultures are reflective per their mission and the resultant qualifications and standards for the 'type' of person that would be able to pass the training requirements respective of the mission. Air Force and USMC are the most profoundly dissimilar, where a more appropriate analogy might be a comparison of Google to IH.
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  This is true. But as a civilian, I'm not sure why I'd give a shit. Moral wil sink for 20 years, but any major conflict should snap 'em out of that.
  - unit91 10y ago
    Combat veteran here (Afghanistan, 2012). You have no idea what you're talking about. War is very hard on morale. You're away from your family killing people who are trying kill you, hoping to live through it, and most of all hoping that in the right moments you'll be able to summon all your strength and courage to fight bravely and honorably. In spite of all your hopes and fears you see death in the most inglorious circumstances. I had a friend of mine who was killed while taking a dump. Try that for a morale booster. To answer your question directly, I hope you care because you vote, and because regardless of what you think we fight and die for you because we believe your life and liberty are precious. Mistakes and inefficient equipment and organizational structures cost lives (maybe mine, certainly others). And if a "better" organized military only results in us being a little happier day-to-day, is that really so much to ask?
    - Ericson2314 10y ago
      To be clear I was working under the (unjustified, hypothetical) assumption that while tradition gives us the separate branches, a different organization would be more effective in the long run. Obviously moral is very important, I don't mean to dispute that. I was saying I don't care for the branches' cultural continuity prima faciae. A temporary drop in moral is bad, but if the new organization really is better the drop should only be temporary and moral should recover long term. The second part of my argument is a mere whip that if we got ourselves into a "big moral/self-evidentally important war", that would bost moral more than the reorg would hurt it.
      - Ericson2314 10y ago
        A good concrete example of this principle is integrating women into all combat rolls. In the short-term I imagine this absolutely will distablize the culture and probably hurt moral in certain quarters. In the long term, I hope the culture(s) will change and moral will recover.
  - wtbob 10y ago
    > But as a civilian, I'm not sure why I'd give a shit. I hope you give a shit about the effectiveness of theprotection others are delivering you. The sort of person who works well in the Air Force is not the same sort of person who works well in the Army is not the same sort of person who works well in the Navy is not the same sort of person who works well in the Marine Corps. The jobs of the services are fundamentally different, as are the mindsets & aptitudes of those in them. The Air Force is a mid-century corporation: it has metrics and deliverables (literal deliverables), and is oriented towards long-term sustainment of whatever it is asked to do. It's very, very good at building an organisation to do the same thing for years, with good morale for its people because they are never tasked too hard, and excellent safety results because that's important when operation a mid-century concern. On the downside, most of it is not really all that flexible, and its culture is not, in the main, oriented towards enduring long-term suffering (there are exceptions). If you have something you want done, you ask the Air Force. If you ask an Air Force officer to secure a building, he'll buy it. The Army is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. It's all about mass, directed according to very strict orders. If you need to pave 1,000 miles of road, the Army Corps of Engineers will do it, according to its plans. If you need to garrison a town, the Army will do it, all nicely and neatly and according to plan. If you have a problem someone's faced before, you want the Army. There's a field manual for everything: a field manual for improvised munitions (because of course there's a manual for improvisation), a field manual for executions, a field manual for skiing. If you ask an Army officer to secure a building, he'll surround it and not let anyone in or out without authorisation. The Navy is a floating, violent industrial plant. It never does the same thing twice; it's always going to one new port or another. It's not as laid-back as the Air Force, nor as regulation-bound as the Army. It speaks an entirely different dialect of the English language, for no particularly obvious reason. If you have a problem that no-one has ever seen before, you ask the Navy for a solution. If you ask a Naval officer to secure a building, he'll make sure a sailor sweeps & swabs the decks, and puts out the lights. The Marines are a cult. They worship at the shrines of Chesty Puller, Dan Daly, Smedley Butler & John Basilone. They think that war is a racket, but they don't particularly care: they enjoy the racket. If you absolutely, positively need it dead or destroyed within 24 hours or less, you call the Marine Corps. If you ask a Marine to secure a building, he will take it by force, killing or capturing everyone inside. If he does a particularly good job of it, he'll be deified and join the pantheon along Puller &c. If you put someone well-suited to the Marine Corps in the Air Force, he'll be fired for getting into a little trouble on the weekends. If you put someone well-suited to the Navy in the Army, he'll go out of his mind from boredom. If you put someone well-suited to the Air Force in the Army, he'll be miserable and quit. If you put someone well-suited to the Army in the Navy, he'll just be generally appalled. The different services have different roles, different strengths and different weaknesses. Those differences are why they are well-prepared for a major conflict.

Animats 10y ago

The Marines do, which is one of their strengths. The USMC has ground-pounders, tanks, rotary and fixed wing air, and landing craft. Doctrine is to use them together under one commander. "All operations are combined operations." The package is intended to win small and medium sized battles without needing other resources for 2-4 weeks. That's enough to deal with many crises. For the big jobs, it gives the Big Army time to position its heavy resources. Right now, there are four US Navy amphibious assault ships at sea, loaded up with Marines, weapons, and aircraft, spread around the world just in case they're needed in a hurry. The U.S. Army, when not in combat, is a resource pool. Deployment involves pulling together various units and equipment from different locations and sending them somewhere. The mix of units depends on the task. "Moving Mountains", by Gen. Gus Patronis, describes how this was done for the Gulf War.