| To: LindyBill who wrote (6211) | 2/19/2021 5:40:11 PM | | From: TimF | | | | I'm not sure I understand what your getting at with the question. Like any weapon's system it sits were you put it and it launches at your target.
Its not a new concept, other countries have mobile ground based anti-ship missile launchers, but I think it is new to the USMC. |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: LindyBill who wrote (6213) | 2/19/2021 8:10:36 PM | | From: TimF | | | | Such a situation would be unlikely. It would presumably require a peer or near-peer conflict (which would be unlikely mostly but not only because they would probably have nuclear weapons). Any conflict against a lesser power (or in particular against some militia, insurrection, or terrorist group) would either be against someone without ships or with ships that would probably never threaten the USMC mission because they would be destroyed before coming close.
Potentially if you had some small USMC deployment near the coast or on an island off the coast of South Korea it could be used against North Korea's navy, but North Korea's navy (at least if they try to use it actively rather than hide it) would not likely be long for this world in any 2nd Korean War. You could also get scenarios against the Iranian navy but the same point holds for them as well.
Even among neer-peer powers Russia is not likely to present the type of threat that this would deal with, their conventional threat would mostly be deployed across land. There are some possible scenarios for small scale use against Russia in maybe the Baltics or potentially Norway, but the Russian surface fleet would probably stay on defense in any potential war.
So at the moment its pretty targeted to China. If the US tried to stop some Chinese attack against Taiwan, or the Japanese islands that the PRC claims, or you had some other island based conflict in the East China Sea, or South China Sea, or potentially further from China than that (but still in the Pacific) if the naval balance between the US and China shifts significantly, and China becomes more aggressive further away from their shores.
I don't think the capability would be worth developing if it was extremely expensive but this isn't an extremely expensive capability for military equipment. The launchers are just variants of vehicles that the USMC is going to have anyway, and the missiles are already developed.
I think having the capability makes sense for the US. It makes even more sense for other countries that are close to potential threats like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Finland, Sweden, Vietnam, Israel, Iran (who would want to use it against the US or against countries that we are allied to). And a number of them already have mobile ground based anti-ship missiles launchers. |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last ReadRead Replies (1) |
|
| To: TimF who wrote (6214) | 2/19/2021 8:57:13 PM | | From: LindyBill | | | | The Marines have not impressed me with their weapon's choices. Their vertical lift planes sat on the decke of the carriers in the Indian Ocean during Afghan one because they didn't have the range to loiter. They still went ahead with them on the F-35.
They would do better spending their research on how to better protect and help their troops to fight. |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: TimF | 6/23/2021 8:19:18 PM | | | | | | Marines Pick Loitering Munition To Arm Light Vehicles And Drone Boats
So-called "suicide drones" will give Marine units a new option for finding threats and engaging them precisely on land and at sea.
thedrive.com |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: TimF | 9/1/2021 8:04:34 PM | | | | | | U.S. Marine F-35Bs to Operate off Largest Japanese Warship Later This Year
By: Sam LaGrone
September 1, 2021
U.S. Marine F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters will operate off a Japanese warship later this year, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger said on Wednesday.
In November, the Marine F-35Bs will embark on one of the two 24,000-ton Izumo-class helicopter destroyers in an exchange that could lead to a similar program in which a U.S. Marine JSF squadron embarked aboard U.K. Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) this year.
“We’re not going to go on deployment but we’re actually going to fly U.S. Marine Corps F-35s off of a Japanese ship,” Berger said on Wednesday during a U.S. Naval Institute – CSIS Maritime Security Dialogue.
The Japanese government approached the Marines in 2019 to consider the exchange of aircraft in parallel to the retrofit that would allow Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force warships JS Izumo (DDH-183) and JS Kaga (DDH-184) to embark F-35Bs, USNI News reported at the time.
The warship will likely be JS Izumo (DDH-183). Izumo completed the first phase of the modifications to accommodate F-35s in July, according to Naval News. The modifications include adding lines to the deck and heat-resistant coatings.
“In this second modification, the bow shape of the Izumo will be changed from the current trapezoidal shape to a rectangular shape to make it easier to operate the F-35B, and other changes to the ship’s interior compartments are also planned,” reported Naval News.
