A new war would flavor Marine leadership’s taste for tanks for decades to come: Vietnam. Ultimately, his article concluded that the tank was needed, and actually was an ideal weapon for protected firepower on the battlefield, especially when used in conjunction with well-trained infantry.īut Barrett was making a case that was only one school of thought at the time. “What shall we do with the tank? Shall the tank be abandoned as a weapon?” Barrett asked. Barrett, who’d spent most of his 15 years in the Corps at that time with 1st Tank Battalion, admitted that a “current and recurring question” in Marine tactics and techniques was the place of tanks in future warfare. In the October 1959 issue of the Marine Corps Gazette, then-Maj. But, again, fairly quickly came questions of the vehicle’s utility and where it fit in the Corps’ scheme of maneuver. Less than a decade after the war, Marines relied on tanks in the frozen, rugged terrain of the Korean War. Though early fighting saw heavy equipment losses, infantry commanders saw the utility of the direct fire, protected asset, even modifying its use with flamethrowers specifically to rout out enemies in fortified bunkers. Tanks saw employment on Tarawa in the Pacific Ocean and in other island campaigns. That first experimental unit only lasted a few years before being disbanded. Marines fought alongside tanks in the Corps’ early World War I incarnations, but the service did not receive its own tanks to play with, train with and deploy until the mid-1920s. Though the Corps has proven itself worthy in battle many times over, it long has had a conflicted relationship with armor, even mechanized units, as it strains to remain a light force aboard ships while also being called upon to fight major land campaigns with the Army. “Stop at the beach, is that the new motto?” Spencer said.Ī U.S Marine from the 1st Expeditionary Force, 1st Battalion smokes a cigarette before a possible offensive November 5, 2004, near Fallujah, Iraq. And it limits its likely needed presence in an urban conflict. He called that reliance a high-risk scenario that a forward-deployed Marine unit cannot afford. “So, what, is the Army the Marine Corps’ 911 now?” Spencer said. But not if the Corps has to rely on the Army to deliver an armor punch. The point of expeditionary forces already on site is that the right tools are available when needed. He poked at how these changes will affect the Corps’ self-identified “America’s 911” moniker for decades through its use of forward-deployed Marine operating units with the Marine air-ground task force, a combined arms package to meet any threat. Spencer pointed out that the 82nd Airborne Division, the Army’s Global Response Force, recently began experimenting with a light tank it can take anywhere in the world, airborne. …they’re all urban littoral zones,” Spencer said.Īnd, he noted, by not having mobile protected firepower such as a tank in the toolkit, dismounted troops entering a city will have to rely more on mortars, close air support and other assets that put both them and the civilian population at risk. “I cannot envision a littoral zone that would require an expeditionary force that would not include a city. And with the majority of the world’s current and future megacities in the Pacific region, most in the littoral zones, the retired major sees that as inevitable. Spencer said that ditching the tank entirely severely handicaps the Marine Corps should it need to fight in a city. John Spencer, who started his career as an enlisted soldier and saw combat in Iraq, is now the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern Warfare Institute at West Point in New York. Where the tank treads meet the road for the individual Marine or solider is when the fighting hits a city. “There is no organizational effort in the Army to replace the tank.” “I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the tank,” he said. The retired three-star general still sees the importance of the tank land warfare, noting those added brigades, modernization and upgrades to the existing tank fleet and investment by the Army. But the Army recently did add two more Armored Brigade Combat Teams, putting those numbers up to 16 ABCTs. Spoehr did understand nervousness among some Marine leaders on looking to the Army for armor in a quick-response fight.
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