Strategypage describes the Marine Corps move (not without some opposition within the Marine Corps) to become smaller, lighter, and focused on smaller amphibious operations:
The U.S. Marine Corps is facing an old problem. Over the last few decades its weapons and equipment got heavier, so that it could compete with army units during combat operations on land. This made your average marine combat unit heavier and more difficult to move ashore for amphibious operations. In response, marine commanders say they would prefer to be a smaller force, one that concentrates on its main mission; amphibious and commando type operations.
This would fit with those tiny wars for tiny islands that I described. So this makes some sense.
But while the Marines have an understandable desire to avoid long counter-insurgency wars inland like in Iraq's Anbar or anywhere in landlocked Afghanistan, I do not look forward to losing the most significant "allied" army to fight alongside the United States Army overseas during the entire post-World War II eras.
I don't think that the Marines really get to choose what wars they fight. If they lighten up and we need troops for a war the Marines aren't prepared to fight, the Marines will be sent to fight with inadequate tactics, training, and equipment in that war.
What I would still prefer is a Marine Corps that is focused on smaller-to-medium amphibious operations and urban warfare (see pg. 38 for my pre-9/11 take on Marine Corps roles), yet with the capacity to scale up to fight a major multi-brigade amphibious operation (the latter is a change in my view, based on China's rising power the last 13 years). In the Cold War, Iceland and Norway could have been the locations for bigger Marine operations. In the future it might be Hainan Island, where China is building major bases for power projection into the South China Sea and points further out.
The urban warfare focus would give Marines a place in longer wars that exploits their ability to breach defenses--whether coastal defenses or fortified cities--while relieving the Army of the need to maintain lots of infantry for city combat. If the Marines take the lead in cities, the Army can focus on mobile, maneuver warfare for decisive operations against conventional enemy heavy units because the Army will need fewer less-mobile infantry to subdue cities.
And maybe the Army can avoid the temptation to become a second Marine Corps for small operations.
This supports the general observation that the Army wins wars while the Marines win battles (in my view, whether isolated small amphibious operations or smaller amphibious or urban battles that open the door for larger and heavier Army formations to exploit).
If the Marines don't want to maintain a lot of heavy weaponry for this task, the Army could supplement lighter Marine units with Army heavy armor (as the Army did in 1991 by attaching a tank brigade to the Marines for Desert Storm) for supporting dismounted troops in urban combat.
Mind you, I don't think the Army should turn its back on counter-insurgency to exclusively focus on conventional warfare. One, our special forces will retain knowledge and skills here.
Two, I think the Army should institutionalize this knowledge. As long as the leadership retains the skills to plan such operations, troops highly trained for conventional warfare are fully capable of transitioning to counter-insurgency if well led by skilled counter-insurgent leaders.
And right now, our troops are outstanding:
What made the experience so different today, versus past wars? It was a combination of things. The most important difference is that the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting smarter. While the Vietnam era troops were representative of the general population, the post-Vietnam era army is all-volunteer and highly selective. The troops are smarter, healthier and better educated than the general population. During the last three decades, new attitudes have developed throughout the army (which always got most of the draftees). The army, so to speak, has become more like the marines (which was always all-volunteer, and more innovative as a result). This ability to quickly analyze and adapt gets recognized by military historians, and other armies, but not by the media. It also saves lives in combat.
This innovation has led to better training, tactics and leadership. Smarter troops means smarter and more capable leaders, from the sergeants leading fire teams (five men) to the generals running the whole show. Smarter troops leads to tactics constantly adapting to changes on the battlefield. The better tactics, and smarter fighting, has been the biggest reason for the lower death rate.
The persistent and hugely wrong notion on the left side of the aisle that our troops are too ill-educated and dumb to do anything but join the military remains a sore point for me. Do read the whole thing for a good tour of changes in infantry combat that the United States has taken the lead in.
Anyway, with our allies shrinking their effective ground forces to the point where I think we should treat them as tribal auxiliaries, I don't like the idea that our Army and Marines will, with budget difficulties driving these decisions to compete with each other for funding, define their own roles when we need them to be a seamless (with overlaps in capabilities a feature and not a bug) joint ground force capable of winning our battles, wars, and battles that lead to wars.