The modification of Izumo and Kaga are paired with a planned JSDF buy of 42 F-35Bs to operate from the two ships. The first of the JSDF F-35Bs are set to arrive in Fiscal Year 2023.
The expansion of Japan’s F-35 capability comes as the Chinese have expanded their own naval capability to improve the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s amphibious capability...
news.usni.org |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| From: TimF | 2/25/2022 6:14:10 PM | | | | | | Paul Douglas went to Marine boot camp at 50. Then he earned a Bronze Star and 2 Purple Hearts in WWII\When he was wounded, he took off his rank insignia so he wouldn't receive special attention.
Jeff Schogol | Published Feb 11, 2022
In late 1944, Douglas served with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment during brutal combat on the small Pacific island of Peleliu. Commanders expected the island to be captured in a matter of days, but the bitter fighting lasted more than two months, providing a preview of how tenacious the Japanese resistance would be in later battles.
Douglas, who was serving as a division adjutant, had been allowed to take part in the invasion on the condition that he stay away from combat, yet he routinely volunteered to be a stretcher bearer to evacuate wounded and fallen Marines from the frontlines, Howard Shuman wrote in a 1979 profile of Douglas for Challenge, an economics magazine.
During one of his trips to the front, Douglas saw that the Marines desperately needed a flamethrower and ammunition for rocket launchers, so he grabbed what was needed and braved heavy mortar and small arms fire to deliver it to the front lines.
He was eventually awarded the Bronze Star for his actions helping those Marines, but the battle went on and Douglas also received his first Purple Heart after being wounded by shrapnel.
At one point in the battle for Peleliu. Douglas killed a Japanese sniper hiding in a cave, after the shooter had killed two fellow Marines. He described his thoughts afterward in his 1972 autobiography, “In the Fullness of Time.”
“As I came out, covered with mud and blood, the thought went through my head that perhaps the fellow was a professor of economics at the University of Tokyo,” Douglas wrote. “What a world it is that causes each of us to seek the other’s life.”
By the end of the battle, 1,336 Marines had been killed and another 5,450 were wounded. The Army’s 81st Infantry Division also lost 196 soldiers, who were killed in action.
As a leader, Douglas was credited with putting his men first. Shuman wrote how during one battle, a Navy corpsman refused Douglas’ order to treat wounded Marines who were under heavy fire.
“He said he was a Harvard Medical School graduate with training too valuable to risk his life,” Shuman wrote. “Incensed by his refusal, Douglas took out his weapon, pointed it at the doctor’s head, and marched him to the front lines. Years later he told me he still shuddered when he thought about it: he had been so outraged that he had been prepared to shoot the man if he refused again.”
Douglas would also routinely pick up garbage so that enlisted Marines would not have to do so, and he refused to skip ahead to the front of the chow line, according to the Marine Corps.
When Douglas was shot in his left forearm during the battle of Okinawa, he took off his rank insignia so that corpsmen would not see that he was a major and prioritize him over the enlisted troops who were wounded.
“If I live to be 100 years old, I will never forget this scene,” Marine Pfc. Paul E. Ison later recalled. “There, lying on the ground, bleeding from his wound was a white-haired Marine major. He had been hit by a machine gun bullet. Although he was in pain, he was calm, and I have never seen such dignity in a man. He was saying ‘Leave me here. Get the young men out first. I have lived my life. Please let them live theirs.”
Following his second combat injury, Douglas spent 14 months in hospitals and left the Marine Corps in 1946 as a lieutenant colonel. His wound at Okinawa cost him the use of his left hand, which he described as a “paperweight.”
After the war, Douglas served in the U.S. Senate for 18 years, where he was a champion of Civil Rights legislation. He is credited with bypassing the chairman of Judiciary Committee from Mississippi to allow the Senate to vote on a 1957 civil rights bill.
He died in 1976 at the age of 84. The year after his death, the Douglas Visitors Center at Parris Island opened in his honor.
“Later in his life many honors came to my husband,” his widow Emily Douglas said at the time. “But there is none that would have so touched him, made him so astonished as well as thrilled, as having his name associated here at Parris Island.”
taskandpurpose.com
cdrsalamander.blogspot.com |
| | The United States Marine Corps | Pastime Discussion ForumsShare | RecommendKeepReplyMark as Last Read |
|
| |
