So when President Trump announced a Space Force, there was lots of memes but one common actual counter argument was it was redundant since space was already de facto covered by the air force .Taking that line of thinking a step further does it really make sense to have 6, now 7, separate branches of the Armed Forces at all? The coast guard navy and marines are all separate branches but they're all maritime. Obviously it's never going to happen there's too much tradition and rivalry tied up into each but it seems like it would be a lot more efficient to combined them into one.
>>61977302>it was redundant since space was already de facto covered by the air force .So was the airforce covered by the US Army Air Forces before they became their own branch when it became clear the airforce was going to be a significant factor in all modern military engagements.The argument being made is this is that same moment for the space force.
>>61977302>but it seems like it would be a lot more efficient to combined them into one.No it's actually the opposite. The branches are all separate because they fight in different domains, and having a branch that fights on multiple domains with different missions makes it less efficient because one component will hog all the funding and the more specialized needs of certain mission sets will be ignored.We have so many branches because we can afford to specialize. Other countries can't.
>>61977302>he thinks its 7 branchesIt's 6. US Marines, US Army, US Space Force, US Air Force, US Navy and US Coast Guard. The National Guard isn't a branch.
>>61977331America's is a special case in this department, the second strongest airpower after the USA forces is the US Navy.>>61977358Yeah I wasn't too sure on that one, what's the rationale, it's still part of the US military isn't it?
>>61977302We honestly could do with probably splitting the Army a bit more, sucker is unweildy with very broad missions. Should refocus Marines while we're at it too. Amphibious landings in a landlocked desert doesn't work.
>>61977302Coast guard is fresh water navy, different use case than the regular navy. Their job is to, well, guard the coast while the USN goes out and does blue water shit like say invade Japan or whatever. Think of them as basically a naval garrison force, whose job is to protect and patrol the borders, and act as a rapid response force, albeit one that's geared mainly towards dealing with small scale, local threats, while the regular navy has more of an expeditionary force role, designed to be able to project overwhelming power wherever it is needed. To that end the coast guard have to have a presence at basically every port in the country, demanding a mobile, highly distributed, and flexible force that can show up wherever they're needed and fill a variety of different roles, from rescuing civilians to dealing with armed smugglers. The coast guard are naval first responders essentially.The marines specialize in amphibious warfare and assault, which is unique and different enough from typical land warfare to justify a split, for a variety of reasons. You could theoretically fold them into the regular army but the practices, training, and specialization needed to do what they do, combined with the need to work far closer with the navy than the regular army, to the point of sometimes being embedded with navy personnel, would mean they'd end up operating so differently from the rest of the army that they might as well be a seperate force anyway.There are good reasons behind why our armed forces are divided up the way they are. Folding any one of them into the other would just end up harming both. The navy doesn't want to have to spread itself all over dealing with the constant, neverending task of securing our maritime borders, and the coast guard doesn't want to have to deal with all those huge, expensive, navy ships that carry way more firepower then they'd ever reasonably need to go up against drug runners, gangs, and the occasional pirate.
>>61977330Fun fact World War 1 tanks or 'land ships' used to be part of the British navy
>>61977473>the second strongest airpower after the USA forces is the US Navy.Yeah no shit, but the reason is to contest airspace over the seas, inland, and support Marines. Naval Aviation isn't just "the Air Force on water". They have some entirely different missions than the Air Force.
>>61977473National Guard is a militia that is tied to the states. In the constitution the military is strictly for foreign affairs while militia is for domestic. If you do a lot of in-depth study of the civil war it's very often state militia and proto-national guard units and very little is the actual army
>>61977473>Yeah I wasn't too sure on that one, what's the rationale, it's still part of the US military isn't it?National guard is state level not federal level
>>61977511>National guard is state level not federal levelIncorrect. It is both state level and federal level.
>>61977358True, but at the same time the head of the National Guard Bureau is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while the Commandant of the Coast Guard isn't.
>>61977473The National Guard is actually part of two different branches of the US military: the Army and the Air Force.
>>61977527That's not really a slight on the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard commandant still has direct operational control over the Coast Guard whereas other JCS are purely administrative by law per the Goldwater-Nichols act.
