The Americans have two airborne divisions: the 82nd and the 101st of three IBCTs each and an independent airborne IBCT: the 173rd, not to mention another 7 IBCTs in the Active Army and 20 IBCTs in the ARNG.
The 101st is Airborne in name only these days- it is primarily an Air Assault Div now - none of the its BCT's are Jump capable.
No one it going to cut anything - the post was click bait at best.
Still need them too -- plus we got more this year from NDAA than was asked...Keep the marines with the Navy. It's about as symbiotic a relationship as you can ask for. Do what they did in WW2 - the Navy and Marines do the amphibious assaults and the Army is brought in once the beachheads are secured. It worked and it worked well. The nature of that has changed but there is still a fundamental relationship between what the ships at sea and the ground based Marines can do to augment and support each other.
As I understand it, the primary objective for the Space force currently is to develop methods and procedures to protect the network of GPS and communication satellites. Considering the importance of these assets, it's well worth the time and money to figure out how best to protect them. In fact it might be best for everyone that we develop treaties to avoid physical destroying satellites and only allowing blinding and incapacitating for a time their capabilities. As the debris from a large number of destroyed satellites, might make large swathes of the orbital altitudes uninhabitable by new satellites/stations or space vehicles for well over a generation.In a country that just formed a Space Force for no particular valid reason (is it that there is no "air" in space and thus negating the primary movement medium for an "Air Force"?) I can't see anyone seriously pushing through an attempt to do away with the Marines. With the rise of China's territorial naval ambitions the Marines, and their new focus, actually appear more relevant than ever notwithstanding some competition from the Army's Multi-Domain Task Force concept (The two aren't mutually exclusive and could be aided by tighter integration during development).
USAF Space Command has been doing that for a while, and other services' commands have done the same. Hell, there are USN, Army, and USMC (?!) Space folks. I agree that it is an important and growing field, but is it different enough to warrant a new service at this time?
Just finished reading Rendezvous with Rama, so...Spaceguard?
Likely the same bun fight when the Army Air Force said "i want a divorce" and became the USAF, the days when almost every astronaut was a fighter/test pilot has come to a close. Likely they don't want to be run by a fighter/bomber mafia.
Yeah, mostly because a lot of those folks don't "get" Space.
USMC have voluntarily moved away from being the 2nd most powerful Army. They read the tea leaves and saw that Littoral actions and Amphibious work was going to be in higher need than fighting in the desert again for a bit.
The USMC also has a budget of around $48 billion of the bigger type of dollar.
I think the Marines worked pretty hard to get themselves roles fighting in the desert. It was a voluntary decision to get away from their specialty to get a part of the action - and frankly their people were needed as the army got spread pretty thin. It makes eminent sense for them to do what they are doing. I'm not sure if all their plans make sense but at least they're thinking about the future in a logical way and will probably course correct where needed.
You just answered all our issues. Double the CAF's budget and problem solved. We don't have to many GOFO's we have too small a budgetThe USMC also has a budget of around $48 billion of the bigger type of dollar.
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