I see MARSOC as a natural evolution for SOF, and I don't think it's a threat to SF's existence. I don't understand that MARSOC-bashing that's been taking place over the last couple of months. If blame is to be assessed and fingers pointed, shouldn't SOCOM be where the ire is directed, and not the Marines?
It makes sense to me to have a Marine SOF organization, and to apply this new capability against the SOF problem sets that we are having the most difficulty with at the moment, which in my opinion are FID and UW/surrogate ops. Furthermore (again in my opinion), SF's legacy and future are secure within the US military- DoD validated that opinion by growing the Group MTOEs to reflect, among other things, two additional battalions (the GSB and an SF battalion per group- if I remember correctly). There will always be a need for SF's core competencies, but the GWOT demonstrated they cannot be the "sole provider" for those competencies.
Stipulate that i agree with every i
didn't pull from Marauder's piece, cited above.
Here's where I believe Marauder incorrect as regards the finger pointing. The Marines, as a Service, must yield endstrength to USSOCOM. So, as much as they may want USMC to contribute, ultimately USSOCOM gets what it gets.
At issue are a couple of points here that, if ignored, make the case that Marines are only interested in "the cool stuff".
(1) No part of Marine Civil Affairs is moving to MARSOC, even though CA is a SOF mission and still falls under USSOCOM for Joint Proponency.
(2) Unless the models have drastically changed from what I last saw, there is no cogent JSOTF capability in any MARSOC unit. An SF Group can do it (now) only after significant augmentation, and despite the desires of at least two T-SOCs, an SF Battalion just doesn't have the manpower to pull it off.
This goes to, what some call, "tooth-to-tail" ratio. In both these cases, MARSOC either chose not to, just won't, man, train, and equip the full slew of SOF capabilities, even though the Service has it within their power to do so. So, Army SOF gets stuck with 100% of the mission requirement, and now a new SOF Service Component to account for when organizing in either case. MARSOC, as configured now, does not provide any relief.**
At a glance, it appears that the only missions USMC (and MARSOC) are interested in for MARSOC are DA/SR missions and FID (if, in fact, they are retaining that mission). They don't appear interested in forming the larger deployed HQ's/C2 functions necessary to Plan, Direct, Monitor, and Assess at the operational level. And they aren't moving any of their CA units (currently all in the USMC Reserves) to support SOF CA requirements.
Given the highly touted, if grossly misnamed, "MEU-SOC" (about which they are quite fond), there's no reason why a budding MARSOC doesn't have this as a core capability.
So, given that, why would MARSOC think there'd be no objection from Special Forces to their delving into UW? From a roles and mission standpoint, there's plenty of unique, enabling capabilities a "MARSOC" could bring to the SOF milieu without also trying to take on the very complicated business of UW.
So, I can see the intellectual vice emotional, argument against MARSOC as it currently is, or at least one where the USMC is required to fork over a bit more manpower to provide true balance. But the locus for a solution resides in Quantico...not Tampa.
**<NAVSPECWAR makes the same mistake. I was in a brief recently where they "discovered" that their tooth-to-tail ratio is Point 5 to one. SF is about 7 to 1 by comparison. NAVSPECWAR is making a play to borrow capabilities from Naval Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) to fill those gaps. (Of course, these would be funded under Service (P-2) vice SOF (P-11) auspices.)>