>>61977478>Their job is to, well, guard the coast while the USN goes out and does blue water shit like say invade Japan or whatever.The division of roles isn't nearly that clear. Pic very related.
>>61977550I didn't mean to imply it was. It's just the Coast Guard is very much it's own thing administratively and legally-speaking.
>>61977567I'd say he had it mostly on the money and that you're being semantic. The Coast Guard operating in Vietnam is a very clear case of their special mission and unique place in the DoD/DHS. They can be moved between departments during wartime, and the Navy actually struggled in Vietnam because they had become to a brown water navy to continue taking the fight to the enemy outside the air. This was something the CG was uniquely suited for.
>>61977576Kind of makes sense with the coast guard, one thing the United States has which most countries don't is very very very strict rules about using soldiers for domestic law enforcement. Most countries even in the west would have no problems about sending in the marines to start cracking a few heads next time there was mostly peaceful protest (with the most utmost restraint of course) so Border Security would kind of fall a legal gray area.
>>61977302>same thing>different bands This is just how US works in general. It has to be this way.
>>61977473The US Navy is kind of unique in and of itself even compared to other maritime forces. Most countries navies are usually geared towards defense and protecting their own shores, and maybe they'll play a larger, regional role if their country has enough power to throw their weight around. Only a handful of navies even have the ability to mount an actual expeditionary force and project power outside of their regional waters.By contrast the USN's entire focus is arguably on expeditionary forces. The expectation of the US Navy is that it can roll up to someplace halfway around the world, go to war on its own with no support other than what it brought with them, and win. A Carrier Strike Group arriving in an area changes the calculus for every military group in the region. And the navy runs multiple of these, around the world, constantly. What other navy is designed with the explicit goal of "we want to be able to sail to any place on the planet and beat the crap out of whoever's there, whenever we like"? For basically any other country the thought of having a force like that would be absolutely absurd.
>>61977302Even though combining em all is obviously never going happen do you think the military could maybe benefit from another Goldwater–Nichols Act to get get all the branches on the same page? For all the talk of combined arms they are definitely still times when the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.
>>61977651>For all the talk of combined arms they are definitely still times when the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.On a strategic level or tactical level?
>>61977603I don't think it can get much further away from "guarding the US coast" than providing gunfire support to ground troops in South Vietnam. I really don't.
>>61977302>>61977330So now that there's a space force do you think we might see a cyber space force in the near future?I know it's sounds like 1980s pulp but cyber security and cyber attacks are only going to be more relevant in the coming years.
As far as the 2nd strongest Air Force in the US military being the Navy goes..... is that true? I can't find any good numbers but a quick check tells me that the National Guard has 23~ Squadrons? There are 2 squadrons of F-22s in the ANG so they do have that going for them
>>61977671Likely not because their missions are tied to protecting their branch's cyber info.
>>61977688Arguably a cyber-warfare division that's goal is offensive (even if it's only offensive target is the other branches to make sure their shit is secure) wouldn't be a terrible idea.... probably doesn't need to be a full on branch though just an alphabet soup agency should be fine.
>>61977659Eh fair enough. The Coast Guards role is to act as a freshwater navy. The vast, vast, majority of the time that means they're operating in domestic waters and therefore are mainly defensive, but in situations where their skills are called for they can be used in an offensive role.But just because they have been used in offensive wars before doesn't mean it's inaccurate to describe their main job as guarding the coast, any more than it would be to say that the navy's main job is NOT to do search and rescue, even though the navy has done that several times before.
>>61977683The Air National Guard is a part of the Air Force. When the Air Force split from the Army, they took their part of the national guard too.
>>61977688While I know know you're probably right but still one can make the argument for the necessity of a specialized dedicated branch just the same way the air force covers the skies in general, say for stuff like massive cyber attacks on an country.>>61977696Yeah. It would probably remain convert agency stuff but I could see it maybe happening more openly if there were some sort of serious attempt to establish the 'rules of cyber warfare' in future conflicts.
Let's be honest and say what we all already know:The USMC should not be a branch on its own.They should never have left being part of the US Navy.
>>61977877They still are part of the Navy.
