Name an Admiral in the nineties who served in country in Viet Nam.

When riverine forces were required in Iraq, what services provided them, in what order?

Could the two be related?

Exactly what capabilities is the Navy providing in Afghanistan?
Mountain frogmen? Amphibious construction many thousands of feet above sea level and hundreds of miles from a beach? Submarine urban and rural reelectrification construction superintendants and supervisors?

The ugly fact is that the Navy is acting in the role Pershing had in mind for the Marine Corps in 1917. Individual reliefs and replacements where transferable skills exist, to allow the army to cope with shortages brought on by battle casualties or bottlenecks in the mobilization process. In the current case the bottleneck is failure to understand that the nation is at war and what the consequences of that fact are.

Since our national leadership has an eight year old massive case of raging DENIAL of what the world we live in has come to, the mobization bottleneck isn’t about to clear up.

What is the point of institutionalizing the consequences of the seminal strategic gaffe; to wit, NO DECLARATION OF WAR, NO NATIONAL MOBILIZATION.

Define, accurately, our current enemy. Have Congress declare war, or own the downstream consequences of failing to do so.

Define and declare the war’s aim and terminal objective, based on a realistic understanding of the enemies war aim and terminal objective, and what conditions will force him to abandon them. Determine the strategy to obtain victory in view of the above.
Mobilize the armed forces. MOBILIZE THE NATION COMPLETELY. Conscript as required to man and train the forces required.
Wage unrestricted land, sea, and air warfare upon the enemy, until he surrenders. Hold war crimes trials, punish war criminals.
Occupy and reconstruct the nations whose governments we have overthrown. Withdraw from the defeated nations. Demobilize.

Ummm, taint likely. You will note we haven’t quite tidied up WWII, yet.

Personally I fear my great grandsons and (God forbid, but probably) granddaughters, will be fighting this war fifty years hence, although they won’t call it the same war. Just as we split first half of the twentieth century into WWI and WWII, when it was one long screwup.

My answer?. Archive EVERYTHING, keep everybody’s phone number.

Because when we get to the end of phase one, that’s about the limit of what the budget will cover. ‘Til phase two.

Quite simply, NECC budgets need to be maintained when they come under pressure for cuts following our eventual drawdown from Iraq and the subsequent reduction in MESF/RIVRON deployment tempo. NECC has plenty of oppportunities to stay gainfully employed conducting FID, TSC, etc., but we need to be creative about it.