The Military Thread

And even with your armed forces split up into separate branches (for the US, there's five: The Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, and the Coast Guard), nowadays it seems common enough to see people from different branches working alongside each other to varying degrees depending on the mission, whether it's a true Total Force operation (say, an Air Force Pararescueman attached to a Ranger company or a special operations element as a medic, or a USAF JTAC using his radio to make enemy emplacements explode violently while working with an Army unit), or something as minor as a smaller unit or detachment from one branch living on another branch's installation (say, an Army Patriot battery operating on an Air Force Base, or an Air Force training squadron stationed on an Army installation).

Sometimes one branch has a surplus of something the other branch needs, and it's just cheaper to share than for everyone to duplicate those requirements.

Funnily enough, military branches in the U.S and most other countries maintain their own military police force (henceforth why Barkey is an Air Force military policeman), whereas The Other Chinese Army sticks with a centralized force that is officially considered to be an independent service branch by itself; the Military Police however are also the most infamous of the ROC’s services, and historically has been used by the Kuomintang regime to suppress political dissidence – it theoretically has had the power to conduct its own civilian investigations and as well as having regular civil police ones being transferred over to its jurisdiction.

Such an arrangement isn't entirely unheard of in western countries. As I understand it, many of the Continental European nations have something called a Gendarmerie, which is basically a cross between a national police force and a branch of the armed forces (the UK, and many of the Commonwealth nations and the US, instead have a more solid split between the military and the police)

I notice that none of you mentioned the Canadian Forces as an example of a unified military (though I hear that the government decided to ditch the "Land/Maritime/Air Command" naming format and renamed them back to "Army/Navy/Air Force" for some reason).

The US may have distinct branches but overall the military is a unified structure.

The problem was Jurisdiction Friction: Before World War Two, the "War" Department ran the Army and the Department of the Navy ran the Navy and Marines (and the Coast Guard in times of war).

After the war the Department of Defense took the Armed Services under it's wing. But they were never really unified. This came to a head twice:

• In the Vietnam War, the US led 4-5 air forces: the USAF's Tactual Air Command, their Strategic Air Command, NAVAIR (including the Marines), the US Army's air arm and the South Vietnamese Air Force. In contrast to the NVA.

• During The '70s (and the fail of Desert One), The '80s, when the US invaded Grenada, communication problems were fatal. That scene in film Heartbreak Ridge where a Marine uses his phone card to call back to the states to get air and naval support? Truth in Television: before the Goldwar-Nicholas Reform Act, the radio nets of the armed forces were that separate.

Since the mid 80's, Joint Operations have been the norm rather than the exception. While each service has a different culture and SOP's, each service trains to work and fight with the others.

It's not uncommon to have a join training school for a common job: mechanics, power plant operators, chaplins, EOD, military working dogs and many other schools are run by one service for another.

The DOD has many manuals and publications that are joint publications. More bases host units from different services.

Of course the National Guard just laughs because they do this all the time (mostly disaster relief or fighting forest fires).

Every so often there is some idiot that says "Abolish the air force" or "fold the marines into the army". There was even a book titles "The Case for abolishing the air force." But these people are still idiots, even if they get the media or a publisher to repeat their claims.

Usually it's a sign that said idiot knows nothing about the military. I give the Chair Force shit for dicthing the C-27J because the Zipper Suited Sun Gods would never want to fly a transport. But the Air Force knows and does that whole flying thing better than the Army and Marines. The Navy (aside from the SEALs, can't do land ops and the Army has more experience administering on massive scales.

So no, some Starfleet like uniformed service is a pipe dream of pundits and bad screen writers.

On a humorous note:

An urban legend had President harry Truman's advisers saying that the Marines could be folded into the Army too save money. So the President asks the Commandant (or Chesty Puller, or both) about this. Rather than just merely fuming, the answer was, okay so long as every private was made a sergeant in the Army because they were better trained. The Army Chief of staff storms out in a huff and that was the end of that...

"Zipper Suited Sun Gods"? Now that's a new one.

Really? It normally crops up every few pages around here.

Speaking of M Ps, where is Barkey? Still deployed protecting something something we might not be allowed to know about?

What kind of internal command splits do you get even within standard military arms? The obvious one would be how in many Navies the Marines are technically part of the Navy, but what about other groups? Submarine command I assume it likewise separate a lot from the rest of the Navy, but what about Army air command and other such groupings?

edited 30th Nov '14 1:26:42 PM by SilasW

Taira; They were still under a unified command structure and unified whole. Those are examples of poorly structured forces not a lack of unification. Even unfied forces get clashes when the lines are not clearly drawn and you have to play guess who is in charge of what game.

The "Joint"ness in Joint Operations isn't just a buzz word. There were many aircraft, ships and vehicles that were canned because they "encroached" on the mission of the sister service.

In The '60s the DOD leadership tried but it failed. It took The '80s to make joint ops a reality.

As for the separate air forces in Vietnam as opposed to Desert Storm? After the Goldwater-Nicholas reforms, the Combatant Commander replaced the idea of having a flag officer from a specific service and the silly games that went with it.

Heck, several US commands have Canadian generals on staff to help train for the future.

What actually happened to the C-27s, anyways?

Some were went to the Coast Guard, the rest are still in the Boneyard.

Taira; That is a completely different thing and has to do with a rather old agreement. They were still unified no matter how you try and slice it.

US Special Operations Command is/has recieved nine C-27s.

They were talking about an AC-27J for a while, equipped with a 30mm gun and some hard points on the wings to drop heavy objects from.

I got this from the Martial Arts thread:

Is there a evolutionary reason why most of us avoid killing our own kind? I know the military does have steps to 'remedy' this problem but still is there a reason for this?

edited 1st Dec '14 1:05:28 PM by GAP

Future of war, why quantity trumps quality T. X. Hammes on why the U.S. military needs to rethink its procurement strategy in light of the shift from few and exquisite to small, many and smart.

So in a few years we will totally have no chance of beating China?

Pfft, the idea of China ever being a military threat is ridiculous. The vast majority of their gear is completely useless on the modern battlefield and what few new things they have pale in comparison to anything the West or Russia can deploy now.

They lack the infrastructure to ever deploy those numbers, even within their own borders. Their entire military would implode if they tried to move it anywhere.

Their win/loss record is just embarrassing and morale in that army is nonexistent. Their soldiers know they only exist to keep the population in line and they know they might not even to be able to do that.

China will never pose a military threat to any of the other world powers.

China's military has enough on their plate trying to keep an odd billion or so people under one regime, they're very brittle should they be forced to actually deploy anywhere.

Underestimating China has not, historically, been a wise move.

I'm not sure China can be written off so easily.

^ True, but unrest is likely to escalate with war, and that demands attention I'm not sure China can afford to split against a significant foreign power.

I was referring to pure industrial capacity, in my,admittedly ill informed opinion,if China did what we did in WW 2, and turned their entire industrial base to war fighting, they would be unstoppable.

And their society would collapse within a week. They're barely holding themselves together now, there's no way the population would be ok with turning into a war economy.

I knew they were having problems but barley holding themselves tougher? That seems a bit excessive.

No more than the US is at the moment...

edited 1st Dec '14 2:26:34 PM by Greenmantle