Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Good observation about the Navy/Marine Corps challenge when budgeting. The LCS or Amphibious ships are dual use (SysAdmin/Leviathan) vessels for the USN & USMC. Submarines & destroyers are definitely Leviathan assets. They also have their vocal advocates in the Navy Department while amphibs & the LCS are the poor cousins of the Navy because they're not flashy, just functional.

But we sailors do envy the Marines in some way. We'd rather have cammies than dungarees and khaki uniforms because they're practical. And the other new office working uniforms look a lot like USMC issue, too.

Finally, another indication of a merge between the navy & marines: the Independent Augmentee sailors & officers in ground units.

It seems to me that our air fighting abilities have been so far advanced that we, by developing superior weaponry, have dictated what a potential enemy must do. In the air everyone has had to play catch up, or just give up. The ground is the tough arena to predict. Where we fight is as important as who we fight. I don't like to see us dumbing down to rifle against rifle and grenade against grenade. We will always have some instances that require a small force (marines, seals) to engage in a short fight. We do not want to have whole divisions (army, marines) lumbering around for months or years trying to kill skinny little guys in sandals. We are going to have to seek political solutions as a first option, not as a last resort. I learned in the old neighborhood that when you head into a fight you bring as many buddies with you as you can. It's tough to find help after the bottles and bricks start to fly.

This conversation brings up a quibble I have with the whole leviathan/sysadmin thing; a lot of people seem to think in either/or terms on it. Submarines are this, fighters are that, etc. But how often does it work that way?

The transports that supply sysadmin also gets leviathan into the field. The amphibious assault force (including escort vessels) that hits the beaches of hostile countries also hits the beaches of disaster areas and protects them from pirates. The fighters that destroy an enemy's air force also provide air cover to sysadmin. Not to mention the versatile roles of the sysadmin troops themselves, Marines only being the most obvious example. The only pure leviathan forces I can think of right offhand are the nuclear forces, the B-52s and the Seawolves. The only pure sysadmin I can think of are civil affairs.